הלקח מבכי ישמעאל: בוחרים רק במי שנאמן לבית ה' | הרב אליהו ובר

It is written in Towards the end of the Torah portion, after Abraham banishes Ishmael, it is written that Hagar wept and cried out. The verse says, "For God has heard the voice of the lad where he is." The Midrash says that Ishmael also cried, so we have both Hagar weeping and Ishmael weeping. And the Holy One, Blessed be He, says, "For God has heard the voice of the lad where he is." We know that the descendants of Ishmael would eventually kill the people of Israel with an army, with thirst. The The Midrash tells that they went out to meet the people of Israel as they went into exile. They brought out before them inflated skins. They thought they were full of water. In the end, they died because of it. And so, but the verse says: "Where he is," now he is fine. But sometimes, and we are now in an election period (it is this Tuesday) , we often hear wailing, cries of people that are not "where he is," but the cries themselves are meant to draw people in, to say: Listen, look at how miserable we are, and they envelop us and all sorts of things. But in truth, it is all like the wailing of jackals. Jackals wail because they want people to come so they can have prey. These are false cries. And when they cry today, the cries of Ishmael—this is already after what Ishmael did to us, that they killed us...with thirst (and I got confused earlier, I said with an army, I think it may also be a point in itself, a correct sentence, no, it didn't come out intentionally). But anyway, Ishmael, they cry and say that here they are losing out, and their olives are being harvested, and all sorts of other phrases like: land here, land there, they cry. And also all sorts of party leaders, and not just party leaders, sometimes people also cry, cry, they want, they want something, they cry, and cry and cry and cry. And often people truly feel their mercy awakened, to have pity, hearing cry after cry after cry. But when you know that the cry is a cry of ...but the cry is for a specific request, they want something that is not true, it is something that is, that is not right, then the cries do not... they do not matter. Whoever already knows this, then these cries do not affect them at all and do not trigger anything in them, because at some point you understand this. That is how it is with the shouts of people who are chasing and being chased and all sorts of things, and one must often know the root, what the background is. People want this to shout it in order to, because, because They, they want people to come and be drawn to them, that is why they cry. Also at the beginning of the portion, and I am connecting back to the beginning of the portion—how would we expect, how would we hear the cries of the people of Sodom when they overturned Sodom? I am sure the cries there reached the heavens and the shouts, but there was nothing. Abraham, our forefather, when he pleaded, he came from logic, from the reasoning that there are righteous people in the city and so on, but he didn't come when there is, uh, a wildness of people that stems from wanting to lure others to idolatry, wanting to lure people to immorality. Such wildness, there is nothing in these wild acts. It’s not wildness, it’s nothing at all. Also, all kinds of, uh, howlings of various party leaders now— "they don't let us ," and "you this," and "the right is this and that." It’s all the wildness of, uh, jackals. They want to lure people toward evil. It’s not necessarily that. It could even be people who sound like they are on the side of "we want," but in reality, it's just, uh, only a howl and nothing more. They could have taken care of these things without that. Uh, when we stand this week, there are people, choice... really, I don’t think: everyone to here, everyone to there. You know, everyone knows that at the end of the elections, more or less in every party, there are a number of votes that go to waste. But what then? There is truly the leadership of God here, and the Holy One, blessed be He—the hearts of kings are in the hand of the Lord—He will handle the matter. And we really have a role: to pray and to plead that only good things happen. >> Amen. >> But, uh, one needs to know that a person says: "Well, I feel a bit affiliated with the crying, the sorrowful, the shouting," and they should know. Before, before he decides to belong to any, uh, whoever...I don’t know, if someone receives messages, phone calls, emails, nowadays you receive them in all kinds of ways: "calls telling you to vote for us because we are this," and they explain why they were so miserable and how they were persecuted—one must know that this should not influence any person. But only truly, and this is the point here, to know: who is for the House of God? Who speaks about the House of God? Who upholds it? Who is there? And who doesn't really care about the House of God? So if the Lord has chosen Zion, for example, and the place that the Lord has chosen, then whoever wants to choose what the Holy One, blessed be He , [chose], and to walk in His ways, must choose what the Holy One, blessed be He, chooses. So whoever chooses Zion , whoever chooses the House of God— I’m not talking about any specific party at all—there is, even within that we have a choice, but in any case, one must know, this is our choice, and it doesn't matter what people shout and what people cry about. Because especially in the context of elections, the choices are choices, not "wilds"[ wild-acts] of "now he is good" and later it turns out otherwise, but the wildness that now he is not, he doesn't want the House of God. So may the Holy One, blessed be He, help us and give us , first and foremost, the part to truly be in the right choice. May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us that He will choose the good and suitable people to lead the Land of Israel and the People of Israel. That all those who do not want to do this, that the prayer is that they do not pass the electoral threshold; it also sounds far-fetched to us sometimes, parties, everyone could fail to pass. So may the Holy One, blessed be He, help us so that it will be only for the good of the people.