Parashas Toldos, Part 4: Finding Hashem in Our Inner World

Transcript

This Torah class is brought to you by TorahAnytime.com. I want to end with the following story. Okay, one story, yeah? One beautiful story. I was moved by this story, touched, and I take it with me wherever I go. In my mind, all my experiences, in the back of my mind, the story goes with me. The heilige, heilige, the holy Klausenberger Rebbe, zecher tzaddik livracha, zecher tzaddik livracha, the Klausenberger Rebbe. He went through an ordeal in the concentration camps, maybe worse than most. Lost a wife and thirteen children. The torture that this person went through. And he was encamped in the concentration camp. He was made to work and to be beaten. He had a tremendous ordeal. The worst experience of a concentration camp he went through. He was in the Moldog, Moldog concentration camp. After the war, when they freed the concentration camp of Moldog, so the buses came to pick up the people, to take them to the Feldteg DP camp. That was the name of the DP camp, the Feldteg. And as the people were going onto the bus, Klausenberger Rebbe was waiting on line, even though he was a Rebbe, but he waited on line like everybody else to get onto the bus, and— He stopped. And he asked the person that was in front of him, Please make the driver wait a few moments. I need an extra few moments. I need to go back to the bunker in the concentration camp because I forgot something. I left something there. He left. He came back 15, 20 minutes later. No. The bus waited. And he went onto the bus, and the person asks the Rebbe, Rebbe, what did you leave there? There was nothing there. You had nothing. You had nothing. What did you leave over there? He didn't want to answer. He didn't want to answer. I left something. He started to look. I don't see you came back with anything. Did you find what you were looking for? Years later, this Jew that was questioning the Klausenberger Rebbe, that made the bus wait for the Rebbe, went to visit the Klausenberger Rebbe. And he said, Rebbe, what was it that you left behind that we waited for you to go back and pick up? And he said something so unique, so eye-piercing, mind-piercing, something very, very—a lesson in life which I take, and like I said, wherever I go and whatever I experience, I take this lesson with me. He said, You know what we went through in the concentration camps. We lost everything. We had nothing, literally nothing. The one thing that we had, we had Hashem. That's the one thing we had in the concentration camp. We had that. And how did we have that? Through tefillah. We were able to daven. That's what we were able to connect to the Eibishter, and that was the only thing we had, and that kept us going. Halacha is that when you daven, you have to have a makom kavua. You need to have a set place where you daven, a makom kavua l'hispalel, to daven. All the years in the concentration camp, this is what kept me going, my connection with Hashem. And I'm leaving it behind now. I'm leaving that now. So I went back one last time to re-experience that connection, to take it with me for the rest of my life. I need one more time to say goodbye to the place and to take the connection that I had in that place, internalize it for the future, to take it with me wherever I go. What did I learn from this? There are two worlds, rabosai. There's the world around us, and that's the olam...

Ma sheker. It's a world of dishonesty, a world of evil, a world of difficult people and difficult situations. But even amongst that world, there's an inner world. There's an inner world where a person could live in, and that world is pure, and that world is beautiful, and that world is the world where HaKadosh Baruch Hu dwells, where HaKadosh Baruch Hu dwells. The world around us, like I said, floods us with the olam chutz, with the outside world. The outside world is sheker. It's bad midos. But then there's the inner world. Yitzchok lived in that inner world. Kalua babayis, he was locked in his house, blind to the outside world, but he saw much more than most people see, even though vatechena einav me'ro'os. He saw a lot, because in his inner world it was kadosh, it was pure. It was purity to his inner world. And there's so much in that beautiful world where you can be connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Don't think that in the outside world, where things are not real and the midos are bad, you'll see HaKadosh Baruch Hu. You won't see HaKadosh Baruch Hu there. But from within, it's pure, and the midos are good, and hashkafos are good, and the eyes are pure. Your insides, you will see HaKadosh Baruch Hu from within. You will see. You'll see the Shechinah resting even in the most difficult, hardest of places. I end with the following pasuk, because with this story I understood pshat in the pasuk. By the tochachah it says that when the tochachah comes, when the bad things approach, they come to you, v'amar, you'll say, al asher eina Loikah b'kirbi, metza'uni, ra'os rabos ha'eleh. Because Hashem is not within me, b'kirbi, amongst me, metza'uni, it found me, all the bad, all the evil. Metza'uni, ra'os, all the bad and evil. Which means the tochachah, all the bad things that happen is because Hashem is not amongst. Notice it doesn't say ki eina Loikah iti, but it says ki eina Loikah b'kirbi. Hashem is not within me. Metza'uni, it found me, ra'os rabos. It won't affect you if you have HaKadosh Baruch Hu from within. You like it. It's beautiful. I was thinking about it on the way in this morning. Metza'uni, metza'uni ra'os rabos. How does it catch me? How does it overtake me? And the answer is because ki eina Loikah b'kirbi. If the Eibishter is within the person, there could be a lot of ra'os around him, it doesn't affect him. He's able to function, like [unclear] zechuso yagen aleinu, is able to function in a concentration camp and relive. That experience, he wanted to relive. It's interesting how he wanted to relive that experience. Most people would say, I want to forget it. It's a new life. Let's turn the page. No. I want that. How could you want that experience? How could you want what you... You should try to get it out of your system, out of your mind. And the answer is, because even in the darkest of times, if from within, from within, there's happiness, a certain type of happiness that you're connected to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, b'kirbi. And in that world, it's healthy. And in that world, it's love. And he wanted to re-experience it, to take that experience with him for the rest of his life. Mitzuni rois rabos. When the bad is when it's eina loika b'kirbi. The internal is not pure. The internal is not spiritual. The internal is not holy. The internal is not emes, not truth. Let's learn from the parsha, rabosai, to work on from within, and try to block, try to block the external world. You don't need to know every two seconds about everything that happens to...

Everybody. It's so important for you to know what happens to that guy 24/7. What does it have to do with you? We're so busy living the other person's life that what? We're not living our life. We're not busy being we. Could you imagine you're married to 50,000 people a day? Think about it. You have a hard time just to be married to one person. With the phones and the internet, you're married. You're busy with everyone's life. Everyone. How could you be busy with 50,000 people's lives? And this guy and this guy, and he sat and he went and he came in, and chat and chat. What do they call the chat rooms? What's happened? What's hap- what's hap-? What do you mean, what's hap-? Did it happen to you? What's what? What's happened? Did it happen to you? Didn't happen to you? Why is it your business? Why is it your business what happened to the other guy? People who are empty and don't have themselves a life need to be constantly busy with everyone else's life but their own. This is the lesson of the parasha. Let's take it and let's purify our eyes and our minds and our hearts, and we'll be zocheh to see the beauty, beauty of HaKadosh Baruch Hu everywhere, everywhere, and in everything we watch and in everything we experience. You've just experienced another Torah class, brought to you by TorahAnytime.com.