Shiur Torah #5 part 1 How Valuable Are Our Rabbis and More

0:00In the name of G-d, let's do it and succeed. Okay, Shiur Torah. One thing I thought about today, and we were just talking about it before, rabbis. Rabbis, when you really think about, you know, the real rabbis, the real rabbis of the world, in my opinion, you know, Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi is amazing, my cousin Rabbi Ephraim Kachlon is extraordinary, Rabbi Zamir Cohen, Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, those are some of the few that I follow closely and I think are amazing. But the Pirkei Avot, which is one of the parts of the Mishnah, mentions that every person needs to get himself a rabbi. Now, what is it to get a rabbi? Okay, so everybody goes to the Meknes, and there's a rabbi there? That's not a rabbi. Those are some of the few that I follow closely and I think are amazing. But the Pirkei Avot, which is one of the parts of the Mishnah, teaches that every person needs to get himself a rabbi. Now, what does it mean to get a rabbi? Okay, so everybody goes to the Beit Knesset, and there's a rabbi there? That's not necessarily your rabbi. He's a rabbi, of course, he's a rabbi, but it doesn't necessarily mean he's your rabbi. If you're making somebody your rabbi, that means that he is your consultant for everything. You have problems with the marriage, you go to that rabbi. You have problems with the religion, you go to that rabbi. You have problems with the children, you go to that rabbi. It's somebody that you're making as, in essence, a partner in your life.

1:22That's what "aseh lecha rav" means. Make yourself a rabbi. Because you have to feel extremely comfortable with this person. Now, to just make any rabbi your rabbi is like making any woman your wife. It doesn't make any sense. You have to think about this. You have to obviously talk to the person, see if you get along with the person, see if they understand you, see if you guys are on the same wavelength. Some people... are on the same wavelength as you, some people are not. You have to, you know, talk to the person and see if this is someone you can connect with. Just because somebody has a beard, a hat, and a suit, doesn't necessarily make them qualified to be your rabbi. They could very well be an amazing rabbi, but they might not necessarily be yours. It could be someone completely the opposite who is your rabbi. So, it's our job to... to get ourselves rabbis. It's not their job. It's our job. Their job is obviously to monitor the congregation, try to help whoever comes, and what they do is extraordinary, which is my next point. But it's our job to find ourselves a rabbi because they don't know if we already have one or not. They don't know if we're ready to actually have one or not. Most people look at rabbis as something very superficial. They look at them as someone that's at the synagogue. They see them maybe once a week on Shabbat when they go to the synagogue.

2:42and he's a nice guy, and you say hello, and you try to respect him, but when anything goes wrong, you yell at them. You know, people look at them almost like janitors or something like that. It's very, very wrong how people view them, but that's just the reality. The point I'm trying to make, aside from our responsibility to get ourselves rabbis whom we can talk to, text, email, meet, and discuss very intimate matters with, is that aside from that... What all of us need to do is start realizing why we are under-appreciating all of these rabbis. Now, even the big rabbis that you see in the world, even the ones that you see on YouTube and on Facebook, and all of these people, they go through very, very similar things like any other local rabbi. Rabbis in today's age are the most unappreciated piece of gold you could ever imagine. And the best example that I thought of over today and the last few days that I think is really extraordinary about it, of what people don't realize, is that a rabbi can never have a bad day. If you really think about it, they're not allowed to have a bad day. And I don't mean that they never have bad days, but they can never show anyone that they are having a bad day. Because people, if you're a rabbi, people come to you every day. One, after another, after another, after another. And what do they come to? They don't come to you, "Hey Rabbi, I just won the lotto, I wanted to give you a hit, half of it." No, never. Never in history does that happen.

4:09that they are having a bad day. Because people, if you're a rabbi, come to you every day, one after another, after another, after another. And what do they come to you for? They don't come to you saying, "Hey Rabbi, I just won the lotto, I wanted to give you a hit, half of it." No, never. Never in history does that happen. Where do they come to you? Rabbi, I just lost all my money. Rabbi, my wife is cheating on me. Rabbi, my kids are having problems in school. Rabbi, I have this problem. Rabbi, this one's dying. Rabbi, I'm dying. You know, problems. Tzarot. Tzarot all day. That's all they hear is tzarot and tzarot and tzarot and problems. And problems from all walks of life. If you want to really... Honestly, I think that somebody should make some type of movie about this, just taping one rabbi's phone calls or conversations for one week. Just one week. If anyone listens or watches this movie of just listening, not responding, not interacting, just listening to the phone calls that any of these rabbis get each week, I bet anything that that person not only does teshuva, but from that point on will never ever say anything bad about any rabbi.

5:21Because when you really realize what they go through and what they have to do all day, it's something extraordinary. They're not allowed to have a bad day. What are you going to say? So somebody says, listen, Rabbi, so-and-so has the machala. They have the disease. They have cancer. Lo aleinu. The doctor said they only have a few months. What does the rabbi say? Yeah, you know, I'm having problems with my palm. Oh yeah, I know. My so-and-so, I know also. What is he going to say to you? He can't. He's not a psychiatrist that is going to tell you, "Oh, listen, maybe if you meditate and pay me an extra $300 an hour, maybe it will go away." No, the rabbi is going to try to give you some solid advice. Pray to Hashem, be closer to Hashem, do things that are going to be conducive to your life, spend time with them. He's going to try to teach you things that you can take with you for the rest of your life, not just for that one particular meeting. I'm talking about real rabbis. I'm not just talking about anybody with a beard. If it was just about anybody with a beard, you'd call me a rabbi already. Well, I'd say I'm not a rabbi. I'm not even 1% of a rabbi. But the point here is that when you think about these special people, they go through so much.

6:35And it reminds me of myself, and the reason why I even had the thought of this is because I thought about my business days when I had all these employees. I remember, you know, when we were at the top, there was one thing different than when we started falling. The one big thing that changed is that when we were at the top, there was never one employee that ever knew I had a bad day. They wouldn't know, they would see me mad or not mad, but as far as knowing what's going on in my life, it never happened. Never. You do your job, I do my job. If I'm upset at something or not, people stay away. They're just minding their own business. They do their own thing. But the difference was that once things started changing in the company was when I started making friends, when my employees became my friends. And that was one of the biggest mistakes, because once you share these stories with people, initially it feels good, but then they forget that you're their boss.

7:36They forget that every time they cash a check, you're the one giving it to them. So the relationship changes drastically. What happens is that when they didn't know if I was having a bad day or didn't even know why something was bad or not bad or good or anything, things were one way. When they started knowing, it only went downhill from there. The rabbi is very, very different. He can't ever do what I did. Obviously, the Torah teaches him not to. But the point here is that he is never even going to think about sharing his problems because some of the big tzaddikim, when you hear some of these stories, you hear, for example, stories about Rav Yosef. There was one night, one Friday, that a woman came, waited, and she's saying, I have to speak to the rabbi, I have to speak to the rabbi. It's Friday. They're going to eat. It's a bad day. Come back on Sunday. No, no, no. I have to talk to them now. I have to talk to them now. Long story short, she wouldn't leave. Finally, they talked to the rabbi. They let her in. They let the woman in. And then they start seeing the rabbi cry with her. So it's not that she was just crying. He was crying with her. They were both hysterically crying.

9:04That's a rabbi. That's why Rabbi Ovadia Yosef was Gadol Hador, Zichrono Livrocho. It wasn't necessarily just the immense amount of Torah that he knew. It wasn't just the fact that the stories that they tell about him are just only a quarter of the real stories that actually happened. But it's the fact that he lived it a thousand percent of the time and he felt what you felt. So when you have a connection with a rabbi... he's going to cry with you. When you feel sorrow, he feels sorrow. When you're upset, he's upset. When you're losing, he's losing. And that's the difference. But obviously, to develop a relationship like this takes time. You have to be honest with them. You have to stay in touch with them. You can't just expect that if you call this Rabbi twice a year, right before the holidays and ask him for a blessing, that you're going to have this relationship. You have to work at this, just like anything else in life. But the...

10:05The minimum that we can do is start thinking about rabbis a little bit differently. When we see that, you know, we only see them once a week or a couple of times a week if we go to the shul more often, and we see them, we just see a small part of their life. We see them giving a little lecture. Sometimes we like it, sometimes we don't like it. We see some people playing with their phone in the middle. We see some people completely not paying attention. Sometimes we ourselves don't pay attention. We do all of these things. No one ever asks... What's going on with his life? And no one's generally going to know. And I can tell you that some of the problems that we're going through are the very same ones that they're going through. But I saw one time a picture, one of these pictures they put on the Internet, and they have a picture of a lion. And it says the difficult part about being at the top is that no one asks if you're okay. That's the difficult part of being at the top. No one asks if you're okay. And I remember that for myself. I mean, when I was at the top of my game and I was doing extremely well, no one ever asked, "Hey, by the way, are you all right? Is everything okay?" I mean, because they're just assuming, just because you have a lot of money or you have this or you have that, that everything is okay. But if you look at the world today, some of the most famous, tragic stories that you hear about are from the rich and famous.

11:34Unfortunately, we just heard about one of our own who killed himself just a few months ago, a very famous comedian, Robin Williams. Right. What didn't he have? Money, he had. A wife, he had. Kids, he had. A career, he was at the top of his game. What didn't he have? From the outside perspective, he had everything. From the inside, he had nothing. No Torah. That's exactly it. And that's the thing. So when you have just material things, people assume that you're okay. When you're in a position of power, people assume you're okay. So they don't ask if you're okay or not. They just assume. And that's the one thing that we have to realize about our rabbis and why we have to appreciate them, because they're going through the very same thing, if not more difficult things than what we're going through. You know how difficult it is to raise money just to keep a congregation alive? or to raise money just to help some of these rabbis, like Rabbi Mizrachi, who tries to help anyone he possibly can do teshuva and come back to Hashem. These stories are things that are just amazing to me, that people have such a hard time giving money to help people save souls. But that's part of this generation's tikkun. If you ask somebody, "Listen, give $500,"

12:59to the shul, and we'll spend $200 of it putting a sign with your name on it. And $300 we'll use to do Seudah Shlishit and also maybe pay a bill or two. Oh yeah, for sure. Tell him, give me $500 to buy 500 discs to help people do teshuva. No, no, no. It's too much. Things are tough. Things are tight. Everybody always has an excuse. Okay, give $100. Okay, you know what? Come back to me next week. I've seen it and I've heard it. And I could just imagine what these rabbis deal with. But that's the thing. People are tying everything to something material. They're always tying something to the material. And one of the proofs of it is if you look at any major donation, it's always publicized. It's always publicized. You always know, okay, so-and-so donated $10 million to this university, that hospital, this congregation, and so on. I mean, you hear it all the time. You have to hear their name. Why can't they be anonymous? Why? Because a big part of the donation is because they want everyone to know. They want everybody to know. I'd be anonymous if I had a lot of money. If I won a lottery, I would be anonymous. That's the key. The key is to make sure that we know these things.

14:21And we're prepared for them. The point of pointing out other people's mistakes, or our own mistakes, is not to say, ha ha ha, you did it. Or ha ha ha, you're a Rasha. That's not the point. The point of doing all this is so we learn what not to do, to remember what we need to do ourselves. That's the point. You're never ever supposed to remind someone who did Teshuvah about their past sins. It's not allowed. It's a big sin. So if somebody did Teshuvah, and they're already in it, you're never allowed to tell them, "Hey, by the way, remember those times when you used to be Mechalel Shabbat?" You're not allowed to do that. You can completely destroy them with that. There's actually a story in the Gemara about two big sages. Became a chavruta. They started learning together for many years. Very, very connected. One time, they got into an argument, and one of them mentioned it to the other one. The other one said, "Okay, so what am I doing? If you mention this to me, what's the point of everything that I did? If you're still remembering me as that person and not what I became after 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 40 years of doing this, then it's not worth anything."

15:40Of course, it's worth something between him and Hashem, but the point here is that for us, we have a direct connection with each other, and we have a direct connection with Hashem. But with Hashem, we don't see Him, we don't feel Him, we don't smell Him, we don't touch Him. So when something is more physical, we feel closer to it. That's just our reality. You feel closer to your wife, or to your best friend, or to your partner, than you do with Hashem. It's supposed to be different, but that's just the way it is for our generation. So we have to make sure that we protect each other and ourselves by not reminding each other about our past. It doesn't matter what you did in the past. If somebody did teshuva, life started at that point. If somebody started doing teshuva and then they fell off, you have to get them back on there, and then they start again, as if they never sinned. You can't bring people down. and remind them of all the things they used to do. Like a lot of people like to talk about, what were these rabbis' former lives? Like some of these big Baalei Teshuva, some of these big rabbis are Baalei Teshuva themselves, like Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak, Rabbi Mizrachi, you know, some of these sages in the Gemara, Rabbi Akiva himself was a Baal Teshuva, his parents were converts, he was a Baal Teshuva himself.

16:59I mean, you have Reish Lakish. He's a huge, huge figure in the Gemara. I'm going to tell you one of his stories later today. He was a criminal. Not only that. Why did they mention he was a criminal? Not because they want to insult him. This guy is mentioned in the Gemara. Just so you know, just for future knowledge, anyone that's mentioned by name in the Gemara had the ability to bring back the dead, to resurrect the dead. There are many people that are in the Gemara but are not mentioned by name. They say, it was said that this and this. So when they say it was said and they don't mention the name, obviously somebody said it, but they don't mention it by name. Why don't they mention it by name? Because he wasn't able to bring back the dead. It's the level that you need to get to in order to be accepted into the club of being in something that's divine. The Talmud is not a book you buy at Barnes & Noble for $9.99 right next to Harry Potter. How did they know that he could revive the dead? They see their actions. Was it something that was attempted? Of course, many times. Is it allowed to be attempted? If somebody has the ability to bring back the dead, I mean, there are stories of actually... I don't know, I'm very bad with names, but there were two...

18:27sages, they lived in different towns, and one of them invited the other one to come over for Purim. He said, come over for Purim, you know, we'll enjoy it. So, big sages come together, it's a big Kedushah. Anyway, long story short, they spend time together, they enjoy it, and everything is good. They wake up in the morning, and he sees that his friend that came from out of town is dead. He's got a knife on him, and he knew he killed him. They both got drunk, and he killed him. He brought him back. Brought him back from the dead. And he said, you know, he went on his way. So the next year, he invited him again. So he responded with a letter that came from out of town is dead. He's got a knife on him, and he knew he killed him. They both got drunk, and he killed him. He brought him back. Brought him back from the dead. And he said, you know, he went on his way. So the next year, he invited him again. So he responded with a letter,

19:28No. That's where the expression came from. Not every day is Purim. When we say "not every day is Purim," we mean it as not every day is a miracle like Purim. But the expression actually came from when he was telling him that not every day he's afraid that if he comes to him and kills him again, maybe he can't bring him back this time. That's where the expression came from. So he responded to him, "Oh, if you think that I can bring you back from the dead, if you're impressed by me bringing you back from the dead..." I should show you what else I can do. And he came. So there are examples of this type of stuff happening. But Hashem is the one who gives and takes. How can a human determine that it's time to bring... A human is not doing it, meaning they're not doing it. It's not their power. It's not a tzaddik's power to do it. They know a certain amount of Torah, an extraordinary amount of Kabbalah and Torah, and they have an extraordinary connection with Hashem. They follow a certain protocol and connect to Hashem, praying to Hashem to give them the ability to do it. No one ever says that they can do it.

20:46Hashem is doing it, of course. They're praying on behalf of that soul. Yeah, they're praying on behalf of that soul. Yeah, of course. It's not them. They don't have power. They're people there. I mean, what did Moshe Rabbeinu say that he is? Nothing. He's dust and ashes. What did Avraham Avinu say? Dust and ashes. What did David HaMelech say he was? A worm. These are the greatest, and they're saying they're smaller than these people. What, any of these sages could compete with Moshe Rabbeinu? No, Meheicha Teisi. But at the same token, again, they all think of themselves, they're all very, very humble. You can't even be a tzaddik without being humble. One doesn't go with the other. You can't mix. You can't be a tzaddik and have ga'avah. You can't be a tzaddik and be an egotistical person. You can't be a tzaddik and have a lot of pride and think that you need to show off. One does not go with the other. It's like fire and water. The only thing in creation that has fire and water is the sky. That's it. Other than that, nothing else could ever exist with fire and water. Why? Because Hashem made it. But as far as Tzaddik and Ga'avah, it's the same black and white. It doesn't even mix. It has nothing to do with each other. That's why the Gemara says someone

22:10who knows Torah but has bad ethics or bad middot is the equivalent of a dead animal lying in the street. They say this is akin to a dead animal in the middle of the street. And this is someone who knows Torah. Just imagine what it is for someone who doesn't know Torah and has bad middot. Okay, but the point is here, if someone knows Torah, why is there a special, you know, significance? Why are they mentioning him? Because if you know Torah and you still haven't worked on your middot, then that means that you've spent 10, 20, 30 years learning nothing. You've learned nothing. You learned a story. You've treated the Torah like it was a Harry Potter book. Or one of these other nonsense books that they sell in the stores and make billions of dollars on. That's how you treat it, like a story. Oh yeah, Moshe went up the mountain for 40 days, he came down, got really angry, and then he threw the Luchot (Tablets). Then he went up again, just like it shows in the movie, and then he came down again, and you treat it like a story. You learn nothing. So that's the thing. What we have to do is learn from all of these stories.

23:37of what are we doing that's wrong, what do we need to correct, how fast can we correct them, and what can we work on now? You can't fix all of your middot on day one. It's impossible. The Gemara specifically says that to work on one midah, one part of your characteristics, can take six years to fix. Six years. It's the equivalent of difficulty, if not more difficult, than finishing studying the entire Gemara, the entire Shas, to fix one Midah. That's not trying to tell us to discourage us and say, "Listen, it's so hard, don't even try fixing yourself." The point is to try to fix it as soon as possible because you have a lot to fix. But what's the way to fix it? What is the potion that makes it very easy to fix? So easy that you're amazed that this statement even exists. Torah. Torah is the only thing in the universe that, when you learn it, you change and you become a better person—if you're learning it for real. Not if you're learning the stories because you like stories.

24:51You're learning it because you're learning, okay, why does this one say this? Why does that one say this? What's, you know, using your brain. You're going into it. You know, you could, obviously, the stories are very entertaining. It's one of my personal favorites. But you're learning what is the point of the story. Why are they saying, okay, this is a holy book. This is a divine book. Hashem put this book together. Why did He put this in the story? Why? Why? ...the entire Harry Potter series, all seven books, 50 times, will it change my life? Other than knowing the books by heart, the answer is no. It's merely entertainment. What's the ultimate purpose? I don't know. I don't know how many Harry Potter books there are. I just keep mentioning that because I hear about it. Kids like to hear that book. How many books does Harry Potter have? Is it like a series or is it like one? There's more than one. There's like more than seven, I think. Seven, okay. So it's seven books. If I read all seven books 50 times, is it going to change my life? Other than me knowing the book by heart? No. No. It's just entertainment. What's the show? I don't know.

26:03So if I read one of these other books about the vampires, there's also a series, Twilight. I read the whole series. Okay, so I know the story. And then you're going to watch the movie afterward. And then I watch the movie, and I've completely wasted even more time, and nothing happened in my life. But if I just read one masechet from the Gemara, just one of these books, if I read one of these books, any of these books that you see over here, One of them, I guarantee anyone that studies just one of them, by the end of that book, his life is different. Just one book. One. I'm not saying, I'm not saying, I'm not saying the whole Gemara, I'm not saying that you have to finish a whole seven years' worth of studies to really, I'm talking about just one, pick one, study it, just one book. Study one book, your whole life changes. Another book changes again. Another book changes again. And then after you finish the whole Gemara and you go back to the original one that you've already studied, you study it again, it changes again. That's how you know the Torah is divine. That's one of the, for me, that was one of my proofs that connected with me. I knew, how do I know that the Chamisha Chumshei Torah, the Torah itself,

27:22is divine. There's nothing else in this world like it. Every single parashah—when you go to the Beit Knesset on Shabbat, they read the parashah, and you hear the story. Sometimes you read along, sometimes you read on your own, and sometimes you're completely out of it and not listening. But assuming we're all good, we're all listening, and we're going along, understanding what he's saying. if you actually read the parasha itself, and then maybe you read a few of the mefarshim, translating what's actually happening, you see how that story, what's happening, is not only relevant to today, to our times today, but it's actually relevant to today, meaning that week that you're in. Something in the world happened, either directly to our life, or around us, that we're aware of, that the parasha is related to it. Every single parasha is relevant to today. Now, when somebody says, no, no, what do you mean? I heard one time, I heard this story about Moshe Rabbeinu, and he went up the mountain and down the mountain again. We'll go back to the same story, because that's a story that everybody knows. He went up the mountain, down the mountain, up the mountain again, down the mountain. A lot of people don't know, he actually went up three times, down three times. He was there for a total of 120 days, not 80 days.

28:4640 days the first time, Moshe Rabbeinu went down. Hashem said, "Your nation sinned. Let me destroy them and start a nation from you." So after Moshe Rabbeinu went down and broke the Ten Commandments, he went back up the mountain and prayed for 40 days non-stop, with no eating and no drinking. The body was here, the neshamah was in the heavens. That's the only way you could explain no drinking, no eating, no nothing. The body can't survive that. The body can't survive even three or four days of that. And for 40 days, he prayed and said, if you're going to destroy them, destroy me first. Wipe me out of your book. Because he felt it was his fault. And that was the difference between him and any other person in the world. between him and any other person in the world. Any other person in the world, number one, would have said, oh, you want to destroy the stubborn nation with me? Sure, why not? Go ahead. Let's do it. I thought you'd never ask. That's number one. Number two, they would say, hey, okay, listen, you want to destroy them? Fine, but maybe the next one, have somebody else run it. Or three, they just completely would not...

30:14would not care to go through all of this. They sinned. It's not his fault. What did he do? He said, it's my fault. And he looked for reasons why it was his fault. The first reason that he used was that he said, Hashem told me to go down, but I said, let me stay here for one more day to make it one day extra. I was supposed to actually go down before they built the... Before they had the golden calf. There you go. See, I'm 25 years in America, I still don't know English. Golden calf, there you go. Now you can see I'm 26 years, so that's why. So the golden calf, and Hashem said, don't go down. He said, no, no, let me stay with you one more day. So He said, and Hashem said, okay, fine. Obviously, Hashem knew what was going to happen, but He gave him the ability for free choice. And He said, if I would have listened to you, it wouldn't have happened. I would have come down before they built it, before the Satan would have come to them and showed them fake pictures, a fake movie of me being dead. That's what the Satan did. The Satan came down to them and showed them a fake movie of the angels carrying Moshe's body. That's what the Midrash tells us. So they said, oh, he's dead. So let us, we need a new connection to Hashem. So that's what started. So he said, okay, it's my fault. And then when that wasn't accepted, or that wasn't enough, he said, okay, it's my fault also because the person that gave them the ability to do it.

31:41carrying Moshe's body. That's what the Midrash tells us. So they said, "Oh, he's dead. So let us, we need a new connection to Hashem." So that's what started. So he said, "Okay, it's my fault." And then when that wasn't accepted, or that wasn't enough, he said, "Okay, it's my fault also because the person that gave them the ability to do it." The only reason why he's alive is my fault. And this goes back, did I tell you guys this story? About the Mateh? The Mateh? No? Okay. So, going back a couple of hundred years before Mount Sinai, there was Yosef HaTzadik, you know his story, his brothers sold him, and then he was in jail. Well, first he was working, uh, For someone, and the woman tried to be with him—she was a married woman—he passed the test, and then they threw him in jail. He was in jail, was it 20, I don't know, total years, I think it was 22 years, something like that, 22 or 23 years. Well, 10 years he was working for them, then he was in jail for 12 years. He was in jail for 12 years, and anyway, after that...

33:06he became second in command. Hashem gave him a huge brachah, obviously. He passed all the tests. Yeah, it was 22 years. He passed all the tests. And Hashem gave him the big blessing. And because he was able to translate dreams, do you guys know this story? Yeah. He was able to translate dreams. So one of the people that was in jail with him, that came back up, that Yosef HaTzaddik told him, "Listen, you're going to go back to your job with Pharaoh, and do me a favor. When you go up there, mention that I helped you out, that I translated your dream." Because he asked him, you know, there were two people asking him what their dreams were. Yosef translated one guy's dream, saying, "You're going to die," and to the other guy, "You're going to go back out of this jail, and you're going to actually go back and work for the Pharaoh and have your job back." And that's exactly what happened. And he said to the guy that was going to get his job back, "When you get your job back, tell the Pharaoh that I'm here. I've been here; it's not right that I'm here, I'm innocent." And because of that, because he asked, because he was a huge tzaddik, he's called Yosef HaTzaddik. He's not called Yosef HaTzaddik by us; he's Yosef HaTzaddik by Hashem's standards.

34:28In his level, he was never supposed to ask a human to help him, and because of that, at that point, he was in jail for ten years, and Hashem punished him with another two years in jail. Anyway, after those two years, so after twelve years total, the guy that he helped finally remembered and told Pharaoh about him, because Pharaoh had a dream that no one could interpret, and he asked Yosef HaTzadik, to come. And they said that in the parashah, it says that they came down, they ran with him to bring him to Pharaoh. So, this shows that when Hashem wants to help somebody, the help comes fast. But it's just, we have to have the patience for when it's going to happen. You know, that's why I said, it's not just a help. When Hashem helps you, you know He's going to help you. There's no doubt. It's not debatable. It's not something that you are going to wonder if He's helping you or not. If you pay attention to the details, it's 100%. So now, He helped him, and He...

35:57came down, and they came and brought him up. He became second in command. He interpreted Pharaoh's dream properly and accurately. Pharaoh saw that it was 100% legitimate and said, "Oh, wow, Hashem is with you." He made him second in command. So now he became, in essence, the king of Egypt. And he asked his brothers, you know, then there's a whole story of his brothers coming and his father coming and so on. But he asked everybody to promise him that when Am Yisrael leaves Egypt, they would take his bones out of Egypt and bring them to Eretz Yisrael. So now when Moshe Rabbeinu came throughout the whole Exodus, We have, you know, about a year's worth of plagues. They had a plague every month. Each plague lasted for about a week, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But it was generally about a week each time. And then for the rest of the month, there was nothing. So, each plague was followed by three weeks of respite. For a year, we experienced all of the plagues. And then Pharaoh finally...

37:12freed the Am Yisrael or gave up in reality, and then what ended up happening is that Moshe Rabbeinu knew about this promise, knew about this promise of needing to take out Yosef's bones. The problem is that because the times were so good in Egypt when Yosef was there, They turned him into an idol. So what did they do? They hid his bones. They hid his tomb. And no one knew where it was. So Moshe Rabbeinu is thinking, how is he going to find his tomb? We're leaving. It's not like he has two weeks to look for it. It's not like there are arrows pointing, "Oh, for Yosef's tomb, make a left." The only way to find it is to find the only person that's still alive from those times. And there was one woman who was still alive from those times. And that woman was actually one of the grandchildren of Yaakov Avinu, which was actually Yosef's niece. Yosef HaTzadik's niece was blessed by Yaakov Avinu, was blessed by her grandfather to live a very long life.

38:39And because when they told them, when they told Yaakov Avinu that Yosef is still alive, he was already old, and they were afraid to tell him and get him so excited that he would have a heart attack. So, she knew this. She knew that they were coming, that her father and his brothers were coming with good news. So, she started playing a musical instrument because she knew that it makes Yaakov Avinu, her grandfather, feel good. It calms him. And he became happy all of a sudden, for the first time in over 20 years. He became happy. And he didn't know why he was getting happy. He didn't even put two and two together. And then, once her father and his brothers, the 12 tribes, saw that Yaakov was in a good mood, they gave him the news. And then he realized, oh, that's why she was playing the instrument. She put me in a good mood, so I was prepared for this good news. That's also why, if you ever have to tell someone good news, it's always good to prepare them for it and not just throw it in there. Okay.