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Paisim chayd asanya. I want to take the opportunity to thank Rvtergan for putting this together. We're literally holding now by the chag haasif By the yomtiv of the gathering. In a yomtiv where Chazal say, "Kol Yisro, ruuyun leshe besukah achas" Every single Jew is right. It's appropriate for us to sit in one sukkah. We know everybody darshens and the dalad minim. All the dalad minim come together on Sukkot, so it's appropriate. Rav Targan once again has put together a vayichan program under Har Sinai. We were ki ishachod b'leivachod. This is the idea of Rav Targan to come together on Lail Hashanah Rabbah. All the boys from all the different yeshivas, rabbis from the various different yeshivas, from all different types of yeshivas. It's a very beautiful idea, and it's appropriate. We should make sure to have a proper hakar satov teruf tagin for putting this together. Everyone should remember to go over individually teruf tagin tonight to thank him for putting this together. It takes a lot of work to put something like this together.
So everyone should please make sure to go over to Tagan tonight and thank him. Now that I've said it, it doesn't count as much because Tagan just walked in. It's a big schuz to be here every year. We should be zeicher to do it next year. The Bei'Mikdash, we're going to have thousands. I don't know how Yeshiva Hakotel is going to hold everybody. We're going to have thousands of people coming to be Oylerago. We'll make it. I heard that place expands a little bit, so it'll be a good makom. There is a story with the Lubavitcher Rebbe and Ellie Weisel. There is a number of very beautiful stories. With Eli Wiesel, famous Holocaust survivor There's a number of very beautiful stories with Eli Wiesel and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. In one of the stories, Eli Wiesel went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe after the Holocaust. And he said to the Rebbe Ever since the Holocaust I've been unable to cry.
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Haven't shed a tear. It's a tragic thing. Sometimes when we face enormous tragedy. So we shut down. And we're pushed, not able to cry. It's a very painful thing not to be able to release. If you've ever had a beautiful cry in your life, you know what I'm talking about. It's a very beautiful feeling of just a 10,000-pound weight being let off of my chest and shoulders. So Aliwizel said to the Rebbe, "I've been unable to cry. Rebbe, could you please teach me how to cry again?" And the Rebbe responded with his typical Not just positivity. Positivity is the wrong word. The Rebbe had a worldview that was exceptionally hopeful. And the Rebbe said to him, "It's not enough for me to teach you how to cry." I'll teach you how to sing. That was the story. The Rebbe said to Eliwizel that after the Holocaust, not only can I teach you how to cry But I could even teach you how to sing. I saw that related to this.
To this beautiful story The Kotzker Rebbe once asked the son-in-law of the Radomsker. He said, "Could you teach me something from your shver?" So he responded to the Kotzker that the Radomsker said as follows: We know that after Arna Cohen lost Nadav and Avihu The response was "Vayidom Arum." Arna Cohen reached a very high level where he was silent. He didn't say anything in the face of enormous tragedy. But the Radvansker said, "There's an even higher level than the Nara Koyin, and that's the level of David Amelek" Because David Amelek said, 'Lamani zamercha kavad v'lo yidom,' that there's a level, lamani zamercha, there's a level of singing that a person can find in the face of tragedy v'lo yidom. It's even higher than silence. I don't need to say this, and everybody's talking about this these days. Here in Eretz Yisrael, we feel it in a much deeper way than anywhere else. But we're in very unusual times right now.
Even just walking here Walking through the streets of the old city, which is the most beautiful place in the world to walk through. Is such a strange cognitive dissonance that exists. That on the one hand. There are children that are just like screaming in the streets, and I saw they were selling cotton candy and juice, and everyone was so happy and smiley. And on the other hand To get here I had to talk my way through a whole bunch of barricades because they didn't want to let me in. They wanted me to go the long way because Lomaisa, we're in a time of. I don't know how to say it. We're in a time where it's an esmolchama. We're in the middle of a war. How are we sitting here in zman simchasehu when we have brothers and sisters that are still chaturim that are still being held hostage?
How can we sit here in yeshiva Lakotel tonight, walking around with smiles on our faces, learning Torah? When I have talmidim in Lebanon that I message them every day on WhatsApp and it's one check because they've had their phones off since Yom Kippur. Since Yom Kippur, they haven't had their phones on. I saw on my WhatsApp status today that one of the wives of one of the soldiers was posting pictures of her and her family, but without her husband. Without her husband, because her husband is off in Lebanon. I was thinking to myself, what is that like? Take a second to think to yourself, what is that like for a young mother with Kanai Nahar, three children? Taking their children on tayulim with a husband who's off at war, and no contact. It's not like you can WhatsApp and say, 'I just want to check in. Are you okay?' The phone is off. Lagam right.
How can we be sitting here? How can we be doing anything but tearing Korea? How could we? How could there be not fifty feet from here? How could there be children singing in the streets of Yerushalayim? How could that be? And if it's a kasha in all of Sukkot, then kal v'chaymer, it's a kasha in Simchas Torah. How are we going to dance? I know everybody in the world is talking. Everybody in the world is writing articles and giving shiurim on this now. How in the world are we supposed to dance? What are we going to do? What are we going to do? We're going to be in yeshiva. We're going to be dancing. We're going to be going crazy. This is the way that we should be celebrating Simchas Torah. On the one hand, the answer has to be yes. How are we going to celebrate Simchas Torah? And to temper
To temper our feelings on Simchas Torah, to have any sense of aveilus on Yom Tov is inappropriate. This was a conversation that I had with the Rosh Hashanah. We were debating in the car because the Rosh Hashanah got up and he said, "You know why we're doing something on October seventh because we don't want to be peygeah in the yomtiv of Simchas Torah." So October seventh this year doesn't fall out on Simchas Torah. I felt very much the opposite. I felt like it didn't happen on October seventh. It happened on Simchas Torah. And to make it about October seventh And I think there's something to both. Obviously, the Rosh Hashanah took the brisker approach. The brisker approach, the halachic man approach of l'maisa you can't have any avelus on yontif, and that's true. But on the other hand, how could we separate what happened from Simchas Torah? I think that's also equally true. Maybe within these two halves, there's something greater. But the shi'le is really in a mystic way. How are we going to approach Simchas Torah this year? Just a very simple way. How are we going to dance?
B'cholal, the entire institution of Simchas Torah is a fascinating institution. Some chaz Torah is not mentioned anywhere in the Torah. It's not mentioned anywhere in the Gemara. Briskers, I imagine, will sit and learn in basic matters. Sit and learn. What do you mean, sitting and dancing? It's not mentioned anywhere in Torah. It's not mentioned anywhere in the Gemara. It's not institutionalized and formalized like Purim or Chanukah. It doesn't commemorate any historical event. Other rabbi, it was something that was a grassroots development that occurred over many thousands and thousands of years. Remember that in Eretz Yisrael, they only finished the Torah. Used to be, they only finished the Torah every three and a half years. It was only in Bavel, in Gullus that they split up the Parshiyos. We should finish the Parshiyos every single year. There's a fifty-four Parshiyos cycle. So it became a minig in Bavel that when they finished the Parshiyos at the end of the year, they made a siyum like we make siyumim in Klal Yisrael, and from those siyumim that they made there became this institution called Simchas Torah.
So to understand in a deep way the inyan, what's the inyan of Simchas Torah? What's the inyan becholal that we have a yomtiv that everybody in Chal Yisrael celebrates, that we all dance on Simchas Torah. But there's a yomtiv that's somehow totally. You'll forgive me for saying this. It's chaotic. It's haphazard. It wasn't formalized. It doesn't commemorate anything. So what exactly is the inner nature of Simchas Torah? Il Gemara in Baba Basra. Gemara in Baba Basra Tazavam Nalas says as follows: Who wrote the last eight psukim of the Torah? Who wrote the last eight psukim of the Torah? These are the psukim that deal with the death of Moshe Abinu. So it's stuck. It's a tricky situation. Rav Yehuda of Nehemiah say that it was Yehoshua Because Moshe Abinu could not have written a sheker. How could Moshe Abinu have written about his own death that didn't happen?
So it must be that Yehoshua wrote the last eight psukim of the Torah. Rabbi Shimon says, "No, Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the entire Torah." Until now, Hashem dictated and Moshe repeated every single word, and then he wrote down every single word. For the last eight psukim, Hashem dictated, and the Gemara says that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote with tears in his eyes. That's what the Gemara says. So we have a machlokes between Rav Yehuda and Rav Nachmiah on one hand, or Rav Shimon on the other. It seems to be a very simple Gemara until you start thinking about it a little bit. There are three very obvious questions. Each side really makes no sense. First of all, the sheet of Rav Yehuda and Rav Nachmiah that says that it was Yehuda that wrote the last eight pesukim of the Torah is a very difficult sheet to understand because how could anybody but Moshe Rabbeinu write the Torah? This is Meishabenu's Torah. Meishabenu wrote the Torah. Obviously, Meishabenu wrote the Torah. How could it be that we're going to say that Yeshua wrote the last eight pesukim?
But on the other hand, how could you say that Meishabenu wrote the Torah if it would have been untrue? Meishabenu's v'sairasaiyemes. Each side really has a chisaron that it has to answer. Rav Yudar of Nehemya has to answer how it could be that Yeshua did Torah and not Meishabenu. And Rabbi Shimon has to answer how it could be that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote something that wasn't true. And one last question before we get to Marsha is a very beautiful answer. What's the significance of the fact that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the last eight psukim in tears? What's the significance of the fact that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote it and he was crying while he wrote it? Listen to this Marsha, an unbelievable Marsha. It was worth it to come six thousand miles just to hear this Marsha. Marsha says as follows. He says it doesn't mean that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the final psukim in ink while he was crying. That's not what the Gemara means.
It means that Moshe Rabbeinu wrote the last eight psukim of the Torah with his tears. That's what Marsha says. That when Avodah Baruch was dictating to Moshe Rabbeinu the last eight psukim of the Torah that dealt with his own death He was crying. And it formed the words of the last eight psukim of the Torah. So it comes out an unbelievable thing Because now we see how Moshe Rabbeinu could have written the last eight psukim Even though it wasn't true. Because if he would have written them in ink, you'd have a kasha. If Moshe Rabbeinu would have written the last eight psukim in ink, that's a kasha. Did you write something that's not true? He didn't write them in ink. He wrote them with his tears, and the Marsha takes it a step further. He says, "Really, it's not a machlekes. Everybody agrees." He says, "What happened? Moshe Abin wrote the last eight psukim with his tears. Yeshua came along and filled in the contours of the words that were written in tears. Yeshua came along and wrote them in ink.
So really, both sides agree. Now you see how Mamash the Gemara works out perfectly. On the one hand, it's Moshe m s v s r s m s. Because Moshe Rabbeinu wrote it. How did he write it? He couldn't write it if it wasn't true. He didn't write it with ink. He wrote it with his tears. So how was it finished? Yeshua wrote the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu cried. That's what the Marsha says. An unbelievable Marsha. But this Marsha gives us an incredible insight into the nature of Torah. It pains me to say this, but we have to be willing to say the hard thing. There's two ta'irs. There's the ta'ira that generations of Kula Yisrael have written with tears The ta'ira of their own deaths The ta'ira that when they stood Al Kiddush Hashem and they were murdered throughout history by the Nazis, by the Crusaders, by the Inquisitionists.
Klal Yisrael has written a Torah in tears. We came along and we wrote the Torah of our own death, the same way that Moshe Rabenu wrote the Torah of his own death, and he cried those words onto the Torah, and it became the words of the Torah. There are generations of Klal Yisrael that have written the Torah with their own tears. And then there are generations that come after that And it is our achrayus to write the Torah that they cried. It's not just Moshe Rabbeinu and Yeshua. It is not just the passing of the torch from one leader to the next. It's every single yid and every single generation. We are in a very unique moment in history. The truth of the matter is that our grandparents They wrote a Torah in ink. Of a Torah that perhaps in history had never been written before.
After the Holocaust, so many tears, millions and millions of tears were cried that would never form a tire. They were the letters of tire, but they never had the capacity to actualize their dreams. I was in the middle of reading a book about the partisans. Partisans. There was a ghetto in Vilna. Everyone hears about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. There was a ghetto in Vilna that they exterminated. Eighty thousand Jews were in that ghetto, and they took them to a forest in Ponar. And they murdered these Jews, thousands upon thousands at a time. And even after the Russians were coming and the Nazis found out about it They had whatever sheir shapleta, whatever couple of yidden were remaining They had them digging up the graves and making mass burnings of the bodies so that they wouldn't find out about the atrocities that occurred. You're talking about levels of barbarism and horrific brutality that we cannot even begin to imagine.
And I was thinking as I was reading this, I was like, "How many How many sifrei Torah were cried in the forest in Ponar? How many sifrei Torah were cried in Vilna when they were exterminating the Vilna ghetto? How many sifrei Torah were written in Auschwitz? How many gedilay Torah did we lose? There's a story that I heard from Rav Chanan Yerushon. It's an amazing story. He tells a story about Rav Gifter. It was Rav Shiva of Telz. And Rav Gifter was talking about what we lost in the Holocaust. So he said in Telz in Europe In Telz in Europe The thing was if you were a serious bachelor, you didn't get married until you were in your thirties. Sit and learn. You're running to get married in your twenties. Today you get married when you're a fetus. Guys get married like. Their first semester in YU, everyone's already married.
But it used to be sit and learn 15, 16, 17 years before you get married. So Rav Gifter said he was learning with his chavrusa, and he saw a guy in his 20s outside the beis medrash. They had a lobby area like we have over here, and he saw a guy dancing in the lobby. And Rav Gifter turned to his chavrusa and he said he got engaged. What type of balgiver is this to get engaged when he's so young? Sit and learn, learn, become an accomplished talmid chacham. So it was nesparr afterwards that the boy wasn't engaged But he had answered a very difficult rashba that he had been really struggling with And he and they were so excited that they went outside and started dancing. They wanted to dance in the basement because they didn't want to disturb everybody, so they went outside. They were dancing.
So Gifter used to say, we didn't lose just hamidachachem, we lost the musug. That you would leave the basic medrash and dance if you found for the difficult rashba. There was a shveri rashba and you were breaking your teeth on that rashba, and you didn't. And now you got to the answer of that rashba. You were so besimcha. There was I can't imagine the gishmak. If you've ever spent time crying over a difficult rambam, you know the gishmak of answering a difficult rambam, of answering a difficult rashba. Rav Gifter said that's what we lost in the Holocaust. We there was so much Torah that never got to be expressed so many Gedolei Torah And our grandparents came to America, they arrived on the shores of America, and they built And they built in the most unusual way. They had hatslacha that makes no sense. They built yeshivas and shuls and guys. I'm gonna say something. It's probably not so nice to say, but it's the emes. They did not build palaces. They said just. Go, get any kid they could into yeshiva. They were running around. Come, you want to be in yeshiva? You want to be in yeshiva? There was no such thing as acceptance letters. There was no such thing as recruiting.
Do you get in? Don't you get in? You got into yeshiva. You could go into yeshiva. Come to yeshiva. In fact, there's a ma'aseh that when they opened Chaim Berlin, Rishagafayvul Mendelovitch Zechesadik of Racha, Rishagafayvul who was the founder of Yeshiva Tarvadas, he drew a line in the map of Brooklyn and he told Rvutner, he said, "I won't take anyone from your side of the line. This way, you could build up Chaim Berlin. Not only that, he said, I won't take any of your donors." Anybody who lives on this side of the line now they're donors to Chai in Berlin. Could you imagine that today? Could you imagine a person who's running a campaign saying, "I reached my amount. Now I'm going to start giving out money to all the other yeshivas." There was, they were desperate just to get people in the door in caravans and shacks. And what happened the next generation? We took those yeshivas that our grandparents built, and then we built them into palaces. Our yeshivas today are stunning. Our shuls are stunning. Our communities are incredible. The chesed that goes on in our communities—you know—if a kid goes off the derech, it's hard.
It's hard to go off the derech. Not just because I'm leaving the infrastructure of my family and my community. It's such a beautiful community. It's an amazing community. Think about where you went to high school. Think about the shuls that you grew up in. They're stunning. They're beautiful. They're beautiful. A couple years ago, a certain neighborhood—they tore down their shul and built a thirty million dollar school in its place. There was a big tumult, like so much money for a new building. The old building was fine, but the Rav got up and he said, 'No, we have to continue to build. We have to continue to build.' I don't know if I agree with him or don't agree with him, but the idea today that our schools are palaces, this is amazing. Our grandparents and our parents, we owe a debt of gratitude to every single person that built our community.
Who doesn't have a timech Shabbos? Who doesn't have a tzala in their community? If you break down on the side of the highway, you can call a chassidish guy and he'll come jack up your car in two seconds. What don't we have in our community? If Chassidim get sick, if you have a child who has special needs, seriously, our community—it's unbelievable what they built after the Holocaust. It's unbelievable. And our generation is in a very unique place because last year on Simchas Torah There was a Torah that was written in tears. And it's the first time in our lifetimes. When I say our lifetimes, I mean us. I don't mean our lifetimes like our parents and grandparents. But in our lifetime, it's the first time that we ever have to think about a Torah of tears. That's what it was like for those of you who were here last year to see chevr on Yom Kippur. I'm sorry to see chevr on Simchas Torah.
Turning on their phones Turning on their phones. Yidden who would never turn on their phones on Yom Tov. They heard and they turned on their phones and they said What do we have to do? And those that didn't go, how could we continue to dance? We were all stuck in this very uncomfortable matzah. We didn't know what was going to be A talmud of our yeshiva. So he turned and he heard right away and he turned on his phone. And he told me that he got in his car and he just went. He didn't know what was going to be. And he met up with his pluga. His mifakade was trying to get anybody on the phone to try to get rishus to go in. What are we doing here? It was such a tumult. Nobody knew what was going on. So the mifakade said to the chevra, he said, "Look, I'm going in." I can't command any of you to come in after me because there's no tsivui. There's no command that came in.
He said, 'I can't tell you what's going to be. I'm just telling you, I'm going, and if you want to come with me.' So this Talmud Avi he told me he said everybody went Vada everybody went who was going to stay behind they all wanted it so he went and he said what was it like he said Rebbe it was like a video game it was like a video game he said your mamish it was like a first person video game your training kicks in and you're just pushing back the enemy and there's bullets whizzing over your head and you don't know what's going to be around the next corner and he said my life was flashing before my eyes. It's mamshah video game. There's no reset. There's no respawn. There's no NPCs in a video game like that. It's, it's, it's real And not everybody made it out. Thousands of Yidden were murdered on that day
And since then, even though it's Benisim v'neflows, and Rabbi said we have to have tremendous hakaras hatov. And I want to be clear, we have to have unbelievable hakaras hatov to the Rebbe Anisholim for this past year, as difficult as it was on October 7th, and as difficult and as painful and as heartbreaking as it's been. To lose the chatufim that we lost, and to lose every single soldier that we lost, as difficult and as painful as that's been, we have to have unbelievable alkar satov. Not only for the fact that so many of our enemies have been wiped out. But also for the fact that the emissaries al pider chateva we should have lost much more. At Pider Chateva we should have lost much more. My brother spoke to one of the heads of Mada of all of Israel. So he said, "You should know, we were expecting in the beginning of the war."
50 a day, that was the number they were expecting to lose. So far in this war, they're holding by one or two a day. Again, there's some days better, some days worse, but one or two a day, that's where we're holding. Nisim v'niflos, we have to have unbelievable akhar zatov. For the first time in our lifetime, we're holding now by a tyra of tears. Thousands of Jews will never be able to write their sefer torah in ink. That's what it means to have your life cut short in the final moments of your life. You write a tirah with tears. It's the tirah of all the things I'll never accomplish. It's a tirah of I'll never get married, and I'll never be zaychad to have children, and I'll never be a builder in our community, and I'll never be able to realize my hopes and my dreams. I'll never be able to do any of these things. That's what in the final moments of your life, there's unbelievable levels of regret of all the things a human being is unbelievably creative.
We can't stop being creative. Every single person in this room. When we say every single person is an ice in the Torah, we mean it. We don't just mean it in the poetic sense of the way that they say it in every single shmuz. That if even one sefer, if even one letter from a sefer Torah is missing, the entire Torah is possible. Avada, that's true. But we mean it in a deeper way. The Torah is kiheim chayinu ve'erichemino. The Torah is life itself. Every one of us has so much life inside of us. Every one of us has so much to give. And in the final moments of a person's life, there's a tire that they don't get to write; they just get to cry. But the actual letters in ink To be able to see their children grow up, to be able to have nachas from their children, to stand under the chuppah. To be able to pay yeshiva tuition, to be able to be marbit's tire, to be able to give.
These people were never able to write their tire. That means we have to write their tire. The same way that Yeshua had to fill in. The tears of Meisher Abenu. Every single one of us in this door is chayev to write the Sefer Torah that those Jews never got to write. And it's not just our Torah; it's their Torah. It's a hemshich. If it's not a hemshich, it's not their Torah. If you are writing your Torah and you are sitting here in Eretz Yisrael this year, and you think I am writing my Torah, this is my time. There is a shprach in yeshivas. It's a terrible shprach. We should never use it. You should never use these words. It's a horrific thing to say. People say it, they don't even realize what a terrible thing it is to say. They say it's my year to be selfish. Chas v'shalom. There's no such thing as a year being selfish.
A year is only giving. A year is only selfless. Maybe it's your year to be inwardly focused. Maybe it's your year to take care of building yourself in a certain way. But chas v'shalom, never to be selfish. If you're sitting here in Eretz Yisrael, or anywhere in the world, right now And you're focused on writing your taira. Then you've missed the point. It happened on Simchas Torah. It didn't happen on October seventh. We want to celebrate it on October seventh because you don't want to have to deal with the Avilos Lanyontev. I understand, but make no mistake. It happened on Simchas Torah. Our response has to be a Simchas Torah response. It means that every single moment of our lives from here on in have to be defined, not limited to the tragedy of Simchas Torah of last year. But in an expansive way. Those tears obligate us to be a different type of bentira this year.
That I'm not alone. I'm part of an organism. Part of an organism called Klal Yisrael. I sometimes wonder what's going to be with the next generation. We raise, it's like guys have trouble davening with a minion sometimes. I daven better when I daven alone. This is a living organism. This is a community. This is a family. This is one guf, the Yerushalmi says. To daven by yourself without Yenem sitting next to you, if you're not part of a minion, means you're missing the point of how you reach out to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. A yid cannot reach out to Hakadosh Baruch Hu alone. We reach out to Hakadosh Baruch Hu as a community, as a family, as guf echad. Kol Yisrael ruym leshed basukachas. A person can't say I'm davening to the Rebbeinu Shalom without a minion. What's that mean? You're davening to the Rebbeinu Shalom without a minion. Where's your minion?
Where's your minion? What are you a part of? The reason our grandparents were able to build what they built in America is because they understood they had an achrayas. They had an achrayas to the people that came before them, and they had an achrayas to the people that came next. And we also have an achrayas. You might think I'm 18, 19, 20 years old. Maybe I'm sitting here in Yeshivat Hakotel on Leil Hashanah Raba. I'm an achrayas to myself. You have an achrayas to yourself for what you're going to become. In this room right now, we don't know who's sitting in this room. But in this room right now, I know for sure there are leaders of Klal Yisrael that are sitting in this room. There are leaders of their community. There are Marbitzei Torah. We have unbelievable levels of talent in this room right now. In Klal Yisrael, it's unbelievable what people are doing. For yourselves? For yourselves? Is this what we raised? A generation of selfish people who are only focused Chassid Shalom on themselves? I can't possibly be.
That's not the way our grandparents raised us. It's not the way our parents raised us. You have to have loyalty to something bigger than yourself. We're not just writing a Torah for ourselves anymore. Maybe we're distant from the Holocaust, so maybe we don't think of that Torah of tears as our Torah anymore. But we all lived through Simchas Torah last year. For those of us that were here, and for those of us that were here the entire year last year, we saw We saw what it was like. We went to the Levayas. We listened to the Hespedim. We heard the lives that will never be lived. We saw it with our own eyes. And if you came this year and you're only Shenaf and you're just in the beginning So you were in America last year, but you're seeing right now when you walk through the streets.
You, it's very easy to look around in the streets and see a mother and a father who are worried. Where's my kid? Do you know how many soldiers got married this year, guys? Do you know how many wives there are that have spent less than a couple of weeks with their husbands, that they shavuot brachos, and then the boys went right back to war? If it doesn't impact you, if it doesn't break your heart Of course it does for everybody here. I'm talking to you. I know I'm talking to the people that have a leiv nishpar. I know that every one of us has a broken heart. I know every one of us is so sensitive to these tears that have been cried. But does it impact us in a way that it changes the way we see the future? Simchas Torah has a strange history.
It commemorates no historical event. You don't find it in the Gemara. You don't find it in the Torah. It's not like Purim or Chanukah. It's never been formalized. You know what it is? It's from Galus. That's where Simchas Torah was born. Simchas Torah is not Shavuos. Shavuos is in the Torah. Shavuos is a formal yom tefillah. Simchas Torah is born of pain. And one thing a yid knows A yid knows how to take all of the tears, all of the pain that's been experienced in this world, and we know how to dance. We know how to look to the future and not just look to the past. This was what Elihu Zel was begging the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He said, "Unleash me from my past." The Rebbe said, 'You can't just unleash yourself from the past. You have to be able to learn to sing about your future.'
That's a higher level." There's a higher level, and by the way, if you want to see it, you could see it. You could look all around. I'm not going to say what I want to say right now for sneas reasons, but the person that I'm speaking to knows who I'm speaking to. Rabbi said there are people we've seen it who suffered immeasurable tragedies, but we see how they're future oriented. We see how they look at what happened. They look at the tragedy of the past and say, "What's next? What are we doing next?" Eli Moshe Zimbalist, Hashem Yikom Damo. Eli Moshe Zimbalist was my mother's. Next door neighbor, who was her student for twelve years, Eli Moshe Zimbalist went to my mother's house three times a week to study with my mother. My mother was his teacher. The Zimbalist families They're unbelievable. The entire community is unbelievable.
Eli Moshe was killed And it was impossibly difficult. And since that time, the amount of initiatives that have come forth. So what are we going to do for Eli Moshe? We dedicate a beis medrash and dedicate all these programs. All these things are happening, l'zeher nishmas Eli Moshe. It's l'zeher nishmas in the sense of what are we building? What's the Torah that we're writing for eli moshe zemblust? What's the Torah that we're writing over all the chaturvim that we executed? What's the Torah that we're writing? The Torah that we're writing is not only the Torah of destroying our enemies. It changes the way we see the world. This is the Torah of Galus. We know how to dance when everything else has been destroyed. Could you imagine what it was like in Bava? Could you imagine the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed? And they said, "Hevra" Let's dance like we were back in the Beis Hamikdash. That's the origins of Simchas Torah.
Finish with the story that I just read, and it could be many of you read the story also. But even if you didn't, and even if you did, it's kedai to hear the story again. My dear friend, Rabbi Judah Michel, wrote this story, and I was so inspired by this story. It bears repeating. We should repeat the story. We should make it part of davening. We should say the story every single day. He wrote a ma'isa that Rabbi Hutner said over about the first Ger Rebbe. Chedush Arim. Chedush Arim was one Simchas Torah was watching all the boys dance And he turned to the person sitting next to him. And he said, "You see those two boys?" See, you're gonna see this boy is gonna finish first, and this boy is gonna be able to go much longer. The guy wanted to see, is what's this nevuah of the chedush arim? What's this? Chedush abal my, abal mofes, able to tell which one is gonna end sooner. But kachav, and it's exactly what it was. The first boy finished, and he sat down, and the second boy continued to dance.
Chassid asked the chedush arim, "Rabbi, how did you know?" So, chedush arim said. The first boy is dancing for all the Torah that he learned last year. The second boy is dancing for all the Torah that he will learn this coming year. So the Torah that you learned, it's finite. It's already over. It's in the past. The Torah that you can learn, the future, that's infinite. A person who dances for the future, they dance. They could dance forever. Chavra The past was difficult. The past was exceptionally difficult. Walk out that door. Yidden are dancing in the streets of Yerushalayim. Zman sim chasenim. Are our hearts breaking on the inside? Of course, every one of us. There's a story with the chasenish. Chasenish used to sit with so many yidden from all different walks of life. Used to come to the chasenish And somebody asked the chasenish, they said, Rebbe, how could you sit and listen to the pain of all these Jews? Doesn't it break you?
So the chasenish said, mamish breaks me. Just to hear the pain of all of these Jews, it mamish breaks me. But there's an even deeper place where the pain doesn't go. That is Klal Yisrael. Every one of us walks through the streets. There's no Jew walking the streets right now who doesn't feel sensitive. You stop a Jew in the street right now and you say, "Are you in pain for what's happening?" Every Jew. I don't care what they're wearing on their head, what type of yarmulke, no yarmulke, this yarmulke, that yarmulke, this shaymle, that hat. Every single Jew in the streets right now, mamish, our hearts breaking. But there's an even deeper place where it doesn't go because we're able to look to the future and say, "But look what we're going to build." And I meant what I said. I meant what I said to Rabbi Tarigan earlier tonight. The future is very bright. Chaver, you're all going to be back here, Hashanah Rabbon, next year. There's not going to be a new crew, and it's not just going to be Hashanah Bet.
It's going to be thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of Jews expanded in the Beis Hamikdash. We are living in Messianic times. Would think that we're not living in messianic times. Our enemies are dropping like flies. Who knows what's coming around the corner? Who knows what's coming? It's wild to think. If you would have told a Jew after the Holocaust that there would be a state of Israel, if you would have told those Jews in the beginning of the state that Jordan and Egypt would be on our side, even if it's a tenuous peace, it's a peace in Jordan shoots down rockets and missiles from Iran. If you would tell this to people, that we wiped out Hamas. That we're taking over Hezbollah. Lebanon is being destroyed before our very eyes. Syria's not really an actor anymore, and Iraq is not really an actor anymore. And really, it's just us and Iran right now. These are Pashat Messianic times. It's a Purim showdown all over again. It's a wild story. You have to open your eyes. The future is exceptionally bright, but our responsibility is not just to allow the future to unfold. It's about what role we will play in the future. What Torah will we write this year, blessed Hashem? Abaye sagte: „Gut Yantiv für Gut Yar.“
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