MUSSAR Being A Decent Human Being (6 minutes)

0:51If you want to be close to Hashem, one of the most important jobs that you have in this world is to learn how to be a human being—it is to learn how to be a good, decent person. But not a decent person, again, by your own definition. You have to look at the instruction set. And there are several parts of the Torah. There's the Written Torah, there's the Oral Torah. And there are obviously many parts of the Oral Torah. One of the critical parts is the Mishnah, from which the roots and the fruits of it is the Gemara. In there, you have exact instructions of what to do. But if we pretend like we already know everything, if we make the Torah secondary, if we make Mussar secondary, well, you know what, we want to learn Parashat HaShavua, we want to learn interesting things that happened in the past. We want to learn different Sippurei Tzaddikim. All of that's wonderful. But if you're not going to implement these things in your life, then it's all useless. To learn about who Moshe Rabbeinu is, is very nice. But to learn how to be like Moshe Rabbeinu is the point. That's why Hashem put it in the Torah.

2:17Moshe Rabbeinu is known for being the most humble man that ever lived. If someone is a failure, lacking money, wisdom, or anything noteworthy, humility is not applicable to such a person since they have nothing to be proud of. But if someone has everything and he's humble, and he pretty much acts as if he has nothing, acts as if what he has is not significant because he knows where it's coming from—he knows it's really not his. If he's a faker, where he's like, "Oh, you know, I don't know anything, I don't know anything," and then, oh, by the way, did you see my book? I wrote all these things in my book. Okay, he's saying, I don't know anything. I don't think it's a faker; he's not real. If someone is like, "Yeah, no, I don't know, I don't know that much about business, but you know, I did sign a deal last week for 30 million dollars," that's a faker. That's a faker. Moshe Rabbeinu, when it says that Moshe Rabbeinu was the humblest man that ever lived, it's making that statement that Hashem is signing off on it.

3:41Because Moshe Rabbeinu actually had all the reasons in the world to be the most arrogant person that ever lived, the most proud person that ever lived, because he actually had everything. He was very, very strong. We read in last week's parasha that when he died at 120 years old, even his eyes didn't dim. He was still strong like a 20-year-old person. He was very tall, very strong. He defeated Og, the king of Bashan. He was very rich. He amassed a fortune from the small chips of the Luchot (Tablets) that broke. The small pieces that Hashem allowed him to profit from made him wealthy. On top of that, He's the only man that ever spoke to Hashem face to face. And he spoke to Him on a regular basis whenever he wanted. He spoke to the Source in the burning bush and also for 40 years throughout the whole desert. All the time that he was in the desert, he spoke to Hashem. So Moshe has many things on his resume that no one ever did, and no one ever will do. But yet...

5:04Moshe Rabbeinu, when Am Yisrael is complaining to him and Aharon about wanting water, Moshe Rabbeinu and Aharon say, "We're nothing. What are we, that you're even complaining to us? Complain to the Source. Complain to Hashem. Don't complain to us. Who are we, by the way?" Why? Just because I talk to him, you think he's going to listen to me? Just because I have some money, you think I can buy you something? Just because I'm strong, you think I can do it? I can break something or pick something up? Everything is from the Source. Everything is from Hashem. As soon as a person realizes this, then they can start developing a relationship with Hashem. But as long as a person has a confused idea of the relationship they have between them and Hashem, it creates a very big problem. of the relationship they have between them and Hashem, it creates a very big problem.