Parashat Chayei Sarah: A Lasting Mitzvah

0:04Here we have the same situation in the world. In America, over 80% of the Jews are marrying non-Jews. The assimilation is out of this world. And even in the religious world, even the people that are religious, keep Torah and mitzvot and so on, still have to a certain extent, some of them have also assimilated to a certain extent, their mindset, their ideology, where it's gotten to the point where if you talk to people about yirat shamayim, Automatically, they're taken aback. Well, hold on a second. Why are you talking like that? Why are you talking again? Oh, why doesn't my punishment talk to me about nice things? I'm gonna get it. I'm gonna get it. In this week's parasha, we have—so I'm in Parashat Chayei Sarah now, so when Sarah Imeinu leaves this world, it says that Avraham Avinu cried, but a little bit. A little bit. You think, you're with somebody for over a hundred years, you cry a lot. No. Avraham Avinu cried a little bit. It's not because he didn't love Sarah. How do we know? Look at what he bought. What kind of gravesite he bought her. The gravesite he bought her is, in today's money, 40-50 million dollars. Which, by the way, as a side note, the Ma'arat HaMakhpela is one of the greatest proofs of the divinity of the Torah and how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves Am Yisrael.

1:29of the divinity of the Torah and how much HaKadosh Baruch Hu loves Am Yisrael. Why? Obviously, at that time, you have Me'arat HaMakhpela, and you have all the people that are part of this whole situation where Avraham Avinu is about to buy this place from Ephron. Meaning it's a whole town, a lot of people. Certainly, some people are much richer than Avraham. Certainly, there are other people that are much more popular than Avraham. Maybe they have bigger YouTube channels. Maybe they have a bigger fan base. They have more likes on TikTok. There are many more people than Avraham. Avraham is certainly not the only individual who's popular, especially since he's new. Yet, 4,000 years later, the only thing that remains from that entire civilization that lived at that time, the only thing that remains is Me'arat HaMakhpela and the story of Parashat Chayei Sarah.

2:29You don't have any stories about Efron and what he did with his kids on the weekend, or his lineage, and how they grew up to be such and such. You don't have any stories about the rest of the people that were there. You don't have any pictures. You don't have anything. There's no houses. There's no monuments. There's nothing left. Zero. The only thing that's left is Me'arat HaMachpela. not only left, it's glorified. People come there from all over the world to pray there; it's a holy place. Of course, it's one of the things we fight with the Arabs about because they think it's theirs for some reason, like they think everything else is theirs. But the beauty here is that you see HaKadosh Baruch Hu wrote it in the Torah, and just like the Torah is eternal, this Me'arat HaMachpelah became eternal. Showing us that this story could have just been about some place that, whatever, it's gone, gone with the time. It could have been, you know, there was a cave in some place, let's call it Hebron, and ta-ta-ta-ta happened, and there's no more Hebron in the world. There's no more Hebron. And we would accept it just fine. But no, HaKadosh Baruch Hu said, no, no, this Hebron, this Ma'arat HaMachpelah, you're going to see it no matter what year you're alive.

3:52And not only that, you're going to see it, and it's going to be beautiful, you can visit it. Showing, what else? Can I see any monument of anything else that happened there 4,000 years ago? No, nothing. Nothing else is available. Everything else was built on, everything else became grass, everything else became rocks, everything else became nothing. So now back to crying over Sarah. You said that he cried a little bit... A little bit. The Torah says that he bewailed her. Right. The Hebrew has bewailed her, it says, with a small kaf. And the Chachamim say the reason why there's a small kaf, it's unusual; you can see it in my chumash. The reason why the word has everything normal size except the kaf is small, is because the kaf is, in essence, to symbolize that he cried only a little bit. The question is why he cried only a little bit? Because we know he loved her a lot; he bought her a $40 million monument. that's still available to this day. Today, you can't even buy jewelry that's going to last a month. Can't buy anything that's going to last a long time. Hani, where's your engagement ring? Oh, you gave me an engagement ring? Well, it's been a long time. Yeah, it's only been, I don't know, five years, ten years. Oh, yeah. Nobody knows anything. Everything's gone. But here he brought us something. It's still available today, 4,000 years later. But he only cried a little bit. Why did he cry only a little bit? The reason why, Rabotai, is because Avraham Avinu knew that this life is like a corridor to the real life.

5:20It's only a small little hole. You're here for a little while. She was here for 127 years, but she is in Olam Haba, in Gan Eden forever. So what are you going to cry about? She's in Gan Eden. She's in the best place in the world. What are we going to cry about? She's great. She's doing fantastic. She's not sick in the morning. She doesn't have any backaches. Her legs are not puffy. You know, she doesn't have to worry about what dress is going to fit her, not fit her. Is she fat? Is she skinny? Is the hair good? Is the hair good? Is the kisui rosh suitable? Daki rosh? Nothing. There's no problems over there. The kids are not driving her crazy. There are babysitters. For free. Everything is great. No problems over there. Now, people ask me, why don't you give a shiur about Gan Eden? Why don't you give a shiur about Gan Eden? That was the shiur about Gan Eden. Why can't it be expanded upon? Because it won't interest you. What we do in Gan Eden... B'ezrat Hashem, when we get there, it's not something of interest to many people in this world. People might tell you they learned Torah. They might say, "Oh my God, they learned Torah, it's still there." What kind of Gan Eden is that? I said, okay, you're probably not going to go there. Yes? If Yishmael did too many bad things in his life, why did his descendants still come?

6:44The father is responsible for his actions, and the son is responsible for his own actions. If the son would have done teshuvah, he would have been forgiven as well. Just because the father is righteous doesn't mean the son will be righteous, as we see with Avraham Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, and Yaakov Avinu—all of whom were righteous. Yet, Yitzchak had Esav. Esav is Edom. He is Amalek, the ultimate arch-enemy of Am Yisrael, of Yaakov. They're not getting punished because of him. No, Esav was wicked. The way the Torah says is that if the father is wicked and the son is wicked, then the son gets punished for both because he's continuing the wickedness of his father. But if the father is righteous and the son is wicked, then the father doesn't get punished for his son. Only if the father caused him to be wicked. If the father caused him to be wicked, then he gets punished for it. But if he brought him to yeshiva, he brought him good things, and the son decided to be a criminal, that's his problem. So, Yishmael, he did teshuva in the end. He lived a wicked life, and then he did teshuva, and that's why he's mentioned in this week's parasha at the end. He's mentioned that he buried Avraham together with Yitzchak. If he was still wicked, he wouldn't have been mentioned. His descendants, on the other hand, many of them are very wicked. then the father doesn't get punished for his son, only if the father caused him to be wicked. If the father caused him to be wicked, then he gets punished for it. But if he brought him to yeshiva, gave him good things, and he decided to be a criminal, that's his problem. So, Yishmael did teshuva in the end. He lived a wicked life, and then he did teshuva, and that's why he's mentioned in this week's parasha at the end. It is mentioned that he buried Avraham together with Yitzchak. If he was still wicked, he wouldn't have been mentioned. His descendants, on the other hand, many of them are very wicked.

8:04Now, when we talk about Gan Eden, Gan Eden, generally speaking, is joy, is beautiful, but it's not really much of interest that most people would relate to in this world. Gehenom, on the other hand, is something that everyone can relate to, to a certain extent, because everyone knows what pain is. Whether you're a little kid and you endured pain by falling while playing with some type of ball, or you ran after your friend, and instead of catching him, you ran into a pole, everybody knows pain. When you're a little older, someone steals money from you, that's pain. As you age, there are all types of other issues: marital issues, children issues, financial issues, health issues. You know, you wake up one day, and you're already 50 years old, feeling like you're 150. You remember yesterday you were 20, and now you're 50. Everything suddenly hurts. That's when you really know pain. And Gehinom talks about that. Now, the Chachamim say... The people have gotten to the point, and this is in Or Yisrael, which was a book written by Rabbi Yisrael MeSalant and also compiled with his talmid, Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer. Highly recommended. One of the few high-quality mussar books that has been translated perfectly into English, but is obviously also available in other languages. Or Yisrael. He says that

9:29People have gotten to the point where they're scared to learn about yirat shamayim, scared to learn about Ge'enom, scared to learn about punishment. Because when they hear about it, they imagine themselves there. Now, if I tell you about Gan Eden, I just told you about Gan Eden, you guys heard the shiur about Gan Eden, it's wonderful. But nobody felt like they were in Gan Eden. When I told you there's no, you know, there's no problems, there's babysitters, no one, the feet don't hurt, the hands don't hurt, nothing hurts, no one felt like they were in Gan Eden. It was just funny. It was entertaining. It was great. Hopefully, one day I'll be there. No one really felt like they were there. But anyone who watches five minutes of any one of my shiurim where I talk about Ge'enom, all of a sudden they say, "Oh, I don't want to go there." Well, who's talking about you going there? I'm just talking generally. Everybody feels like they're going to be there. Why? That's how HaKadosh Baruch Hu programmed us. That's how HaKadosh Baruch Hu programmed us. You can relate to it. Hence, the reason why people, when they don't want to serve Hashem the way He wants them to, they run away from shiurim (lectures), they run away from books, they run away from teachings that talk about gehinom (hell). I remember I talked to one avrech (a married Torah student) who, Baruch Hashem, did teshuva (repentance). Even though he was already an avrech, he had to do teshuva.

10:47Why did he have to do teshuva? Because although he was learning the Shas, he knew nothing about reward and punishment. He only understood different sugyot in the Gemara. I asked him, "Wait, did you go over Masechet Berachot?" He said, "Yes." "Masechet Avodah Zarah?" "Yes." It's practically in every masechet. I said, "What about those sections that talk about reward and punishment?" He replied, "No, we skipped those. We skipped those." So, he had to do teshuva. Baruch Hashem, he did teshuva, and all of a sudden, he became a much bigger Talmid Chacham. He was able to understand a lot of things that he couldn't understand before. So, the reason why people don't like to talk about it is because they imagine themselves there. Here, we have Avraham Avinu, a little letter, Nifkota, he's talking about how? Just a little bit of crying, why? You don't have to talk too much about it, because she's in Gan Eden. She's in Gan Eden. If I tell you about what she's experiencing and how wonderful it is, you won't relate. You won't feel like you're there. He became a much bigger Talmid Chacham. He was able to understand a lot of things that he couldn't understand before. So, the reason why people don't like to talk about it is because they imagine themselves there. Here, we have Avraham Avinu, a little letter, Niftara, he's talking about how? Just a little bit of crying, why? You don't have to talk too much about it, because she's in Gan Eden. She's in Gan Eden. If I tell you about what she's experiencing and how wonderful it is, you won't relate. You won't feel like you're there.

11:43It'll sound cool. I'll tell you about all the amazing animals that are there. The animals there all have wings. They're all beautiful; even the pig is beautiful. Everything is wonderful there. Believe it or not, you eat there, unlike what many people think. You eat there, and you're even with your wife there. There are a lot of wonderful things there. Now, it's not going to help you serve Hashem, no. It is interesting, mentally stimulating, for sure. But it's not going to help you in your purpose in life. On the other hand, Yirat Shamayim will. Why? HaKadosh Baruch Hu says in Masechet Shabbat, "Yirat Hashem hi otzarotav." The fear of Hashem, that's His treasure. We are meant to be a light unto the nations, not to follow their misguided practices. Remember, every Jew has to remember that he's a Jew and she's a Jew. We don't celebrate non-Jewish holidays, even if they seem harmless.