Parashat Chayei Sarah: How To Pick The Right Shidduch

0:01On one hand, we pray for him to come every day; on the other hand, we need more time to save some more Jews. But it's not the same, this shiur is before a refuah shlema for Raisa bat Golda. May Hashem give her a refuah shlema, and may Hashem give all of Am Yisrael a refuah shlema, whether from sickness, terrorism, or the countless other challenges we're all enduring in the exile as well as in Israel. There are a lot of difficulties right now, but Hashem, you know, it's a... It's not an easy time, but we know that when the darkness is at its peak, we're that much closer to the light. So, we'll see light soon. This week's parasha, Parashat Chayei Sarah, is a very interesting parasha. There's a lot of mussar in it that we can learn from. A lot of things that teach different lessons about...

1:08character traits that we can learn from the matriarchs and patriarchs, and also different things about Judaism itself that are very, very important to know. So the parasha starts, Me'ah shanah, ve'esrim shanah, ve'sheva shanim, shnei chayei Sarah. Sarah's lifetime was 100 years, 20 years, and 7 years, the years of Sarah's life. So it breaks down 127 years into 3, and there's a reason for it. It's showing you how Sarah's life was complete. From the minute she was born until the minute that she died, she was completely righteous. Me'ah shanah, ve'esrim shanah, ve'sheva shanim, shnei chayei Sarah. Sarah's lifetime was 100 years, 20 years, and 7 years, the years of Sarah's life. So it breaks down 127 years into 3, and there's a reason for it. It's showing you how Sarah's life was complete. From the minute she was born until the minute that she died, she was completely righteous. So the next question that we hear is that if she was so righteous, if she was a bigger prophet, and even more of a tzaddeket than Avraham Avinu, why did she die first? Avraham Avinu died at age 175. Sarah died at the age of 127. It's a difference of 48 years. Why did she die first? Good.

2:27One explanation is that at her level, when Hashem gave the news to the angel that they were going to have a baby, that they were going to have Yitzhak when she was 90 years old, when she laughed and then denied it, in essence, that was a punishment for it. Because at her level, she was supposed to have complete faith. Another explanation that I like better, and I think is probably a combination of the two, is the reality that Avraham Avinu became officially Avraham Avinu not at zero. Even though he was righteous from the beginning of his life, and he identified God at the age of three, he jumped into the fire in Ur Kasdim when... Nimrod. When Nimrod actually wanted to test him and said, "Either worship one of my idols or I'll throw you into the fire." And as a little kid, Avraham Avinu jumped into the fire willingly, and Hashem obviously saved him. So, he was very righteous and had very deep emunah from the beginning of his life. But he reached the level of being Avraham Avinu at the age of 48.

3:50At the age of 48 is when he officially got to such a high level where he became a Kiruv rabbi, the first one of his kind in history, where he started converting people. He started, you know, in those days there wasn't Judaism, even though we had the Oral Torah in those times. The type of Judaism we have today and the Torah that we have today were not the same back then in the sense that We weren't obligated to do all of the mitzvot at the time of Avraham Avinu as we were after Moshe at Har Sinai. So, as a matter of fact, some parts of the Torah were much, much more extensive at the time of Avraham Avinu. A lot of people think, oh, maybe they had much less. It's not necessarily true. As I said, I think last week, In the Gemara, there is one of the tractates called Avodah Zarah. It's about idol worship. It discusses various details of idol worship, what constitutes idol worship, and what does not. Whether it's worshipping an actual physical idol that somebody buys at a store, or it's worshipping a person, like, for example, in Christianity, when people are worshipping J.C. as if he is a god.

5:17that's completely idol worship. So unfortunately, we even have Jews who do idol worship, such as worshipping a rabbi. They say that the rabbi is a Mashiach, or that the rabbi is the only way for them to be saved. All types of nonsense that people make up, and it's 100% idol worship. So idol worship has a lot of different details. This doesn't even scratch the surface, but the point I'm trying to make is that the tractate in the Gemara that talks about idol worship has five parts. In the days of Avraham Avinu, it's 4,000 parts. 4,000 parts. So if you're talking about, let's say, five parts are maybe 70 pages, if I remember correctly, 70, 80 pages in Avodah Zarah, so 4,000. Just the Avodah Zarah tractate that Avraham Avinu had would be longer than the entire Shas we have multiple times. So, just because they were before Mount Sinai doesn't necessarily mean they had less. But more so, when Avraham Avinu reached his ultimate level and became Avraham Avinu at the age of 48, that's when Hashem considers that he started his life.

6:45Even though, yes, he started at the age of zero like everybody else, and he lived 48 years and so on, but the reality of it is that he started his official life, according to spirituality, at the age of 48. So if you look at the age of Avraham Avinu, he died at 175. Minus 40 is 100. Same thing. Same thing. 127. Same thing as Chayei Sarah. So, that's another explanation. So how did Sarah actually die? You see this. The parasha starts immediately telling you that Sarah Imeinu died in Kiryat Arba, which is in Chevron, in the land of Canaan, which is Israel. So, but it talks about this, it's right at the beginning of the parasha, right after we finished the whole big test of Akedat Yitzchak, which is telling us that this actually happened at the same time. What ended up happening is that when Avraham went with Yitzchak to the mountain, Satan took advantage of it and came to Sarah. He, uh, dressed up as an old man, an old poor guy, and Satan can turn into anything. And he came down and he said, "Oh, I feel so bad for you that your husband is about to kill your son." "What? What do you mean, kill my son?" He says, "Yeah, he's about to kill your son. Everybody knows. How could you not know?"

8:08dressed up as an old man, an old poor guy, and Satan can turn into anything. And he came down and he said, "Oh, I feel so bad for you that your husband is about to kill your son." "What? What do you mean, kill my son?" He says, "Yeah, he's about to kill your son. Everybody knows. How could you not know?" So Sarah is running hysterically. She's looking around town, looking for some type of an answer, some type of response. How could this be? She reaches all the way to Hebron and finds these three giants and asks them if they have seen her husband. Have they seen an old man with a younger man? And these three giants are able to see far away, and they're also very big, so they... look away, and they say, yes, there's an old man, and he's on top of a younger man that's laying down like an offering, and he's tied up, and the old man has a knife in his hand. So Sarah Imeinu starts hysterically crying, and then the Satan comes back shortly later as a different person. And he says to her, no, you have nothing to worry about.

9:32I just heard that your son, Yitzchak, is fine and he didn't kill him. So from the happiness, she had a heart attack and died. So the way he said it, the second old man came, the reason why he came as a second person is to make the story more elaborate by saying, "Oh, don't you know that this first guy is a known liar?" and he's saying to himself, Once you know he's a liar, he made this whole elaborate story to make it more believable. And that's also one of the lessons we learn from this: every big lie in history always has a little bit of an element of truth. Every big lie. And, in order for it to stand, the Gemara even says if you ever want a lie to stand, it has to have a little bit of truth in it. Because a complete lie, a hundred percent lie, does not have a leg to stand on. So, there was a lot, you know, the truth part of it is that this, technically, Avraham was coming to kill his son, not because he wanted to, but because Hashem, you know, in essence, that's what he thought Hashem wanted. But the Satan went overboard. When he came to her and gave her the good news, he went overboard, and her heart couldn't, you know, couldn't handle it. Now, let's not misunderstand it, that technically, it's not that

10:59She died early. She was supposed to die at 127. She was supposed to die that day. It's just that that was the tool that Hashem used to have her end her life. And that's also part, you know, the death of a person is part of their repentance. How a person dies is part of their teshuvah. It actually is a... it's a it repents for some of the sins that we make, some sins that we make in life during life, the only fixing, the only way that we can fix them is an actual death. So the way we die also is part of it. So, for example, in the old days, when someone would violate Shabbat, you know, they would stone them. They would throw the person off of a two-story building. If they didn't die... then they would throw a giant stone, a big boulder, they would roll it down the hill, and if he still didn't die, there were already people ready with rocks to kill him. This is just for violating Shabbat. Just for violating Shabbat. I mean, technically Shabbat is the core of Judaism, but the point I'm trying to make is that stoning was the most difficult death of all, and that was the punishment for Mechalel Shabbat. Now, now that we don't have...

12:26the Sanhedrin. We don't have the ability to stone people. So what happens? So the Gemara says that even though the ruling of the Sanhedrin, the judges of Judaism, is no longer around, the punishment still is. But the punishment comes from Heaven. How does it come? They give you different examples. They say that someone who is supposed to be stoned will get run over by an animal. So in our days, by a big animal, in our days it's like a car accident. Someone dies in a car accident. Someone falls from a building. Someone that gets into a plane crash of some kind. All of those things are a way of repenting in essence for that sin. It doesn't necessarily mean you repent for the sin completely in any way, shape, or form because the Mechalel Shabbat is in a very, very deep if he doesn't do teshuva or she doesn't do teshuva, but it's really important to know that there's a din and there's a dayan—there's a judgment and then there's a judge—and everyone's going to have to pay for their sins at some point or another. And if we live our life with that in mind, we have a better chance of not making those sins. If we ignore it...

13:57If we live in illusion, like some people want us to live, it's okay, you know, it's not relevant to today, it's not too strict, it's too this, it's too that. People always say that things are different today than they used to be. But the sages have already told us that there's nothing new under the sun. Everything that we have today, we had back then. Whether it's desires... For women, money, power, whatever it is, maybe some machinery changed, but we had machinery back then. Everything is relative. And the reality of it is that the same difficulties we have today, we had back then. If anything, it was even more difficult back then. You had more of a reason to work on Shabbat back then than you do today. Why? Because there was a lot more poverty back then. If you didn't work on Shabbat, it could have meant the difference between having food and not having food. In today's world, no one is going to go without food if they don't work on Shabbat. It's just that they're not going to have more money. But food, pretty much most people eat in the world. No one's going to miss a meal because they don't work on Shabbat. So the key is that the more we know about the consequences of our actions and what the Torah says about them,

15:20the easier it is for us to live our life according to that. If we deny those rules or we say, you know, different silly things like it's not relevant or it's, I'm not, you know, it's too much or something like that, then it gets us to a point where we start living a lie, and that lie gets bigger and bigger, and eventually, we get used to our life being this way, and then changing becomes nearly impossible. So you can say, listen, I know this is the truth, but I'm not ready to do it yet. But don't deny that it's the truth. Okay, listen, I know that Shabbat, you need to keep. You can't drive on Shabbat. I know you can't watch TV. You can't use the phone. You can't use all these electrical things. You can't do all of these things. But I'm not ready yet. I just started doing Shabbat a month ago. I started doing Tefillin. I started eating a little bit more kosher. I left my non-Jewish partner. Okay, but I'm not ready to keep Shabbat yet. Okay, that's better. It's not good, but it's better than someone saying, "Listen, I don't think I need to keep Shabbat. When I get to Shabbat, I'll figure it out." That's just silly.

16:44So now, Sarah Imeinu passes away, and we also, there's one thing I actually learned in the last couple of days about the difference also between the Jews and non-Jews in regards to death, how we treat our dead is very, very different. First of all, When we're talking about any of the sages, when we're talking about any of the patriarchs in the Torah, they're always mentioning chayeihem, they're always mentioning the lifetime of a person, not the death of a person. Because the Gemara says that a righteous person is alive even past this life. He's alive forever. Whereas a wicked person is dead even in this life. So, a righteous person, he's really living a full life. Not just this life, but he's living an eternal life. It's the real life. The soul lives an eternal life, so a righteous person will live this eternal life. A wicked person, Hashem already considers them dead even in this world. This world is just a corridor in comparison to the eternal world. So now, when someone dies in Judaism...

18:05The way we treat the dead is very unique. We wrap the body. We don't have these big caskets like the non-Jews have. It's very humble. And the person gets wrapped and they do the... We have a shivah. And we have to... It's a very respectful process. It's not a... We don't leave the coffin open for people to see the body or anything like that. We consider all of those things as desecration of the body. Now, there's a tradition, a minhag for the non-Jews called cremation, where they burn the bodies. And Nirel actually asked me, and somebody else also asked me coincidentally in the last few days, about whether it's allowed or not. And I actually thought that it’s not allowed under any condition, but actually, it’s wrong. There are some conditions where cremation is allowed for non-Jews. For Jews, it's not allowed. It's not allowed to burn a body in general. It's not allowed to burn a Jewish body. But for non-Jews, it's allowed under the condition that it's not done for some sort of idol worship. Meaning, it's not done for religious purposes, for let's say, I don't know, for the sake of Jesus or for the sake of Allah or for the sake of something like that, or Buddha or something like that.

19:30It's not done for religious purposes. And two, it's not done without the permission of the deceased person. Because, in essence, one of the reasons why we're not allowed to do it in Judaism is because it would be a disrespect to the person, disrespect to the dead. Now, since in Judaism it's not allowed to do such a thing, you're not allowed to do it under any conditions. But for non-Jews, it is a minhag for many of them to do that. So if the actual person, before he dies, asks for them to do that, then he obviously is foregoing his respect for his own body, and therefore it's not disrespecting his body. So if he's choosing to do it, then it's okay. But again, it cannot be for any purpose that's relevant to avodah zarah. So, I mean, there's a handful of things that I... For burial purposes, it's not idol worship, right? If it's just for burial purposes, no. Yes, it's fine. Okay. Just to understand. Yeah, yeah. It's a... But the big... I mean, there's a few other things. It's a... One other thing that... Is the reason why we don't allow it for Jews is because...

20:54part of the kapparah, part of the repentance of a person after he finishes his life, is the fact that their body suffers in the grave for a year. The worms eat, the worms and maggots eat the body, and the body in essence suffers because of that. That is actually part of the repentance of the neshama. So when you burn the body, you're giving up on this repentance. You're doing teshuva in essence. You're making up for sins by having the body eaten up. I know it's gross, but in Judaism, every one of these things is important. Where is the suffering part? Where is the suffering part? The body suffers. How much it suffers is not the same type of suffering as... us getting, you know, I don't know, a paper cut, but there's definitely some type of suffering. Part of the neshama stays for a certain amount of time, and in essence, part of the neshama suffers from it. But the kapara is one of them. The desecration of the dead is another reason; another reason is the desecration of the living.

22:14meaning that the people, the family, if the family didn't want it to happen, then they would be embarrassed by it. One of our mitzvot that we need to do as Jews is to bury Jews, so it's forbidden that by burning them, usually you don't bury those things, so that's another reason. Fear that somebody would enjoy the dust somehow for some type of idol worship. And last but not least, I'm glad I looked at it, last but not least is that Jews are obligated to believe in the resurrection of the dead. It's one of the 13 principles of faith. There's a resurrection of the dead that's going to happen after the Mashiach comes. All the righteous will be brought back to life. This has already happened before multiple times. It happened at Mount Sinai because Am Yisrael, when they heard Hashem speak the first two commandments, His voice was so significant and so beyond their ability to hear that they all died. Twice. And He brought them back to life. Another time this happened was when the tribe of Ephraim was brought back to life. This is actually also in the Tanakh. There's a story about it, called the story of the dry bones.

23:41He brought them back to life. There were hundreds of them. I think it was 800 or maybe even more. There were many, many of them. He brought them back to life. Hashem brought them back to life. So anyone that says, you know, hey, how could you bring back people? You know, they died. How could you bring them back to life? It's actually kind of silly because when you think about it, you all come from what? From a seed. From a tiny little seed that joins... an egg, and somehow turns into this perfect human being that works, that has functions, that hears, and sees, and smells, and thinks, and has their own voice, and has their own look, and has their own wisdom. By the way, those are three things that the Gemara says. Three things are different about all humans. They all have a different voice, they all have a different look, and they all have different wisdom. Even though sometimes you'll see similar looks, they're not going to be identical. Even though sometimes you're going to hear similar voices, they're not going to be exactly the same. And even though sometimes you see that two people are smart, they both got 100 on the test, it's not the same wisdom. Different way of thinking. So...

25:02the wisdom, looks, and voice of three things that Hashem gave us that are unique between each person. One of the reasons why He made those three specific things unique is because if we all had those same things, then there would be a lot more sex crimes. One guy would pretend that he's somebody else and go to the guy's wife. They look exactly the same. So for her, she didn't make a sin. He looks exactly like her husband. or in the days before electricity, one guy would come to the woman with the voice. She can't see him. So with wisdom, people would come up with all different types of plans of how to commit more crimes, how to create more problems. So Hashem made us unique in those things. Now, when it comes to the resurrection of the dead, A Jew is obligated to believe in it. And it's much easier to believe in the resurrection of the dead when you understand the beginning. When you understand that you all came from a seed, came from nothing, then when you think about the resurrection of the dead, half the body is already there. You already have all the bones. So half the body is already there. So it's actually starting with more than what you started with originally. Technically, Hashem doesn't need anything.

26:27to create, you know, to break somebody. But the point is that a Jew is obligated to believe in the resurrection of the dead, and someone that burns their body is, in essence, going against that belief. He's saying that he doesn't believe in the resurrection of the dead. A non-Jew is not obligated to believe in the resurrection of the dead. So, By them burning their body, it is not heresy. So, there's a 14-page answer if you want to give me after the shiur. It gives more details. But anyway, you learned about cremation and that. So now, after that, it says that Avraham came to eulogize Sarah and bewail her. Now, to... in Hebrew, one of the letters is a different size than the rest of the letters. There's one letter that's smaller than the rest of the letters where usually it's a normal-sized letter, but in this particular case, it's specifically highlighted and made smaller than the others. One of the lessons that we learn from this is that

27:53Avraham Avinu, he came, obviously he's very, very sad to see his lifelong partner, his soulmate, his everything die, but he kept it inside. He had sorrow, but he kept it inside. He didn't share it with the whole world or cry hysterically. running through the streets, how miserable the things are, I can't believe it, why did God do this to me, why this, why that. He didn't do all of that. He was very, very sad, and probably more sad than any one of us could even imagine, because again, keep in mind, he's been with her for over 120 years. It's not like they were together for two years. They waited until he was 100, and she was 90, for a kid. Finally, they have the kid. He goes through all of these tests, and she dies, I must say. It's a very, very difficult test. And now he has to keep it inside. The reason why is because he's trying to teach us here that when someone goes through difficulties, it's not about keeping it inside and not sharing it with anyone. Of course, you share it with your wife, you share it with someone that you're very close to,

29:15Fine, of course, people need to get some stuff out of their heart, share with the Rav, if you're close to a Rav, share with somebody that cares about the situation. But sharing your problems with the world is completely a no-no. If you're going through difficulty, walking around with a sad face or an angry face... is not a solution. It just makes things much, much worse. Why? Because your face will attract that same type of energy. There's a Rabbi Yisrael from Salant, about 150 years ago. He started the Mussar movement. And one day he sees a regular Jew, and he sees the regular Jew walking around with one of these miserable faces, And he stops him and he says to him, "Listen, why do I have to suffer because you made sins? Why does he say 'made sins'? 'Made sins' because you're not going to get the problem for no reason. Obviously, you committed a sin. It's a form of repentance that Hashem is sending you. Hashem gives you a problem for one of two reasons: either as a repentance for something you've done, either in this life or a past life, or to raise you higher."

30:36To test you so you overcome the test and become better for it. So Rabbi Yisrael from Salant says to him, why do I have to suffer because you're going through a problem? And he says, well what do you mean? How are you suffering? He goes, why do I have to look at your face? And the rest of the world has to look at your face and you're always angry. And everyone's scared to be around you because you're about to explode. And everyone's worried all the time. Why do we have to look at this? Okay, you're dealing with a problem. Deal with your problem. We don't have to suffer because you have a problem. And there's a lot of truth in that. In reality, when you walk around with a miserable face, it causes everybody around you to become miserable. If you come into the house upset, the entire mood becomes upset. The kids start crying. The wife all of a sudden has had a tough day that she wants to tell you about. It's just everything starts connecting to that negative mood, and everything drops down severely and gets worse and worse. And unless the one who started it changes it, it won't stop, ever.

31:55when you go to work, I remember when I would come into the office, I used to have this mindset that if I was serious all the time and always under pressure and always pretty much trying to conquer the world day after day, that eventually people would catch up. And I was always angry that people didn't catch up and I was always upset that we didn't get enough done, even though we were doing fine. And I would come into the office, and at times I would come into the office angry, and it's already 8 o'clock in the morning. There's nothing to be angry about. Nothing happened. I'm already angry about who's late 5 minutes, who may be late, who was late, who's not working hard. All of these different things. And sometimes it was true, sometimes I would make it up in my head. Mm-hmm. Either way, it wasn't a good way to run a business because you change the environment of the place. And it's unenjoyable. People don't want to work in a place like that. People don't want to be in a place like that. So whether it's your house or your business or even just walking around in the street, you have to make sure that the face that you have outside, that's the face you're going to receive. You have a sad face. You have an angry face. That's the way people are going to look at you. You have a happy face. You have a smiley face.

33:22People are going to smile at you. You smile, and the world smiles right back at you. And Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, who started the Mussar movement, is one of the people who expanded on this whole lesson that we learned from almost 4,000 years ago from Avraham Avinu, where he kept the sorrow inside him. Immediately after that verse, it says, "The very next verse says, 'Abraham rose up from the presence of his dead and spoke to the children of Heth, saying, I am an alien and a resident among you.'" Why does it say Abraham rose up? Okay, so I understand. Abraham eulogized Sarah and bewailed her. Why does it mention he rose up? Nachman is teaching you something very, very important. If you go into a difficult time, I understand, it's difficult. Everybody has their own level of difficulties. But Avraham Avinu is telling you it's time to move on. Keep moving. Keep moving. If you're going to have a long face, you're going to be miserable and tell everybody about your problems and think that that somehow is going to fix your problems, you're mistaken. It's not going to fix anything. It's just going to create more problems. Telling people about your problems is not going to fix them. Mm-hmm.

34:45As a matter of fact, it's just going to create more problems because those people are not going to want to be next to you. At times of help, there are very, very few, if any, people to count on. At times of need, I can tell you this from my own personal experience and I can tell you this from countless other experiences that I've heard about. No one has ever come to me and told me throughout all the years of meeting all these people, whether they're business people, religious, non-religious, no one's ever come to me and told me, "Listen, you know what? When I had a tough time, everybody came to help me." doesn't happen. Very, very rare to have any help. When you do, it's very few. You know, you get a few people, one, two, three people that help. At most, it's usually somebody very, very close to you, like family. It's not the people that you expect, like your best friend or the guy that was your business partner or any of those people. The people that you helped in the past, don't count on them helping you. It's not necessarily that they're doing it intentionally. It's just human nature. People... are not necessarily attracted to difficulty. They figure that if you're in a difficulty, helping you may get them into a difficulty and it becomes a snowball effect. So people generally run away from difficulty. People want to connect to fun and parties and illusions and all that type of stuff. So now...

36:11Avraham Avinu is telling you that at a time of difficulty, yes, you could be sad, but there's a certain amount of sadness you're allowed to have. And then you have to move on. Avraham rose up, and where did he go? He went to purchase a grave for Sarah. He wanted to buy her something very special. He didn't want to buy her just any grave. Avraham was very rich. He wasn’t short on money or anything. But he wanted to buy something very, very special. And he knew of the cave of Machpelah, the Me'arat HaMachpelah. He knew about it for years already. I didn’t even know about it. One day he went to, actually, last week's parsha when he had the guests. The angels came as guests. Now, he had to go get three cows for them. One of the cows ran away. It ran away. So, he chased the cow, and the cow went into this cave. When he went into the cave, he smelled this amazing smell of Gan Eden. So, he looked into the cave and he saw that the graves of Adam and Chava were in there. Adam and Chava were in there. So, from that moment on

37:37he started praying over there. And according to Masechet Berachot in the Gemara, Avraham Avinu made the Tefillat Shacharit. He wrote the Tefillat Shacharit. The morning prayer that we have in Judaism, Avraham Avinu wrote it, and the original part of it, Yitzchak did Mincha, which we actually see in this parasha, and Yaakov did Arvit. So... He discovered this cave. He saw that this was something special. But this guy, Ephron, didn't know that it was special. He owned it but didn't know there was anything in it. A few other people in town knew there was something special about this cave, and they wanted to bury other people there. However, according to the Midrash in Me'am Loez, it says that every time somebody came to bury the dead in the cave... in the cave of Machpelah, a big ball of fire would come out and scare everybody away. So now, Avraham is looking to buy this cave. He comes to the town. He talks to the Chittites. And he says, I'm looking for a plot of land. And they say, Oh, listen, you are a prince of God. We have respect for you.

39:04Anything you want, we'll sell you, we'll give you. But if you really want to do me a kindness, then connect me with this Ephron who's going to sell me this cave of Machpelah. I'm willing to pay full price for it. The minute that he said Ephron's name and expressed interest in talking about Ephron, Avraham was such a big-time guy, they considered him the Prince of God. Wasn't he? He's rich, he's the Prince of God, he's won wars, he's famous. As soon as he mentioned Ephron's name, they made Ephron into some type of a leader. One of their leaders. And Ephron... comes to Avraham and he tells him, "Oh, take whatever you want. It's free. It's free. I gave it to you already. No need. Don't worry about anything. I've given you the field. And I've given you the... you don't have to pay anything." But then he says something special.

40:23that shows that he's a con artist. He's saying, I've given it to you in the view of the children of my people, I have given it to you. What does it mean? In the view of the children of my people, he said, in front of everybody else here, all these other people, I'm giving it to you for free. Between you and me, Nothing. So Ephron replied to Avraham, saying to him, "My lord, heed me. Land worth 400 silver shekels. Between me and you, what is it?" So now it's not free anymore. After he got all the kavod, because he gave it to him for free, all the newspapers are going to write, "Ephron gave a big piece of land in a cave to Avraham Avinu, the biggest sage we have." He gave it to him. Wow. You know, they're making Ephron get a big kavod for that. But he doesn't just want kavod. He wants kavod and he wants the money. He wants a lot of money. The 400 shekels, the 400 silver shekels in today's world is worth millions and millions. Probably somewhere around maybe four or five million dollars.

41:39for something that, even in those days, they didn't know the value of. So for a regular person, it was probably not even worth a tenth of that. So he overcharged him because he knew he was rich and was able to take advantage of him at a difficult time. And Ephron got punished for it. Actually, in the Torah, you see that Ephron is spelled with five letters: Ayin, Pei, Resh, Vav, Nun. but after he makes this scam, he loses one of the letters in his name. Every time he's mentioned in the Torah, it's spelled with four letters. So he's missing the Vav. Why? Because those four letters that are left, the numerical value of them is 400. Just like the 400 that he asked and schemed Avraham into paying. Another thing that's really interesting about the Ma'arat HaMachpelah, which is actually not relevant to anybody here but is relevant to anybody possibly watching, is that the Cave of Machpelah is one of the best proofs against Christianity. In the New Testament, they say that the Cave of Machpelah is in...

43:06Nablus, whereas it is in Shechem. So, whereas in this week's parasha, it says it literally several times that the Cave of Machpelah is in Hebron, which are two completely different places. So, it shows that despite the New Testament saying that it's a continuation of the Old Testament, something like that is a mistake. you know, it shows that it's not divine or anywhere close to being divine. It's just a man-made document that people made a big deal about. But in reality, it has countless mistakes. And, you know, the Kever Machpelah is one of the best examples because it's an easy, literal example. It's not based on faith. It's not based on whether you believe in this one or that one. It's not based on the sect or not sect. It's based on literal scripture. You know,

44:06Hashem over here wrote that the Kever Machpelah is in Hebron, over there in Shechem. It's two completely different places. What, Hashem forgot? So, you know, that's the thing. So when you see mistakes like this, it's very good to catch them and highlight them. It's good for the non-Jews that are possibly watching this to know. But it's also good for Jews to know how much truth we have. I think that watching the debate that Rabbi Mizrachi had with the Christian professor is very, very good for Jews to watch, not just for non-Jews. Because the more you know about the truth that we have, the more confident you are to practice it. When you're just practicing Judaism without knowing anything about all the other religions, and not knowing how much of the truth we have and how much of a lie they have, then you can have doubts. And doubt is not something good. Next thing after this, Avraham tells his helper, his main helper, Eliezer, to go find a wife for his son, Yitzchak. He sees that it's time for Yitzchak to get married. And he makes... then you can have doubts. And doubt is not something good. Next thing after this, Avraham tells his helper, his main helper, Eliezer, to go find a wife for his son Yitzchak. He sees that it's time for Yitzchak to get married. And he makes...

45:33Eliezer promised him that he's going to go to a different land to find the woman, and it's not going to be a Canaanite woman. One of the reasons why he's mentioning that it cannot be a Canaanite woman is because the Canaanites were cursed by Hashem. However, Eliezer himself was a Canaanite. But Eliezer was a big tzaddik. Eliezer... He was such a big tzaddik that the Gemara says that he's one of ten people that actually never died, but went to the next world completely alive. This shows you that this is not about discrimination. Avraham is not discriminating against his number one guy. He's not discriminating against the Canaanites because he doesn't like them. It's because Hashem said so. Hashem said, you cannot be with the Canaanites. So, Avraham is listening. It's not that we discriminate against non-Jews. We like non-Jews. Some of the best people in history have been non-Jews. In our current history, in past history, there's even books in the Torah about non-Jews. I mean, Iyov was a prophet. A tzaddik. He was a non-Jew. So, it's not when the Torah says

47:02that a Jew is not allowed to marry a non-Jew. It's not because we think that the Jew is the best and the non-Jew is not good. That's completely wrong, because the non-Jew could very well be much better than the Jew. If the non-Jew is keeping the seven laws of Noah, whereas the Jew is not keeping mitzvot, then the non-Jew is much better off. He's a much better person, according to spirituality. I'm not talking about if they're nice or not nice. I'm talking about as far as spirituality is concerned. The non-Jew has a law about it. The Jew doesn't have a law about it if they're not keeping the mitzvot. So, when Judaism says, when the Torah says that intermarriage is not allowed, it's not discrimination. It's just what Hashem said. Hashem decided. He said, listen, the Jewish people, they're going to have to be separate from everyone else. The rest of the world is the rest of the world. They could be together, Chinese with with the Korean, the Korean with the Japanese, the Japanese with the black people, the black people with the Spanish people, Spanish people with the American people, and so on and so forth. They can do whatever they want. That's one thing. But then there's the Jewish people. Jewish people are not allowed to intermarry. It's not discrimination. It's just what Hashem said. And we know this from this particular verse because Avraham gave full control of everything he had to Eliezer, who was a Canaanite.

48:28He trusts him with everything. And he says to him, "I'm giving you everything. Please take care of this big responsibility of finding my son a wife." If he didn't love Eliezer, if he didn't care for Eliezer, he wouldn't give him this big responsibility. But at that time there was no Judaism. There was no Jewish people. There was an Ivri. It predates Judaism. But there was still some form of Torah, and there was monotheism. It was either you believed in God or he believed in idol worship. Okay. So Eliezer was a Canaanite, but he believed in God. So it's like a Noachide, for example. Someone today that does the seven laws of Noach, that's what Eliezer was, he's a Noachide. He does the seven laws of Noach, but he's still not allowed to marry, if someone does the seven laws of Noach, he's still not allowed to marry a Jew. Right. But at that time, he was looking for... He was looking for someone except the Canaanite, because Hashem specifically said not allowed to marry the Canaanites. Oh, there was a specific... Specifically made not to marry the Canaanites. So anyway, so he sends him on this mission, and the reason why this is, you know, this is a specific issue that's mentioned is because Eliezer is also looking for a husband for his daughter. Eliezer has a daughter, and he wants her to marry him.

49:57Yitzchak. Yitzchak's a big tzaddik. His father's a giant tzaddik. Why wouldn't he want to marry her? He's been Avraham's servant for so many years, his righteous servant, his right-hand man, the head of his kollel, his yeshiva, he's running it. He's running his whole empire. And he can't. One of the reasons... that the Canaanites were specified as a nation, that we weren't allowed to marry into, that Abraham was not allowed to marry into. It's going to surprise you. Most people think it's because of the idol worship. It wasn't because of the idol worship. Because, as you see, Eliezer wasn't an idol worshiper. The reason why the Canaanites were not allowed is because the Canaanites had a lack of moral characteristics. The women were not modest. And they had bad ethics. So Rabbi Hirsch here is explaining that why is not being modest a bigger deal

51:26than idol worship because idol worship is a matter of belief. You can change that. You tell a person, "Listen, the statue, you just made it last week. Obviously, it's not God." So, you show him a few proofs of the real God. That's it. You got rid of idol worship. Modesty, or lack of modesty, is inside the person. It requires a certain amount of willpower, and it's a certain amount of characteristics of the person. If the person has a characteristic where they're not willing to change themselves, nothing in the world is going to change. Someone that's not modest, there's no limit to what they would do. And that's why when people... and Orthodox Judaism makes a big deal about modesty. It's not that we don't like beauty. It's that the Torah explains to us that there's a place and a time to have beauty. A husband needs to see his wife's beauty privately. The wife actually has two obligations. A woman has two obligations.

52:52One is to raise the family, and two is to be beautiful for her husband. That's it. Those are her obligations in Judaism. And in that, women are considered higher than men because the Mashiach will come in the merit of the women. We were taken out of Egypt based on the merit of the women. The Mashiach will come based on the merit of the women. So it's not that it's not a big deal. It's a big deal. The woman in the Gemara is called Bayit. What's Bayit? House. A woman is called house because she's the one that builds the house. She is the most important part of the house. So when you have an immodest woman, a woman that does not have modesty, then you have yourself a defective bayit. You have yourself a problem inside the house. So, when her nature is like the Canaanites, and she has no interest in being modest, it's not something that even makes sense to her, you have a problem. But it's just because she doesn't understand, like many people in our generation, they just, that's the way they grew up. They don't mind being immodest.

54:13But they see that all their friends are walking around half-naked. They're wearing the shirts, they're wearing the t-shirts, or the tank tops, or the tube tops, or the bikinis, or I don't know, maybe in the next few years, people are going to start walking around naked altogether. But that's where it's going. We're very close to it. Every generation in the last hundred years has had less and less clothes. Every generation has fewer and fewer clothes. I think eventually we're just not going to have any clothes. And people don't know that this is a big deal. Obviously, some people realize it's a big deal, but in reality, there are many, many young girls who have no clue, no concept whatsoever of how severe their clothing is. Little girls... are being given, you know, they're 10, 12 years old, 13 years old. Their clothes, they don't shop for their clothes. Their parents buy their clothes. And they're foolish parents. Why do they buy them? Let me buy them a tank top. Let me buy her shorts. A 12-year-old girl puts makeup on. She looks like she's 20 years old. Oh, it's so cute. It's not cute. She's not supposed to look like she's 20 years old. She's 12. But that's the thing. People think that

55:31We're all supposed to look like celebrities and we're ready for prime time. And that's a big problem in our generation. So here Avraham Avinu is telling you that it's not necessarily about the idol worship. The idol worship and the beliefs, we can change that. With the right amount of teaching, you can change that. But it's the characteristics of the people. And if there's a lack of modesty and a lack of willpower to change that, you can't fix it. So now Eliezer goes on this mission, and he's very determined to find it, and he asks for a blessing from Hashem to give him a sign. Now, technically, in Judaism, you're not allowed to look for signs. You're not allowed to say, "Listen, Hashem, if you get me this job, I'll keep Shabbat." Or if a black cat doesn't pass me today, then I'm going to buy this car. Or if it rains today, then I'm going to buy this stock. You're not allowed to do those things. That's idol worship. You're not allowed to do it. Okay? So how is Eliezer doing this? How is Eliezer asking for a sign from Hashem? doesn't pass me today, then I'm going to buy this car. Or if it rains today, then I'm going to buy this stock. You're not allowed to do those things. That's avodah zarah. You're not allowed to do it. Okay? So how is Eliezer doing this? How is Eliezer asking for a sign from Hashem?

56:57So what he's doing is that his request has to do with what he's doing. Meaning, he's asking Hashem, please help me serve my master, which is Avraham, by bringing me a righteous person that's going to show me her midot. He's asking for a woman, a young woman. He's not asking to bring me a beautiful woman that's going to be 5'10", with 110 pounds. He's not asking for that. What he's asking for is to give me someone that's going to show me her middot, her good characteristics, where I'm going to ask her to drink and she will give it to me, so it shows kindness. And without me even asking, she'll give water to my camels and my people here. That shows that good nature. Why is he asking for this specifically? Because he says, her... being beautiful, okay, it's fine. But that's in the hands of Hashem. But her having good characteristics, that's the most important part. Obviously also, he's asking for Hashem to help him with this because that's not as easy to find. Beautiful women, you could see. Any guy with eyes could see whether she's beautiful or not beautiful. But a characteristic requires you to develop a relationship with that person. He doesn't have this kind of time. Mm-hmm.

58:24So Eliezer is asking for Hashem's help to make the signs very, very obvious. So now, Eliezer goes to the well, and Rivka (Rebekah) was coming out immediately as he was finishing this request, this meditation, this prayer that he was praying to Hashem for this help. As he's finishing, Hashem sends Rivka. She comes to him, and she comes to the well. He asks for a drink. She gives him the drink right away. And she says, "Okay, I'm going to get water for all the camels." But he didn't even ask her. Because for her, just giving him a drink by himself and not giving a drink to his camels didn't make sense to her. That's how good her nature was. She was such a tzadeket. that for her to give drink to the camels, of course, why would you even have to ask for it? Obviously, if you're thirsty, then of course your camels are thirsty also. And the people with you are also thirsty. So she went back and forth over and over and over again. This is not like five minutes. It's going to the well. And if you think about one of the...

59:50Also, again, Rabbi Hirsch also said that ten camels would consume at least 140 gallons of water. So this shows you, her actually doing all of this, it's not two minutes. To constantly go back and forth, it shows how good her character was. Because listen, if she was just, you know, sometimes people tell you, listen, listen, you need anything, call me. Anything you need, I'm here. I'm here. One day, hey, how are you? I need your help. No, I have something to do. I got something to do today. I'm busy. Well, what are you doing? I'm actually going snowboarding. i'm in crisis right now. I need your help. Yeah, move. Anytime you need the help, they tell you, call me, call me, call me. The one time you call them, they're not available. That's just reality. People, you know, they say, no, no, whatever you need, it's on me. I'm telling you, I had some people I did business with. Literally, millions of dollars in business. Made them a lot of money.

1:01:10Helped whatever I could help. One time I asked for help. Ah, you know, I'm really busy right now. Doing this is really going to take my focus off. Focus off? What are you talking about? This is a penny in comparison to what we did before. And all of a sudden, that's the nature of people. I'm not saying all people are bad; I'm just saying that not all people are helpful. And you see the genuine character of a person. You see who's really there for you at times of need. If someone was fake at a time of need, you're going to see it. Rivka, if she was fake, right now you would see it. If she really didn't mean it, she said, "Listen, I'll give it to you and your camels," but she really didn't mean it. Then she would give him a jug. She'd give the camel a jug. Yalla, I'm out of here. I'm going home. Leave me alone already with you and your camels. I'm going to have to go back and forth for three hours giving everybody a drink. She's going to be three years old. She's a little girl, and she is going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Three years old. She's three years old. Now, okay. The three years old part, the reason why I didn't mention it is because it's very easy to misunderstand it. Three years old in that time is not three years old in our time.

1:02:38Three years old in that time is the equivalent of probably somebody like 15 or 13 years old today. Not quite old enough to get married or to have kids, or at least not supposed to. But, you know, a grown person. Nature changed over time. We think that things are the same, and that's actually one of the ways that people... have problems with the Torah because things don't make sense to them. When you hear, okay, the Midrash says that Rivka was three years old, automatically some fool would say, oh, what? Crazy people want to marry three-year-old people? They're thinking of the same thing they see on the news of some sheikh marrying off a three-year-old little girl. Okay, so we have to understand that This is not the case. If 3 years old equals 15 years old, then Avraham, if you know, 100... He's 175. Is he equal to 500 years old? Well, 100 also, until the generation of Avraham, men did not age. Men did not age. Avraham looked the same as Yitzchak,

1:04:05For most of his life. After the Akedah, after the Akedat Yitzchak, one of the things that Avraham asked from Hashem was to not give him any more tests, but also to make him age because it's not fair that He walks around in the street with Yitzchak, and people can't tell the difference between them because they look exactly alike. Same face. So Avraham didn't age. So Hashem responded by saying, okay, I'll do as you spoke, and you're going to be the first one to have a white beard. And Avraham had a white beard. He was the first one to have a white beard. But the face of Yitzchak, the face of Yitzchak and the face of Avraham were exactly the same. You might say that this contradicts what I said before, which is that there are three things that Hashem made different about people, one of them being the face. So how could it be that Avraham and Yitzchak had the same face? No, no. The exact same face. The reason why is because when...

1:05:11Sarah was taken by Avimelech. It was before Yitzchak came to the world. Shortly after they left Avimelech, Sarah became pregnant. So people were saying when Yitzchak was born, "Oh, maybe Avimelech was really the father." So Hashem did not want to make sure that no one is making fun of the sages, of the important people of Avraham and Sarah. So He made Yitzchak so identical to him that you can't say it's not his. So He made a miracle where they literally look exactly the same. So much so that when Yitzchak, at 37 years old, would walk around in the market, people would come up to him and want to pay him money or borrow money from him thinking he's his father. Mm-hmm. So now, as far as the age is concerned, the times change drastically, as far as human beings change drastically. One of the examples is, you know, vision. Like, right now, if you look down the street, if you have perfect vision, 20-20 vision, maybe you can see, I don't know, 50 yards, 75 yards, 100 yards. You can identify a person if they're just standing there. If they're walking around,

1:06:27You know, some people have a funny walk; you could identify them from five miles away, but a regular person, a regular person, you can't see their face unless they're, you know, maybe, I don't know, a block, two blocks away. In the old days, according to the Gemara, you were able to see 18 miles. That's far. 18, oh no, I'm sorry, 15 miles, something like that, 15 miles, so it's far. They say it in the Gemara where it talks about what's the din for a person whether he's supposed to give maaser off of his sheep if he has big land. And he has five sheep on one side of the land and five sheep on the other side of the land. Does he have to give maaser, combine those five and five, and give ten percent right there and then? Or... Once one side gets to 10 and the other side gets to 10, then you take, you know, 10% from each. So they said, well, if he could see both sides from where he is, then it's considered as if they're all together. So the next question is, well, how far can he see? And they say, I think it's like 19 mil or 18 mil, which is the equivalent of like 15 miles or 14 miles.

1:07:45so someone can see in those days, this is just 2,000 years ago. It's not, Avraham Avinu is almost 3,700 years ago. It's a long time ago. So this is only 2,000 years ago, which was a deterioration from Avraham, and they were able to see 15 miles. But see, like see, you can identify the person 15 miles. So human nature changed drastically. You also have examples of how old men, you know, if there was a fire one time and an old man carried two young men in his arms and started running, sprinting. You know, you don't have old men that can carry themselves in today's age. You know, so things change. Human nature changed. We became weaker. We became less than what we were. I mean, it's a, beauty is very different. You know, Sarah Imeinu, Her beauty, according to the Gemara, makes everyone else look like monkeys. Literally, like monkeys next to her. Not like monkeys, like, okay, there's one, you know, we're talking about the most beautiful people in the world today. You combine all their beauty, they all look like monkeys next to Sarah. Not talking about regular people like us. Talking about the most beautiful people look like monkeys next to Sarah. So, human nature changes drastically over time.

1:09:09and were less than what our forefathers were. So now, also, there's another, this particular verse, again, it's not necessarily relevant to what we're talking about, but it's relevant to what we said before about the proofs against the New Testament. One of the things about the New Testament where they, there's a proof against it here, is that, until this day, the Christians say that the word word "alma" means "betula". The word "alma" means virgin. And it doesn't. The word "alma" means young lady. So in this parasha it says the word "betula" and also says the word "alma". So if they were both the same In verse 24:16, it says, the maiden was fair to look upon, a virgin whom no man had known. So it literally talks about a betula. And then the other one, it says as far as an alma, it says, this is in 24:43. So if the word alma and betula were the same,

1:10:38then you wouldn't use two different words. So this is in the same parashah, so they can't say, no, one is in this book, one is in another book. This is in the same parashah, talking about the same exact person, talking about the same exact paragraph. It's not like it's a... So it's, again, anyone that's looking for answers, the Torah makes it very, very simple. All it requires is a little bit of effort. So, next thing is that they... Eliezer comes, he finds Rivka. Rivka is showing great manners, great characteristics. He asks, who is your father? And he finds out that she comes from the family of Avraham, from his brother's family. And he asks if he can stay with them. And she says, sure. And she brings him to the house. And now we meet a very, very interesting character. Lavan HaRasha. Lavan was Rivka's brother. And Lavan, even his name was a lie. Lavan means white, white means pure. He was such a crooked person that even his name was a lie, even his name was really black.

1:12:02They actually, the sage Chazal says that Lavan also ends up, some say it, that Lavan ends up becoming Bilaam. Bilaam is the wicked prophet of the Gentile nation that tried to destroy Am Yisrael. Some sages say that Lavan becomes Bilaam later on in life. So anyway, Lavan has a different plan. He sees this Eliezer. Eliezer has... Ten camels full of diamonds and gold and all types of goodies. And he has these servants. And the man sees this is a way for me to make some money. "Come in. Of course. Sit down with us. I already freed up the house for you. How could you not stay with us? Please stay with us." He's such a welcoming guy. Wow. Tzaddik. Tzaddik.

1:13:03Come, we'll give you water to bathe your feet and all the men that are with you. We'll take care of your camels. He's welcoming him with open hands, open arms. Start serving food. Eliezer is not a fool. Eliezer says, okay, I'm going to get right to the point. a servant of Avraham I am. Hashem has greatly blessed my master and he prospered. He has given him flocks, cattle, silver and gold, servants and maidservants, camels and donkeys. Sarah, my master's wife, bore my master a son after she had grown old, and he gave him all that he possesses. And my master had me take an oath, saying, "Do not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites in whose land I dwell. Rather, go to my father's house and to my family and take a wife for my son." He tells her, "Listen, I can't, I'm not going to eat until I have spoken. I can't, I can't, I can't."

1:14:28mingle, I'm not here for fun. I'm here on a mission. I said, okay, speak, speak. What do you want to say? He says, okay. I come from the servant of Avraham. I'm here. He's very, very rich. He's very, very powerful. He's very important. He's from your family also. He's connected to you. Hashem obviously has led me to you because Avraham specifically asked me to find somebody from his family, but I didn't know where you lived. It's not like they had GPS in those days. It's not like I saw them on Facebook. And obviously, Hashem made me come to you and you have a perfect daughter for a son. So Avraham and his father, Betuel... Betuel was also a Rasha Merusha. And the mother was also a Rasha'it. So then the next question you ask is, how could it be that Rivka is such a Tzaddeket with such good manners? This actually teaches us something very, very important in life.

1:15:55A lot of people like to use the excuse of their background for their behavior. "Oh, I didn't grow up with a father. I didn't grow up with a mother. My father was arrested. My mother was a prostitute. My parents didn't keep mitzvot. I didn't know." All these different things. And they make up excuses. for their whole life. I understand. Don't get me wrong. I'm not discounting anybody's difficulty in life. Hashem Shalom. People have difficulties. Some people grow up without parents. Some people grow up with parents that you wish they weren't your parents. Some people grow up with friends that you wish you didn't have them as friends because they're worse than enemies. I understand. But we can't use that card forever. Okay. Someone grew up with a difficult past. Learn from Avraham Avinu. Move on. You can't keep talking about and living your life in a miserable way and making every excuse under the sun to do things that are wrong because 30 years ago something bad happened. Because you didn't grow up with a father does not necessarily mean that it's okay for you to rob stores.

1:17:19Because your mom was not exactly a good woman does not mean that it's okay for you to beat up your wife. The opposite. If anything, you should have learned from that. Not to do it. Because we weren't brought up in a Jewish household does not mean that it's okay for us not to be religious. No one in history has ever gone into Olam HaBa and Gan Eden because their excuse was that their family wasn't religious, so it was okay for them not to be religious. No such thing. No one in history has ever gone into Gan Eden because their grandfather was religious, but they weren't religious. We all have our own responsibilities. Each person has their own responsibilities. You have to make decisions for yourself. Hashem gave each one of us a neshama, gave each one of us a brain. We can use it. That's it. can't say all this, and I was born this way, so that's why this. I was born that way, that's why this. It's nonsense. As a matter of fact, a Jewish person that comes to Shamayim, and Hashem asks him, did you keep Torah and mitzvot? Obviously, you can't lie over there. They already know the answer. When he says no, and he gives the excuse of why, the first thing that Hashem does, that the dayanim in Shamayim do,

1:18:49They bring converts. They bring righteous converts to the Jew. They say, "Look at this righteous convert. How could he do it, and you're not doing it? You were born into royalty. You were born into Judaism. You had everything handed to you on a silver spoon." all the mitzvot. Your parents showed you yeshiva. You knew what Judaism was. You didn't grow up in communist Russia where you weren't allowed to practice Judaism. You knew that Judaism existed at some point in your life. So how can you say that it was difficult for you to do it? This non-Jew didn't have to do it, and he decided to choose Judaism. chose Judaism, he converted with a kosher conversion, and he kept all of the mitzvot and became a very, very big tzaddik. So, the converts are used as the biggest example in Shamayim, because again, they weren't obligated. If Hashem is going to show us an example of another Jew, a righteous Jew, and says, okay, listen, I understand, I was

1:20:05you know, he was born on this street, I was born on that street, he's better than me. Okay, fine. I understand. He's just a better Jew. But when it's a convert, you see, this person had it more difficult than you. Much more difficult than you. And he still did it. Which means that the reason why we're not doing it is just an excuse. It's just an excuse. So now, Lavan and Betuel the Rasha are planning, and the mother is also planning a way to kill Eliezer and take all of his money. Meanwhile, Rivka is a big tzaddekes, and the reason why she was able to be a tzaddekes in a house full of reshaim, a house full of evil,

1:21:06because she made her own choices. She made her own choices. She learned the real things from it. She learned what not to do. So, if a three-year-old girl, which again could be 12 or 13 years old in our days, can learn the difference between good and bad, then obviously all of us have the ability to do that. No one who was brought into the world that's not able to do it unless they have a sickness. It's called a shoteh, like someone who is autistic, someone who has some type of sickness. But they don't have the obligations of Judaism. They're not obligated. Somebody who is autistic or has some type of illness that does not give them the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong, they're not obligated to do all of the mitzvot. But, Baruch Hashem, we're obligated and we're also okay. So the key here is that if Hashem decided that the best way to do the right thing is to not do what our parents are doing, and now she is watching her brother and her father plan

1:22:33the murder of this guest. All the while, she also finds out that this guest wants to bring her salvation, which is to get her out of there. So this is not exactly an easy situation. Hashem helps. She can't overpower her parents. If she screams out, "Listen, there's poison in your food!" They're probably going to kill her too. So Hashem said, Hashem never gives us a test that we can't pass. Hashem sends help, and the poison that they put in Eliezer's plate, He sends an angel to move the plate and give it to Betuel. Betuel eats it, and he dies. So now, before he dies... they were going to feed Eliezer, and they said, yeah, you can have her, no problem, just eat with us, sit with us, you can have her, no problem. Just like Ephron, earlier with the grave, now it's free, it's free, no problem. But now that they see that the father died, Eliezer is not a fool, there's assistance from Shamayim, the next morning, if Eliezer comes to them, he goes, okay,

1:24:04let me go, let me take the woman and go to my master. He said to him, "Oh, why don't you let her stay with us for a year or ten months? Maybe to mourn the father, maybe to prepare for this wedding." They don't specify why she needs to stay. And he says to her, "No, no, no, don't delay me. This obviously is the will of Hashem." He made this trip very, very smooth. Obviously, Hashem got involved with this whole situation of this shidduch, so let's not kid ourselves here. Let me go now. And he said, okay, well, listen. Why don't we ask the child? Why don't we ask Rivka? Why don't we ask Rivka? What happened to yesterday? He said, no, take her, take her, she's yours, go, give her to your master. All of a sudden, we have to ask her? A few things. Number one, this is because they never really planned on giving her to the man. Two, they thought that she's, you know, a young kid. She just saw, you know, her father just died. They were hoping that, you know, she's not going to leave them. Three, we need to learn a lesson from this.

1:25:28There's a very big misconception about Judaism when it comes to couples getting married and how they meet. There's a concept called a shidduch. A shidduch is when, you know, some professional people or perhaps family members, friends, whatever, they connect two people to go on a few dates to meet each other before they get married. Now, unlike the secular world, where people meet each other at bars, clubs, pubs, work, on the street, and all sorts of places. They have relationships for years before deciding that they care less about each other and no longer want to be with the other person. In Judaism, it's very different. In Judaism, first of all, there's no physical contact during dating. It's not dating to see if you like each other physically by becoming intimate. Obviously, both people have to be attracted to each other, especially in our generation. Attraction is very important in our generation because we're so low, not necessarily because we're so high. But

1:26:46And they have to see if they connect mentally by talking. That's how you develop a relationship. You don't develop a relationship by lust. You develop a relationship by talking, by developing some sort of friendship first. Relationships that start purely based on intimacy are bound for disaster. Because eventually... the people get sick of each other, and they don't want to do that anymore, and they end up talking to each other. And once they talk to each other, they realize they have nothing in common, and they don't like each other. And then they waste two, three, four, five years of each other's lives. And then after this, they go on to the next relationship, again and again and again and again. So in the shidduch world, people think that the parents decide who the boy is, the parents decide with the girl, and they force the kids to marry. That's completely wrong. That's what I was trying to get to. This Torah, this verse over here, when they said, let's call Rivka and ask her, from here, we learn that even the rasha Lavan, the wicked Lavan, even he knew the law, which is that you have to ask the woman whether she wants to or not. A woman can never be forced to marry anyone.

1:28:13It cannot be forced. It doesn't matter if it's a little kid or a big kid. It can't be forced. If she doesn't want to be married to the guy, she doesn't have to. This is not Islam, where you're selling the kid for a few camels. In the shidduch world, where people are trying to make couples meet, it's to meet and talk. You talk three, four, five, six, seven times. That's it. You're either going to like the person or not. If you can't hold a conversation by your second meeting, it's not for you. If you're still talking, you're going to know whether you care for this person or not after a couple of meetings. You don't need to date somebody for two years to know whether you like them or not. And as far as love is concerned, love is something that you have to develop over time. That's one of the misunderstandings that people have about love. They think that it's this fancy, you know, fantasy. And people think, oh, it's love at first sight, and you have to be intimate to do that, and you have to do this, and you have to do that. And it's just like the movies. First of all, love has nothing to do with being intimate. Of course, being intimate is important in life. It's part of our nature. But in reality, it's not necessary for love.

1:29:41Love is based on a relationship. Love is based on a connection between the male and the female, and whether they are able to bring the best out of each other or not. Because the purpose of a relationship is to bring the best out of each other, to make each other better. It's not one plus one equals two. It's one plus one equals seven. If it's one plus one equals two, then you're better off alone. I was the same. I was the same, you were the same, nothing changed about your life. I was Steve, she was Sarah, I stayed Steve, she stayed Sarah, nothing got better about me, my character is still flawed, I'm still cheap, I'm still wicked, I'm still a Mechalel Shabbat, she still walks around like she has nobody in her life, like she's single, she still does this, she still curses, she still does, nothing changed. then you're better off alone. I was the same. I was the same, you were the same, nothing changed about your life. I was Steve, she was Sarah, I stayed Steve, she stayed Sarah, nothing got better about me, my character is still flawed, I'm still cheap, I'm still wicked, I'm still a Mechalel Shabbat, she still walks around like she has nobody in her life, like she's single, she still does this, she still curses, she still does, nothing changed.

1:30:41So you didn't bring anything out of each other. All you did was make it a disaster here. But if you bring the best out of each other, all of a sudden Steve becomes calmer. All of a sudden Sarah is more modest because she's not going to share her beauty with the rest of the world. It's Steve's. All of a sudden, Steve and Sarah are more interested in what's the purpose of life. We're not just here to go to clubs and pubs and casinos. There has to be a bigger purpose to life. They get to Hashem, they become a little more religious, they keep a few mitzvot, they raise a Jewish family. Even if it's outside of religion, the reality of it is that when you have a true relationship as far as real love, the two people are supposed to make each other better. If you're not making each other better... There's no point. If one person is making the other person better and the other person is not making you better, it's not really a good relationship. Why? Because in reality, one person is becoming a crutch for the other one. So one person is really, really terrible, doesn't want to change. But the other person is, I don't know, for some reason or another...

1:32:03feels like they have to help this person, so they make up for them being bad. So let's say, for example, this person has a drug problem, and they keep sending him to rehab. No, no, I believe he's going to change. I believe he's going to change. 20 years, he hasn't changed. He's not going to change now. You know, so again, we have to understand that real relationships based on the Torah, it's not just because Hashem told us, listen, you're all fools, you don't know how to make decisions. There's instructions here from the Manufacturer. Very simple instructions from the Manufacturer. Your relationships have to be made, the choices have to be made based on what the instructions say, not based on what our logic says, because our logic is flawed. So now the next part after this, it shows how, again, with Rivka, she didn't become Rivka just because...

1:33:04They've gone with something very special. As we already said, she was a very generous person. A very kind person. She wanted good. A genuine person with her own opinion. So she was a very strong person. Imagine, not only surviving but being righteous in a house full of murderers. They put poison in the guest's food. It's not like they were thinking about it. They brought the guy inside the house. If you don't like him, don't invite him. They brought the guy into the house to put poison to kill him so they could take all of his money. So you're in... She's growing up in a house full of murderers. And she's a tzaddeikes. A very strong woman. And this is one of the most amazing parts of the things we learn about Rivkah. So she leaves with Eliezer. She gets to a point where she sees from far away a man walking in her direction, in their direction. And Rivkah raised her eyes and saw Yitzchak. Now, she didn't know it was Yitzchak. So she inclined while upon the camel and she said to the servant, she said to Eliezer, who is that man walking in the field towards us?

1:34:28She's a man walking towards them. And the servant says, he is my master. That's Yitzchak. What does she do? Today, if a woman is told, listen, this is the most important man in the world, his son, and he's going to be your husband, what do women do? All of a sudden, they run, jump, hey, it's my husband. She hasn't met him, but she jumps on him. People are excited. People are excited. What did she do? She then took the veil and covered herself. She covered herself. I want to show it. This is going to be my husband. He's an important person. I have to cover myself. I can't show myself to the world. Modesty. Anytime a righteous woman is mentioned in the Torah, it always highlights the same thing: modesty. Very rarely do you ever hear about anything else about women in the Torah. First of all, women in general are not mentioned that much in the Torah. The ones that are mentioned are very special: Sarah, Rivka, Rachel, Leah, Chava, and several other women. You have Ruth, Batsheva, Devorah—yeah, you have the prophets.

1:35:55You have several women, but in comparison to the number of men, the number of males, there's no comparison. There are a lot more. But the ones that are mentioned, and they're highlighted for something special they have, it's always the same thing: modesty. He's not saying, listen, Sarah was the smartest woman of all time. Sarah was the woman that was the most generous of all time. She gave a lot of tzedakah. No, it doesn't say that. She gave a lot of tzedakah. She was a big host. No, it talks about modesty. Constantly talks about modesty. Why? Because Hashem is telling you that a woman has two missions. She has the mission of being beautiful for her husband and

1:36:56and she has the mission of building a home. Without modesty, neither one of those things can be done the right way. If a woman is not modest, it's not possible to raise a kosher home. Why? Because a daughter that grows up is going to do exactly what her mom does. Eventually, I know the daughter is going to form her own opinions and make her own decisions, but in reality... the daughter is going to do exactly what the mother does. If the mom is wearing skirts that are tight, like skin, and short, then the daughter is going to think that this is okay. And she will do the same thing, and tighter and shorter. And maybe even get tighter and shorter, exactly like Rav Nehorai says. If the daughter sees that the mom is wearing something modest, where it's not tight clothes. The sleeves are covering the elbows. The entire neckline is not shown. Where it's up to here, you don't have to show the chest or any of the parts that are under the neckline. The dress is not tight, it's loose, and it covers the knees even after you sit, not just before you sit, where a lot of people wear these skirts.

1:38:22where it just barely covers the knees when they're standing, so of course, when they're sitting, it doesn't cover anything. As a matter of fact, I actually saw recently that, unfortunately, it's almost become standard that people are not even covering the knees anymore. They're just wearing skirts and thinking, I'm talking about the Jewish world, not the non-Jewish world. The Jewish religious world, where sometimes you just have girls wearing dresses that are not covering the knees at all, but they figure since it's a dress, it's modest. They come to the Knesset with the miniskirt. But because it's a dress, they think it's modest. I don't know who tells them that. I don't know what logic tells people that that's modest, but in a situation like that, it's better off if they wear pants. The reality of it is that when it comes down to it, people need to use their own brain. People need to do what Chazal (our Sages) were able to do, which is to use their own common sense. and decide, do I want to be righteous with Hashem or not? Do I want to make my own rules, or do I want to follow what Hashem says and buy myself eternity? By using the excuse of our background, that our mom said it was okay when we were kids, my dad never paid attention to me, my brother was a thief and a liar and a murderer, okay, fine.

1:39:51you can use that for exactly one second. Why? Because your story cannot be any worse than Rivka's. Her entire house was full of murderers. And she ended up becoming a tzaddekes. And if Rivka can become a tzaddekes, all of us can become tzaddekes. So now, to finalize, she sees Yitzchak And he talked to Mitzah. Obviously, he's happy that he has a woman now. But he still has doubts. He just met her. He doesn't know if she is really going to be the one. Mm-hmm. Because he knows that the promise that Hashem gave his father was that the seed of Israel is going to come from him. The descendants of Israel are going to come from him. Mm-hmm. most important nation in the world is going to come from him. Is this really going to come from this woman? He doesn't know. He knew that his mom was a special woman. And he was in a lot of sorrow because his mom died. And he wasn't sure if this Rivka is going to be like his mom. And Hashem made a miracle that when Sarah was alive, the house was always lit.

1:41:15There was always light in the house. Artificial light. But as soon as she died, the light went away. Our lamp, oil lamp, would burn from Shabbat to Shabbat. The entire week was an unusual amount, a miraculous amount of time. that it would last. The dough for her bread would also last from Shabbat to Shabbat. And there was also a special cloud that was over her tent. When she died, it went away. To make sure that Yitzchak knows that Rivka is the one, as soon as Rivka walks in, he brought her into Sarah's tent. As soon as she came in, all those things came back. Wow. So he knew, this is the one, and that's why it says, after, it says, and Yitzchak brought her into the tent of Sarah, his mother. So after he brought her into the tent, he married Rivka, she became his wife, and he loved her. And thus was Yitzchak consoled after his mother. The love of his wife, Rivka,

1:42:44and knowledge that she's the one with whom he's going to continue the descendants of Avraham into Am Yisrael, that gave him comfort. That was the only thing that gave him comfort. And again, like we said, the love was not based on them being intimate with each other, her walking around with mini skirts, money, or any of the artificial things that we look for today. It was based on having a mission with common ground, common beliefs, and an understanding that our purpose in life is to make each other better. It's not for one person to benefit while the other person suffers. It's also not for both people to suffer. You have, unfortunately, a lot of relationships today where...

1:43:48People are miserable. But they figure, listen, we're not really happy, but maybe if we have a kid, maybe we'll be happy if we have a kid. Because all of our friends are having kids. So if we have a kid, maybe the kid's going to make us happy. They have the kid, they're not happy. And they say, okay, you know what, maybe if we have a second kid... Okay, second kid comes, they're still not happy. They say, okay, maybe if we make some more money. They make some more money, they're still not happy. And they're constantly looking for something physical, something material to make a spiritual connection work. They can never fix it. You could have 50 kids. It's not going to make you happy. You could have billions of dollars. It's not going to make you happy. The way to become happy in a relationship is by connecting and making each other better. If you don't have that connection, then you will not have the interest to make each other better. If you don't care about the other person to the point where you don't care about what they're giving you, you only care about giving them, without expecting anything in return, then there's a problem. The problem with relationships today is that people think it's a partnership like business. Listen, if I buy you a present, then you have to buy me a present. If I cook today, then you have to cook tomorrow. If I watch the baby today, then you watch the baby tomorrow. No, no, it's shtuyot.

1:45:13you only care about giving them, without expecting anything in return, then there's a problem. The problem with relationships today is that people think it's a partnership like business. Listen, if I buy you a present, then you have to buy me a present. If I cook today, then you have to cook tomorrow. If I watch the baby today, then you watch the baby tomorrow. No, no, it's shtuyot (nonsense). That's business. If you want to do that, go do it with business people. Don't do it with your wife. Don't do it with your husband. I want to do something for my wife purely because I love her. That's it. That's all. That's the only reason. I love her. I want to make her life easier. That's it. It's not because I expect her to do anything for me because she already does stuff for me anyway. Obviously, the more I do, the more... I do, the more she's going to want to do naturally. It's just like, for example, when someone says, "Listen, what happens if I start keeping Shabbat? Then I'm not going to be able to work on Shabbat. I'm going to make less money. If I have less money, then my life's going to become more difficult." The easiest way to explain that and show how wrong that mentality is by thinking about it this way. Hashem created the heaven and the earth, created the stars, created the humans, animals, trees, air, everything and anything that you have. And He said, "I created all of it in six days, and I rested on the seventh," not in essence rested, but rested as far as stopped creating. I even created Adam, the first human being.

1:46:42is by thinking about it this way: Hashem created the heaven and the earth, created the stars, created humans, animals, trees, air, everything and anything that you have. And He said, "I created all of it in six days, and I rested on the seventh," not in essence rested, but rested as far as stopped creating. I even created Adam, the first human being, on the sixth day. I didn't create him on the first day, or the second day, or the third day, or the fourth day, or the fifth day. I created him on the sixth day. Now, there are multiple reasons according to the Gemara of why I created him on the sixth day. One of the primary reasons why I created him on the sixth day was because the first mitzvah that he would be able to do is keep Shabbat. Keep Shabbat. First mitzvah. Before anything else, keep Shabbat. So, Hashem created all of that. And then you're saying, if I keep Shabbat, Hashem's going to punish me? How does that work? Obviously, if He can create the heaven and the earth, if He can create all of these things we just talked about, then obviously He can create enough parnassah in six days where you don't have to work on Shabbat.

1:48:13You don't have to work on Shabbat. And that's the thing that people need to understand. Hashem is not creating a world for us to purely suffer in. But He is going to give us tests. If we take the tests and we go with full faith in Hashem, we'll pass the tests. But if we're constantly questioning the system and thinking that our logic is somehow... going to be superior to his logic or to the Torah’s logic, then we’re just leading ourselves into a road that's full of disaster. I think there's a lot to learn from this parashah as far as from the modesty of the women that's highlighted in this parashah, the wickedness that was around in those days that still is around today, of how people that are wicked promise a lot and do nothing, whereas people like Eliezer don't say anything but do a lot. That's what righteous people do—say very little and do a lot. And that's what we want to emulate. We learn that pretty much this whole parashah is about right and wrong. It's learning the difference between right and wrong, and it tells you exactly what's right and exactly what's wrong.

1:49:41We learn this parashah over and over and over again. I mean, honestly, it gets us to a point where you shouldn't have any difficulties, you know, as far as knowing what is truly Hashem's will. And when you do it, not only do you reach the point of getting to Hashem's will, but you also get to a point of being happy yourself, having a life that's full of love and success, and b'ezrat Hashem, everything that's good in the world. Any questions? Next week, I'm not going to be here. Next Tuesday, I'm going to be in New York. Therefore, there won't be a shiur next Tuesday, but I will let you know in the next day or so if we're going to be able to reschedule it for another day next week, depending on the schedule. Since I'll be in New York for a couple of days, we'll find another way, another day to learn.

1:50:42Chazakim U'Baruch.