Thinking Talmudist Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Thinking Talmudist podcast.

Good afternoon, everybody. It's so wonderful to be here today and to hopefully be able to learn and grow together in our study of Talmud. Today we're going to continue some of the previous Talmuds that we began and we're on 58a Intractate Gittin. The Talmud related previously of a few stories that were jarring, upsetting, disheartening, maddening, etc. etc. The Talmud now is going to share three more stories, several more stories,
incidents of how young Jewish children were harmed by our enemies. None of these are particularly joyful. Very, very upsetting. And I think it's important for us to realize that when nations preach tolerance and when nations preach humanity, they need to do so by looking in the mirror first. And when you talk about the Roman Empire and the terrible things that they have done, it's quite unconscionable for them to ever stand on the world stage and talk about decency.
When you hear some of these stories, you're like, just like, what in the world transpired? But as Jews, one of the reasons we are so successful beyond norms, well beyond norms, is because we're not busy pointing fingers at other people. If we're busy blaming others, if we're busy always being worried about how we're going to get paid back for the tragedies that befell us, then we'll never get anywhere. But the way the Torah teaches us is to just take a lesson, learn from it, and
grow and become better. And if you look at the Holocaust, there's, you know, it's now 80 years, 80 some-odd years, since the six million were murdered, brutally, and you don't see much remorse in the world. You don't see much of a, you see that many people are willing to deny that it ever happened. When I have grandparents, three of my four grandparents were survivors of the camps. I had two that were in Auschwitz, one that was in the Kovne ghetto, and
they lived through it. They experienced the horrors of humanity. And this is, it's something for us to realize that we have a big responsibility. And our responsibility is to bring God's presence, God consciousness, into this world. That's our job. And if we run away from it and say, you know what? I'm just gonna assimilate and become part of the nations of the world, and no one's gonna know that I'm Jewish, and I'll never be held accountable. I'll just live a good life.
That never ever worked. Hashem says, no, no, no. You are the chosen people. You have a chosen responsibility, and you cannot remove yourself from that responsibility. Okay, so now we're gonna see some stories of what transpired, and I want to just put it into perspective of we have to not be busy asking, why did Hashem allow it to happen? We can always ask that question. But we need to focus more on what is the lesson that can be learned for us.
The Talmud brings these stories for us to learn, grow, and it should impact our lives to change our trajectory. Okay, so the Gemara relates several incidents that depict how Jewish youth suffered at the hand of the enemy. The first of these incidents occurred during the period of the destruction of the first temple. Amar Rav Asi said, Arbo'o kavim moyach nimtzu al evin achas. There were four kavim, that's about the equivalent of 24 eggs size, okay? It's a measurement of brains were found on one stone.
Ulo Amar, Ulo says, tisha kavim. It wasn't four kavim. It was double the size. It was nine kavim of brains were found. Amar Rav Kahana vi'itey mo shila bar mari. I see you're queasing. It's like, what in the world is going on here, right? Rav Kahana, or some say that it was shila bar mari. He said, what is the scriptural allusion to this? Because we know everything that transpires in our world was already predicted to us by our sages. There's a prophecy. There's a verse that talks about this.
It says, ba'as bava la'ashtu da'as re'shi yishalom lach. O violated daughter of Babylonia, praiseworthy is he who will repay you in accordance with the manner that you treated us. Meaning, there's nothing that goes in this world unpaid. If someone harms, they'll be exacted judgment. If someone does good, they'll be exacted a payment, a reward for it. There is nothing that goes unaccounted for. Oh, we lost that file, so you're not going to be held accountable. You're, you know, you're now acquitted. No, there's no such thing.
If someone does good, they get good. If someone does bad, they get bad. And there's no such thing as anyone not being exacted reward and or punishment for their actions. Asher she yohas v'nipets esol olecha alasala. So here's the verse. Praiseworthy is he who will clutch and dash your infants against the rock. The verse implies the enemies of Babylonia will dash Babylonian children against rocks in retribution for the manner in which the Babylonians treated Jewish children.
So we see that they're rewarded, the people who take revenge for God on those who do evil things against the Jewish people. Now, I want to just, you know, I don't like to get into politics. I don't like talking about politics, particularly not when we're online sharing our opinions here with the with the world. But there is, there is an incredible life that we can notice in the news every day.
Where you have two sides of the world, those who want to do good and those who want to do evil and they are like two scales of the world. And we're living in a time where people can choose to be supportive of the Jewish people or can become enemies of the Jewish people. And it's very easy. We mentioned this, we talked about this in the Talmud, where someone brought Titus's soul back. Onkelos brought Titus's soul back in a necromancy and
he asked him, so tell me, tell me what's going on there in the world to come. See, he says to him, you know that if you start hating the Jews, you'll become very famous. He says, no, no, no, that's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for to become closer to God. Well, that you're not going to do by hating on the Jews. And it's an amazing world where we're seeing the people and the nations that are standing with the Jewish people
and the people and the nations who are standing against the Jewish people. And it's, there's an accountability for everything. So it's not for us to say, oh, you're going to get punished. We're not saying anything, but we see throughout our history that those who did good got good and those who did bad got bad. And that doesn't change. And we hope and we pray that everyone just does good. That's what we want. Okay, so the following incident occurred during the period of the destruction of the second temple.
What was it? B'nei Tziona yekoram ha-missulaim b'keh paz. Scripture states the precious children of Zion who are missulaim with paz. What is missulaim? And this is from Lamentation. Paz is an extremely rare and precious type of stone. And paz is also the something we spoke about in our prayer podcast where we talked about Rosh HaKesem paz. Paz is the gold, a gold crown that we should wear on our head. Our sages tell us paz is the numerical value of 87. Pei Zayin, 87.
And this refers to Baruch Sha'amar which is the most recent episode of the prayer podcast. We talked about Baruch Sha'amar that has exactly how many words in it? You guessed it. Paz. 87. And I say, what does it mean a gold crown on the head? Meaning the beginning. The head is the beginning of our prayers. The beginning of our prayers should have a gold crown. What's that gold crown? Paz. Paz is 87. All right, and there's 87 words in the prayer of Baruch Sha'amar.
87 words. Signifying the the hint. And now that we open up the Talmud for today and it coincidentally, there's no coincidence, is talking about paz. This is a sign from Hashem that Hashem loves the Torah that we are studying together here at our Magnificent Torch Center. Okay, beautiful. What is the meaning What is the meaning of mesulayim with paz? What does mesulayim mean? If one wishes to say that it means that they were covered with adornments of paz, of gold, or of this gem,
the following difficulty arise. We taught in the school of Shiloh, of Rabbi Shiloh. Two Easter weights of paz came down into the world. So, of this special gem or gold that came down to this world, there were two measures that were brought down to this world. One fell in Rome and one was spread out around the rest of the world. Means there was not enough paz in the land of Israel from which so many adornments could be made. Rather, the verse means to say
that they put paz to shame with their beauty. The beauty, what is it referring to? Referring to the Jewish children. They were so beautiful. The beauty of the children of Zion surpassed that of paz. This is born out of the following. Originally, the aristocrats of Rome would have in view the beautiful figures engraved on their signet rings of paz. They would have it on their ring when they engaged in conjugal relations. They had the images of these children. But later, what did they do?
They actually took the Jewish children and they tied them to the legs of their bed and they engaged in conjugal relations with those Jewish children. Because they were so beautiful, Jewish boys were even more desirable for the purpose, for this purpose, than signet rings having the image of them. So, this is sodomy. Right? And these are the aristocrats of Rome. So, like I mentioned previously, I don't want to hear about morals and ethics from Rome.
Okay? I don't want, you know, if we look and we have this, I keep this close by, but if we look here, we have five, six pages of Jewish history of Jews being persecuted. You know how many of them are from Rome? Here we go. In 1021, Jews burned alive in Rome. It's not talking about the outskirts, other cities in that area. Right? Rome, the Inquisition was established in 1231 in Rome. And there's several other
times that you can find in our history where the Roman Empire was not exactly known as being the most wholesome. All right. Omer Ley, so one of these Jewish boys who was subject to this treatment, asked his fellow, He says, where is this punishment written in our Torah, in our scripture? Omer Ley, he says to him, The verse states in the Chumash, this is in Deuteronomy, chapter 28, the verse states as follows,
He says over here, even any illness and any blow that is not written in this book of the Torah, Hashem will bring upon you until you are destroyed. Okay, that means, and this is referring to what? This is referring to if the Jewish people don't follow the will of Hashem. Hashem says, I'm listing here a bunch of punishments, a bunch of things that potentially could befall the Jewish people. But there's also things that are not mentioned
that can also befall them. And this is what one boy was telling the other. So where does this punishment come from? He says, this is where it's where it comes from. God threatens to bring punishments besides those written expressly in the Torah. Omer, so the first one says to the friend, How far am I from that place, meaning how much further must I study until I reach that verse? Omer Ley, the other one says to him,
A small amount, only a column and a half left for you to reach that part of your study. Omer Ley, the first one says to him, If I had reached that verse, I wouldn't obviously, I would not need you to tell me where it was, meaning had I known that verse, I would have understood on my own that it alludes to this punishment. So again, they're not asking why. They're not asking why. Our job is not to be submissive.
Our job is to ask questions. As Jewish people, we ask questions. That's what we do. But the question isn't a rhetorical question. God, why did you do this? God, you did this for a reason. What is it? What do I need to learn from it? What do I need to learn and in what way do I need to grow from it? So now the Talmud continues. Another tragedy involving Jewish youth which occurred during the period of the destruction of the Second Temple. Rabbi Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel,
who said in the name of Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamaliel, What is the understanding of the verse? What is the meaning of that which is written? My eye has brought me grief over all the daughters of my city. To which tragedy is this verse referring? In the city of Betar, which is aforementioned, we mentioned it previously. We talked about the city of Betar. I believe we mentioned that over two million people were murdered in the city of Betar. So there were 400 synagogues in the city of Betar.
And in every single one of those 400, of those 400 synagogues, there were 400 teachers of children. Rabbis studying and teaching and each one of them had students. And each one of those rabbis had how many students? 400 students. And when the enemy entered the city, the students would stab them with their sticks. And when the enemy prevailed and captured the students, they wrapped the students in their scrolls and burned them alive.
Set them on fire. So they burned the books and they burned these millions and millions of children. Another incident involving Jewish youth, which occurred during that period. The rabbis taught in Ebraisa. There was an incident in which Rabbi Yeshua ben Hanania went to the great city in Rome. There is a little boy that's in prison. What else do we know about this little boy? He had beautiful eyes and a fine appearance and his locks were arranged in curls.
You think the chassidic curls just began now? The chassidic curls were around forever. Weirdest, by the way, just as a side, a little side note here. Where do those side locks come from? I have them, by the way. I have my payas. Paya means the corner. We have paya in a field, which is, you leave the corners of your field for the poor people. We also leave the corners of our heads. We don't cut our side curl area,
this side area. The Torah tells us not to. Why? To differentiate ourselves from the nations of the world. So this area is not cut. What are pious people? Chassidim are called pious people. What's their identity? Their identity is taking a mitzvah and perfecting it, elevating the mitzvah. There's a mitzvah to keep it and not cut it. They grow side curls and they want to beautify it. They make a curl out of it to make it beautiful so that it's
recognizable, their observance of that mitzvah. And there are many who will shave their entire head but keep their side corners so that it's pronounced. You see it and it's an identifying feature. So it's not just random, they're not extremists, they're just fulfilling a mitzvah in the Torah, just like anybody who doesn't cut the corner of their head. So Rav Yishua ben Hanani went and stood by the entrance of the prison. Who has given Jacob over for spoil and Israel to plunder? So this little boy says back to him,
Is it not Hashem? Is it, it is this that brought upon us such a fate. We sinned against Hashem and our fathers did not want to go in his ways and they did not listen to his Torah. This is what the child responds, Omar Rav Yishua ben Hanani responded, He says, I am guaranteeing that this young boy will become a great scholar and will render great Jewish law decisions, legal decisions in Israel. And I swear by the temple's service that I am not budging from here
until I redeem this child for whatever price they're demanding and getting him out of jail. And they said that Rav Yishua ben Hanani did not budge from there until they redeemed this boy from the prison for a very large sum of money. And it was shortly thereafter that this young boy became a great master of Torah and became a major figure in Torah authority in Israel. And who is he? Rabbi Shmuel ben Elisha. That child later became Rabbi Shmuel, the son of Elisha.
The Gemara relates another tragedy which occurred during that era. There was an incident with the son and daughter of this Rabbi Shmuel ben Elisha, who were captured and sold to two masters. His son and his daughter were both captured and sold or kidnapped. Sometime later, the two masters chanced upon each other in a certain place. I have a slave that there is nobody as beautiful as my slave. I have a slave, slave woman.
And there's no one in the world that's as beautiful as this young girl, my slave woman. He says, come, let us wed them to one another. And then we will have their children, we'll divide their offspring. They brought the son and the daughter of Rabbi Shmuel ben Elisha into the room. He sat in one corner. And she sat in the other corner. The son of Kohanim, I can't marry a slave. And she says,
I'm a daughter of a Kohanim, and the daughter of great righteous Kohanim, a granddaughter. I don't, I can't marry a slave. So he says this, she says this. They wept the whole night. Comes the morning and they recognize each other. Like, you're my sister, you're my brother. They realize that there were brothers and sisters. They fell upon each other and wept bitterly until their souls departed. And in reference to them, Jeremiah, our prophet, laments. Over these I weep. My eye, my eye runs with water.
This is from Lamentations. This is a key piece of our Lamentations that we recite on the ninth of Av, one of the terrible, terrible tragedies that befell the Jewish people. But it's an amazing story that I think just shows, I mean, they realized that they were not, they were never going to be free again. Chapter one, verse 16 in Lamentations. Okay, so the Gemara relates another incident that demonstrates the fortitude of Jewish captives held by the Romans. Again, our Roman friends, our moral, ethical Romans, right?
There was a story about a woman and her name was Safnas, the daughter of Peniel. And she was taken captive. Why was she called Safnas? Because she was, Safnas means to gaze upon. She was so beautiful that everyone was staring at her. Everyone was gazing upon her. You know who else was named that? Joseph, Joseph. Joseph was called Safnas Paneach because he was so handsome, it says that the woman would
stand on the walls looking to see Joseph just to get a glimpse, you know, the most handsome guy on earth. That was Joseph. They wanted to get a glimpse and see his beauty. And this was here, this woman, her name was Safnas Bas Peniel. She was taken captive. She was called the daughter of Peniel because she was the daughter of the Kohen Gadol who served in the innermost chamber of the temple. In the Holy of Holies, right?
And that was Peniel, the inside or the face of God, so to speak, where they were so close, the holiest place on earth. Her captors abused her an entire night. The next day, he clothed her in seven robes and took her out to sell her. One person who was extremely ugly approaches him, the captor, and says to him, Show me her beauty. The captor said to her, said to this man, He says, if you want to buy her, buy her.
But don't waste my time because there is no beauty in the world that is equal to hers. The man said to the captor, Even so, I would like to see her for myself. So he removed six of her robes and then she ripped off the seventh robe and rolled in the dust. She said before the Almighty, Master of the universe, If you do not have pity on us, He says, if you're not having mercy on us, at least have mercy on your holy name,
on your mighty name. And in reference to her, Jeremiah prophetically laments, Oh, daughter of my people, gird on sackcloth and roll in the ashes. Make for yourself a mourning as for an only son, a most bitter lamentation for the plunderer shall suddenly come upon us. It doesn't say upon you, the people, rather upon us, meaning God and the people. We're all in this together. God is saying to us through the prophecy of Jeremiah, says it's not you who's going to be abused and pained.
It's us. I go with you. This, I think, is really what we need to understand from the entire Talmud here. And that is, you know, there was recently an interview that was put out about one of the hostages who was held for, I think, 700, 800 days in Gaza. And he was on the ground with no light, with nothing. And they told him, if you convert to Islam, we'll give you whatever you want. We'll give you whatever you want. We'll give you food.
We'll give you more rations of food. We'll give you to drink. We'll take care of you. Just convert to Islam. He said, I have something. He said this in the interview. He said, I have something that they can never take away from me. And that's my relationship with God. Our direct relationship with God without any intermediary. We don't have Mohammed as an intermediary. We don't have JC as an intermediary. We don't pray to Moses. We don't pray to rabbis.
We don't pray to any conduit. We talk directly to Hashem. We say Baruch Atah Hashem. Blessed are you Hashem. We talk directly to God. There's no intermediary. You know why? Because wherever we are, whatever suffering, whatever pain we experience, Hashem says you're not alone. And these hostages said they felt a closeness being so far from humanity, being 60 meters underground. Imagine that. It's cold. It's lonely. It's dark. You can hardly breathe. But they felt a closeness with the Almighty.
Because when they're hostages, Hashem is hostage with us. It's not, oh, they're suffering. No, we are all suffering. We're all one people. We're all wearing the yellow pins. We're all feeling that pain because it's, the yellow pin doesn't really mean much except for a reminder that our brothers and sisters are not home. You know who's with us? Hashem is with us. It's not your pain and not mine. I'm with you. When a parent experiences the pain of their child,
the child knows they're not alone. God is our parent. Hashem is our parent up in heaven who feels our pain. And throughout our history, fingers aren't pointed, fingers aren't pointed against Hashem. They're with Hashem. Because Hashem says this is the process that we need to go through to repair and to correct the way. We sometimes go astray. We sometimes go not in the direction that Hashem seeks for us in the Torah. I was interviewed earlier on a podcast and I mentioned,
I said, you know, the owner's manual is very important. The owner's manual is very important. If you buy a dresser from Ikea, you open up the plastic and you say, okay, I'm going to put this together. And your wife says to you, so why don't you look in the instructions? I don't need no instructions, right? The likelihood that you're going to be able to put this complicated furniture together without the instructions, not likely. You're not going to put it together to correct.
You're going to, it's going to look like it might maybe, but then you can't put the drawers in. They don't fit. Something's not going to be right. There is an exact way that it was created. And as the manufacturer, they tell you, follow these instructions. Don't skip any step. One, two, three, there's a process. You know, when you buy a brand new car, when is the first time that you look at the owner's manual?
When you have to fill up gas the first time like, oh, now I got a BMW, the ultimate driving machine. So when am I going to look at the, till now I was driving a Toyota Corolla. So I get the cheapest gas, but now I'm a, I got an, I got, I got advanced in my business. I got, I got an upgrade. I'm now the vice president. I made partner. Let me drive a nice car. The ultimate driving machine.
So you pull up at the gas station and you look at, and you're like, I'm not a Toyota Corolla guy anymore. Now I'm a, a fancy BMW guy. So you open up the glove compartment, you take out the book and you say, what's the recommended octane? They're like, get the super premium. You look outside, it's a dollar more. Like Mr. BMW, who do you think you are to tell me what to put it to my car? I earned this. I paid for it.
I paid for it. I'm going to put in whatever I want. What's Mr. BMW going to tell you? Go right ahead. Put in, put in flour. I don't care. Put in water. But if you want to have the ultimate driving experience, this is the recommendation. The recommendation is you put the super premium unleaded so that you have the ultimate driving experience. Follow the instructions. Mr. BMW says, I made this engine. I know what it needs in order to maximize its experience.
God created each and every one of us. God says, if you want to maximize the experience, stay away from certain foods. It's going to clog, not necessarily your body, your spiritual connection to God. Food is spiritual. You're going to block. You're going to clog your spiritual capacities. That's why we're forbidden from eating certain foods. The Torah says, don't eat pork. Don't eat those things. The Torah explicitly says it. Why? Because it's going to clog your spiritual connection with God.
It's in the owner's manual. Tells us exactly. Eat this, don't eat that. Do this, don't do that. We have the greatest gift in the world. You want to know why they hate us? You want to know why they come after us? You know why they execute us? You know why they do all of these terrible things to us? Because we have the manual. And when you have the manual and you don't use it, that's a terrible thing.
Whereas in Yiddish, they say it's a shanda, right? It's a terrible thing if someone has the manual. Imagine two people buy the same dresser. One came with a manual, one didn't. And you're not even looking at it. You have the opportunity to do it right. This is the gift of our Torah. The gift of being the chosen people. Yeah, these are devastating stories. Devastating. And they make us uncomfortable. And we start asking questions, which is good. Ask the questions.
But we also have to look at the answers. The answer is that Hashem wants our closeness. Hashem wants our relationship with Him. And that is the message of each of these incidents. It was to be a wake-up call for us here today in 2026, for us to realize that when things happen, there's a master behind it. And that master is not the person Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens or those people saying their anti-Semitic remarks. It's not them. There's a master behind it.
And that's the Almighty, not the Qataris. It's the Almighty where Hashem is behind it, waking us up and say, hey, have you picked up the owner's manual recently? Have you followed the instructions? It's magnificent. We're about to start next week's Torah portion is already going to be the giving of the 10 commandments. Chapter 20. We should read this. We should learn it. It's the greatest gift in the world. We, you want to know how to be a good husband?
Look at the Torah. You want to know how to be a good wife? Look at the Torah. You want to know how to be a good parent? Look at the Torah. It's all in the Torah. We have that manual. And if you look at the people who have set the tone in the world of education, in the world of psychology, in the world, they're all Jews. That's our job. Not to sit there and say, oh, I'm so proud.
Look how many, how many world records the Jews have. And look who's, that's our job. Our job is to shine a light to the world. That's our responsibility. But we have to look at the manual, not make up our own Torah. Torah is there. It's perfect. All right, my dear friends, let's have an amazing Shabbos. And let's not forget that we're on a mission. We're on a mission to serve Hashem. He gives us the manual of exactly how to do it.
We're about to, in five and a half hours, we're going to be lighting our Shabbos candles, welcoming in the Shabbos queen. What an amazing gift. What an amazing gift. It says that every day had a mate. Sunday, some opinions, Sunday was married to Monday. Tuesday was married to Wednesday. Thursday married to Friday. Other opinions say that Sunday was married to Tuesday. Sorry, Sunday was married to Wednesday. Monday was married to Thursday. And Tuesday was married to Friday.
But either way, however you learn that midrash, Shabbos came to God and complained. He said, it's not fair. They all have mates. They all have a partner. I don't. God says, don't worry. Your partner is the Jewish people. The Jewish people will adorn themselves with their finest clothes. They will dress up the Shabbos table that every Shabbos will be like a Thanksgiving dinner. Even more. They'll have the finest foods. They'll buy you flowers. They'll get all dressed up.
Like it's a, you get dressed up in a tux and they're like, what's going on? Oh, we're going to the ball. No, no, we're going for Shabbos. We're meeting the Shabbos queen. That's the gift. You know, the queen has all the bridesmaids, all of the escorts that walk around with the, that's what happens on Shabbos. When the queen comes into shul, what do we do? We turn around towards the back, towards the entrance, and we welcome in the Shabbos queen.
Bowie v'Shalom HaTeres Bala. Welcome in, come in. Who does she come with? The queen. Shabbos queen comes in with the angels. They escort the Shabbos queen. And it says that when we go from shul to our home, we're escorted by those angels. We're walking with the queen. Again, we are all, the Jewish people collectively, are the king. Shabbos is the queen. It's what's called the Shabbos queen. And we come to the house.
The Talmud tells us that when this table is set, the angels say, so should it be next Shabbos. It should be set and beautiful next Shabbos as well. And if heaven forbid it's not, the angels say it shouldn't be set next Shabbos either, which is, by the way, a very important lesson. What comes first? The blessing or setting the Shabbos? The chicken or the egg? It doesn't make a difference. Just get it started. Get started. Do the Shabbos. Get the table ready.
And then you already started that chain coming one after the other. Mitzvah, goreres mitzvah. Our sages teach us one mitzvah, just start with one. It already starts the train of the next mitzvah, the next mitzvah, the next mitzvah. All you got to do is start with the first. Our psychologists tell us that if you want to have a productive day, start your day, get something small done. Once you get something small done, it already starts the whole day.
It puts it in motion. It gets the whole day running. My dear friends, there's no better way for me to start my day than to learn together with all y'all. This is really awesome. Thank you and have an amazing Shabbos. The halacha says you're very good. I like that. The halacha says that we're not supposed to wear shoes the way they wear shoes. We're not supposed to tie our shoes the way they tie their shoes. If they have black shoelaces,
we should wear white ones. And they have white ones, we should wear black ones. Okay, why don't we just do that? It's a lot less noticeable. No, you want it to be noticeable. That's exactly the idea. You want it to be noticeable. You want it to be noticeable. We're not hiding the fact that we're different. We're celebrating it. We're celebrating our difference. Not if you're going for an interview with Morgan Stanley. Oh, well, they're all Jews there too. Not many.
So I'll tell you, there's a story, a true story, a Hasidic, brilliant, brilliant Hasidic Jew, finished law school. He's a relative of a friend of mine, finished law school and interviewed at the top law firm in New York City. Now, how does he come to the interview? He comes in his overcoat, you know, the Hasidic long coat. He has his side locks. He has his big yarmulke and his long, his big beard. And they said to him,
you know, is this the way you're planning to present yourself? Like in, when you're practicing law? Like, so he says, is it any better now? Is it any better now? Right? He still has the side locks, the beard. It's like taking off the yarmulke is not going to make a difference. Remove the pace. Is it going to make a difference? No, it's not going to make a difference either. Right? It turns out this guy is a really, really brilliant attorney,
but we shouldn't be ashamed of how we look. You know what? They like us when we're beautiful. They don't. They hate us. They hate us when we're beautiful and they hate us when we're ugly. It's not going to make a difference how we are. They're going to always find the reason. If we don't follow the will of Hashem, they will always find a reason. Yes. This is the theme of what we spoke about the whole class today.
Is we have to recognize the responsibility that we have, both in our land and when we weren't, look, the majority of our history, we weren't in our land. It was promised to Abraham, promised to Isaac, promised to Jacob, promised to Joseph and his brothers, promised to Moses, to Aaron, to Joshua. Joshua finally brings them in. And then what? A few hundred years later, they're in exile. A few hundred years later, they come back in. A few hundred years later, 70 years later,
they come back in for the second temple. And then we're done. For 2000 years, we're out. Till 1948, where you have the huge establishment of the state of Israel. And now we're back. And it's more robust and it's more productive than almost any country on planet Earth. It's really phenomenal. It's amazing what's become out of Israel. And it's an amazing thing that if we look at history, you see that when the Jewish people did not reside
in the land of Israel, it was desolate. Fruits didn't grow. Nothing, vegetation, nothing grew. Today, it's unbelievable what you get out of Israel. Israeli wines, best, best. You know, you know, I was going to go to the wine, right? Love Israeli wine.

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