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Parshas Va'eschanan: Forever Young and Resisting Beechwood Aging · The Weekly Parsha - With Michoel Brooke

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: act like a spiritual sloth, and sin and dispersion follows closely behind.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Vinoshantim is this week's idea.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Vinoshantim and becoming a sloth is our topic today.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This rather caution-worn-filled Pesach rears its angry head as the Torah reading of Tisha B'Av, and not a slightest coincidence that it also finds its way into our Parsha, parsha's Veschanon, as one of the foundational psukkim that this stuffed Parsha brings to our attention.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Vinosh Shantem, what does that mean?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: To the beginning of chapter 4 of Deuteronomy, when you will give birth, when you will beget children and grandchildren, life is merry, life is beautiful, the American dream, and you will grow old in the land.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Then you will defile yourselves, become corrupt.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Then you will defile yourselves, become corrupt.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Moshe Rabbeinu continues to give a detailed explanation of how, through his prophecy, he foresees that there will be an exile, all of the horrible details that you are probably well familiar with after spending a day mourning with ashes on your head, sitting on the floor and listening to the Kinos on Tisha B'Av.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: The Noshantim is, though, where it all begins.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: Before this word, life is perfect, but as soon as you bump into the Noshantim and you will grow old, life becomes derailed.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: When you become not old at that type of, as the Torah speaks zohkin, which is a very well-seasoned and experienced adult.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: A zoh ain't a Zady, no, vinay Shantem is an elderly, uninspired, sleeping in his rocking chair.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yashun is the root of it, which really means to be dozing off.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: In his sleep, vinay Shantem, and he will become old, deteriorated inside of the land.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: That is where it all ends.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: When you become an old Zaydi, not filled with wisdom, but actually have fallen asleep watching the Sunday cartoons, not even awake to be able to drink the iced tea that was brought to you by your live-in help, you are just so, vinochantem, the growing old.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: When the Torah and the mitzvos become something that is no longer fresh, no longer like your shana rishona, your still young marriage where life is exciting and youthful, but rather when you lose that youthful exuberance and become an oshantim, it's all over.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: You hear me now Drills this point home in one of his final prophecies God comes to him.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: You'll find it in Parak Bez, pasuk Bez.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: It's clearly the straw that broke Yerushalayim's back and Yermiyah said he prophesied that God was lamenting that.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Oh, I miss when my Jewish people were youthful.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: I miss it when they were lech teich acharai ba midbar be'eretz lozerua.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: I miss it when, 850 or so years ago they were all running out of the yamsuf Like a chassid and kala so excited.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Everything's so new, so fresh.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: But now they're old, they complain about their knees and their back pain and they really only look forward to taking trips to the doctor and complaining about their pain to their grandkids.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: It isn't the slightest coincidence that the Noshantem becoming old, burnt out, as they say has the numerical value of you guessed it 852, which is exactly the amount of years from the time that Yehoshua brought the Jewish people over the Yardane and into the Promised Land.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: After Moshe passed.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: From that time until the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians, how many years did the Jewish people have their own Jewish state, have their own political independence and serve Hashem with love and in closeness and with clarity and with peace and with youthful exuberance and with youthful gusto?
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: You guessed it?
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: It was 852 years until vinochantem that word with that same numerical value 852, came into effect, when there was no longer enthusiasm in their Yiddishkeit.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: All was over, the growth process stunted.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: The growth process stunted when the beech wood fermenting process, aging process, if you're familiar with that metaphor falls onto a Jewish nation and they forget about those exciting memories.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Everything becomes dry.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: History and science actually tell us that it's rather an inescapable reality.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: We are left to wonder Ben Oshantem, is there a way out?
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Ben Oshantem is what led to the exile.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: But science and history tell us that the longer that you let's use the word endure satisfying circumstances, a pleasant life, a beautiful society where you do not need to cry out to God, the better things are, the quicker that one forgets their origin.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: One forgets his previous struggling and all of the Gila-like thoughts, the miraculous salvation and the splitting of water.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: That all recedes and fades away and surely rather swiftly, vino Shantem sets in.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Is there anything to do about it?
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I ask you point blank is your Judaism Vino Shantem?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Is it like one has grown old and no longer does he get excited about a kriya shema or reciting Kiddush?
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Are we vino shantem?
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: God forbid.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Depressing question, for the only way that we are to bring the temple back is if we can rectify the entire reason that we were sent into Golis, which is Vinoshantem.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: But Golis is not just a punishment, golis, the dispersion is.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: So Hashem can make the point that.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Fix this, and then we'll hang out again.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So we must fix Vinoshantem, vinoshantem, ba'aretz.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: We must stay youthful when we do that, when psuket izimra is exciting, when we treat Shabbos like the foundational mitzvah that it is, when we're excited about it, can't even wait for it.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: That's when we bring the Besamegdosh back.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: Furthermore, to make sure that we stay in our youthfulness, it's actually part of the contract that we all signed on to.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: If you didn't, your grandfather did when we made a covenant with HaKadosh Baruch Hu.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: The terms of the contract we must keep certain mitzvot, certain halachos.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: We must serve Hashem with a certain amount of love.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: The rest of this actual pasuk of Kisolet Moshe foretells all the suffering and really the only reason that we were able to endure, even though we were in Oshantim and weren't just completely obliterated and annihilated, was because God has a pact with the forefathers.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: They were so incredible, so wondrous that, no matter what would happen, that pact would remain intact.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: Of this irrevocable covenant Is that we are to be Enthusiastic.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: We are to serve Hashem.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: We are to serve Hashem with joyful obedience.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: We are to be the Pasek says Rejoicing In fear, in a happy fear, in a way Like someone who knows what he's doing is the right thing and he's living above a basic playing field and he's living like Torah and mitzvos are his life like a young chassan who's still in his shana rishona.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: That's what Judaism is supposed to look like.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: That's what Judaism is supposed to look like.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: Judaism is supposed to look like the 95-year-old Rebar and Leib Steinman.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: When he went to the doctor close to his 95th birthday and the doctor took out his notepad and said okay, now, which medications are you on?
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: Rabir and Labe looked at him like medications.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: What do you mean Now?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Everyone, everyone who's 95 that I know.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: A little bit of Tums, maybe some anti-acid, maybe some help in the digestive tract, something For the eyesight, vitamins Not for Rabar and Leib.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: He was perfectly young If you look at his Torah it comes across in his Sfarim and Ayal HaShachar but youthful.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: The Beechwood aging process and the Vino Shantem disease did not touch him.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: He stayed young his whole life, forever young.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: How can we, ladies and gentlemen, resist the disease of Vino Shantem?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: How can we keep the enthusiasm that every project begins with, but as trials and setbacks and not seeing the pay-rosen, fruitful productivity that you had hoped for, as you begin to struggle and you see that there may not be such a great light at the end of the tunnel that what began in such excitement ends in misery and you just say, ah, I'm never going to learn how to play the guitar, and you just throw it away and move on to the next hobby.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: How do we stop them in Oshantum?
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: How do we remain young in the land?
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: Well, it's all baked into the price.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: The answer is that God gave us the answers.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: We say it twice daily, we remind ourselves and try to make it clear in our heads of the Yitzias Mitzrayim, of reliving it, because it's not some sort of just habitual routine.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: But surely you're aware of the halacha of smicha geula latvila.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to have your kriya shema next to your davening, because prayer is always supposed to be birthed out of that fact that we were stuck.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: It's supposed to be fresh in our minds that we were slaves in Egypt and we owe everything to him.
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: And by reminding ourselves twice daily Yitzchias Mitzrayim, we keep things fresh.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: So many mitzvot are connected to Avzei Cherli Yitzchias Mitzrayim, because God, in his mitzvot, consistently tries to drive into our hearts and minds the youthfulness of that, the right that we have to life itself is because of God.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Don't you become mistaken and think that we would have been anything without Hashem.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: We owe everything to him and our obedience is to him because otherwise we'd be dead, reminding ourselves of the constant idea that we were nothing.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: But God saved us.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: That keeps the salvation fresh and keeps things like still, it's the Sheva Brachos, like.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I can't believe.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: You saved my life.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: The entire set of times of Torah is all there to keep things fresh.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: If we would open up and meditate upon the ideas behind Shabbos, behind Rosh Chodesh, use our minds to connect to Yovel and Shemitah these are all categories or types of mitzvot there to ensure that Judaism is fresh and one does not fall into that horrible Venus fly trap of in Oshantem.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Every week is supposed to be a new beginning, a halting of human productivity.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Nothing that shows that you can do anything is able to be performed on Shabbos.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: It is all God.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: You remember Zecher, l'ma'aseh beratios, everything's from him.
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: You go back to the origins of your beginning to keep things fresh.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Every week, an entirely different idea, a new parasha, a new yesod, a new life.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: Every single week, the mekor habracha, the shavua shechalbo, an entirely new beginning Every single month.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Perhaps the most, in my opinion, overlooked mitzvah, overlooked holiday, yes, holiday, that of Rosh Chodesh.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: It's supposed to be a new beginning.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: It's supposed to be the head of the month and while most of America frowns on somebody who lives month to month, not so in Judaism.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: You should be living month to month, not in your finances.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe save up your money and buy yourself a big, fat house in the Hamptons, if that's your thing, but you should be living month to month in your ruchnias.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: You're supposed to be fresh start the month.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: The way of human nature is that it slowly is vino shanteming.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: But then boom, rosh Chodesh comes.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: It's a new, fresh beginning, a new month, new goals, 30 days, a fresh, new slate, a new season, a reboot.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: Study all the halachas of Rosh Chodesh and keep this idea in mind and you'll see how these words sing, this idea With the witnesses, how it's only in our control to call it a Rosh Chodesh.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: Where you look, how you look, the way that we count with the moon, the Lavanah.
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: It's all about keeping things fresh.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: When life, agriculture and business, which constantly preaches a certain amount of self-serving I'm good on my own, god, I got it type of idea Shemitah, we reboot Yovel, we reboot, we blow the shofar and everything goes back to its old ways.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Everything, everything there to keep things fresh.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Fresh, perhaps the most simple, direct and glorious way to keep things fresh, to keep you and your family inspired, enthusiastic, to make your Shabbos table like a big getaway Shabbos project.
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: And you're the prideful speaker giving over the Torah's divine law to your family, your wife the Rebbetzin, giving over and teaching how to keep the house holy in the walls of your house, like the Great Wall of China, and pushing out all the bad influences.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Pushing out all the bad influences, protecting and breeding, nurturing children to become Torah giants and to walk in the ways of a loyal service of Hashem.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: The greatest way is to actually engage in the life-giving mitzvah of Talmud Torah, because the Torah itself, when it becomes your sessions in college, when it becomes what you're doing, everything becomes new.
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: When there's a new page of Gemara, when there's a new halacha, as you constantly make your way through the Torah, things become fresh, a new law, a new thing.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: You can do, you can take a step forward.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: You see things in a new light when your sandbox that you play in, like Davide Malach said, torah is his shashua, it's his child's play.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: It's literally something like a fidget spinner.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: It's constantly like a toy.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It's play.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: It's literally something like a fidget spinner.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: It's constantly like a toy.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: It's something fun, it's something new.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Of course, it's obvious why Rebar and Leib, with so much simcha and newness in his Talmud Torah, was on no medication when he was in his 90s.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: Of course, there's no issue of the no shantem.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Have you ever seen a young lawyer?
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Everything fresh.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: A young college student.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: When he's learning and studying, he wants to find out new hacks, new tricks.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: Learning has great demands.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: Talmud Torah, like a young college student, your dedication, your craving for newness, new halachos it keeps us young.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It's no secret that everyone who wants and knows this secret of remaining enthusiastic in their Yiddishkeit takes their Talmud Torah very seriously.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: And knows this secret of remaining enthusiastic in their Yiddishkeit, takes their Talmud Torah very seriously.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Let there be no doubt of the answer to this Vino Shantem problem.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: It is Torah and mitzvos.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: They were given to us by God to protect our youthfulness, our freshness, our craving and drive for more.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: We constantly remind ourselves of our origins so that we don't just become, with a big belly full of meat, sitting back and saying life is good without ever craving more and God forbid, forgetting about God.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: How do you keep a nation from deteriorating and growing old, from deteriorating and growing old?
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: You tell them to remember as many times as possible, daily, about how they had nothing and were nothing, and they owe their lives to someone, something.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: And you tell them to study all the laws and get to know what their obligations are.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: So every day is newness, every week, every month, every year, every seven years and every 50 years.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: But alas, this Vino Shantem warning, it wasn't heeded.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem Eretz Yisrael, it fell Because of Kisolet Bonnev and Oshantem Baaretz.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: When you become a spiritual sloth, you lack that alacritus nature.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: When you become complacent, when you become an old man dozing off in his armchair, galos and churban lurk and are ready to pounce.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: Our obligation, as is clearly stated by Parshas of Eschanon and the laning on Tisha B'Av, is to listen to the warnings of all of the prophets.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Jewish people stay young, stay youthful, stay.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Serve Hashem Like it's still your Sheva Brachah.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: Serv Hashem, like it's still your Sheva Brachos.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Serv Hashem, trying with all of your might to resist complacency and resist v'noshan tempah aretz.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: We actually have that luxury of looking back and seeing what happens, that just within 600 years, six centuries, two different Batei Mikdashos fell because there was a lack of serving Hashem with a certain vibrancy, a certain gusto.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: How can we possibly risk once again ignoring the warnings of Inno Shantem.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: We must remain excited, we must give over the mesorah of Torah and mitzvos, and it must be done with simcha, nor with missimcha only with a fresh, youthful happiness.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: When you are a lion, a leopard, a gazelle, really any animal besides for the sloth in your spiritual observance.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: We have a chance.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: We have a chance to bring back that Besa Megdosh that was squashed, that was destroyed because of an Oshantem Baaretz where he grew old in the land.