Rabbi Michael Khaimov | CHAZAQ Tisha B'Av Marathon

Tisha B'Av Before we begin, we want to say shalom baruch to our dear friends at Torah Anytime, to our dear friends at Chazak, to Rabbi for always thinking about Israel, for putting together programs such as these in order to enable us to maximize the core of this wonderful day. And you hear that song, that they should be blessed and may they have a man can you hear that song? We begin today with a Gemara. The Gemara is a famous one. It's found in Maseches Yoma. The Gemara says that the first Bet Hamikdash had three catastrophic sins. They had a riot, they weren't behaving morally. They had a mean, there was murder. There was gazing. It was all of the worst things. And therefore, the Bet Hamikdash was destroyed. Second Bet Hamikdash, the Gemara says they didn't have it. People were studying Torah. People were doing mitzvot. People were doing chesed. The Gemara says chesed and Torah is a great protection for man. And yet, with all of that, with the chesed, with the Torah, with the mitzvot, there was one sin that eroded, that rotted away at the foundations of our Bet Hamikdash and the Gemara says that was the sin of sinat chinam. So, we hear this on a yearly basis. Many speakers will get up after me and they're going to say sinat chinam, but the question is what is the tangible meaning? What is the meaning of sinat chinam? How do you hate somebody for no reason? How can I hate you for nothing? Many of the faces in audience I know. Some of them I don't. Do I hate somebody for no reason? What does it mean to hate for no reason? If we look deeper into what it means, we're going to find the only way you can hate for no reason is when you're envious of somebody, when you're jealous of somebody, when you're in competition with somebody. You're in rivalry with somebody. Because you're in rivalry, in competition, feeling of less than, feeling of watching other people and how they're living and what they're doing. That's how it's possible to hate somebody for no reason. He did nothing wrong to you. He didn't look your way. He didn't hurt you financially. Didn't slander you. Why don't you like him? Because he's in the same trade as me. Why don't you like him? Because I feel he took what was mine. If we look into this concept of competitiveness, we find the man in history who had it all. He was a great scholar. He was wealthy. He was respected. He was chosen by God in many ways. And yet he lost it all. Who was this man? None other than Korah. Korah lost it all all because of competitiveness. All because of rivalry and jealousness. But the word Korah, what does it mean Korah? If you study the word Korah in Hebrew for those who speak it, comes from the word Keriah. You know what Keriah means? Keriah means bald. He has no hair. What example can we take from the hair? What's the lesson from Korah? There was a person his name was Iyov. Iyov suffered very very much. He came to Hashem and said, "Hashem, maybe you switched my letters from Iyov to Oyev. Maybe you made a mistake." And Hashem says to him, "Iyov, how could you say that? If you look into the human body, you have millions of follicles of hair. Multiplied by billions of people. No two hairs come out of the same follicle. Every follicle has its own hair. Every hair has its own follicle. You know what it means? That every person has his shifa. Every person has his bracha. Every person was chosen for a specific unique mission. There is nobody on planet Earth like you. Eov. No follicle can nourish two hairs two strands. And if that happens, it's going to be dangerous and difficult upon the eyesight of a person. And the question is what a hair have to do with the eyesight? The connection of hair to the eyes is because our eyes play trick on us. Our eyes make us feel that guy took my position. That guy took my kavod. That guy took my job. You're in rivalry, in competitiveness. This is what it means to hate for no reason. And I'll tell you a secret. It's not getting better. Unless we make change. With all of the advances of social media, many people are not happy. Why are we not happy? You have everything in your life. You know why? Because we're not living our lives anymore. We're living the neighbor's life. We're living the the other person's life, our friend's lives. We're watching them. They went to this place, they went to that place, they bought this, they bought We're comparing to each other. It's what Korach did. He doesn't believe in the hair is ketera. Because if Korach looked at the follicles and at the hair, he would see that each and every hair has its own follicle. There's no reason to be in somebody else's lane. I remember I was once with a boy, Johnny, in my car. I was going from Bet Gabriel back home. And I needed to be on the left side of the Grand Central. On the right side is the Jackie. On the right So, we're standing and it's mamash standstill traffic. One lane over, the cars are flying and flying and flying. So, the boy says, "Rabbi, I don't understand. Why don't you just take the other lane? Everybody else is doing it." I said, "I, if I take the other lane, I'm going to end up in Eastern Parkway. It's true that everybody else is going fast, but that's not my lane. I need to stay on my lane. This is the lane that I God chose for me. I need to be on Main Street. I need to be in Fresh Meadows. So, therefore, I understand that what? That this is the lane I have to be in. I don't have to be in competition with anybody. There's a famous story with a great rabbi, his name was the Sdei Chemed, Rav Chiskia Medini. The Sdei Chemed was an unbelievable scholar. He wrote a colossal work. Magnum opus, 18-volume work. When he was a young scholar in Constantinople, there was a peer that he had in his Yeshiva who was very jealous of him. He didn't like that the rabbi was matmid, he was studying, he was learning, he was doing what he had to do. He was up for shacharis every day. And sometimes when we see others who are succeeding, it bothers us. Not because they're doing anything wrong, it's because we feel less than. So, this man devises a plan. He says, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to hire the cleaning lady. We're going to make a shmuah, we're going to make a rumor that this man, Chiskia, who everybody thinks is so holy and so good, not really so good, not really so holy. He misbehaved with this lady." And they fabricate a rumor of such. And Rav Chiskia Medini was ashamed. He didn't know what to do. And the rabbi of the Yeshiva told him, "Listen, I know you're innocent, but please, for the sake of shalom, go. Go to a different Yeshiva." He packed up his bags and he moved to a different place. A little while later, the cleaning lady had remorse, and she came forth with the story. She said, "Listen, it was all fabricated by one of the other members here. He fabricated the whole story that I should say that he did X, Y, and Z, and he's not so pure and he's not so holy. I apologize. I lied." She came, she admitted to the great rabbi, to Rav Medini. And she said, "Do with this information what you will." And the rabbit now had a choice. Do I go back to the Yeshiva? Do I go against my rival? Do I put him in his place? Do I show my innocence? Or do I say, "You know what? The damage has been done already. What am I going to gain from the rivalry? What am I going to gain from proving my innocence?" He decides, "You know what? For Hashem Yitbaraj, I'm going to keep myself quiet. I won't say anything." And he, so to speak, he buried it deep within himself. He says, "From that day forward, a great miracle happened for me." What was that miracle? He says, "Every sefer kadosh that I opened, everything that I read was etched into my mind, was etched into my heart." 18 volume encyclopedia. From what? From the fact that he said no to rivalry. I don't have to live another person's life. I don't have to drive in somebody else's lane. I am good enough to accept where you are in life, to be happy with where Hakadosh Baruchu placed you. It's true. I maybe I'm learning less than I am with Ovadia Yosef. It's true. Maybe I don't understand the Sugya like I got it from Moshe Feinstein. It's true. But I was born to be me. I wasn't born to be somebody else. Sinat chinam is when we start to compare to each other. There was a great rabbi, the Megaleh Amukot. He reveals a fascinating secret. He says, "Every month corresponds to a different part of the body." Which part of the body does the month of Tammuz and Av correspond? The great rabbi says they correspond to the two eyes of man. And the question is, what is the connection of eyes to these two months? Well, our destruction began in these two months and was concluded in the month of Av. It all has to do with the eyes because our eyes play trick on tricks on us. It's not a coincidence that the Gemara says that when you fail to reason, fail to understand the lesson of the hair. It's damaging to the eyes. Why? Because your eyes plays tricks on you. Your eyes make it seem like that guy took away what was rightfully mine. Korach felt so also. And Moshe was saying, "No, Korach, you're making a mistake. This is the definition of sinat chinam. When you feel somebody took what's yours and you're not happy with where you are in life, that is the foundation of sinat chinam. But getting rid of our rivalry isn't good enough because we're Jews. We need to bring positive energy. What that means is instead of being in competition, we have to pray for our competition. We have to be happy for our competition. When we learn to give to the other, when we learn that we're not rivals, many times siblings they argue. It's not fair. He got more ice cream. I got more ice cream. So once I was giving ice cream to one of my sons and I said, "No more. One cup." But he was smart. He took half of his cup and he gave it to his brother. And when I saw that, I said, "Oh my god." I told him no more. I'm only giving you one. But he wasn't in a state of rivalry with his brother. He shared with his brother. He gave to his brother. So what did I do? I loaded him up with a second full cup. He gave away half and he got full. The point is is that it's not enough to negate the rivalry. We have to bring positivity, positive light into the world. In our synagogue, baruch Hashem, we have men they go downstairs to the kiddush. Some people they have a tradition every Shabbat they have they eat boiled eggs. So they take boiled eggs and they hit it against each other. We don't have the tradition in my home, but many people have such a tradition. They fight with eggs. Boiled eggs and anyway the eggs need to be cracked. So I have two men sitting downstairs, grown men. One is 70, one is 47. They're sitting and they're fighting with their grown men fighting with their eggs and they heard the drasha that I gave that you got to wish well on your competition. So one guy before he hit the egg, he says, "David John, die box to the weigler." He gave him a bracha, "May it be that you win." And he took his egg, and he hits it against David's egg, and guess who won? The guy who gave the blessing. When David saw that, he says, "Oh, I have to wish well on the other." Now, he says, "Arkady, die box to the weigler, may you win." And guess what happened? Now, David hits the egg, ta-da, and guess who wins? David wins. Arkady, the third time. They broke a lot of eggs that day. >> [laughter] >> They were trying to see does it work? Five times in a row, time after time, the one who wished well on somebody else, his egg was the winning egg. You wish well on your competition. You realize you got his follicle, I got my follicle. He got his safe, I have mine, I wish well on him. He doesn't take away from me. There's a guy in the community tells me, "Rabbi, I have a bagel store, and one day I wake up in the morning, and I see across the street a new bagel store is coming." He says, "I was frozen. I didn't know what to do. We invested a lot of money into this place. Competition's coming across across the street. I don't know what's going to be with me." He says, "I want to tell you, I started working on my bitachon. I started working on myself, on my trust in Hashem, on realizing every hair has his follicle. Every hair is connected to Hakadosh Baruchu. And he says, 'I'll tell you something. Not only my income didn't go down.' He says, 'Now we're 3 years later, I can show you the books. I'm making more money than I was before that second bagel store opened.'" It's an unbelievable phenomenon. Not to be in competition with somebody else. These are the months that correspond to the human eye. We must learn to look with our eyes to see positivity, to bless others. And when we utilize our kohot, the pasuk writes, "Um varachem var um um um var um varachem var varecha varechecha." That what? I will bless those who bless you. What does that mean? Says Hakadosh Baruch Hu, when you realize you're not in competition with another Jew, you realize that Hakadosh Baruch Hu takes care of each and every one. He put me exactly where I need to be. I got the 11:20 slot today exactly where I needed to be. Not 20 minutes early, not 20 minutes too late. In 20 minutes, maybe my head's going to start pounding. 20 minutes earlier, I wouldn't be able to measure measure me exactly where he needs me. And so to every single member has to realize and all of the viewers have to know that Hashem has them exactly where he needs them. Hashem is taking care of them on an individual basis with Hashgacha Pratit. There is no reason to fall into the syndrome of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, to fall into the syndrome of Korach, of understanding that you took away my Shefa. It's not true. There is no man on earth who can take what's yours. And Be'ezrat Hashem, may we leave today, after the end of the program, with strength and valor and understanding that what? We wish well unto our brothers. We wish well unto our friends. We wish well unto our competition. To bless them Bechol Mile DeMeitav UMeitiv. When Hashem sees that I genuinely want what's good for him, then Hashem blesses me as well. Amen. Can you hear it, son?