Tefillah - 163 False Values

Who De We Praise and Admire?

ויהללו ויברכו את שמך באמת – “And we praise and bless Your Name, in truth”. We give hilul (praise) to Hashem, but we say specifically that it should be with emes (truth).

There are times where we give halel (praise) to Hashem. Every day in Pesukei D’Zimrah, we are singing the praises of Hashem, and we also praise Hashem when we say on Halel on Rosh Chodesh and on the festivals. So there is a Halel we say at certain times, and there is also a ‘halel’ we say every day: Pesukei D’Zimrah.

But when we sing the praises of Hashem in Halel and Pesukei D’Zimrah, it must be a hilul that is in line with what’s on our hearts, so that “the month and heart are equal” as we praise Hashem. It should not be superficial; it should be coming from our hearts, so that we are uttering a truthful praise to Hashem.

To understand it better, a person is mehalel (praiseful) about what he truly admires deep down. Rabbeinu Yonah writes, “ish lifi mihalalo”, “a man according to his praise.” When we praise something, we are outwardly revealing what’s going on deep in our heart.

The root of all hilul we must give is to praise Hashem. Our yearning in life should be for Hashem and for His Torah.

When our heart truly yearns for Him, we find ourselves praising Hashem and His Torah, for that is what we admire deep down. But when the heart is mixed with various desires, we find ourselves praising things that are not true to Hashem’s Torah.

The Falsity of Admiring Community Figures

Surely those who grew up in a Torah home and who live in the world of Torah know in their minds that we are supposed to praise Hashem and the Torah, for that is what we value and admire. But if we think into it and we examine ourselves deeply, we will find that our values are not always in line with the virtues of Torah that we are supposed to admire; sometimes this is on a larger degree and sometimes it is on a smaller degree.

Understandably, those who do not live with the Torah’s values, who are very much mixed with the nations of the world, will end up admiring and praising the values which gentiles speak of. The secular world boasts of its strength and might, and the talents and external accomplishments of mankind. A person found in the world of Torah admires internal accomplishments, and not what the world admires.

However, even those in the Torah world are not always admiring and praising Hashem and His Torah and those who serve Him. There is a lot of admiration towards community figures, for example.

Understandably, those who serve the community with “emunah”, who are not trying to wrest control over the public, are people who possess fear of Hashem; such people should be praised, to a certain extent. But most people involved with helping the community are not doing so with “emunah” or for reasons that are “for sake of Heaven”. This is because very few people are capable of acting lishmah (with no ulterior motive), and this is true both when it comes to Torah learning as well as when it comes to helping the community.

When these community figures are praised and honored for their efforts, sometimes it is done out of total flattery, and sometimes it is done out of a sense of gratitude to them, which is a bit more of a refined motivation than flattery. But the common denominator between all of these honors accorded to them is that it is for reasons related to money, control, and power. In most instances, the community figure was not motivated by holy intentions to help out.

Just because these people are famous and admired doesn’t mean that they represent the Torah’s values. But people become accustomed to admiring and praising these community figures, and slowly it begins to corrode the spiritual values of the heart, as people get used to praising people whose lives are focused on gaining control and honor.

One doesn’t have to possess keen inner sight to notice this troubling attitude that is so prevalent: people who have control over the community (due to their money and power) are the ones who are honored by gatherings. There is a smell of ‘honor’ in the air there that people can sense, and this ‘honor’ is going to those who have control over the community.

Hashem knows how much truth and falsity is contained in all of this honor and fame that is being attributed to these people. He knows the percentages of how much good here is present, and what percentage of evil that is present; what the motivations of the person really are.

What results from this is that people are getting used to praising and admiring those who have power. The first negative outcome of it is that people are involving themselves with ‘good and evil mixed together’. It is not total evil of course, but it is very far from being mostly good.

A certain person is made famous for his good deeds, a certain tzadakah organization is made famous, all for reasons that are usually not for the sake of Heaven. And when people get used to this, it negatively affects one’s soul. Because a person is so used to this, he has become so callous to it that he doesn’t even feel the problem. It gets a person used to a life where he does not mainly admire and praise those who learn Torah and serve Hashem. Instead, the person finds himself admiring other things.

This was already a problem that began in earlier generations; it continues into our generation. There are many places outside of Eretz Yisrael (and there are also some places here in Eretz Yisrael too) where they honor people who have a lot of money, with the same prestige as the honor accorded to Torah scholars.

People who have money are given all kinds of prestigious titles, such as “HaNichbad” (honorable one), “HaGvir HaMuflag” (the wonderful philanthropist), etc., alongside their names. Why must they have these titles along their names? What is this power and control accorded to them? It is all a terrible ‘mixture of good and evil’.

If we are talking about Torah educators or those who are involved with chinuch that are given honor for their efforts, there is more reason to validate this kind of honor, but even so, it must not be overdone. It shouldn’t be done in a way that causes us to lose our deepest values. But it has gotten far worse than this. Honor is being accorded to all kinds of people - not necessarily people who commit cardinal sins, but people who do not have Torah values either.

Connecting To Evil

When we get used to giving praise and accord to people who do not have Torah values, we don’t realize that it’s causing us deep down to admire in some way those who don’t have Torah values. Sometimes, they are people who are considered ‘observant’ of Torah and mitzvos, and in other cases, they are people who are ‘connected’ to the Torah observant world, but not necessarily observant themselves.

We must realize that when we praise and give admiration to such people, it is slowly corroding away at the spiritual values that are in our heart. It causes our souls to become deeply connected with those people; it is not merely a matter of talking in admiration of them. When we speak about them in admiration, it slowly begins to affect our soul, causing our soul to become more and more connected with those people.

Sometimes this admiration is done verbally, and sometimes it is done mentally. It is possible (and in fact, it is very possible, and not a mere isolated occurrence) that a person verbally and mentally considers Hashem and the Torah to be the main thing in his life, but deep down in his soul, he has developed other values.

One who lives without self-awareness of course will not suspect that this might be the case; in his mind, he’s absolutely sure that his main values in life are Hashem, the Torah, and those who learn Torah and serve Hashem. But just because he is sure does not mean it is true. It can all be in his intellect and in his mouth, but in his heart, it is not so.

The Things We Read And Hear

Getting used to reading newspapers every day gets a person used to having admiration for people who do not have Torah values. Each day, the newspapers are basically screaming out the lifestyles and values of people who do not live a pure kind of life. And there are ways to “hear” all of this too.

It keeps sending information into us that is totally distant from a truthful life. It slowly connects one’s soul, more and more, to external values, with the more he reads and hears about these distant values.

The End of The Exile: Where Evil Attaches Itself To Us

The exile of Egypt is compared to a fetus in its mother’s womb; the Jewish people in the state of exile are not only forced to be nourished from the other nations – they have become embedded with them. That was the depth of the Egyptian exile, and that was why we so badly had to get out and be removed from them, where we were made into our own nation. In exile, we are like a fetus inside a ‘non-Jewish mother’ – the gentile nations of the world - whom we feel deeply attached with, by default.

When we praise and admire those who do not have Torah values, it connects our soul to a strange world that is distant from truth. It used to be that it was hard to see this problem. Now, however, almost anyone senses it, unless his spiritual senses have become totally deadened. The situation of the generation today has become, now more than ever, like the ‘fetus in its mother’s womb’ – and the ‘mother’ is chas v’shalom, the ‘Erev Rav’.

The generation has slowly become ensnared by praising and admiring values that are not truthful to the Torah of Hashem.

The Sages compared to our exile to Yaakov Avinu’s fight the angel. At first they fought as separate beings, and this continued throughout the entire night, but right before dawn, the angel wrestled with him and attached itself to him.

The metaphor from this is that at the beginning of exile, we had to fight secular influences, but they weren’t so attached with us. Now we are closer to the coming of the ‘dawn’, where the secular values are very attached to us.

At first, a person admires people who have money, and slowly as he gets used to this, his soul becomes deeply attached with these values, with the opinions and thoughts of those people who have money and power. He might want to know, “What is this wealthy or powerful person thinking? What does he think, what does he say, what is his opinion?”

His soul becomes to feel connected, slowly, to a person whose thoughts are immersed in thoughts of sin, lust, honor, and evil character traits. By always thinking about such people, a person doesn’t realize that he’s connecting his soul to a person who has heretical thoughts, and he might receive heretical thoughts in return, from the connection. And surely if a person actually listens to what such people have to say, he is very negatively affected in his soul, by the connection that has been formed in his soul to that person.

One of the Sages, Rabbi Meir, had a teacher who became a heretic, and Rabbi Meir still wished to hear his teacher’s wisdom, so he would continue to learn by him. When asked how he could learn from a heretic, he said that he is “eating the contents of the fruit, and throwing away the peel”. Rabbi Meir was a on a very high spiritual level, so he was able to do this, but who in this generation can say that he is on the level to do this? If someone today claims that he knows how to sift out the good from the bad from the mixture of good and evil that he comes across, he has deluded himself, because only rare individuals were able to do this.

When a person gets used to hearing the opinions and thoughts of a sinful person, his soul slowly becomes more and more connected to that person’s values, “attached to it like a dog” - both on This World, and chas v’shalom, even on the Next World.

When a person speaks of the praises of people who do not have Torah values, even if he also speaks of Torah values, his heart begins to acquire different values than pure Torah. He looks fine on an external level, but internally, there are negative changes taking place. It slowly begins to affect the way he talks, and eventually, his opinions and values in life change, and they are no longer in line with the Torah.

To Where Are We Connected To?

So we must understand that it’s not just an issue of how we talk and think, on a superficial level. It is an issue of where we feel deeply connected to. It is a question of if we are really connected to Hashem and to His Torah and to those who serve Him loyally.

If one is connected to the outside world and he doesn’t feel a deep connection to the Torah’s values, without a question, he feels connected to the world outside of Torah. Those connections will spawn into other connections.

This is not about people who live outside the world of Torah. We are speaking about people who live within the Torah world, but they don’t realize that they are slowly becoming connected to the world outside of Torah, and they are uprooting themselves from the Torah world and placing themselves into the world outside of Torah.

If one realizes that this is happening to him, he should view himself as a person on a shaky boat that is being tossed around in middle of the ocean, where his boat is about to capsize; he must keep screaming for his life.

The Danger of Today’s Times

One must know that when he admires values that are outside of Torah, he will end up falling into the places that are outside of Torah, even if he didn’t intend to take such a path.

In this generation we live in, there is no ‘neutral’ kind of existence. In previous generations, if a person didn’t immerse himself in Torah, he was still able to live a holy life where he was protected from outside influences. But in today’s times, all of the influences have entered into the Torah world; our world has become totally and absolutely hefker (unbridled).

If someone doesn’t feel how this is so, his feelings have become deadened. But someone who has even some minimal spiritual feeling can feel the apathetic attitude which has become so prevalent; he can feel how in today’s times, there is a “Lavan” trying to uproot everything. In a few moments, a Jew can be uprooted from all of the fundamentals of Judaism.

In previous times, it would take a long time for a Jew to go off the derech. It was a slow and drawn-out process off negative influences. But in today’s times, a Jew can fall completely into evil in just a few moments, due to the connections with the outside world that are pouring into our sheltered society and uprooting everything.

Seeking Truth

It is only when a person holds firmly onto truth that he can survive all of this.

One must realize that he is in a world which is entirely filled with connections to the “50^th gate of impurity”. But Hashem is still here; He is found openly with anyone who searches for Him. Unless one seeks a connection with Hashem every single day of his life, he is found in a world of total hekfer.

There is Torah and mitzvos on this world, but that will not be enough to save a person from this world of hefker that we are on, because the world is getting more and more confused and ruined.

A person born in today’s generation has a status of tinok shenishboh (a captured child), and it doesn’t matter which community he was born into or which sect of Judaism he is of; this does not make a difference anymore. The danger is the same to each person today. Because wherever we are, the ‘50^th Gate of Impurity’ surrounds us.

If these words are absorbed, we can realize that the things that many people admire today are not at all like how it was even 20 years ago. It used to be that people naturally admired the Torah’s values, but now, people aren’t so clear when it comes to this. Baruch Hashem today here are tens of thousands of bnei Torah today learning Torah, but who knows how many bnei Torah have left their Torah learning to go to the workplace (and they are not engaging in the kind of job that the sage Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar had), where they place themselves into a world that is hekfer? And that world of hefker has crept into Torah society as well.

In our times, a person is enveloped in a world of falsity, which claims to be ‘kosher’, resembling the chazir (the hog), which claims that it is kosher because it of possesses split hooves. One with even a little feeling for the spiritual can see the falsity that lurks behind everything that surrounds us.

Our Torah will never be exchanged, but the society we live in can creep in to our sheltered world and cover over the truth. The falsity of the world today can cover over even the simplest truths which those in the Torah world grow up with.

In our times, anyone who has come into this world has come into a place of awesome danger. It is difficult to say such a thing like this, but it is even harder to be silent from it, when an opening of Gehinnom is here.

The world was never such a dangerous place to our souls as it is today. It always contained evil, but it wasn’t an instant descent. In today’s world, the danger is rapid. Someone growing up in today’s times doesn’t even know what’s correct and what’s not correct, what the misconceptions are, which people today are truthful and which people are not truthful. Everything is mixed up; it’s all “good and evil mixed with each other”.

If someone today really searches for truth, and he turns to Hashem to be saved, “He is close to all those who call out to Him in truth”. He is really very close by; “for the matter is very close to you.” Although we are surrounded by terrible evil, at the same time, Hashem is still very close by, that is, for those who truly search for Him.

If someone doesn’t seek each day to have a palpable relationship with Hashem, if he does not feel a deep connection to His Torah, to fulfilling His will and His mitzvos – he will fall into the lowest depths of depravity.

Hashem reveals Himself to those who search for Him. In previous generations, it was very difficult to attain a deep closeness with Hashem, and one had to work very hard to attain this closeness. But in our generation, being close to Hashem has become closer within our reach. This is because it is written, “He dwells amongst them in their impurity.”

If anyone wants a true life, no matter what his situation is, he should understand that our values today have become captured, and that is why we find ourselves admiring values that are not truthful.

One can merit to be amongst those who truly search for Hashem. He can realize that as we are towards the end of the exile (we do not know exactly when the end will be, but we are definitely very deep into the end), Hashem is still with us in our impure situation .We must not despair from this; for we can realize that it is Hashem Who has placed us here, and therefore, He surely gave us the chance to come out of it and to remain connected with Him even as we live in this impure world.

A person can merit to be of the individuals today who search for truth, and not be fazed by the great hester (concealment) which we are found in. We can connect ourselves to Torah at all times, to be connected with Hashem every moment, to give our souls to Him.

In Conclusion

ויהללו ויברכו את שמך באמת – To praise Hashem with all our heart, to praise Him truthfully, to remain unfazed from all the hester that surrounds us, and to understand instead that all the hester today is beginning to pave the way towards the destruction of all evil. Realizing this concept is the root of true closeness with Hashem.

May we merit from Hashem that the impurity that surrounds us should be removed from the world, that all our hearts should become purified and be turned towards Hashem, in true d’veykus.