The Trust Factor
A daily lesson that focuses on achieving unparalleled success in life using ancient wisdom in modern times.
We will be discussing critical concepts as they are laid out in the book Sha'ar Habitachon - The Gate of Trust. Written 1000 years ago, the author reminds us of the values and wisdom that have allowed humanity to thrive throughout history.
The concept of trusting in a higher power that exists purely for our benefit, puts us in the drivers seat with absolute confidence to achieve greatness.
Eliminate: Fear, Hatred, Anxiety, Depression, Jealousy, Greed...forever!
* Note that some terminology will be in the original Hebrew or Aramaic which I will always follow with the English translation.
The Trust Factor
Episode 152 - Beyond Mitzvahs: What It Really Takes to Build Your Eternal Future
What truly qualifies us for eternal reward? The answer might surprise you.
Most of us assume that performing good deeds automatically secures our place in the World to Come. However, as we discover in this episode, the path to eternal reward requires more than individual piety—it demands that we become teachers and guides for others on their spiritual journeys.
We explore how the Torah uses physical metaphors to help us understand abstract divine concepts. God doesn't actually have hands, eyes, or emotions, but these anthropomorphic descriptions serve as bridges between our material reality and the spiritual realm. Unfortunately, this approach has sometimes led to misinterpretations throughout history, with some religions mistakenly attributing human form to the Creator.
The four-part process of Jewish spiritual practice—learn, teach, safeguard, and implement—forms the foundation of meaningful religious life. Of the 613 commandments, many aren't applicable today without the Temple in Jerusalem, while others apply only to specific circumstances. Yet among all these commandments, Torah study stands supreme, outweighing all others combined because it enables proper fulfillment of all divine obligations.
As Rosh Hashanah approaches, this teaching reminds us that spiritual growth requires more than individual observance. By embracing the continuous cycle of learning and teaching, we become active participants in the transmission of divine wisdom, creating ripples of positive influence that extend far beyond our individual lives. Make your preparation for the Jewish New Year meaningful by committing to this deeper understanding of spiritual merit.
Good morning everybody, Happy Friday, Welcome to the Trust Factor, the podcast that guarantees your success when you implement its divine, age-old teachings. We're wrapping up another amazing week. We are going into the week of Rosh Hashanah. So, guys, this is it. This is the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, the last Shabbat, my friends. You have to make it a meaningful one. It has to be preparation for a brand new year.
Speaker 0:All the things we've talked about up until now, my friends, come to fruition. After the weekend, Monday night, it all starts. Let's get back into what we're discussing. We said that God needs to make reference to reward and punishment, to positive and negative consequences, by giving us examples that we understand, that we can connect with, because these concepts are spiritual in nature. All of the Torah comes from divinity, which is spiritual, which operates in another realm, which originates in another realm, and so for us who haven't been to that realm any time recently and have no recollection of that realm, it's difficult for us to understand what some of these real concepts mean, and therefore he gives us examples or references that we can sink our teeth into, that we can understand, based on our involvement in this world with the material and we see this in other places also. You know this has come in history to be a pain sometimes to the Jewish nation, because there are references throughout the Torah where God talks about how he has, you know, the hand of God and how God gets upset and he has emotions and God's eyes. And you know there's all these different references to the physicality of God or to the humanity of God that somehow God has features that are humanistic, which are exactly the opposite, because we know it says En lo guf, ve'en lo demuta guf, he doesn't have a body and he doesn't even have an image of a body. He doesn't resemble us at all. But what he does in an attempt to come close to us, in an attempt to have a relationship with us, is he brings metaphors, he brings examples that we can understand and he tries to humanize himself in a way that allows us to have a relationship with him which, as you can understand, especially by other religions who follow men as God, it can be problematic, but we have to understand that, without a doubt, God has no physical form, he does not resemble a human being and he is certainly not a human being Anybody who would think or suggest that God is a human being or has human form, and that is the same God that created everything that ever was, is and will be the universe.
Speaker 0:The galaxies created everything that ever was, is and will be the universe, the galaxies, humanity, by a human being, by somebody in flesh and blood, is sorely, sorely mistaken. It is the wackiest idea that you can suggest, and yet you have billions of people running around suggesting that not only maybe a human being did it, but maybe a statue, maybe a wooden statue that somebody just finished carving in a back room has the ability to be able to create, to be able to make human beings and to be able to form galaxies. It's shockingly crazy, my friends, but in people's desire to connect back to purpose and meaning and God, they will do wacky things. Sometimes, when the reality and the truth is right under their nose, all they need to do is look and ask questions about what he already gave us thousands of years ago. It's here and it's meant to be studied and it's meant to be understood. God wants to have a relationship with everybody, but we have to seek him out in the correct channels. If we don't, God forbid, we end up getting on the train going in the wrong direction. Not only are you not going, you're not following your God, but you're doing the exact opposite. You're following false gods. And that, my friends, has been a problem since the age of time. Let's move forward, because there's something very interesting that I just read over here, which surprised me also. I didn't know these things.
Speaker 0:What he says is that there's a fourth reason why Torah does not describe reward and punishment of Olam Haba the next world. It's all. With regards to this world, we just said it's because we can't understand concepts of the next world. We don't understand eternity or divinity. He says there's another reason. There's actually two, he says there's another. One of the reasons is that a person does not truly deserve the reward of the world to come simply because he has performed good deeds.
Speaker 0:You hear this. You think you're just going to go do these mitzvahs, these good deeds, and, as a result of that, you're building your world to come. I thought that. I thought that up until five minutes ago, but it's not that simple. What does he say? He says, rather, he can become fit to receive this reward from Hashem by virtue of two factors after performing good deeds. So the prerequisite to be able to get a life of eternal good is number one. Good deeds. That's the prerequisite. After that, there are two variables that need to be met. What are they? The first way that a person becomes fit for reward in the next world is by not only performing the good deeds, but also teaching other people the service of the Creator and guiding them to do what is good.
Speaker 0:You hear this. In other words, you have an obligation and we know this which means to learn and to teach, to keep and to do, to safeguard and to do so. You have an obligation to learn the mitzvahs number one. Then you have an obligation to teach the mitzvahs number two. Then you have an obligation to guard what you've learned and taught, In other words, make sure that it doesn't go away, and it can. If you're not constantly living a life of Torah and mitzvahs and relearning the things that you need to know, then they will disappear. You will forget them. It's not like riding a bike. That's the reality of Torah and godliness. You have to be on a path of constant growth. If you're not on that path of constant growth, all of the growth that you've done to date becomes at risk. You now risk potentially God forbid losing that which you have learned, and so that point is to guard it. And the last one is la'asot, to do an obligation.
Speaker 0:Why do we learn the mitzvahs? Why do we sit and learn Torah? Why do we learn about them? Not just because we want to understand them, not just because of the theory behind them, but the practice. We have to take what we've learned and apply it.
Speaker 0:You know there are 613 commandments that apply to the Jewish nation 613. Now, not all of them apply today, my friends. In fact, very, very few of them apply to the average Jew today. Why? Because a lot of these commandments applied in the time of the Beit HaMikdash, the temple, and they can only be performed when we have a temple. Now that we don't have one, a lot of these mitzvahs aren't doable. You cannot do any of these mitzvahs because the temple no longer exists. On top of that, if you're an average Jew, a lot of them also that apply today don't apply to you, like those that apply strictly to judges. Judges have a lot of the mitzvahs that apply to them. Doctors have mitzvahs that apply to them. There are certain professional categories that have mitzvahs that apply specifically to them but don't apply to the rest of us because we're not in those fields. So, really, at the end of the day, from the 613, I don't know how many remain, Maybe 100, 150. I'm not sure.
Speaker 0:The point is that we have 613 that were given to us and there is one mitzvah that trumps all of the rest, that if you take a scale and you put the one mitzvah on the one side and the other 612 on the other, the one mitzvah outweighs the other 612. What's that mitzvah? Talmud, Torah, Kineged, Kulam. The learning of Torah is bigger and outweighs the rest of the mitzvahs. Why? Because we learn in order to do. If we don't know what to do, then what's the point of the 613 mitzvahs? In order for us to comprehend the other 612 mitzvahs, we have to do the one mitzvah that tells us how to do them. That is the study of Torah. That's why we learn, my friends.
Speaker 0:So the first thing is lilmud, to learn, Then Lilamed. Okay, I just learned ABC. Now I have to teach ABC, the Hebrew alphabet. You might think it's elementary, and it is, but unfortunately there are many people out there who don't know the alphabet, the words, the letters that God created the entire world with. That's what he did. He created the world with speech. He used the alphabet and there are Jews out there who don't know the alphabet entire world with. That's what he did. He created the world with speech. He used the Aleph Beit and there are Jews out there who don't know the Aleph Beit. So if you've learned it, it's time to teach it. And then you have to continue growing so that you guard your learning, you don't forget it. That's how you maintain it, by continuing to learn.
Speaker 0:And then you go out and you implement. You implement the mitzvah. So you know that you need to give charity. You go out and give charity. You know that you need to pray. You go and pray. You know you need to buy a pair of tefillin. You buy a pair of tefillin. You know you have to build a sukkah. You build a sukkah, but you have to learn how to do it.
Speaker 0:First, my friends, and then you have an obligation to teach. Only after you've done that, my deeds, but you've taught other people. Then if there's one more condition, by the way, which we'll learn on Sunday, but this is condition number one that you've taught other people the path of godliness then you potentially have an entry, a ticket to enter in an eternity, a world of goodness, an eternal goodness in the next world. My friends, that wraps it up for today. My friends, I hope you have an amazing weekend. We'll pick it up on Sunday. We'll have a couple more classes before Rosh Hashanah and then we're into the sweet holiday of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. My friends have an amazing day and an amazing Shabbat.
