Latest / Rabbi Moshe Haber - Daily Mussar/Weekly Perasha / Rabbi Moshe Haber Path of the Just: Cultivating Respect and Critical Thinking in Jewish Life 11.17.25

Transcript

Rabbi Moshe Haber Path of the Just: Cultivating Respect and Critical Thinking in Jewish Life 11.17.25 · Rabbi Moshe Haber - Daily Mussar/Weekly Perasha

• 0:00
  This idea of ABBA performance with ABBA we had done ya, which
• 0:06
  means fear and then oar and also means cavort.
• 0:09
  And we spoke about the idea of making a big deal about shoes or
• 0:13
  making big deal about rabbis making about Shabbat, building
• 0:16
  these things up so that their words are powerful, right?
• 0:21
  That means you give them respect for a sure.
• 0:24
  That means you don't say certain things.
• 0:26
  Sure when you tell your children when it's a certain thing is
• 0:28
  sure when it comes to a rabbi amid you hold his word and hi,
• 0:32
  his team doesn't make a difference exactly fully who he
• 0:34
  is just more about promoting the position and the eventually the
• 0:38
  person and they would in turn happens is that you take their
• 0:42
  word more seriously. They hold more weight and he
• 0:45
  creates a better Jewish world and sending you to a Shabbat if
• 0:48
  you make Shabbat a big deal. Or we have the examples of, you
• 0:51
  know, saying aside turn foods for Shabbat or making, you know,
• 0:54
  eating your your your meals and dining room only using a dining
• 0:58
  room about having certain people, these different things
• 1:00
  that build something up. They create a promise.
• 1:03
  That was overall theme, right? I mean, we said, if someone
• 1:07
  gives you a random opinion, if I give you a opinion about
• 1:10
  something that I don't know anything about, doesn't carry
• 1:12
  any weight. But if I, let's say, give you
• 1:14
  opinion about business and I happen to be I'm the CEO of a
• 1:16
  certain company and I ran a company regarding that topic, in
• 1:22
  my opinion carries so much more weight.
• 1:23
  So it's really the position that creates the power of the war,
• 1:28
  the position that creates that other people listen more and
• 1:32
  take more respect to. The overall theme of respect is
• 1:35
  that when you give something, someone a certain degree of
• 1:39
  honor, then in response, everything that comes out of
• 1:43
  there that comes from there carries so much more weight.
• 1:45
  And it's a very important thing for our families when discussing
• 1:48
  that, you know, if someone's cynical or even critical of
• 1:52
  Torah al mitzvot of rabbis, they may be very intellectually
• 1:56
  smart, but they don't realize what they're doing is they're
• 1:58
  destroying and tearing down the wall.
• 2:01
  And for their children's sake, all their children know is who
• 2:04
  said that? Oh, that right away.
• 2:06
  OK. And you got it from A-OK.
• 2:09
  Whatever the the quote is, they break it down and tear it down
• 2:14
  because their parents might have used that angle.
• 2:16
  So even though you have a right and you should be highly
• 2:20
  analytical and even at times it's good to be critical, at
• 2:24
  times, it's very good to have your own mind.
• 2:26
  We always believe in having online and thinking on your own
• 2:29
  and not how to achieve mentality.
• 2:31
  But building up people and building up their positions
• 2:35
  usually usually allows you to get from more people and begin.
• 2:41
  And because you gave them more respect, their work has more
• 2:44
  weight, weight. And because of that, there's
• 2:46
  more influence. And usually it's a positive
• 2:48
  influence. All that comes because you made
• 2:51
  that position, that person, that place, that book more prominent.
• 2:57
  That's overall the theme and you see it works.
• 2:59
  Now on the flip side, we know what happens if you build the
• 3:02
  person up and that person's not so good.
• 3:06
  That is a very negative effect and that's a dangerous thing,
• 3:08
  which means if you. But that's subjective.
• 3:11
  Now what a person good or not? But I'm saying, let's say a
• 3:15
  person, you know, sadly to say a person has a negative thing
• 3:18
  going on in his life. I, I know someone who's actually
• 3:21
  in the position of prominence, relatively position prominence.
• 3:25
  I know it's something somewhat prided about him.
• 3:28
  I don't know if people knew they were not maybe give him the same
• 3:31
  respect they give him the time or a rabbi person.
• 3:34
  So you wonder, is it OK for that person to be built up when
• 3:39
  there's a part of him, He seems like a good guy in general.
• 3:42
  There's a part of him that might be destructive.
• 3:45
  If people know him too much, will they know his full story
• 3:49
  and maybe influence the negative way?
• 3:50
  So it's a very delicate area. As a parent, you probably knew
• 3:54
  this about certain people and you probably was there for a
• 3:57
  little bit like, you know, you, you got on your nerves, you got
• 4:00
  your little nervous when someone was telling you something about
• 4:03
  making a big deal about someone that you knew.
• 4:04
  This guy's not the greatest guy, right?
• 4:06
  And you're watching your kids talk about them or people talk
• 4:09
  about them and people giving them honor.
• 4:10
  And you're saying to yourself, hey, it's a little risky right?
• 4:13
  There you go to. His funeral sometimes, you know.
• 4:16
  That's fine, they say. This guy, well, I think.
• 4:18
  They choose yourself being like. That that's OK, because they're
• 4:21
  very best to it. Zach, you can say anything,
• 4:24
  right? You just got to got to listen,
• 4:26
  by the way. Yeah, I'm sure by now you've
• 4:29
  learned the art of reading between the lines.
• 4:31
  Unless you rose and anyone's got a positive side or good.
• 4:35
  The kids want to have a good feeling about the parent.
• 4:38
  That's all fine. There's no end.
• 4:42
  To saying oh that guy did it. Because then.
• 4:46
  You're right, you're right. Where does it really take you?
• 4:48
  So I'll tell you truth. I used to be like.
• 4:49
  That, well, critical in that sense, yeah.
• 4:54
  Even a few rules, you know, talking about the guy like his,
• 4:57
  you know, he said Pasadi, you know, and you have to count your
• 5:00
  fingers after he shook his hand exactly, you know.
• 5:04
  And then I said, you know what? If that's the way they remember
• 5:07
  him, good for them. OK.
• 5:09
  So now you're just going down there for a second.
• 5:12
  The overall theme of being critical or being maybe even
• 5:17
  cynical or being kind of gullible and accepting.
• 5:21
  So I it's very, very odd to be this out.
• 5:24
  You have to be a person who has your own opinion, any of your
• 5:27
  personal has things worked out. To be gullible is extremely
• 5:31
  dangerous. I know people are very close to
• 5:34
  who you know, every rabbi or every person with a beard, every
• 5:38
  person with anything who's going to read a book, they go all they
• 5:41
  fawn over the guy, everything you and I, I know that they are
• 5:45
  pro certain people are not good people.
• 5:48
  OK, Sometimes they say something 1/4 guy and I want to sit down
• 5:50
  like I cringe. Look at that cringe.
• 5:52
  You're calling this person like his mashiach and I'm telling you
• 5:55
  he's not even the best guy, right?
• 5:57
  Well, so that's the overall they they accept everyone, they kiss
• 6:01
  everyone's hand, all that business, right?
• 6:04
  It drives me personally crazy when I see them do it.
• 6:07
  That gets me nervous because how do you deal with that?
• 6:10
  That's how you deal with that. And Jay has me nervous, but I
• 6:15
  haven't seen it be so destructive.
• 6:17
  And they're like, I have seen them, you know, maybe give money
• 6:20
  to the wrong place and maybe be overly involved in their own guy
• 6:23
  and making it like his opinion matters and it doesn't.
• 6:27
  I don't know. It's hard to figure out how to
• 6:29
  deal with such a person and such a mindset.
• 6:31
  And I grew up in a world my father was definitely had ahead
• 6:35
  of being absolutely critical. And he was very much not just
• 6:40
  accepting everyone who walked. And he had his own opinion, all
• 6:43
  right. He never ever said a word last
• 6:45
  turn it off pretty much in his life.
• 6:47
  So even though he was critical, he didn't carry the weight of
• 6:50
  knocking someone down. He just didn't give too much
• 6:54
  into or didn't go too much down the road of people who were
• 6:57
  nothing to do with Kabbalah ever, nothing to do with these
• 7:00
  people who said certain things, never got excited about anyone
• 7:03
  who was a big deal. All those things.
• 7:04
  You could cut that all out. So, yeah, I just, you know, you
• 7:07
  he cared about the regular person and evaluate the people
• 7:09
  who Ulischmann, all that. So I really grew up in that
• 7:13
  world and I'm around a lot of the other world.
• 7:17
  And I always wonder which world is better.
• 7:19
  OK. So for me personally, I thought
• 7:22
  his world is better, but he had his own opinion that his world
• 7:25
  was. No.
• 7:27
  But you can tell. You can tell he did not care
• 7:30
  about anything to do with Mikubalin in general, anything
• 7:34
  to do with anyone that was a random big deal, just became the
• 7:38
  hot shot. Didn't care for that at all.
• 7:41
  And he didn't really, you know, if someone quoted, somebody
• 7:43
  would say, yeah, someone quoted something as a big common, like
• 7:46
  something extreme. He said who said, oh, yeah, a
• 7:50
  big deal. Stuff like that.
• 7:51
  Just like, you know, diminished the excitement of that thing and
• 7:54
  a little bit. He poured water on that fire a
• 7:56
  lot of times. But he was never really cynical
• 7:59
  in the sense that he broke something down.
• 8:01
  I don't know which way is better.
• 8:02
  But I I would think. Right, I've seen it more
• 8:05
  successful. I would think that a rabbi is
• 8:10
  the one guy that can keep the checks and balances in the world
• 8:15
  because if the person's already sitting in your class, that mean
• 8:18
  he already made a commitment to the better himself.
• 8:22
  And I would think, and again, I don't know what it is to be
• 8:25
  Rabbi being rabbi's shoes, but I would think that it's it's his
• 8:29
  rights right in the relationship.
• 8:32
  Like every part of the sun signs a consent in school.
• 8:35
  The consent is here by the person sitting there to to to
• 8:39
  stop a guy from, you know, being.
• 8:43
  Absolutely. You know, off track.
• 8:45
  It is definitely a rabbi's, a rabbi position to tell this guy,
• 8:49
  let's say someone's very involved in this, Sir.
• 8:52
  And I had someone recently who told me others him Kubal in town
• 8:56
  and he does something called, I don't know what they even call
• 8:59
  it some sort of overall like, you know, I think of it like a
• 9:03
  physical. It's like the it's like the blue
• 9:05
  people, I'd say. Some I mean, he goes to your
• 9:07
  house, this is, I mean, I need tikkuna or something and he
• 9:11
  decides why you're going into whatever.
• 9:12
  And I told this guy to waste of time.
• 9:15
  And if your wife doesn't like it, she's right in your room
• 9:17
  because it's not for us. OK, it's easy thing for me to
• 9:20
  say, you know, I don't like this stuff.
• 9:21
  Easy for me to say. And as a rabbi, usually you can
• 9:24
  know if there is any right or wrong and say certain things
• 9:27
  absolutely right. And it's a very important point.
• 9:29
  And he does more than even say Rabbi's supposed to give off a
• 9:32
  tone that shows what he's pro or what he's going to talk from the
• 9:36
  things he speaks about, from the things he talks about, from the
• 9:39
  people he quotes, from those he's impressed by it, from the
• 9:42
  reaction that he gives when he sees certain people.
• 9:44
  All these things was to give off a certain tone of what he's
• 9:47
  into, what he's not into. You can tell.
• 9:48
  And a second you can know. You know what I like, You know
• 9:51
  my father like you know with other rabbi, you know good,
• 9:54
  simple, clear. And as a parent you have to have
• 9:56
  the same mode. Maybe take that mindset and
• 9:59
  apply as a parent. You are required as a parent to
• 10:02
  have figured out your system of life.
• 10:03
  It doesn't mean you know everything.
• 10:04
  I mean it does every rabbi know everything.
• 10:06
  The rabbi is no more, but it doesn't mean everything.
• 10:09
  As a parent, you have to have a mechanism and a theory how the
• 10:14
  world is supposed to look. If you don't have worked out
• 10:16
  your theory and you're in trouble, you need to have a way
• 10:18
  down. You do.
• 10:19
  All of you do. Once you do, once you do, you
• 10:23
  have to therefore have things that set up your alarms.
• 10:26
  I think that you say that's not good.
• 10:28
  I don't like that. I hear that quoting this one.
• 10:30
  I like it. And even if it's something
• 10:32
  religious and you might say I don't know everything about, OK,
• 10:35
  you don't, fine, you don't need to, but you do have a sense of
• 10:38
  how they're also looking. You need to have that sense.
• 10:40
  And based on that, you should have a feeling as to what seems
• 10:44
  off, what seems wrong and what tone and what push or what angle
• 10:50
  people are making does not fit your worldview.
• 10:53
  And even though we're not supposed to be egotistical and
• 10:56
  we spoke about yesterday not being Arabic and all that, you
• 10:58
  need to have a worldview. And that worldview is required
• 11:03
  to shoot down a lot of nonsense. It's absolutely right.
• 11:06
  The person has to have that. And with that, that comes a lot
• 11:09
  of those respect to a lot of people, but also to certain
• 11:13
  situations, to certain theories. I don't go for that.
• 11:16
  That has to be a head, has to be a mindset, because otherwise we
• 11:19
  will make mistakes. I know someone, just go ahead.
• 11:23
  No, your father never looked for honor.
• 11:25
  I'll never forget the time. I remember people were there
• 11:27
  when we we had a dinner for the Rabo.
• 11:29
  Yes, I'm in the the restaurant. The rest are we.
• 11:34
  I'd rather be with you guys in the basement than be in a
• 11:36
  beautiful show, he says. You know, 'cause he, he loved
• 11:39
  the crowd. He loved the guy.
• 11:40
  There you go. Yeah, that's amazing.
• 11:42
  I hope he got both exactly. Rather be in the basement where
• 11:46
  you had to. Get with you.
• 11:48
  Yeah. And I always think about it.
• 11:49
  I say, yeah, my father once sent this speech and I was actually,
• 11:53
  it might have been the week I got married, I think, because I
• 11:56
  remember my emails were in school.
• 11:58
  I finally used to quote this speech all the time.
• 12:00
  I didn't realize it's a big deal until my father-in-law made a
• 12:02
  big deal out of it. My father said, you know, it's a
• 12:05
  famous line. You run away from honor, honor
• 12:09
  chases you. So my father sent this to me.
• 12:17
  He says, how come people don't use our trick?
• 12:20
  It's such an easy trick. People want to know, he says.
• 12:23
  He said the lioness is like they can't handle it.
• 12:25
  He's they just can't handle it running up the cupboard.
• 12:27
  So I thought I came home. My father-in-law says, you know,
• 12:29
  he lives. He thought he just said
• 12:30
  something like this. His father just said, he said
• 12:33
  anyone runs away from honor. Such a profound statement.
• 12:36
  Anyone runs away from honor. People get the people, honor
• 12:39
  chases them and no one can handle it.
• 12:41
  He he didn't get the honor that he deserved when he was alive,
• 12:45
  but but he passed the. Wagran Nagar people saw how part
• 12:48
  of the same point. Right, Robert Azeri.
• 12:50
  While he was. Eulogizing him, how he said how
• 12:53
  great your father was. You know, I I was enough.
• 12:55
  He was in awe of Azeri, who was very in order.
• 12:59
  Yeah, you know that was not, but rabbis did, did every.
• 13:03
  Yes, and it tastes that little new.
• 13:06
  I thought I told them about this all the time.
• 13:08
  I said when they say any respect, let me say you want to.
• 13:15
  Exactly what does it mean? Respect.
• 13:18
  It was a wonderful day. There are two kinds of respects
• 13:21
  and this is a reality. A person.
• 13:22
  It's not for their whole life. There's one kind of respect,
• 13:25
  which is the charm of the big deal, the big accolades, the rah
• 13:31
  rah that my father's a not cat. Absolutely not.
• 13:34
  There's another kind of respect, which means when he says
• 13:35
  something that matters or you see him, you want to go over,
• 13:38
  you want to talk to him and you are in a sense, you're talking
• 13:41
  to the intrusion. You say, you know that Rabbi is
• 13:43
  something special, that kind of respect he always had.
• 13:45
  Doesn't want anything not. And the reality is, and this is
• 13:47
  something amazing, while a persons of life, a very fine
• 13:51
  person while they're in life, they don't often get the first
• 13:54
  respect. They get the second one.
• 13:56
  After 120 when the dust settles, what happens is you shave off
• 14:01
  all the fat and then you just have the plain person without
• 14:04
  the the power or without the position or out the noise and
• 14:08
  that plain person carries weight.
• 14:10
  And that sounded like my fault. And other people like that also
• 14:13
  who they carry their weight after 120 because then it's only
• 14:16
  about the person himself and that kind of respect they get.
• 14:19
  I just closed out this point. I know someone last week is to
• 14:21
  close at this point. I will stop someone last week
• 14:25
  who made a major mistake, made a major mistake and in my humble
• 14:29
  opinion was because they gave one of these kind of people too
• 14:32
  much credit in their opinion. They had someone opinion and
• 14:38
  that someone gave them a kind of fly by answer.
• 14:41
  They took it to town and they made a mistake and they made a
• 14:44
  major error and it's because they maybe were a little
• 14:47
  gullible. So you got to figure out in life
• 14:50
  how you get a healthy dose of I want to have an opinion.
• 14:54
  I want to trust the great people.
• 14:57
  At the same time, I want to have my own critical thinking, and
• 15:00
  that comes from your world view. And the world view that you have
• 15:03
  is combined with your parents, your experience, your rabbis,
• 15:08
  your trust in rabbis, your belief in Torah, your following
• 15:11
  Torah, and the whole thing combined creates your AI.
• 15:15
  I always love AI as an example. AI is a combination of the
• 15:19
  whole, everything, all information.
• 15:20
  So you have your own AII. Stick a question into you, it
• 15:23
  spits out an answer. Where's the answer coming from?
• 15:26
  Everything you witness in life you need to have that and that
• 15:29
  includes both acceptance of what people have to say but lack of
• 15:34
  not being too gullible. The perfect combo creates the
• 15:38
  perfect opinion and shapes you realize them.
• 15:40
  Stop with this. Go ahead.