Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat Lech Lecha 1

Shalom we are in par I say just say is for Abraham the same as for Noah Noah in par Noah we see the beginning of the mission of Noah and how Hashem chose him to be the only human being to be saved from the mabul the only human being to have communication with God and to Merit that God should speak with him and to choose him as his only one and in we see that Hashem further purifies The Offspring of Adam arish out of all the descendants of the first man Hashem chose the best Noah and out of all the descendants of Noah all the 17 Nations Hashem chose one man Abraham like the scientists like to use their theory of evolution that things evolve and become more advanced which is false Hashem is causing evolution of humanity and he is purifying them and choosing best out of the best and so the purification continues through Abraham and then Abraham has uh eight children and Hashem chooses one yak and then Yak has two children and Hashem chooses one Yakov and then Jewish people go through Egypt 210 year process of purification and out of that only 20% of the Jewish people are worthy to stand on Mount Si and receive the Torah and the rest as they say is history the rest we are the descendants of those Jewish people who stood on Mount Si and the sages point to the similarity of the wording our para is called similarly two words that are the same are spelled the same way they read differently they mean different things but the letters that they are made up of are the same said to Abraham go for yourself which means start your journey long journey we're still walking on that path that hasem said to abah continue walking Noah has a similar expression at the beginning of it says no so we have the same word repeated twice Noah Noah and our sages say Hashem loves the person and therefore he calls him twice Noah Noah Hashem said to Noah Noah it's not enough that I call you once I love you so much I want to call you again Noah Noah these are the The Offspring of Noah Noah was such a righteous man but the similarity is pointing to the fact that Abraham and Noah were fulfilling the same role no was saving the physical human being from destruction and Abraham was saving the spiritual human being from destruction in times of Noah people may have recognized God but they were evil to each other in times of Abraham people denied God they served Idols Abraham was the only one to still hold on and to teach others about one God so no is our physical father he saved the entire Humanity everyone who we have now is descendant of Noah if not for him we wouldn't be here today and Abraham is our spiritual father we say Abraham ainu he is our spiritual father because of him we have our Nish our Nish the special soul of a Jew unlike any other human being we have merited a higher portion of a soul because of Abraham the commitment that Abraham had to God and self-sacrifice his willingness to stand up for what is right and he was willing to be thrown into fire and he was sent on dangerous missions multiple times and he passed all his tests that guaranteed that Hashem was satisfied with Abraham and he said Abraham that's it you're hired Abraham I Choose You Forever in um um in at the end of almost at the end of the Torah we read that Hashem is not a human being in and therefore he doesn't change his mind the other nations other religions are trying to convince us yes Hashem chose you originally but then he changed his mind he was disappointed and we say no the Torah says God Is Not a Human Being and therefore he knows what's going to be and if he chose CH someone to be his Nation God knows what they're going to do God knows all their mistakes and still he chooses them must be it's forever we are an eternal nation and God guarantees it because God chose Abraham forever and he said not only I Choose You Forever I choose your children after you forever and ever there's going to be no changes no New Testament no Quran there's only one Torah one nation under God indivisible so Hashem knew that that after testing Abraham 10 times from then on it becomes in the nature ingrained in Abraham and in his descendants to stand up for truth to stand up for what's right to stand up for God so much so that the Jewish people are willing to even sacrifice their comfort sacrifice their livelihood the Jewish people are willing to earn less money work less days a week they are willing to even put their life on the line why because they know God loves them they know that God chose them and just like in a relationship between people if someone loves me I will not be able to abstain from loving them back this is the nature of partnership that when you do something good to one he will feel indebted he will feel obligated to pay back your favor this is called gratitude and this is part of the Jewish Nation uh we are called yehudim Jews in English is comes from the Hebrew word yehudi and the word yehudi comes from the word which means acknowledgement which means gratitude that means that the essence of a Jew is that when we feel God's love for us we will reciprocate and we will love God back and really God loves everyone as it says hashem's Mercy is on all of his creations and God created everyone that means if God loves everyone why doesn't everyone love God back and that means that in order to have gratitude in order to have have this Mutual commitment you need a certain um purity of character and we we the the the Jewish people have it from our forefathers as we say Hashem you are the god of Abraham you are the god of Y and you are the god of yov and because they passed so many tests and were were uh again and again choosing good it became their spiritual DNA and it became our spiritual DNA and therefore when Hashem chose Abraham he chose him forever and therefore he chose us we are standing today here because we are God's people God's chosen ones and God loves us because he knows what we are capable of we might not realize and therefore we might not appreciate our own greatness but God knows how great we are and therefore he loves us so Abraham is living in a in a land that it's not accepted to serve one God it's considered primitive serving one God is primitive they made fun of Abraham and they said Abraham you have to become modernized look we have so many inventions we invented the god of the Son and the god of the the moon and the god of love and the god of hate and the God of War you have to become more educated Abraham you have to become um enlightened a little bit more sophisticated why are you holding on to your old beliefs just one God that's all you can think of they were they were making a lot of um trouble for Abraham they were making fun of him they were making his life not only embarrassing for him and for his parents but also dangerous because people don't like those that don't agree with them if I think there are thousand gods and you think only one that means you disagree with me and I don't like that just like now it seems that the three major um monotheistic religions it seems that we all agree that there is the creator of the world we all agree that he runs the history and guides the history of the world we all agree that he is observing and uh judging the behavior of people we all agree that we serve him that there is no one besides him and yet these three religions are mortal enemies of each other ever since Christianity was created it became a mortal enemy of Judaism and ever since Islam was created it became a mortal enemy of both Judaism and Christianity and even though we have so much in common we all believe that God came on this Earth that God appeared on Mount Si and chose the Jewish people all three religions agree we all agree there is one God we all agree that God gave the Jewish people the Torah his teaching we all agree that God wants a human being to be righteous and moral and still there's so much hatred and so much blood was spilled this month and this year and this century and this thousand years in the name of religion even though there's so much in common and now imagine in Abraham's time when they argue about the basics is there Creator to the world or not is there one God or many gods your God or my God by us it's simple there's one God we all serve one Creator and we're still fighting by them they had different gods and so Abraham lived in a very challenging time someone asked me a question if God would come to me and tell me go do this do that I would listen why is it considered such a great deed that Abraham did God told him leave your father leave your land and go to the land I show you if God tells me get on the airplane and fly to Israel because mashia is coming I would for sure go what was so special about Abraham and the answer is that it's easy to say when we're sitting in the comfort of our home in the United uned States and we don't hear screams of people who are being uh tortured and we don't hear threats to our life and no one is banging on our door saying open up we we want you convert or die we live in a in a safe bubble and we think it's easy if God comes and tells me something it's easy but if you have a physical human being who is standing over you and he is about to kill you even if God if you hear God's voice and he's telling you don't be scared how many of us would be able to control our emotions and our senses we hear the screams of our enemy we see the bloodthirsty eyes of our enemy and we know from experience he's that he intent to kill is serious and he's ready and able and willing to kill and even though God tells us go go ahead go past him it's still a very difficult challenge so much so that most people would not be able to pass that test even though God spoke to them and we have proof we know the story about bam the non-jewish prophet to whom God came and God told him don't go he clearly told him don't go and what did Bam do bam said but God maybe maybe you can change your mind maybe you can let me but I really want and he asked him again and again until God said you know my opinion but if you want to go I let you shouldn't go but if you want I'm not going to stop you and he happily went how can he go he knows God doesn't want it and the answer is that God doesn't take you by your um hand and force you to follow him God gives you a command and he allows you to make your own decision to follow God's command or not we gave example of bam who didn't follow God's command we have example of Adam arish the first man God spoke with him and God told him don't eat from the tree and Adam went and he ate how is it possible God comes to you and says don't and the answer is because God implanted in us this ability to think for ourselves no one can force us to think freely no one can force us to think the way we don't want because we can think freely it's only if they force us physically we want to do this they cannot control our mind but they can control our body God doesn't control our body and he doesn't control our mind if I decide to do something I can Hashem runs the world in such a way like a Grandmaster in a chess chess game he can make you feel that you're making your choices but he will still arrange other um events around you in such a way that you will be Leed in the direction that God wants you can turn one way and you can choose the other way and you can jump and dive you can do whatever you want but at the end of the day you will arrive at the destination that God wants it's up to you do you want to arrive there by listening to God and choosing good choosing what's right or do you want to get there by choosing bad and God will have to trick you and get you there anyway so because of that great ability of a human mind to choose what it wants it is considered a test even if God comes to you and tells you what you're supposed to do um that great ability of a human being to think freely is what is called yet we call it the evil inclination because at the end of the day even though it's a great ability to think freely whenever you think freely there are two possibilities I can choose good or I can choose bad I can choose right or I can choose wrong it's nice to have freedom but that freedom comes with a dangerous choice I can miscalculate and choose wrong and God made it even more difficult because he gave us a our body and the body also sends its signals to the mind the body is sometimes hungry and it tells the Mind why don't you forget what you're doing as good as it may be and take care of me I need food go and spend time and money on taking care of your body the body might be tired and the body will tell the Mind why don't you stop what you're doing even if it is a good thing and take a break re rest relax don't move so fast I'm tired the body might want Comfort warmth softness pleasure and the body is telling the mind I want and on top of it Hashem gives us hormones that affect our mind that make us not think straight all this is called a challenge this is called yet the evil inclination at the end of the day it's good because through this we have a struggle and we choose good and we are rewarded for choosing good despite our mind thinking maybe I shouldn't listen to God our body saying relax eat sleep get some pleasure our hormones affecting the clarity of our thinking and still we go and we choose to serve God we choose to listen to God's command we get great reward thanks to the yet thank thanks to the body thanks to the hormones we get great reward because of the difficulty so majority of people are not able to pass this test because it's truly a great test so much so that two great schools of H and shamai they had many descendants thousands of people in each Yeshiva and they had a an argument they said would it have been better for a human being to be created or not will you take an individual and the question is what are the chances that he will succeed in life or fail in life are the chances greater that he will succeed and then when a baby is born we smile and we say welcome this is a good world you have a greater chance of succeeding good luck or the chances are higher that the person will fail in this world perhaps the test is too difficult and then when a baby is born we should really feel bad for him good luck my friend you don't stand a chance look at everyone and they argued some said it's a it's good for a human being to be created and others said no it's bad for the human being to be created and for three years they argued back and forth until they all agreed that it's not good for a person to be born it's not good for an individual to be created why is not good because the chances are that he will fail miserably so and we look at the history of humanity and we see that yes unfortunately 99 and some per of people fail in life we see that the Jewish people are less than 1% 1% of humanity is 80 million people if you say that there are 8 billion people now 10% is 800 million and 1% is 80 million people now the number of Jewish people let's say is 20 million really they say it's about 13 15 million let's say it's 20 million that means it's only one quarter of a percent we have Jewish people and how many of the Jewish people know about God and serve God maybe another quarter so it's a quarter of a quarter 116th of a percent of people who are actually still committ ited to the promise that their ancestors