אִם יִרְצֶה הַשֵּׁם
י׳ חֶשְׁוָן תשפ״ז
From the shiur of Rav Yosef Mizrachi chlita on Lech Lecha, 10 Cheshvan 5787.
Neither the transcript nor this post has been reviewed by Rav Mizrachi chlita. This is a student's drash of the shiur. It is not psak.
Oy to the wicked, oy to his neighbor. Until Lot left, HKBH did not speak to Avraham.
If you do it, do it right. Do not do anyone a favor. Decide: am I a servant of HKBH, or do I stay a faker until Mashiach comes and the fakers are exposed.
Yesterday Rav Mizrachi chlita spoke in Queens about the world as it stands. Tonight he opened the parashah. After the flood, eight people were left. Ten generations later the Torah begins to sit with the fathers.
1. The book has one Author
The nations split HKBH because they cannot hold Him.
They see mercy for the widow and the orphan, and they see Amalek erased, Shabbat punished, the flood covering a wicked world. Their common sense says: two gods. A kind one and an angry one. The Torah does not give them that door. He is one. There is none before and none after. The Ten Commandments already said not to have another.
The punishments do not come with a tag.
A man stands in the rain in a soaked suit because the jack will not lift the car, and he asks why this was done to him today. It may be twenty years old. It may be yesterday. HKBH does not print the reason on the tire.
People already know there is reward and punishment. Even a man who spoke against the religion an hour ago cries HKBH, help me when the trouble arrives. The speech against religion was not philosophy. It was a sedative for the conscience. Look where I grew up. Look what my parents were. HKBH will understand. Rav Mizrachi chlita's word for that was not compassion. It was an excuse.
Rabbi Wallerstein a"h told of a twenty-year-old girl, furious at her parents, speaking as if she had been crushed. What had they done. They bought her a Volvo. She had wanted a BMW. Ingratitude is a middah. It writes a person into a world where the Giver is never enough.
2. The live fish
Avraham is called Ivri. Ever is a side. The world walks one way. He walks the other.
How do you know if a fish is alive or dead. The dead fish come in with the wave. The one swimming against the wave is alive.
A person who takes whatever society, the feed, the room, pours into his mouth, has no spine. He is moved by a remote. The one who says prove it, let me check, let me think: that one is alive.
Avraham and Sarah were the first to do kiruv in the world. Karov: to bring close. He spoke to the men. She spoke to the women. There was no Torah at Sinai yet. The conversion was one question. Do you believe in the One who made the world, or in the idols everyone kisses. Yes: you are with us.
He was already fifty years married, from twenty-five to seventy-five, with no children. He took Sarai, their goods, and the souls they had made, and he went to the land he was shown. Shem's portion was being sat in by Canaan, Ham's son, who had been given Africa and took what was not his. HKBH promised Avraham two things at Shechem: children of his own, and this land returned to them. Avraham built an altar and thanked Him.
Later he pitched toward Beit El, because he saw a sin that would be done there. In Yehoshua, Achan took from the cherem after the command not to take gold or clothing from the fallen. One man drilled a hole in the floor of his cabin. The other ninety-nine went down with the ship.
Sometimes one person kills everyone with him.
That is already Lech Lecha. The neighbor in the tent is not a private hobby.
3. No questions asked
HKBH said: separate from your father. Go to the land I will show you. You will have children from a barren wife. You will have wealth and honor and blessing.
Avraham was seventy-five. It had taken fifty years to build a name in that place. He would start from zero among people who did not know him. He had no children. How much more did he have to suffer.
No question asked.
The same mouth that does not argue when he is told to leave, does not argue when he is told to take the son. He does not think a negative thought about HKBH. That is why half the world still says his name.
When they went down to Egypt he said she was his sister. The Zohar, as Rav Mizrachi chlita brought it, is that he was not afraid for Sarah. He saw an angel walking with her. She was not an ordinary woman. HKBH would tell him, later, to listen to her. A husband still has the last word in the house, and HKBH still counts a wife's tears against the budget of the man who caused them. Both are in the same Torah. Sarah smelled what a crooked guest was. On Yishmael she was a prophet, and he had to hear her.
The Ramban asked a hard question on "she is my sister." Ordinary people do not open their mouths to sit in judgment on the fathers. We say what is written. We do not invent a new Torah to make ourselves feel like apikorsim with a kippah.
4. Lot chose the cheese
Lot walked with them. He had no children and a fortune on the hoof: camels, cattle, gold, silk. If Avraham died, the servants would run. So Lot stayed near the money.
The cat sees the cheese in the bag and walks behind the owner. The minute there is a chance, it grabs.
Avraham knew the greed. He made Lot rich in his lifetime so the nephew would not sit waiting for a funeral. Then there was not enough grass. The shepherds fought. Lot's men let the animals eat from private fields in Canaan. That is theft. Avraham's men, raised by him, would not. Lot's answer was: the land was already promised, so it is already ours. It was not his yet. A man who eats the field while the deed is still in Heaven is already in Sodom.
Lot chose the green. He sat in the gate, which means he sat in their court. From the hour he left Avraham, Rav Mizrachi chlita said, he is marching in their parade. The people of Sodom were thieves and murderers, and they had a law: no guests. Kindness would bring immigrants. Eliezer, Avraham's servant, walked into a feast, filled a plate, and when they asked who invited him, he said: be quiet, or I will scream that I am your guest. One by one they fled the death penalty, and he ate.
If a man broke your head with a stick, you paid him. Eliezer took the stick to the judge. There was a bridge with a toll. Walk the camel through the water to save the coins, and on the far bank the police of Sodom were waiting: you cheated our income, now pay double.
That is not a cartoon of wickedness. It is a legal system with no yirah. Rav Mizrachi chlita's word for the clerk who will torture your building permit for four years because you would not bribe him was the same word: Sodom. People take because they think HKBH went to sleep, or made the world and walked away.
One day in Gehinnom, a billion dollars cash cannot justify. There is not one sin in the world that justifies even a minute there.
The people who escape it are the people who keep the law, who fear HKBH, and who, when they fall, run to teshuvah. The others do not care. That is why they can sit in the gate of Sodom and call it order.
5. Oy to his neighbor
Once Lot became wicked, HKBH did not come to Avraham the whole time he was next to him.
Oy to the wicked. That would be enough if the neighbor were wicked too. The sefarim add: oy to his neighbor. The neighbor is not the rasha. He is the one who is not allergic.
How can you love me, I break Shabbat. So what. How can you love me, I eat what is forbidden. So what. How can you love me, I married a man. So what, I accept everyone. A Jew who praises the wicked, King Shlomo already warned, is not with HKBH. He can give speeches. He is not connected to the Torah. If chillul Shabbat, bloodshed, theft, and to'evah do not disgust him, he has testified about himself.
A girl asked: I am becoming more religious. My sister sits on her phone in our room on Shabbat. I have nowhere else to sleep. Do I get punished. Rav Mizrachi chlita did not tell her to make a scene. HKBH sees if you suffer. If you hate the sin, if you try to pull them and it does not work, if it breaks your heart, that pain is read. He reviews the kidneys and the heart every second. He knows the difference between a roommate you were forced to have and a roommate you chose.
The other picture is a son who runs to hug the man who spits on his Father. Every breath is a gift. The mansion, the car, the healthy children: taken from HKBH and used against Him. Another spit, and another, and you kiss up to him on a podcast as if he were a rebbe. What kind of son are you.
Avraham separated from Lot. Then HKBH spoke again.
6. Do it right
A girl called Rav Mizrachi chlita. She had been on a date. The young man asked who she follows. She said she loves Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l. He asked, who else. She said Rav Mizrachi chlita. The boy said he would have to think whether he wanted a second date.
Rav Mizrachi chlita was not insulted for himself. Who is he, he said. But Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l was a servant of HKBH from aleph to tav. Ten thousand righteous Jews do not outweigh him on a scale. His books are in houses and shuls. After he left this world the Torah spread further, even into Hebrew in Eretz Yisrael, even into goyim who asked for a sefer and came closer to HKBH. The boy who flinches at that strictness, who needs a softer Rav Miller zt"l, who holds that the world is billions of years old while he wears a kippah, is not a small mismatch in taste. He is telling you the home.
How do you dare to call yourself religious.
He asked the modern kippot, Americans and Israelis, what they want for a son: a talmid chacham attached to HKBH for forty or fifty years, a modest house, children in kedushah, or an F-16, or a doctor. Ninety-nine percent, he said, with yarmulke and tzitzit, some with beards, answer the pilot or the doctor without a pause. People may be wicked. That is bechirah. The anger is the title. Orthodox. Religious. What is orthodox in you.
He has watched Birkat Hamazon not finished, not one word of blessing attended to. He has watched Shemoneh Esrei in twelve seconds, twenty, thirty, and they sit down. He timed a fast Israeli reading. The floor is four minutes. The man in front already took three steps back. Did they pray.
Muslim sheikhs put his yirat clips on their pages: shame on you, you have to hear from this Jewish rav how to behave in religion. A faker with a title is not in that picture.
If you do it, do it right. Do not do anyone a favor. Am I a servant of HKBH. Do I learn Torah from the right teachers, the right hashkafa, the books of Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l, and work on my character and my holiness, or do I stay a faker for the rest of my life. When Mashiach comes, the fakers will be exposed. It will be a big shame. We do not have that much time left. We have to wake up now.
Yirat Shamayim
Lech Lecha is not a travel story. It is the command to leave the rasha you have made your neighbor, including the one in the mirror who still wants the title.
HKBH does not speak to Avraham while Lot is in the tent. A Jew who is not allergic to a rasha is not with HKBH, no matter how many speeches he gives.
Desire for food and for the body has a timeout. HKBH built the pause so the pleasure does not turn to vomit. Money has no timeout. Lot followed the cheese into Sodom. That greed is the middah of this parashah.
A punch does not arrive with a label. Teshuvah is to run when you fall, not to write a speech that HKBH will understand you.
Four minutes is the floor of an amidah read like a Ferrari. Twelve seconds is not tefillah. A blessing you did not hear is not a blessing.
The live fish swims against the wave. The dead one is religious in the mouth and modern in the son he prays for.
If you do it, do it right. Mashiach will not be confused about who was a servant and who was a faker.
Kindly partner with Rav Yosef Mizrachi chlita and support the kiruv, the kollelim, and the avrechim in Eretz Yisrael, and the shiurim of Torah.