Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg - Choose Life!

[Music] in parshas natsum that we read last week the parsha really that talks so much about teshuva there's a very famous pasuk very famous verse and the verse says there's many commentaries that talk about these words i'd like to quickly just share with you two ideas on this ver pasuk the first is from the harim the reducer said is not a one-time choice choose life but rather bakarta bakayim is a constant choice that we have to make to choose life to find a little bit more life in our life in our day to live a little bit more meaningful to speak a little bit less lost life is a constant choice that we have to make i'd like to also share with you an idea from a moshe feinstein ramosha feinstein the great sage of the 20th century great halachic authority great sage he said means you focus on the end of the verse it says choose life so your children and grandchildren will also live and he said it's not enough to make the right choices but we need to make the right choices with our eyes on the future generations how we choose is as important as what we choose if we do mitzvot with simcha if we do mitzvot with enjoyment if our children see that even the struggles that we have to do for mitzvoth we don't correct we don't complain about it but rather we embrace it because we're so excited about everything that we're doing in in torah and mitzvos then our children want to continue that way but if we make the right choices but we do it begrudgingly we do it it's difficult it's hard then our children unfortunately will not want to continue this for moshe feinstein saw it witnessed this in the lower east side of manhattan for the decades that he lived there where he saw countless thousands of people who were sacrificed for torah who gave up their jobs because those days businesses were were open on saturday and if you didn't come to work on saturday you didn't come to work on monday and they gave up their jobs for shabbos and yet their own children in droves left judaism and it always bothered moshe finance he didn't understand why if the parents sacrificed so much why would the children not continue and he pointed out on this pasuk and he said because bakarta bakayim they made the right choices but they came home friday night and they said oh it's so difficult to be a jew and the children said dad i respect you so much but why do i need this difficult life but he said had they made a different way had they come home and put on their smile and said i lost my job this week but it was worth it for you guys it was worth it for our torah it's worth it for our tradition and and sang and danced around the table then the children would have wanted to continue it so prajaat hashem this year not only should we make the right choices but we should make the right choices with an eye on the future generations and our relatives and family members around us that they should also want to continue to make the right choices [Music] you