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Last mishmar of the summer. Unbelievable Unbelievable! What a summer! Baruch Hashem. There was a lot of talk tonight about taking our experience of NCSY Kolle with us into the year. To try to really make the most of every Of everything that we've learned, of all the inspiration that we've had How do we take it with us? Pasuk in this week's parsha says, 'Rei anochi noisen l'fnecha mayom brachu uklala.' The balei machshava they dash in every word of this pasuk, so we're going to go through every word of this pasuk. Rei, anochi noisen l'fnecha mayom. I've put before you today brachu uklala. Blessings and curses. So what does this mean? So there's a Ramban. The Ramban says that this pasuk is the source for free will. What's the significance of free will? What does free will mean to us? Also, if you look at the pasuk The pasuk says rei Which is in singular. It's lashon yachid.
And then it says lifnechem, which is plural. Which one is it, singular or plural? Then we have to understand what this idea of bracha uklala means. What does it mean that Hashem put before us a bracha or a klala? And then the final diac that we're going to make Aside from the word aneichy Is hayom and nosein are in the present tense. It doesn't say 're'e anoechi nasati lifnechem.' See that I have put before you. "Re'e anoechi noisay lifnechem" in the present tense. So we'll go through this one at a time. There's a chasam seifer. Chasam seifer says that the reason it says "re'e anoechi," I'm sorry, "re'e an lifnechem" Is because a person needs to understand. That the fate of the many depends on the individual. The Rambam says that a person has to see the world as if the entire world is hanging in the balance.
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And everything is depending on this one mitzvah. There is a tendency in the world to think that what we do doesn't matter. There is a tendency that a person could chas v'shalom think. What I do matters to me But not that what I do matters to everybody. Is a chassidish marshal about a wedding that was being made in the shtetl. And when they would make a wedding in the shtetl, if the family didn't have money, everybody would join together. It's not like today's chasnas where they make hundred fifty thousand, two hundred fifty thousand dollar chasnas. Back then, what was a chasna? They got together in the town square, and they had a klezmer band, and they had a little bit of kichel, a little bit of herring, and they would serve wine. So the rav of the town got up. He said, "These two orphans are getting married."
Each one of us needs to come and put a little bit of wine into the barrel. So what happened? The first guy comes to the barrel with his cup of wine and he says to himself Everybody's going to be putting in wine. If I put in water, nobody's going to know the difference. So he put away the wine and he took out water and he poured a little water into the barrel. The next guy comes and he says everybody's going to be putting in wine. If I put in a little bit of water, nobody's going to realize. So he puts in water, and this is what happens over and over again, until finally, when it comes the time for the chasna, and they pull out the barrel of wine and they start pouring the wine, it's pure water. Because everybody thought my individual contribution doesn't matter. When a Yid does a mitzvah in France, it helps a Jew in Eretz Yisrael. The Neviachaim says, and when a Jew does a mitzvah in Eretz Yisrael, it helps a Jew in France.
Every one of us is connected deeply to every other one of us, and a Jew needs to know that the entire world is hanging in the balance, and that your mitzvah could tip the scales. One of the things that we struggle with so much is we start to think to ourselves: there's a ruach sh'tos that comes into our head. It says, your mitzvah doesn't matter. I'm sitting here in I'm sitting here in Yula. I'm just assuming I'm sitting here in Yula. I'm sitting here in DRS. I'm in TABC. I'm in Heychalam. In JIC. I'm in Skokie. I'm in Frish. I think I just exhausted all the schools. There's a feeling there's a certain chalishos that a person has, does what I do really matter, does it really make a difference? Rei, see that what you do on an individual level impacts every other person. Klal Yisrael is an organism.
We think of ourselves like I'm an individual, he's an individual. Klal Yisrael is an organism. I was having a conversation with somebody today and he told me, like many of us, he struggles with davening with a minion. He says, I'd rather daven by myself. I totally understand it. I just want to remind you guys of something you know. I know you know this. A Jew daven's with a minion because a Jew can't daven without a minion. That's like saying my hand did something or my leg did something. We're only a unit when we behave like a unit. For a Jew to say I'm going to daven by myself, not Chassidish. I'm saying that it's not a davening. I'm saying that when we daven by ourselves, it's lacking. It's lacking our full self. A yid expresses his full self in the context of Klal Yisrael. That's why we're such balei Chesed, because we know that every single Jew is deeply connected to every single other Jew. That's what Yishalmi says. Every single Jew is guf echad. We're all part of one body. We're inseparable from each other.
It's an awesome responsibility that everything every single Jew has. But it's also an awesome responsibility that every Rebbe has. The rebbeim have a responsibility to teach you guys and remind you of something you deeply know. Which is, you matter. And there was one rebbe that did a terrible job of this. He had a talmud. The talmud. This is many years ago. The Talmud's name was Shmuel Yoyel. It's a chassidish abacher. Shmuel Yoyel. Shmuel Yoyel Mastel. Shmuel Yoyel Mastel grew up, and he had a rebbe that always told him Dubista garnished. You're a nothing, and you're going to be a nothing in your life. And so Shmuel Yoyel Mastel went off the derech. He's a very talented man. Shmuel Yoyel Mastel went on to become a very famous actor. And he took a stage name. And what was his stage name? Zero Mastel. What type of name is Zero Mastel? He said it's a tribute to my rebbe who told me that I was always going to be a nothing.
So his stage name was Tevya from Fiddler on the Roof. Zero Mastel. He was in the producers. He was in many famous movies. His stage name was a tribute to his rabbi, who always told him, 'You're going to be a garnished.' When you tell people that they're going to be a zero, they become a zero. When you tell people you're something, what you do matters. Then we become something. The you know You look at Cain. Cain killed his brother Abel, right? Why Cain killed his brother Abel? Because he brought a carbon. And what does it say? The El Menchasay Leisha And Hakadosh Baruch Hu didn't pay attention to his karban. If you think that what you do doesn't matter, if you think I did something, I tried to come close to you, Abister, and my karban didn't matter. You could even kill your brother. You could, when you think that what you do doesn't matter, kill your own brother because if it doesn't matter, you could commit fratricide.
It's a terrible thing when we think that it doesn't matter. But listen to this word I heard from Rav Weinberger. This word twenty plus years ago, unbelievable word. It'll change your life if you listen carefully. There was a Gilgal of Kayin Many years later. His name was Elisha Hanavi. Kayin said Veel Minchasay Elisha. Nobody's paying attention to my carbon. What's Elisha's name? Elisha. Somebody's paying attention to me. Somebody's paying attention to me. So what's the story of Elisha Hanavi? The story of Elisha Hanavi is that he was a farmer's son. And he was tending the fields. And Eliyahu Hanavi walked by him, and the corner of Eliyahu Hanavi's jacket touched him, and that's it. He was off. He was like, "I'm with you, Rabbi. I'm with you." And he became the Talmud Muvak of Eliyahu Hanavi, and he became the great Elisha Hanavi. Right before Eliyahu Hanavi ascended to Shamayim He said to Elisha, "Ask me for a bracha, and I'll give you a bracha."
So Elisha Hanavi said. Rebbe, I want pishnayim meirulchacha Which means literally, I want to be twice as great as you. It's a very strange bracha. Imagine going over to your Rebbe and saying, 'Rebbe, I want to be twice as great as you.' So listen to what Weinberger said. He said the holiest side of Alysha was that he felt like in his world, in his life, he was a farmer's son. But he knew he was more. He wasn't just a kid on Encei's Yekolal. He was a kid in his heart who was saying. I know I'm a something. I know that there's a reason I'm alive. I know I have something to do in this world that nobody else could do. I know that I'm supposed to make an impact on all of Klal Yisrael. I know that. So when he saw Eliezer Hanavi, it reminded him he could be more than he is. So he had two ruachos. There was the Eliezer Hanavi that was a farmer's son that was tending the fields, and then there was Eliezer Hanavi who was going to lead ganz Klal Yisrael. And he knew that he was both people, just like every single one of us in this room knows.
I believe that every single one of us in this room is two people. There's the person we are right now, and there's the person that we know we're meant to be. But we need a rebbe to come along to touch us with the corner of his jacket to say, 'Come with me. You're part of my world. Come, let me help build you up. Let me remind you of the person you could be.' Eliezer Hanavi was nervous. He said, 'Rebbe, what's going to be when you ascend to Shamayim?' Who's going to remind me that I'm a something? Who's going to remind me that I matter? Who's going to remind me that my singular job in this world is to impact all of Klal Yisrael? So he said, Rebbe, I need pishnayim me ruchacho. I need to remember that there's two ruchos. He wasn't asking to be twice as great as his Rebbe. That's the literal translation. He was saying, Rebbe, when I'm with you, you make me feel like there's the person that I am, but there's the person that I could be. That's the job of a Rebbe. The job of a Rebbe is to remind every single Talmud. You could do something special in this world. Every single person in this room has unique talents. Imagine if I came to one of you and I said to you, 'What's your unique talent?' And you go, 'I don't know.'
That is a tragedy of epic proportions. If a guy doesn't know what makes him unique, if a guy doesn't know his talents, if he doesn't know what his kliach is, what he could bring to the world, could you imagine the explosion in Klal Yisrael if every one of us was tapped into our unique self? If every one of us was tapped into our neshama and we said, 'This is who I am,' and I'm going to go do it and I'm going to make it awesome, Klal Yisroel would be an even greater place than it is today. The problem for so many of us is we lack the self-esteem to be able to say, "This is me," and I'm going to put it out there for the world to see. And it doesn't matter; not everyone's going to love it, but I'm going to be me, and I'm going to be courageous in the face of that vulnerability. That maybe not everybody's going to like it, but I'm going to be awesome. We could be free. Guys, we're not free in this room because we're especially at this age. There's so much social pressure. There's so much I have to fit in. I have to be this type of person.
Nobody has to be any type of person. Be yourself. If you could be yourself, you could be awesome. The problem is that people are spending their whole life. I've got to fit into this. I've got to fit into that. I've got to become this type of person, that type of person. Your responsibility is to become yourself. If you become yourself and you shine brightly, then you'll illuminate for every one of us. And chaval, there's a terrible thing in our system that we build these boxes. I heard a great line once from a rebbe. He said, "Boxes are for coffins." You're not supposed to be in a box. You're supposed to be yourself. Some people here in this room are kooky funny. It's not funny that everybody appreciates, but it's funny that some people appreciate. You know what I'm saying? Like it's just a weird type of humor. You know the Chicago guys and the. You're related to one of those guys, yeah.
You should know your brother is a gavalt. He's one of the funniest people I've ever met. But he's so funny because he's himself, and it's so beautiful to see. It's a tragedy. We see it all the time. It's hard to watch. You see people that are so unique, but they don't allow themselves to be unique. I'll tell you, Maisa. It was a guy in yeshiva, and he was a very good basketball player, and he was like a very 'cool guy.' He was like one of these yeshiva league cool guys. And he was because he was cool, so he also sat in judgment of everybody else. That move where you're like, cool, so you sit in judgment of everybody else. You like push other people down to call yourself tall. So there was a rebbe who noticed that he was struggling in this area. He wasn't accepting people as they are. He wasn't opening himself up to the possibility of relating to other types of people. So the rebbe called him out on it.
And the guy pushed back. He said, "No, it's just—it's weird. It's this, it's that." The Rebbe Maimon fought him on it for months. Until finally the guy was like, "You're right." I'm just afraid of who I truly am. I'm just afraid of being myself. And it was an amazing thing. This guy came out of his shell, and all of a sudden he stopped being cool and he started being himself. And you know what? He was the biggest weirdo of all. And I loved him because he was so strange. All of a sudden he was like a totally new person. And one time I was leaving the beis medrash. I might remember this. And I saw this guy wearing a giraffe onesie outside of the beis medrash, and he was doing jumping lunges outside of the back of the beis medrash. And I'm like, "What are you doing?"
And he looks at me with totally deadpan and he goes, "Exercise" Nachas, Rabbi Yisai, Nachas. All of a sudden, he wasn't worried about what other people were saying. He came alive because he wasn't worried about what other people were saying. It's a terrible thing that we do. That we tell people, 'No, this is what's cool. This is what it means to be cool from our neighborhood. This is what it means to be cool in NCSY.' Kol, be yourself. Be yourself. The whole world, like the Rambam says, like Chassam Sofer, according to the Rambam The whole world could be a bracha or it could be a klala. The world could be a place that's connected to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That's bracha from a lashon of source to make a bracha means to pull something down from its source. The world could be a bracha or a klala. You know what it's dependent on—you. Re'ei anoichi noisin lefnechem ayoyim bracha uklala means I'm putting before you today the entire world. What this world will be—will it be a place that's connected to godliness, that people could be their unique self? Will it be a place of conformity? Will it be a place where people can't be themselves?
That's up to you guys. What type of culture will you create? Will you create a culture of open authenticity, vulnerability, courage? Will you create an environment? And I think we have to work on this. Will we create an environment of fear? Will we create an environment of conformity? Will we create an environment where people can't reach their potential because they're so afraid of what other people will think? So it comes down to anaychi Rei anaychi. If you want to know the key, you have to know anaychi. You have to know who you are. And listen to this. This is the key of the night sheir. What you are is a chooser. If you want to know what a human being is, if you want to go all the way back to what is a human being Ultimately, a human being is someone who makes a choice.
Many people live their lives on autopilot. Autopilot means they're not making choices. They're part of a system, and the system just rinses and repeats. You're part of that system. You don't make choices. You just do the same thing day after day. But you know the beauty of life is you could stop the system and you could say I choose to stay on this ride or to get off this ride and go on a different ride. You don't have to do what you're doing. To be a chooser means I get to choose to be me. Almost every minute of every day, there's a question that confronts us: Will you be yourself or will you be something else? And that's ultimately what it comes down to. You're in bed. The alarm rings, and it's time to go to shachris. And you have a question: Should I wake up and go to shachris, or should I stay in bed? Bed is comfortable. The floor is cold. I don't want to get up. I don't want to put my feet on the floor. I don't want to move. I'd rather stay here and be comfortable. But then you live with the sense of regret.
You live with the sense that you didn't access your highest self. You've chosen to be something that you're not. Or you can choose to say my shachris matters. Not only does it matter to me; it matters to my community. Because if I'm not at shachris, the community is lacking. And if I'm not part of the community, the entire world is lacking. Klal Yisroel is lacking. So every morning you have to see it. Re'ei anoechi. You have an opportunity, Rabbi. Say, listen carefully. You have an opportunity right now to ask yourself, Who am I? You're leaving this summer. That's the question you're being asked all summer. Who are you? Who are you? It's the question we ask. If people want to grow, they have to ask themselves the question over and over again. Who are you? Who are you? Re'ay anoi'chi. There's a true version of yourself. Chazal say, Al t'kri b'hi baram ela ba'avraham.
Who was Avram Avinu? There was a person when Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world. When he said, 'I'm going to go out and find him,' I thought, 'You can't just go out and find someone like that.' But he did. He found him. And then he brought him back. So there's a vision of an Avram Avinu. There was Yaakov Avinu's face was on the Kisei Hakavod. When the Malachim were going up and down the ladder, they were seeing Yaakov Avinu down here. They were seeing Yaakov Avinu on the Kisei Hakavod. They were astounded. Could it be that somebody actually became the best version of themselves? The answer is yes. That's why the Gemara in Tanya says Yaakov v'inu lo mes. Yaakov v'inu didn't die. What does it mean? He didn't die. He became the truest version of himself. Once a person becomes the truest version of themselves, they're eternal. To become authentic, to become real, but to do that, you have to make choices. You are going to be confronted with choices in the environment of Beit Meir, Southern Campus. Beautiful, Baruch Hashem, eleven fifty-four at night, and we have Baruch Hashem people in a room stinging. The choice is much easier. But you go back, certain friends, certain environments, certain systems. These choices become a little bit harder. It requires focus. It requires intention. It requires orientation. Are you actually stopping and making a choice?
And this is the last point of the night. The choice is not tomorrow. The choice is not a week from now. The choice is not two weeks from now. The choice is not two years from now. There are guys. Unfortunately, this happens. Guys go okay, but say the Rebbe, I'll do it when I get to Eretz Yisrael. Give me a break. Let me have the last two years of high school. Let me have my summer after twelfth grade, that no man's land where I'm no longer in high school, so the high school can't get me in trouble, and I'm not yet in Eretz Yisrael. I want to have my fun. Abay say choices get made. Hayom. Choices get made not in the future, hayyom and noisim. Every single moment of every single day, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is putting choices in front of you. What choices you make in the present determine where you are in the future. There's something insane about our lives. You know what we do?
We make choice after choice, and then we go like this. I don't know how I ended up here. It's a funny thing, no? Because I don't know how I ended up here. What do you mean you don't know how you ended up here? You got in the car and you drove there. Say yeah, but I never meant to. You have a guy in ninth grade. He has shifas. He has dreams. By the time I'm in twelfth grade, I'm going to be capable of doing this and that. And now it's tenth grade already, and he says, "I don't know. I didn't do any of the things I thought I was going to do. What happened? What do you think happened?" Every day you made a choice. You want it. You want to have a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu where you feel close to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Now you can always be close to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, but do you feel close to Hakadosh Baruch? Do I feel it? So you'll ask yourself, 'Well, no, I don't feel close to Al Kiddush Baruch Hu.' And then you'll say, 'Well, what choices did I make?'
Did I daven? Did I learn Al Kiddush Baruch Hu's Torah? Was it okay to ask for the Torah? Was I involved in Chesed? There were choices that were in front of you every single day. How ridiculous would it be if somebody got in a car Didn't put on Waze And just drove And then he goes "I don't know how I got here." What do you mean? You made a left. You made a right. You went straight for ten miles. You made another left. You know exactly how you got here. People are often mystified, including myself. We're mystified. We're like, how did I get here? What do you mean, how'd you get here? You made one choice over and over again, and that's how you got here. Rabbi said, there's a good thing. If you want to go somewhere else, you know what you have to do. It's very simple. You have to make choices in the present moment. What am I going to do today? Now you're coming and you're going into eleventh grade, and you have two years left to high school, and you're finished with NCSY Kollel for the summer.
So now you have to ask yourself, what are my next choices? What are the choices that are in front of me? The choice to be part of this chevrah or that chevrah, the choice to put myself in this environment or that environment. There's going to be challenging environments, and there's going to be some guys already say, I could see myself that. I'm already with a certain chavra, and that chavra is starting to do this type of thing, and maybe they're creating that type of environment. I know it's so important to me to be a part of this group. I totally get it. But if you do that Remember that you're making a right turn.
And then you're making another right turn. If you want to know in two years how you ended up where you ended up, it's because you made choice after choice to go in that direction. You could also make choice after choice every single day to go in a different direction. You can make a choice to say, "I want to be in a higher level shir." You can make a choice to say, I want to have a chavruta. You can make a choice to say, I want to finish a mesecta. I want to pick up a sefer. I'm going to keep in touch with my madrichim. I'm going to continue to listen to shiurim. I'm going to cut out this type of music from my life, and I'm going to put this type of music in my life. I'm going to choose to be a lets And I'm going to choose to make fun of things and to make jokes out of everything. I'm going to choose to take things seriously. The choice is in front of you all the time. The shaila is who you want to be And you're going to end up exactly where you end up. And remember, Rabbi Say. That when you go somewhere, if you go somewhere and you're yourself, you can be proud of yourself.
If the choice you make reflects your highest values, then in two years from now, as you're coming out of twelfth grade, you'll be able to look back and be proud of yourself, and you'll say, I'm a person of dignity. I did what was right for me. I accessed my truest self. I listened to my own voice. Even in learning, a lot of times, we listen to a sheir. But what about your own voice? What about your questions and learning? What about your answers and learning? You have a unique neshama. You have something to say. Are you thinking about what you have to say? It's a fine line because we want you guys to pick up a derech halimud. So we want you to say, we want you to ask these types of questions. But you should know, in Europe, in Slabodka, they said no. We want to create a certain open environment where people could learn how to ask their own questions. The derech halimud of Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky and Ravan Kotler was very, very different, and they both learned in Slabodka. But they were encouraged by the altar to be their unique sense of self. That's the key, Rabbi Isaiah. Are you going to be you in two years from now? If you make one choice day after day, and that choice reflects your highest values.
Then in two years from now you'll be proud of yourself. And that is an incredible gift to give to yourself and to the world. If you believe that you matter, then you'll be your best self. But if you make choices, Rachmano Letzlan. That ignore the future. If every day you make choices, one day at a time, you make choices to go in this direction. You're going to look back, and it's going to be great, because you're going to regret, and regret is a beautiful emotion, because it tells me I didn't live up to my highest values. But nobody wants to be sitting here in two years from now, going, I betrayed my highest self. I chose conformity over true individuality. That's a tragic choice. So I want to bless us all on this last night of Mishmar Avens Yisvaykola. Midnight. Now it's twelve o'clock at night. We have a room full of guys. We're shteiging. Baruch Hashem.
My bracha to all of us, including myself. I'm part of this chevrah. Let's be true to authenticity. Let's be zeiche to a true aneichi. To be zeiche to know that what we do matters not only for ourselves but for all of Klal Yisrael. If we would be unique, Rabbi say, how amazing would this puzzle be? How incredible would it be if every single one of us could be our unique self? If every one of us could shine There are guys that are here that are not shining because they're too afraid to shine. When you hold back your light, Rabbi Yisai, you are holding it back from everybody. Let's not hold back our light. Let's shine. Let's take the ruach that we had in Nitzis Yisrael and remind ourselves: Pishnayim Eruchacha. This is the person that I am now, and Be'ezrus Hashem, this is the person I am going to be. Rabbi Yisai, have a wonderful Shabbos.
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