Rav Mizrachi chlita - Rosh Hashana Is Not a Picnic

Published on September 7, 2026

אִם יִרְצֶה הַשֵּׁם

Neither transcript nor post has been reviewed by R. Mizrachi chlita

Based on the live chiour of Rav Yosef Mizrachi chlita (same material also uploaded as The Blessings VS The Curses).

Rav Mizrachi chlita came back from Eretz Yisrael and opened close to judgment day.

Ask people on the street what Rosh Hashana is. They say: beginning of a new year. The head of the year. Every fool knows the name.

Ask what it means.

Picnic. Tiberias. Eilat. Europe. A boat. Rocket ball with the kids.

They do not understand that today is judgment day. While they pack for a trip, HKBH is judging them, their children, and their family for the year ahead based on the past.

The wake-up hashkafah of Rav Mizrachi chlita

This chiour is not soft inspiration. It is a wake-up.

Knowledge before slogans. Knowing the name Rosh Hashana is worthless if you do not know it is Yom HaDin.
HKBH runs the world with exact justice. Blessings chase the one who listens. Curses chase the one who refuses. Midah keneged midah. History already proved the tochachah.
Fear the deed, not the microphone. People fear hearing the curses read. They do not fear doing what brings the curses every weekday.
Torah belongs on top of the world. If the nations do not know it and admire it, that failure is ours. We did not yakim.
Love rebuke. Suspect compliments. Rebuke can save you. Compliments can leave you comfortably numb until Gehinnom.
"Good Jew, not religious" is not good. Nice to neighbors while wiping HKBH out of your life is worse than plain nastiness. It is spitting at your Father while smiling at strangers.
Serve with joy. Cold mitzvot still leave Heaven with a complaint: you had everything, and you did not serve besimchah uvetuv levav.
Do not tell yourself you will be fine. The heart that hears the curse and says "my way" is the heart Nitzavim says HKBH will not agree to forgive.
Punishment has a ceiling. Erasure does not. HKBH promised the Avot. He can punish. He will not replace Am Yisrael. So use the fact that you are still standing.

That is the ethos: wake up, know, listen, uphold, take the din seriously before the King writes.

Judgment day, not a vacation

Rosh Hashana is Yom HaDin. Life, health, money, children, shalom bayit, whether you will be here next year.

Rav Mizrachi chlita says people have no idea what they live for. They do not know how they expect to succeed when they do not know what the day is.

This year Rosh Hashana falls on Shabbat. That makes it harder. On the first day we do not blow shofar. We blow on the second day. The shofar is like crying: long cries, short cries, broken cries. The mother of Sisera cried for her wicked son. HKBH is sensitive even to that crying. A Jew who does not come, does not cry for his life, does not make real promises to HKBH: how exactly is the year supposed to look?

Those who wake up only on Rosh Hashana also come too late. From Rosh Chodesh Elul there is a whole month. Ashkenazim blow shofar every day in Elul. The days are serious. Sleep through them and show up on judgment day with empty words, and you already wasted the preparation HKBH gave you.

Ki Tavo: almost all the curses already happened

Rav Mizrachi chlita goes into Parashat Ki Tavo, the scariest parasha in the Torah: about 98 curses. He says if you check them one by one, almost all already happened to us. Even the ones you would never believe were possible.

Listen: blessings chase you.
Refuse: curses chase you.

Not theory. Already history.

What Arur means

Arur is the curse HKBH gave the snake. A terrible curse. Once that word lands on a person, it is very difficult to get rid of. The snake is cursed for eternity. Canaan is cursed forever.

Eliezer, the faithful servant of Avraham, wanted his daughter to marry Yitzchak. Avraham had trusted him with everything. Still Avraham told him: a blessed and a cursed cannot marry. You are cursed to slavery. We carry the divine blessing. HKBH does not mix them.

That is the weight of arur. Not a scary word for shul. A decree that stays.

The curses the nation answered Amen to

Rav Mizrachi chlita walks the list. Among them:

One who makes an idol or statue and hides it. Also a 3D idolatrous image. Open idolatry in the front yard is not better. Rav Mizrachi chlita also rebukes Jews who treat a dead rabbi like an idol: grave, chair, picture, salvation from him instead of from HKBH. When you ask how something happened and they answer only with the rabbi's name, and change the subject when you say HKBH helped you, that is idolatry wearing a kippah. Admiration of talmidei chachamim is one thing. Worship is another. Zero tolerance.
One who takes his parents lightly (makleh). In America it is common: kids block and hang up on parents 30, 40 times while the parents go crazy at 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. Rav Mizrachi chlita says every hang-up is a new punishment. Those kids are cursed forever like the snake. Beating parents until blood, or cursing them with HKBH's Name, is death-penalty territory, not "just" arur.
One who moves his neighbor's boundary little by little until theft looks like a property line.
One who misleads the blind. Not only a blind man on Queens Boulevard whom you send the wrong way. Anyone blind in that subject: an old man who does not know his Flatbush house is now worth millions, a Jew who never learned Shabbat, a soul who thinks Rosh Hashana is a picnic. Taking advantage of that blindness is cursed.
One who beats his friend in a hidden place. Rav Mizrachi chlita connects this also to lashon hara behind the back. You already knocked him down without fists.
One who takes a bribe to spill innocent blood. Convict the innocent. Kill the wrong man.
אשר לא יקים את דברי התורה הזאת. Whoever does not uphold the words of this Torah. Yakim is not "I agree in my heart." It is to establish, to lift up. Routinely and on purpose not keeping even one mitzvah puts a person into that net. Rav Mizrachi chlita says that means almost everyone is in danger of that curse.

Two secrets Rav Mizrachi chlita teaches

Secret 1: why people fear the reading more than the deeds

People are afraid to go up for the aliyah of the curses. Afraid the reader will read the curses over them. They are not afraid, every weekday, to do the things that bring the curses.

Rav Mizrachi chlita: the secret of lo yakim is that the Torah is not where it is supposed to be. It is supposed to be on top of the world. Everyone should know it. Everyone should admire it. If that is not the case, it is because of us. We do not do enough.

Today it is easy: make a clip, send it to thousands of groups, promote it, bring speakers, sponsor Torah. In the old days Shmuel went community to community. At the end of his speech he reminded them he did not take their donkey, even though they owed him transportation. Same idea as a rabbi who refuses the leased car and gas card and drives his own car from Monsey to Manhattan: he keeps the teaching clean. Upholding Torah means putting it in front of people, not hiding from the aliyah while living the curse.

Secret 2: mashpia and mushpa

Rav Mizrachi chlita: when two people speak, one side is influenced and one side is the influencer. If you need to influence the other (to wake him up, to make him religious), you cannot let him influence you back.

Chazal say: love those who rebuke you. Hate the ones who compliment you. Not hate the person. Hate the compliment.

Why? Compliments keep you comfortably numb. You think you are fine. By the time you notice, you are dead already, and it is too late. Rav Mizrachi chlita brings the song Comfortably Numb, and Dust in the Wind: one of the top rabbanim in the world today became religious from that song, as a secular army officer who started asking what we are living for, went to a seminar, and has been learning around the clock for decades.

Compliments also destroy a rich man's cheshbon. Someone gives $10,000 a month to a yeshiva. People praise him. He is happy. Keep it this way. He could have given $100,000 easily. In the next world he will scream: why only 10 when it could have been 100 or 200? The compliment helped freeze him. Rebuke would have saved him.

Nice to the neighbors, war with HKBH

Rav Mizrachi chlita asks: who is worse, an evil person who is not religious, or a "wonderful" person who is not religious?

Someone nice to every stranger on the block, helps with bags, washes the car, and has zero gratitude to HKBH. Or someone nasty to everyone, including HKBH.

He says the nice one is worse. It is like a son who is sweet to all the neighbors and spits in his father's face. That is not a good person. That is a hypocrite. You have the middah of kindness in you, and on purpose you use it for creation while you go to war with your Father.

"I'm a good person, I'm just not religious" is exactly how a person walks into these curses with a clean conscience.

Head, not tail. Or scattered.

If you listen: blessed in the city and in the field, coming in and going out. Enemies come one way and flee many ways. Barns full. A holy nation. The nations see the Name of your G'd on you. Head, not the tail. Only up, never down.

If you do not listen: the mirror. Cursed in city and field. Confusion. Fear morning and night. Children taken (Rav Mizrachi chlita says: look at October 7). The enemy among you rises. You become the tail.

Then the punch line:

תחת אשר לא עבדת את ה׳ אלקיך בשמחה ובטוב לבב מרוב כל

Because you did not serve HKBH with happiness and a good heart, from all the good He gave you.

Not only rebellion. Cold mitzvot. Serving without simchah. Heaven has a complaint about that too.

15 million instead of billions

We should have been like the stars. Nations that started in the same era of history are in the billions. We have about 15 million. Rav Mizrachi chlita says instead of on the order of 4 billion, we are a remnant. That is what "you did not listen" looks like after millennia: almost total erasure.

The limit: punish, not erase

After all that, the hard happy end:

HKBH will never wipe Am Yisrael off the face of the earth. He promised Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. He does not replace their children with another nation. He is not a congressman who promises one thing and does the opposite.

Maximum: punish.
He will not erase the covenant people.

You are still here. You are still being judged. You can still return.

Rosh Hashana of Nitzavim: when HKBH will not forgive

Rav Mizrachi chlita closes that Rosh Hashana of Parashat Nitzavim is coming, with the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah and Yom Kippur right after.

In Nitzavim the Torah speaks of a person who hears the words of this curse and blesses himself in his heart: I will have peace, even though I follow my own heart (beshrirut libi elech). My way or the highway.

On that person the Torah says: לא יאבה ה׳ סלוח לו. HKBH will not agree to forgive him. Anger and jealousy smoke against that man. All the curses written in this book come on him. HKBH erases his name from under the heavens.

That is the RH parasha warning on the calendar Rav Mizrachi chlita is pointing to: the heart that hears the din and says "I'll be fine."

Guidance: mitzvot aseh and lo taaseh from this chiour

Rav Mizrachi chlita's mussar is not only diagnosis. Turn it into work. Below is practical guidance drawn from the hashkafah of this shiur. Not a full Shulchan Aruch. A checklist for the din.

Mitzvot aseh (do)

Treat Rosh Hashana as Yom HaDin. Come. Cry. Make real kabbalot. Do not leave the King writing while you are on a picnic.
Use Elul. Hear shofar. Prepare before the day arrives. Waking up only on RH is already late.
Kibbud av va'em. Answer parents. Speak with respect. Thank them for worrying. Treat them like parents, not like garbage.
Hakem et haTorah (yakim). Learn. Teach. Share a clip. Send to groups. Promote. Bring speakers. Sponsor Torah so another Jew hears the truth.
Accept tochacha. Love the one who rebukes you. Let guilt wake the conscience. Stay the mashpia when you are trying to wake someone else; do not become mushpa to their numbness.
Give according to what HKBH gave you. If you can give 100, do not freeze at 10 because compliments made you comfortable.
Serve with simchah and tuv levav. Keep mitzvot, and keep them with a good heart, from the abundance you already received.
Return while you are still standing. Nitzavim means you are still here. Use Aseret Yemei Teshuvah and Yom Kippur. Repair what you broke between you and people, and between you and HKBH.
Fear HKBH and listen to His voice. Head, not tail, comes from not turning left or right after other gods and other sources.

Lo taaseh (do not)

Do not turn Yom HaDin into vacation. No "I'll deal with it later" while HKBH judges you and your children.
Do not make or worship idols. No statue, no hidden closet idol, no praying to a dead rebbe's picture or grave for salvation instead of HKBH.
Do not degrade parents. No blocking, no hang-ups as sport, no insults, no hitting, no cursing.
Do not steal by inches. No moving boundaries. No "everyone does it" theft dressed as cleverness.
Do not mislead the blind. No exploiting ignorance in money, halacha, or emunah. If they do not know, do not use that against them. Teach them.
Do not destroy a friend in secret. No hidden violence. No lashon hara that knocks him down behind his back.
Do not spill or enable innocent blood. No bribe, no false testimony, no crooked din against the innocent.
Do not leave the Torah on the floor of history. Ignoring lo yakim while Torah should be on top of the world is itself the wide curse.
Do not live on compliments. Do not stay comfortably numb. Do not hate the rebuker and hug the flatterer.
Do not say "I'm a good person, I'm just not religious." Nice to creation while at war with the Creator is hypocrisy, not righteousness.
Do not serve cold. Mitzvot without joy still bring the complaint of tachat asher lo avadeta... besimchah.
Do not bless yourself with false peace. Do not hear the curse and say beshrirut libi elech, I will be fine on my own path. That is the case where the Torah says HKBH will not agree to forgive.

Before the King writes

Do not pack for Eilat while the King is writing.

Know the day. Keep the aseh. Guard the lo taaseh. Take rebuke. Uphold Torah. Serve with joy. Do not tell yourself you will be fine.

Rosh Hashana. Aseret Yemei Teshuvah. Yom Kippur.

Enough time to change a decree. Not enough time to pretend you were never summoned.

אם ירצה ה׳ kindly partner with R. Mizrachi chlita's efforts of kiruv, kollelim and avrechim in E.Y. and Torah lectures.