Chapter 1: How does the Rebbe maintain such a high level of joy?
How is the Rebbe consistently able to maintain such a high level of joy?
So I assume the Rebbe means me. But let's not talk about me.
Let's just talk about the importance of Simcha. It just happens to be yesterday I had the privilege of going together with a group of Datilu Umi Rabbanim from Eretz Yisrael who are here to... I'm not sure what they're here for, but I think they're here to learn about American Judaism. And they've gone to all sorts of different places in America today.
to see from Jews and the different Tashkafos and the different ways of doing things, and they visited Lakewood, and they saw BMG, and they met with Ramal Kiel Cutler, and they visited Yeshiva University, and they met with our Rashi Yeshiva, and they visited the Chabad Kinas HaShluchim, and they visited our scroll headquarters, and they asked them, when are you going to start translating Rav Kook?
And the answer was, never, ever, ever. But whatever it was, they visited a whole bunch of places. Yesterday, I happened to have gone with them to Yeshiva Darchei Torah. They were in the five towns, and they were visiting
DRS and they're visiting Darche so I figured I want to be on the fly a fly on the wall when they go to visit Darche and because you know Darche is more yeshivish more I guess they would identify as Haredi but American Haredi and much more open-minded Haredi and certainly a very different experience than let's say BMG or Lakewood and this group was going to be meeting
with Ravelli Brudny for lunch as well, who's obviously a member of the Moetz Eskedolei HaTorah of the Agudah. So anyway, with that background, while we were in Darche, they brought us to, I think it was a 7th grade classroom, and there was a Rebbe, Rebbe Halbertal, I think is his name, who is, I think he lived in Israel, maybe is Israeli, so he was able to communicate with
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Chapter 2: What insights were shared from the visit to Yeshiva Darchei Torah?
in Hebrew, you know, a real shein yid, as they say, a very, very, very special, sweet person. I don't know him, but just by seeing him behave in those few minutes, you could tell right away, you know, some people you could tell right away that they're extraordinary. And I'm sure it was no accident that Darche chose his classroom to bring these Rabbanim to.
And, you know, they had an Israeli flag hanging in the classroom, which I assume was the cover of these Rabbanim and was not... you know, something that's there every day. But it was very, very sweet, very nice. And Rabbi Halbutzal asked Rabbi Yaakov Shapira, the Rashi Sheva of Merkes Harav, he said, Harav, you're here. You know, he was clearly the Arisha of the Chabura.
There were a lot of great Talmudic Chachamim that had come. but Rashid of Merkis Haraf, they all seemed to turn to as the leader of the group. And he said, please, can you share something with the Talmidim? So Rav Shapiro shared a number of things. One of the things, he spoke very briefly, but one of the things he shared with the Talmidim
was a story, I didn't catch who the story was with, but that someone had asked the child, what do you want to be when you grow up? And the child answered, happy. I want to be happy when I grow up.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of happiness in life according to the speaker?
And the person who asked the child the question turned to the child's father and said, I don't think he understood the question. Maybe I was asking, do you want to be a doctor? Do you want to be a Rosh Hashanah? What do you want to be when you grow up? The father said to the person who asked the question, he may not have understood the question, but he gets it a lot more than you and I do.
Ultimately, that's all that we really want. Everyone wants the same thing in life. Everyone wants to be happy. Most people, or many, many, many people are confused about what's going to accomplish that. Some people think if they have enough money, that's going to get them the happiness that that they so desire, or whatever it might be, the most pleasure, or whatever it is that they're chasing.
And ultimately, being happy is what everybody wants. So it's a very, very critical middah. In Hashkafah, we assume that it's not that you're happy when good things happen, but good things happen when you are happy.
meaning when you create a positive energy around you, and social sciences certainly verify this, we know this to be true, that when you create a positive energy around you, good things happen to you.
Chapter 4: How can one generate happiness in their life?
I think the Maharal writes on the Misha Nechlasa Adar Marvim Besimcha, What is it? Is it that when there's the mazel of simcha in the world of Adar, so then you can be more b'simcha? Or is it that because you have a chiv to be b'simcha, it creates a real mazel? And the answer is probably a little bit of both. But certainly, happiness is something that can be generated by a person.
I think all the research says that happiness is not a result of what happens to you, but but a result of your attitude toward things. And there are certain tricks to be able to generate this sense of happiness. Most important trick is to find the right partner in life, to be a positive person and to have a happy home environment.
where if you're a man and you want to find the right woman, you want it to be a woman who is going to have a smile on her face and is going to be someone who is a more cheerful person. And a lot of times you control that because if you walk into your house with a frown on your face and I'm just so exhausted, so then you'll get back exactly what you're giving.
But if you walk in with a giant smile on your face, and with positivity and with happiness, you'll get that back as well more often than not. So that's a very important way to create happiness.
Chapter 5: What role does gratitude play in achieving happiness?
I think they say that if you give compliments to people, it means that you're looking for good things. And when you look for good things, you will find good things. Right. So if you're looking for something to compliment, it means you're looking for something that is positive and you will likely find that which is positive. Show gratitude.
Again, same idea that you're looking for something to be grateful for. And when you show gratitude to people and you thank them. You reach out to them, you know, and you compliment them and you thank them. So those are things that bring about happiness.
There is also a certain sense of happiness that a person accomplishes when they feel that they're together with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, when they feel that they have a relationship with Rabbanu Shalalam.
Chapter 6: What is the importance of Malav HaMalka and its observance?
I believe very strongly that tefillah, in the most genuine sense, brings a person a certain sense of happiness. Not like the I'm doing cartwheels and making funny jokes kind of happiness, but a sense of serenity. comfort, a sense of being comfortable in my own skin, and that is ultimately happiness.
It also helps if a person could figure out what their kohos are, what they're best suited for, and start working toward dedicating the majority of their time toward doing those things that they're best suited for, that they can contribute most that they believe HaKadosh Baruch Hu put them in this world to do. That, I think, is also a very critical component of happiness.
Obviously, there's so much to say about this. This could be, you know, there should probably be a full semester course in college about how to be happy, and particularly from a Torah perspective. But, okay, we'll suffice at that for now. Question number two is much more halachic, a Cheshon Mishpat question.
Chapter 7: How should we approach non-observant Jews and communities?
If a car is parked illegally on the sidewalk of a supermarket parking lot and a shopper accidentally scratches it while pushing a shopping cart to his own car, is the shopper responsible to pay for the damage? Does the car's illegal placement affect liability?
So it's not about legal or illegal, it's really about if someone is negligent with their own stuff, and then their stuff gets damaged by an adam ha-mazik, so is the adam ha-mazik, when we say adam will be olam, so is the adam ha-mazik going to be chayiv? Do we say, no, you were negligent, you shouldn't have put it there, and what did you expect to happen if you put something where you put it?
So the basic background is, the Mishnah in the second paragraph of the Kama tells us, that an adam is mu'ad li'olam. The Gemara, Davchav Zayin, Babakama, quotes from Ula that people generally, when they're walking, they're not constantly looking at exactly where they're stepping, what they're stepping on.
So if someone puts something fragile down on a public thoroughfare, and you step on it, you're generally not going to be, and you had no idea that it was there. You had no responsibility to know it was there. The guy who left it there should not have put it there.
Chapter 8: What are the halachic considerations when hosting guests?
So Tosfos, on the spot, says that even though Adam will be old, and that's ben b'shogig, ben mezbeim, ben onas, ben baratzot, you're chayiv even for the things that you do, but onas, that's only if... you could have prevented the damage by being a little bit more careful.
Meaning, Tulsa says if it's an Onus Ke'en Aveda, that it was an Onus, you didn't try to do this damage and it was an accident, but it was Ke'en Aveda, meaning it was an Onus like losing something is an Onus. There's a big difference between an Onus that's Ke'en Gezela and Gneva and Onus Ke'en Aveda. Something gets stolen from me, that's an Onus. Something gets lost from me.
It's an onus, but I could have been more careful, meaning I could have avoided it. So it's the same thing. For a person to be high for damages, it has to be a damage that he could have prevented if he was just a little more careful. But if you had no expectation... that the Adam was going to be there. And it was totally out of place. And you didn't see it. You didn't know that it was there.
So that you're not going to be chayiv for. That's an ones kein geneva, not an ones kein aveda. And therefore, you know, the classic case I think that they give is someone puts down, I think, this must have been a Shiloh once, like, 40 years ago. So therefore, all the posts can use this example.
They talk about someone puts down their glasses on a chair and someone else comes and sits on that chair. So you're not expecting a pair of glasses to be on the chair. So you break the glasses. So if Reuven leaves his glasses on the chair and Shul and Shimon sat on them and broke them, if Shimon didn't notice the glasses on the chair...
before sitting down, since it's not normal for people to keep breakable things on chairs in shul, Shimon can say that I wasn't negligent at all. I had no reasonable expectation that it would be there, and therefore I'm going to be putter. And that is exactly what the Gemara says.
If you noticed that the glasses were there, and then you forgot that they were there, and you ended up sitting on them accidentally, then Reuven can say, well, wait just a minute, a little more care, and you would have noticed it. Meaning, and you would have remembered. That's Oneskein Aveda.
you know, just a little more focus, a little more paying attention to someone else's stuff, and you could have avoided this damage. So if that's the case, then I would bring it back to our case of the car. that if the person left a car on the sidewalk, hard to imagine that you didn't notice it.
So while it's not right for him to have left it there, it's wrong for him to have left it there, but if you noticed it, a little more care. You could have avoided hitting it with your shopping cart. It may not be right that he put it there, but even on an onus. So yeah, it's an accident, it's an onus, it's not your fault, got to pay for it anyway.
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