The Dangerous Mindset Of Instant Gratification

1:03It was the eighth day. Moshe summoned Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel, and he said to Aaron, "Take for yourself a young bull for the sin offering and a ram for an elevation offering." So here we're implementing some of the things we learned from last week. But it says the eighth day; we know we only have seven days. What does it mean, eighth day? The eighth day means that for the first seven days, only Moshe Rabbeinu was allowed to do all of this. And Hashem commanded that Aharon and his sons will remain inside. They would not go out. Only Moshe Rabbeinu was to carry out specific duties during this period. Why? Because for seven days, only Moshe Rabbeinu would perform these tasks. But starting from the eighth day, no one other than Aharon and his sons were allowed to partake in these duties. This illustrates that even Hashem has a specific system and order for His Kohanim and Levim. Everyone has their designated roles and instructions, which may or may not always make sense to us.

2:05It doesn't make a difference if it makes sense to us. But if you fast forward a couple of verses to verse number six, it says Moshe gives us the secret of all secrets. He says, Moshe says, this is the thing that Hashem has commanded you to do. Then the glory of Hashem will appear to you. Moshe tells us, you see all these korbanot, all the systems, the stuff that's unusual, the mitzvot that you don't really understand. Why is there any rav? Why isn't there any rav? Why do you have to eat kosher? Why not eat kosher? Why does it matter if you wear shatnez or don't wear shatnez, or if you keep Shabbat, you don't keep Shabbat, or if you eat matzah from this guy or matzah from that guy, or if it's halak, or if it's chalav Yisrael? All these mitzvot, for a new person, can be overwhelming and confusing. More importantly, though, they are integral to understanding the will of Hashem. Don't really make much sense and quite frankly, sometimes the "new" person has been religious for 30 years. Sometimes they're "new." I don't mean "new person" as in a brand-new ba'al teshuvah, you know, last week he was about this, and this week he's a shomer. But no, by "new person," I mean new to the Torah, new to understanding what is the will of Hashem. What does Hashem want?

3:21because we live in a world where people think that whatever they want, Hashem should deal with. He should just accept me as I am. That's the politically correct world that we live in today, and many rabbis enable people to think like this. "Hashem loves you no matter what, you know, every Jew has a share in the World to Come, everything is good, everything is great." But the reality is, anyone that's lived in the world for long enough knows that life is not so great and... Life is not so great. Why? Cancer happens, disease happens, divorce happens, theft happens, robbery, bankruptcy, deals going bankrupt, people stealing, people lying, people cheating, all types of stuff happens in life. So all of this "no, life is great" mentality, it's not really true unless you have bitachon. Why? If you have bitachon, then you know that everything that's happening is from Hashem and it's good. ...is from Hashem, and it's good. But very, very few people actually understand what it takes to truly live a life of bitachon. So here, first and foremost, Moshe Rabbeinu gives us the first set of instructions.

4:40He says, this thing, whatever it is, whether it's Shabbat, whether it's Shatnez, whether it's Taharat HaMishpacha, whether it's Mussar and working on your Middot, whatever it is, hard or difficult or not so difficult, doesn't make a difference. Man or woman, acceptable or unacceptable, politically correct or incorrect. This thing that Hashem commanded you to do, this is what you have to do. Then the glory of Hashem will appear to you. Meaning, once you do what Hashem said, then you'll feel the good from it. The good is not only Olam Habah, which very few people have an understanding of what it's like in this generation. When you tell people what is Olam Habah, they think it is a bunch of tzaddikim learning Torah. You tell this to the average 25-year-old or 35-year-old who doesn't really learn Torah. Tell them, listen, yes, HaShem. Rabbi Akiva, all the 2,000 members of the Tosafot, all the tzaddikim, Moshe Rabbeinu, Avraham, Yitzchak— all of them are learning Torah, and you can go there. It's like, sounds boring. I don't learn Torah over here. You want me to learn Torah for eternity? No, give me some pool tables, some swimming pools, some bowling maybe, some movies. That's what people want because they think that that's fun.

6:09Elohim is very, very hard for people to connect to, even though technically that's the only reason the Mishnah in Avot says you should do a mitzvah - for l'shem shamayim. But since we don't have a concept of what Elohim is so early on in our teshuvah, we have to feel something here. People need to see something right before the lecture. We were talking a little bit about how we're such a demanding generation, where literally we need things on demand. You want to press a button, something has to happen. You go to a website, if it takes 30 seconds to load, you're out. In fact, recent statistics that I read said that if it takes more than three and a half seconds to load, most people leave the website. The website takes more than three and a half seconds to load, meaning over 90% of people leave the website. Three and a half seconds. When I was a kid, you know, in the days of Antiochus, we had something called dial-up. Dial-up meant that...

7:16something called dial-up. Dial-up meant that you went to a website, or you wanted to go to some place, if whatever was actually available in those days. There was barely anything actually available. You have Prodigy, AOL, and whatever AOL was offering. You went to the website, and all you had was to enjoy the... That's the noise your modem made for a good two to three minutes until you finally arrived at whatever destination you wanted. And God forbid it's the wrong destination. Now, you have to go to a different one, but you had to enjoy the music of this modem. What kind of music it made for you! Back then, it was normal. Two, three, four, five minutes between web pages, between pages within the page—it's normal. Today, if you're not giving me a response right now within three seconds, I'm out of here. We order food. Companies say delivery within 25 minutes; at 26 and a half minutes, we're already on the phone asking, "What's going on? I ordered, you guys said 25 minutes. It's late, I can't believe it. I'm paying top dollar." You call the guy and start yelling at him like he's one of your slaves, like your power and he's one of the Jews over them. He's scared because he's late a minute and a half—God forbid he's late 20 minutes because he hit traffic, or something happened. Companies say, "Listen, delivery within 25 minutes." At 26 and a half minutes, we're already on the phone. "Hey, what's going on? I ordered, and you guys said 25 minutes. It's late, I can't believe it. I'm paying top dollar!" You call the guy, you start yelling at him like he's one of your servants. You feel like you're the master, and he's scared because he's late by a minute and a half. God forbid he's late 20 minutes because he hit traffic or something happened, and...

8:39Happens we're all guilty when it comes to this. Why? Because we've all become accustomed to pushing a button and something happening on demand; they call it instant gratification. Instant gratification is, unfortunately, one of the landmines of the Satan when it comes to bitachon. And the reason why is because bitachon is the exact opposite. It works the exact opposite way. Bitachon doesn't operate based on instant gratification. Bitachon functions based on how much patience you have. Because that's how Hashem measures your actual bitachon. If you expect things to happen instantly, like a website, like a text message, like an email, you expect things to happen that way, and you think that Hashem is going to dance to every one of your tunes, guess what? You will live a life of misery and anxiety, and you will never have an ounce of bitachon. Because bitachon doesn't work that way.

9:52Get the hang of it. One of the most valuable traits for mankind is called patience. Without patience, you're not going to survive. Meaning, you'll survive physically, but your life will be full of suffering from morning till night. You'll be suffering. Because nothing in the world will work based on the schedule that you want it to. Nothing in the world will work on a schedule that it should according to your understanding, according to our understanding. Everyone is stupid; everyone is slow; everyone is this; everyone is deficient. That's the way it is. Why? Because you have some visual in your mind, some type of idea in your mind that no one can live up to. So unless you understand that Hashem is the one who is causing him to be slow, him to steal, him to run away, him to hang up on you, her to curse you, Hashem is the one managing all of this. You're not going to be able to survive as a righteous person. Now,

11:02This seems more like Hashem is taking away our free will. So, briefly, we're going to delve into the details of all of this. But, to simply answer the question: no, Hashem never takes away free will. The way it works, in a very simplistic way, is that Hashem makes a decree. Whatever the decree is, Rosh Hashanah decides something is going to happen. A certain person is going to make a lot of money, lose a lot of money. He decides whatever the case is. After He decides and passes the stamp on the decree, signs off on a decree, Then he decides which things, which people, and which creations are going to contribute to implementing this decree. So, for example, if it's, let's say, losing money, and then...

12:02Lose money? Now the guy thinks, "I'll lose money. That's most likely what it means. I'm gonna get fired." No, not necessarily. In fact, it could be the opposite. In fact, the guy could get hired by a better firm, get a 500% raise, and he thinks, "Why, Baruch Hashem! Hashem loves me. I was a tzadik last year because the second day after Yom Kippur, I got a job offer with a 500% raise from Google." So the guy is happy. He walks into Google. He's excited. He has a half a million dollar salary waiting for him. All he's going to do is show up. He thinks, what a blessing. However, in reality, it was decreed that this year would be the opposite. For him to lose a half a million dollars. Whatever he did, I've decided, but how is it gonna happen? Hashem will decide throughout the whole year how this is gonna happen. He could make half a million dollars from the job but lose a million dollars in his investments. Net, net, yes, he made half a million dollars from the job, but he lost a million dollars in investments, or vice versa. The point is that...

13:10Now, Hashem decided to implement, but how is He going to implement the small details? Okay, so one, you know, one broker who was the best broker in the world for 10 years, all of a sudden became the worst. So instead of making a million dollars, he lost a million dollars. Perhaps one deal that was going great for three, four, or five years with some partnership, all of a sudden the guy that he was partners with went crazy and decided to run away with some money, another hundred. He contributed a hundred thousand. He contributed five hundred. He contributed, everyone contributed a certain amount to the loss. So why does Hashem pick those people? Because those people chose to do what they're doing, meaning there's also a decree on them. But they chose to do something bad. So, for example, if somebody stole from him, out of the million dollars, somebody stole $200,000, the guy who stole the $200,000—Hashem didn't tell him, "You have to steal." The guy who stole, he decided to steal $200,000. And Hashem says, "Okay, since you're going to steal, you decided to steal $200,000, steal from him. Steal from him." Why? Because out of all the people that you want to steal from, they don't deserve it. Only he deserves it.

14:21So steal from him $200,000. Meaning that Hashem's decree was already written on Rosh Hashanah. How He is going to implement it is going to be based on our decisions.