Arama - R. Hillel Eisenberg - TorahAnytime.com

A couple summers ago I had the great privilege of going to Spain. And Spain has a territory called Tarragona. And I got to learn a lot about the chief rabbi of this territory called Rabbi Yitzhak Arama. He was one of the great Rishonim. He lived many hundreds of years ago. The Akedat Yitzchak. And he was the chief rabbi of this region during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, a very difficult time for the Jewish people. And one day he gets a knock on the door that a whole group of Jew of of people in his kehilla are there and they say, "Rabbi, we are becoming Christian. We're not asking you, we're telling you. We have one question for you though. When we become Christian, because it's just way too hard, are we like still Jews and we're going to like be held responsible for all not doing all these things or like once we leave, we leave? Basically what they were asking was is in is Judaism is Yiddishkeit an intellectually subscribed religion where you subscribe intellectually and then you could unsubscribe and then sprinkle some water on your head and move to the next religion and voila, you're part of the next religion. Or you're stuck. >> [snorts] >> You are genetically a Jew. You could run, you cannot hide." So he looks at them and he says, "Uh sorry Charlie, you could run, you cannot hide." He says they So they turn to him and say, "Excuse me, why is that fair? We never agreed to any of this. It is way too hard. Our great great grandparents were at Har Sinai at the first Shavuot and they agreed to it. We never agreed to this." So Rabbi Yitzhak Arama, he turns to them and he says, "Um you're making a mistake. You were at Har Sinai. Your nishamas agreed to this." So they look at him and they say, "Yeah, we also were in first grade. Our nishamas were there. What right does my nishama have to accept Yiddishkeit from me? What does my neshama know about me and my physical world? Me in 1492 and me in Berlin in 1933 and me in Czechoslovakia in 1666 and me in Lakewood, New Jersey in 2026? What right does it have? So, he looks at them and he says, "You're making a mistake." He said, "Your neshama stood at Har Sinai and knew everything there is to know about you. It knew all about your upbringing. It knew about your neighbors. It knew about your parents' divorce. It knew about the miscarriages, the doubts, the struggles, the infertility, knew about the pain, all the nights you would cry yourself to sleep, knew about the struggles, the battles, the things that you're dealing with that nobody else in the world knows, the time you did the thing you should not have done. It knows everything. And it said, "Na'aseh v'nishma." And at that exact minute that it said, "Na'aseh v'nishma," it was injected with a holiness that's tailor-made for you and your life. You in 1492 and you in 1666 and you in 1784 and you in 2026. You with your life and your upbringing and your siblings and your psych medications and your your your school, your teachers, your abusive parents, your everything. It knew everything and it was perfectly tailor-made for you. There is no such thing THAT I AM NOT SOMEONE FIT for the Torah. It's impossible. It makes no sense. You got a dose of holiness at Har Sinai that was designed for your lifestyle to make it the absolute best, to inject it with meaning and purpose, harmony and bliss, with kedusha, with a sense of meaning,