Tantzers Event - Rabbi Eli Mansour

Rabbi Mansor to please uh say a few words that morning. >> Uh I'm good. Good morning everybody. So before I begin, I was sitting with Stephen and he asked me, "Did you ever hear of the organization?" I said, "I can't even pronounce it." But that's neither here or there. Doesn't matter what the name is or how to pronounce it or what language it's in. We're a resultoriented community. A lot of you people are businessmen. We just care about the bottom line anyway. So, call it whatever you want. Uh, one word about our host and hostess with the mostess. Uh, although I don't have a charitable relationship with Avi, I'm sure that'll evolve one day and I'm anticipating very quickly. Oh, Mag and David. I take that back. I have a very prosperous relationship with Abby. We did value Shiva. That's right. I meant personally in any event. But I I do have a relationship and I saw the a very good side of the man which is more impressive to me than anything. The Gimra says when you're trying to measure people's character, look at the small things. Look at the things that people overlook. Try to find the humility. Then you know everything about the guy. He made a big bitzvah for his boy in our synagogue in Lawrence Avenue. and like a real proper bitzvah all the NBA was there and all the you know all the sadikim the lamemed sadikim showed up and uh you know with all the paraphernalia and jerseys and all you know all the good stuff and uh it was a beautiful event. I'm so happy we could have these parties in Ashul and my son who happened to get somehow a third-hand invitation he was there and uh he could he didn't come home with any any booty any loot and somehow Abby found out about it. I'm not too sure how. And the next day, you believe it, he comes himself. He's a busy man. He's running businesses and stuff. He comes himself to the house with a basketball, with a jersey, with a thing. Okay, where's Jacob? And he delivers it person. To me, that's that says the whole story. Now, the big things have value because of that. I know a lot of wealthy people and the only thing that's greater than their bank account is their egos, which make them very intolerable people and people are not so liked. So my impressions, my first impressions are the ones that I'm always going to remember. And beset as our relationship continues to grow, I'm sure I'll have a better window into the the uh the the the gentle giant that sits in front of us and his great rebbitim. Regarding our great master of ceremony, Mr. Ami, who is a dear friend, he's such a good man. Um in America, they say charity begins at home. In our community, charity begins with Harry Ammei and it actually begins with him. It ends with him and he's the middle as well. I bless my good friend with good health and prosperity. I want you to all know he doesn't get paid for this. Uh might be a good idea if he would take a dollar for every event. He would be very wealthy just on that alone. uh to his credit not only does he come and not ask for compensation he actually gives and he gives very generously and he gives happily so credit to our great Mr. A me chairman of the board [Applause] we're finding a trend trending that a lot of organizations run by Ashkanazim bless them are servicing the Syrian community. This is I think the third event that I've gone to this year that this trend has happened. We went to Shabbat. Now is Shabbat is a synonymous with I know it well. and they're just giving out uh tomat tom shabas as they say in the vernacular and they're giving food. Who knew that they're giving out hundreds of families in deal? So all of a sudden they come along and say we can't sustain that item the deal chapter of it and sure enough the community rises up to take care of that 24/7. I was in Mount Si. My rebbit had a little procedure and of course I escorted her there and it was a 12-hour uh ordeal there, but everything's fine. And I cannot tell you when I was in the hospital and I'm looking at that board 24/7 of all the names and all the Syrians. So I said, "Well, these guys were not Syrians. The guys who were loading up the kitchen had beards down to the floor, hats up to the shamim and all that, white socks. Didn't look anything like Syrians, but they're servicing the people. So therefore, we have to step up. So now we hear uh that tanzers as they call it and as AI and uh Mr. Shami mentioned how many unfortunately of our people I mean sickness does not forget about economic it doesn't discriminate between Ashazim whatever you are and that's unfortunate I want to explain to you in my opinion humble opinion what what the value of what these guys are doing so we have a mitzvah the mitzvah is called him everybody knows But I think that because we've heard that word so many times, we stopped paying attention of these two words. We don't pay. Oh yeah, visiting the sick, taking care of the sick, but pay attention. Usually, you visit one sick person at a time. I mean, you don't make a collective visit. I mean, you go into the room, there's one patient on the bed. So why does the uh term refer to it in its plurality? It should say and of course many times over. But why is it? So I wanted to say a novel idea in honor of the good people of Tanzas. What I think is is that when somebody is sick in a family, there are many other people in the film that are also sick but go unnoticed. The obvious sick person is the patient that's laid up in the bed that's going through his medical treatment. However, there's a nonapparent effect and casualty, collateral damage that takes place to the whole family. If a husband is tied up, it affects his wife. And if the wife is affected, it affects the children and it affects the grandchildren. And the whole chemistry and the whole balance of a family, I mean, families are very fragile. Doesn't take too much to throw off a family offkilter. And God forbid when somebody a beloved person is going through a crisis, the family is thrown into peril. And therefore, I think the rabbis were telling us not to look at this mitzvah myopically. Do not just look at the h but whenever there's a h there's him and therefore to fulfill the mitzvah correctly you cannot only deal with the one that's sick you need to do a comprehensive job and take care of the holy and I think not for the first time but it's a breath of fresh air to see this again that this organization has identified what was not obvious to everybody everybody knows the h but to the credit of Zelig and his holy group, they have identified the him. Kudos to you. You're doing the mitzvah in the perfect way and in the correct way. Finally, I will not belabor you with long dash. Although I do have all day long for an organization like this and I'll tell you why. I made once an observation in the first Mishna ink. Then the Mishna says was the second Mishnah that the world stands on three pillars. And we all know that these three pillars correspond the primary traits of the three fathers. The avot is represented prayer. He himself was a sacrifice. Today we pray instead of bringing the and wasra. So actually if you follow the sequence of the it's why does the Mishnah put it out of order. The says that's why is last? He should be first. It's a strong question. In your honor, I would like to say again a novel interpretation. These interpretations are intellectual property. I'll have you know and they are trademark. So please before you put it in a video or in a movie, I'd like you to speak to me first. In any event, the explanation is is that I don't think the Mishna is giving us the chronological order of the avot. As a matter of fact, I know the Mishna is not giving us the chronological order of the mitzvah of the avot, but it's giving us the chronological story of the Jewish people and what the world is going to look like from the beginning of time until Mashiach comes. There's going to be a generation of Torah and there's going to be a great um level of uh capacity and understanding and genius. I think that great generation of Torah was the generation of the Mishna. It was the generation of the Gim. We'll never replicate that generation. As a matter of fact, our opinion is the earlier rabbis are like angels and we are like Ben Adam and we are simple. We cannot hold the candle against the authority and the the genius and the intellect of the previous generation. So I think although we have a lot of Torah, don't get me wrong, it's quantitative, but it cannot stand the quality of the previous generation of Torah. And then you have the next generation. That was the time the temple stood. That was Abua. If you saw the temple in its glory, you saw what service of God means. People were coming and bringing sacrifice. They were bowing. They were praying. They were supplicating. I wonder today we have beautiful synagogues. We have magnificent edififices. We have beautiful beautiful places of worship and they're all filled. We need more. However, we may question we may question is the kabana of our prayers anywhere near the kabana of the earlier generations. In our generation, we we we measure a minan by its speed. We measure a shul not from when the minyan starts, but when it ends. And the more we're able to skip in a prayer, the happier we are. You know, if we're so lucky to get a yishem, that's about two and a half minute save. Gives us a lot of time to spend out of sh. So again, I'm not god I didn't come to condemn our people, but we have shuls. We pray but we can't compare our prayers to the previous generations. I mean our sidurim we pray minimum kabana and uh uh last in first out. However, there's going to come a generation where we might not be able to boast our Torah to the levels of the previous generation. And we might not be able to say that we're the bestim in prayer. But there's going to be one generation which is ours where we're actually going to be able to look at our ancestors and say in this not only have we met expectation but we have actually exceeded expectation. Our calling before the Msiah is not going to be necessarily Torah or Avoda in the final generation. It is going to be gimmut and this an organization like this our grandparents didn't do this. I have no doubt my grandfather and great-grandfather they could learn a Mishna and a 10 times better than me. I I I I surrender. My great-grandfather and my great great-grandfather Mansud used to pray with the sidude of the cabalists. There's no question he has more than me. And I'm not being pretentious or obnoxious. But when it comes to they didn't have this they didn't have the wherewithal they didn't have the technology they didn't have the the ability to to network like these organizations are able to it's nothing to do they had the good heart and I'm sure they had the intention but the actual ability for this to materialize for this to actualize into something that is a reality they didn't have it so although we might not be able to hold our heads that high when it comes to Torah Abua but the final generation that ushers in Msiah It's all about So you're involved in not only dancing for sick kids. You're going to be involved in the most important dance of all. When the Msiah comes, this organization is in a transition. There's not going to be any more sick people. But I believe that we learned yesterday in the that God is going to make a dance for all the and he's going to be right in the middle and everybody in that circular dance. I think they call it the horra. It's not going to be a square dance. It's not going to be the pula. It's going to be mah and everybody's going to point to God and say, "Hashem, this is the God we were waiting for. We're waiting to rejoice in his salvation." Well, I think I I can't tell you everybody that's going to be in that circle, but I have a hunch and I'm not a betting man. I would venture to say that some of the good people at Tanzers, the dance that they've started today in the pre- messianic period is going to earn them a position in that ultimate dance of the dance of Msiah. And at that time, and the dance of compensation that we're doing now will be the dance of consolation. and I pray that our community recognizes that we're being helped and if we're being helped, we have to rise to the occasion. Thank you very much. [Applause]