Loeg Larash: Tzitzis, Tefillah, and Torah Learning at Graves

Transcript

I would like to discuss with you a custom that Jews universally had for years, and it's become very in style, and in particular during the time of Elul, Aseres Yemei Teshuva, and that is to go al kivrei tzaddikim. It became a big thing. People are running, they run to Europe. Now the truth is we have kivrei tzaddikim locally. People don't realize, right here, we were zoche in our backyard, big great roshei yeshivot and tzaddikim are buried right here. Maybe it's not such a bad idea. We'll take a, so to speak, a road trip from the yeshiva. Maybe, huh? Whatever it is, my Rosh Yeshiva, my rebbe, Rav Pam, is buried right here. It's not a bad idea. But all right, I digress, as they say. What's the discussion? You know, people go there and they daven. Are you allowed to daven in a beit hakvarot? Are you allowed to put on a tallit in a beit hakvarot? You're not allowed to wear tzitzis in a beit hakvarot. The Gemara tells us that if someone goes into a beit hakvarot, he's forbidden to show his tzitzis. Why? Loeg larash. You're making a mockery of the dead person who doesn't have the mitzvah. He, unfortunately, and he feels the pain. Ha, ha, ha, you see, I have the mitzvah. Ha, ha, ha, you see, you don't. Ha, ha, ha. Loeg larash. I always feel that today we don't have to worry about the beit hakvarot only. We have loeg larash wherever you go. Most people are— Yeshenim like meitim. So maybe we shouldn't take out our tzitzis in the middle of a Beis Knesset in a shiur, because it's loeg l'rosh, huh? The difference is you don't have to be dead asleep. You could wake up and learn, so it's your fault that you don't want. You know, today, loeg l'rosh. What's loeg l'rosh, yeah? It's the other way around. The guy outside tells the guy who's learning and davening, Ha, ha, ha, you see? You see? Ha, ha, ha, look what I have outside. He thinks the loeg l'rosh is the other way around, right? You see, you know how many times people go, You see the boat ride I had yesterday? You saw? You saw? I went boating, and you were home in your house in a four-bedroom, in a four-cornered bedroom, four by four. You know of such a thing? We know of no. Ha, ha, ha, you see? Loeg l'rosh in the reverse, as they say. But I do want to tell you there's a big lesson in the loeg l'rosh, and that is the zechut a person has to do a mitzvah, even the simplest tzitzit, and the person who is not here is sad that he can't do it. You know how lucky we are to be alive to do a mitzvah. You understand what the loeg l'rosh means? That the poor guy can't do the mitzvah tzitzis. It's all right, he can't do the mitzvah tzitzis. He's patur. He's patur. He's not alive. He's patur. And af al pi kein, it's loeg l'rosh. What do we see? How lucky a person is that he can do a mitzvah. How lucky a person is, a moment. They say over that the Gra, before he passed away, he took his tzitzis in his hand and he began to cry. Brah, Rabbeinu, what are you crying about? He said, Look in this world for a few pennies. Look at how many mitzvot I can be mekayem with the tzitzit. Look, the reward. Chazal tells us the great reward for putting on a tzitzis. We'll have avadim. You guys, like the future when Mashiach comes, you'll have slaves. I mean, you have it now in the house with the... But, but... Tatle is very poshut. Go into, do me a favor, walk into any store and you buy for ten bucks a pair of tzitzis, you got a tremendous mitzvah. It's kind of very simple, yeah? Tatle, this doesn't depend on anything. Do me a favor, you buy a pair of tzitzis. Don't make simple things... Material, I know there's something in the air today. It's very simple. You go—what's the difference? You go to the store and you buy a pair of tzitzis and that's it. ... לא משנה. תאמין לי, זה משנה אם אתה מדקדק במצוות. לא כשאדם, לא כשאדם דוקק במצוות. מה זה דוקק במצוות? הוא הפוך, לא מדקדק אלא דוקק. In Yiddish there's expression, a djukak. You know what djukak is?

Listen to me. Do me a favor. Sir, sir, if you want to bother me about tzitzis, we're not giving a tzitzis shiur. Whatever it is, for a few bucks you can get yourself a pair of tzitzis. Stop making me... Okay, that's it. I can't. I can't. I can't. מה אתה רוצה ממני? זה דבר פשוט. לא מבינים שבשביל כמה פרוטות יכולים ציצית? איזה ציצית? מה זה ציצית? מה זה... אשכנזי, ספרדי, אריזל? מה אתה מבלבל את המוח? Okay, there's no rabbeinu. Listen, eh, eh, eh, eh, that's not the point of the shiur. That's not the point of the shiur. The point of the shiur is, okay, everybody should not discuss with me what kind of tzitzis he wears. I don't care, okay? The point is, if you're wearing a pair of tzitzis and you walk into בית הכפרות, there's an issue of לא יגלה ראש. And what do you see from over here? That לא יגלה ראש means the opportunity, the zechut that you have and this person does not have. It's very simple. So you should learn from here the zechut, what it means to do a mitzvah and how lucky we are to be alive to do a mitzvah. Now, הלכה למעשה. So you go to the בית הכפרות to pray. You're going to your parents, grandparents' kever. What do you do? מותר להיכנס לבית הכפרות בטלית קטן שלא לובש תחת בגדיו. You don't have to take off your tzitzit. He doesn't have X-ray vision, the met, right? It's only if it's out in the open. שלא אסור בזה אלא כשלובש על בגדיו ונראה לעין. So, right, so Ashkenaz will have an issue what to do with the tzitzis. ולכן הנוהגים להוציא הציציותיהם מחוץ לבגדיהם, עליהם להכניסם בבגדיהם כשמגיעים לבית הכפרות. וכל שכן... Sheyesh zeh hechsher shelo yatzitziot nigrarim al hakvarot. A lot of times, the tallis—you see with a tallis, it's dragging on the kever itself. You can't get more loeg lerosh than that, okay? Loeg means you're making a joke out of someone who can't. Okay. I know, but that's the whole point. Not everything that you don't do deliberate, you should do anyway. You should be careful. It's like a guy coming and saying, Did you see the home run I hit? You know who you tell to? A guy in a wheelchair. You don't do that, right? Don't sit there and brag about the beautiful marathon you just ran to a guy in a wheelchair. That's what loeg lerosh means, okay? Says the Gemara, V'holech—these, I don't have— Right, so it's very good to drink water right at the kever. Why not? Why should you drink? Because he can't drink. So the brachah we'll talk about. So let's go slowly, slowly, slowly. Drinking is not a problem because he can't drink. That's not the problem. It's mitzvahs. The meis is thirsty, so then bring him a Gatorade. V'holech b'veis kvaros—if someone's going into a beis hakvaros b'makom she'ein sham kevaros, he goes to a place where there is no kever. It's a beis hakvaros, it's a big one, but there is no kever in the daled amot where he's standing. Yesh omrim she'ein tzarich lechasot hatzitziot. So it's not about entering a cemetery; it's going near a kever. So if a person walks into a cemetery and he's not in daled amot of—this doesn't interest? Soon it should be very interesting. You know why? Are you allowed to daven by Reb Shimon bar Yochai's kever? Well, what right do you have to daven by— Oh, now I got your interest, huh? Rashbi, I got your interest, huh? Loig l'Rosh, you're davening in front of a... he can't daven. Are you allowed to say over divrei Torah? We'll talk about all this, okay? Now, yesh omrim sheyesh lachush sheyiskarev techilas. Some say even not near a kever. Just to walk into a cemetery, even far away from the kever, still shouldn't go with tzitzis. Why? Because we're afraid that you might come close to it. So you got to be careful, loig l'Rosh. This is serious halacha. Even if I'm not near the kever, but you might come and walk near the kever and you put your tzitzis in. That's shema, maybe, maybe. Exactly, we're going to talk about it. Very good. V'lachein, gam b'ohel... now, v'im yesh geder, and that's really what I was talking about. A lot of times on Main Street we have a bet hakvarot. You have to take in your tzitzis. It's daled amos to the bet hakvarot, to the kever, mutar, mutar, mutar. Mutar leilech with tzitzis bachutz, keshehu holech samuch lemechitzah mebachutz. You're in, you're in. You're out, you're out, okay? So even if you're close, you have the right, and I guess the pshat is you have the right to live your life. You go.

You go into their domain, you come to them, then there's lo yiglarosh. Lo yiglarosh doesn't mean I have to be careful from my ways; he could see, you know, twenty feet away. It doesn't work that way. I come to him, but if there's a fence, then I go to him. You know, when I grew up, they used to say a good joke: Why do beis hakvaros have fences? Why does a beis hakvaros have a fence? That's the question. Why does it have a fence, you know? So the real story is so people shouldn't walk there if they're kohanim. That's really a good reason to have a fence. When we grew up, we heard the joke as follows: You know why a beis hakvaros has a fence? Because people are dying to get in there. And that's what I just said. I just said a kohen has a fence. Okay. What some say, you know what the eitzah is? To take this tzitzis and then take this tzitzis and tie it together, like they do simchas Torah in the Chassidic shuls, right? They take the tzitzis and they tie it together, right? Says Reb Yitzchak Yosef, lo ilu klum. You didn't gain anything. It's not pasul; your tzitzis are still kosher. It didn't change much, right? So tying the two tzitzis together is a wives' tale, as they say, a babushka tale, a babushka tale. Now, hanichnas toida am shel meiso shel kever. Someone walks in four amos near a kever. Dinoi kenichnas l'beis hakvaros, v'afilu, vyesh omrim she'afilu b'kever shel katan. V'shel isha. A katan is patur min hamitzvos. A woman doesn't wear tzitzis. So maybe when I go near an isha, a kever, there's no problem, right? Because there's no loeg lerash. She doesn't have the mitzvah anyway. So some say it's not a problem. V'yesh cholkim v'omrim, d'b'kever shel katan v'shel isha, you should be machmir. So some say you have to be machmir, and some say no, which is interesting. They don't have the mitzvah. This particular—now, katan, I could see maybe midin chinuch he has the mitzvah of tzitzis. But the isha does not have the mitzvah of tzitzis. I guess the concept of doing mitzvahs in front of her, it doesn't have to be this. Everyone listening, or I should leave? Are you listening? Yeah. It's not this mitzvah. Some say what? It's this mitzvah. They have this mitzvah; it's loeg lerash. They don't have this mitzvah, not loeg lerash. While others say it's in general, you're showing that you are doing a mitzvah when they can't do other mitzvos, so there would still be a problem. So there's a machlokes: I'm mistama loeg lerash, safek loeg lerash, safek loeg lerash l'chumra, safek loeg lerash l'kula, right? It's a question of loeg lerash, hurting somebody l'chumra. Now, b'makom shenohagim la'asir hatzitziyos mehatalis shel hameis b'bayit—okay, this is for someone who passes away; we could skip this. Now, asur lakachat sefer Torah b'zaroi b'vet hakvarot. A lot of times they pray in a beit hakvarot near Reb Shimon bar Yochai, so they want to carry the sefer Torah. To this place. Halacha is, afilu shehu mimtachas v'eino korei bo, even if it's completely closed and you're not reading it right here, you can't carry a Sefer Torah into a beis hakvaros. V'yesh omrim shekol ish shelo yahalechim Sefer Torah v'yikra b'sefer. It's only for the reading, but for the carrying there's no problem and there's no loeg larash. So it's a big machlokes, you hear? Can I bring a Sefer Torah into a beis hakvaros? Now, v'yesh machmirim gam b'etzem haknisah l'beis hakvaros, Sefer Torah v'ikar, sheyesh lachmir b'zeh. It seems like these are strict halachos. Whenever in doubt of loeg larash, what do we decide? What do we be machmir? Two opinions. You hear, Benny? What do we see? What loeg larash? Even hurting a dead person, you hear? It's a disrespect. It's not a kavod. Now, lomed Mishnayos. People go to the kever, they're learning Mishnayos, or they're saying Tehillim l'ilui nishmat the person that they're coming to visit in the kever, right? Is that a problem of loeg larash? What would you say, Benny, huh? Why not? Mishnayos. The poor meis, he can't learn Mishnayos.

Okay, so he's saying very good. Since you're doing it for him, so I guess it overweighs the loyg l'rosh, or he'll be moichel, so to speak, on the loyg l'rosh because it's l'toeles. He's gaining from it. So even if maybe it hurts him a little bit, or maybe we could say a little different. The loyg l'rosh is not so much him and his pain, but it's you. It's about you showing disrespect to the meis. You know, when we grew up as children, we learned loyg l'rosh. The meis feels something, I don't know, and it's embarrassing him. It's not about him. It's about you. It's you when you behave in front of a meis in a way like, Ah, you see, I have a mitzvah. So the sensitivity is not about him being hurt, because he possibly doesn't even feel anything. It's more about who? It's more about you. I taught you a big yesod, rabosai. Loyeg l'rosh is possible. What's loyeg l'rosh? The meis. The Gemara in Brachos speaks, do meisim really feel anything? Gemara talks about it. Do meisim know what's going on? Don't they know what's going on? I look around the shiur, there's a lot of, if you know what I mean, meisim, and they don't know what's going on, right? But you don't see, you look around. A son goes to the kever of his father and says, Baruch... zaka ava. So that should be maybe allowed. That's what we just said. It's exactly what we just said. We just said it's even more than a son, even not a son. Since you're going to the beit hakvarot and to this particular kever for his zechus, l'ilui nishmaso, so therefore it's lichvodoi, it's not a bizayon. Loyeg l'rosh might not be so much hurting the meis as much as bizayon that you... Because that you, it's about you. So if you're doing lichvodo, not a problem. Now, l'kein mutar l'harich chesed b'samuch l'kever. That's why you're allowed to say a hesped. Now, I don't know if you know, Lithuanian Jews have an interesting type of hesped. Hesped's really supposed to be crying, or speaking about the meis. Lithuanian Jews have a different mahalach in a hesped. They say a shiur, and then they tie it into the meis. They'll say like a whole piece of Torah and this and that, and guess what? Oh, and with this we could say, we could feel... So you have to listen to a half-hour shiur. They used to say this, that the Mirers, when they say a hesped, it's not a hesped, it's a shiur klali, okay? They say a shiur. I can't tell you which rav, all right? He was a Lithuanian rav. He got up at my grandfather's shloshim, and he spoke on the parsha, and he spoke, and he spoke, yeah. And everyone was waiting till he get to the point, like what does it have to do with anything? And therefore, this woman that just passed away, and everybody's like, Huh? What are you talking about? The truth is, it was the beginning of Alzheimer's. We realized two, three years later, but we were all sitting there going, Huh? But what was the point? He was saying divrei Torah and divrei Torah, and he was trying to apply it. So he realized that he was applying it to a lady, and what was the story? He realized, he goes, Oy, I said this yesterday by a levayah from a... I remember a woman. He got, in Yiddish they call it, tsutumlt. But what was the whole thing? There was a whole speech that had nothing to do with my grandfather, and he applied it. He applied it to my grandfather, and by mistake he didn't realize he applied it to somebody else. Okay, so let's say there's a hesped. Let's say there's a hesped, yeah? Okay, we're gonna have to stop. Let's say there's a hesped, so that's mutar. Now, last and final halacha: are you allowed to daven in the Maras HaMachpeilah? Now, the answer is they're buried very, very deep, so that's the heter. A lot of Acharonim speak about a lot of—Rav Shimon Bar Yochai is different, Torah of the person, it may be is different. It's a big sugya, but it's a topic. If loyg l'rosh is a problem, what's the heter? What's the reason we're able to go to a kever and pray? So if we're praying for him, if we're praying l'ilui nishmaso, sheyeshaveh zechus mishnayos, right, or Tehillim, okay, that is no problem, loyg l'rosh. But if it's for us, we're praying for us, and the answer is we have to find excuses, either because they're buried more than four deep.

These things are very deep, right? It's not like today we bury right there. It's, it's, it's. But here in Rashbi, it's much, much deeper. And also they talk about the concept of tzaddikim, tzaddikim, tzaddikim is a whole different. The Gemara speaks about, הושיבו ישיבה על קברו. One of the Tannaim passed away and they put a yeshiva on his kever. So the mefarshim ask, how could you put a yeshiva on his kever? So some say it was further daled amos away. A lot of the yeshivas that they have in Miron, it's not mamish on the kever, it's four amos away, so then it's mutar. Others say since they're learning the Torah of the meis, when they put a yeshiva on the kever of a Tanna, they're learning this Tanna's Torah, not a loeg larash, no problem. Many mefarshim say, how could you put a yeshiva on a kever? How many people are in this yeshiva already? How big is the—huh? They put a yeshiva on the kever. The kever is four by four, right? Eight by eight. How many people could you fit there already? So one answer is—oh, the answer is it wasn't literally al kivro, where is it? Liad. And that's the raya, because how could you put a whole yeshiva, and therefore there's no loeg larash. The Rach says, הושיבו ישיבה על קברו, it was three people. You could fit three people. So many say, ah, you see from here a yeshiva is three people. I can start collecting already. Any guy that has three people in his yeshiva, he's already able to say, Ten li, give me please a tzedakah, my yeshiva, my kollel, Baruch Hashem, yoylam. Amen.