Hashem. And so it's very important while you're eating fish on Shabbos you're thinking “Olam chessed yibaneh! How I'm enjoying this! The fish is delicious.” Same thing, the soup. And when it comes to the chicken you start all over again. You're enjoying and you’re thinking of olam chessed yibaneh. When it comes to dessert, of course.
And don't be ashamed! Don't say, “I'm a parush. I'm not interested in ta'avos of Olam Hazeh.” No! It's avodas Hashem if you enjoy it the right way— with thought. “I thank You Hashem for all the chessed You’re doing with the world. And I'm sampling it now so that I should appreciate Your chessed even more.” And the more you sample and the more you think, the more you're going to appreciate it.
The Exceptional Shabbos
And it’s not merely for those details, those samples alone. Because when you acquire a Shabbos mind, a mind of happiness, so you’ll take that with you all week long. חַ ̇∆ּפַל , at the beginning, greatness is rovetz. When a person utilizes the Shabbos with a little thought, he begins to see that the world is a good place. He enjoys the food. He enjoys his family. He enjoys wearing nice, freshly laundered clothing. He enjoys a little rest. He enjoys the weather. He’s training himself by years and years of oneg Shabbos to see that Hashem is giving him a world of happiness.
Now, I’m not saying that if a person doesn’t think these thoughts, that he’s not fulfilling his duty as a Jew. Even if a person is a megusham, an ignorant person, and he sits down and eats without thinking, something seeps in in the subconscious mind. It's not wasted. Besides, it's a mitzvah and a mitzvah even without understanding the purpose of the mitzvah is also something. But still, there's no comparison to the achievement by a man who thinks a little bit and he understands why he’s enjoying the Shabbos.
And therefore, to a big extent he’s a failure. It’s chatas. He hasn’t lived properly. Because when you utilize the Shabbos for what it’s intended, to try to gain this Torah attitude of „ֹ‡¿מ בֹטו ה≈ּנƒה¿ו הָׂ ָ̆ﬠ ר∆ׁ ̆ ֲ‡ לָּכ ̇∆‡ יםƒ ֹ̃ ל¡‡ ‡¿רַּיַו, it changes you. Week after week, each Shabbos you’re becoming more and more exceptional. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu is waiting for people who will be exceptional.
Part III. A Good Life
The Cheit of Taanugim
Now once a person begins to utilize the Shabbos in order to gain an attitude that this world is a very good world, he begins to see that he doesn't have to run after pleasures; he won’t need candies and movie theatres and pastries. Because once he’s trained by means of thoughtful oneg Shabbos, he’ll learn that everything is a taanug. He won’t need ice cream to be a happy person.
Because here’s a man—he says, “Rav Miller said the world was made for enjoyment, so why shouldn't we go all the way? Let’s go!”
The answer is this. Let's say it's good to eat a tasty piece of challah and enjoy the chessed Hashem. So he’ll eat two challos, three challos at a time? You'll commit suicide if you eat three challos every day. And more importantly, it’ll be ruchniyus suicide too, because if a person lets go, he becomes a slave. And to become a slave to taanugim, that's not life anymore.
Life is for the purpose of being a free man, to choose between good and not good, and once you become enslaved, you’re losing out on life; that’s also cheit. And therefore even though Shabbos teaches us to enjoy the world, but we learn to enjoy it the right way.
Happy With Simplicity
That’s what it means לַכ‡ֹּ ̇ חַל∆מּב ַּ̇פ – You can eat bread and salt, םƒיַמּו ה∆ּ ̇¿ׁ ̆ƒּ ̇ הָרּוׂ ̆¿ּמַּב – and you don’t have much water either; just a cupful of water, לַﬠ¿ו ןַׁ ̆יƒּ ̇ ı∆רָ‡ָה – and you sleep on the ground; no dormitory beds, ל≈מָﬠ הָּ ַ̇‡ הָרֹוּ ַ̇בּו – and you’re working in Torah too, ‡ָּבַה םָלֹעוָל¿ךָל בֹטו¿ו ה∆ּזַה םָלֹעוָּבָיך∆ר¿ׁ ַ̆‡¿ךָל בֹטו¿וָיך∆ר¿ׁ ַ̆‡ – you’ll be happy in this world and it’ll be good for you in the Next World (Avos 6:4).
You hear that? ה∆ּזַה םָלֹעוָּבָיך∆ר¿ׁ ַ̆‡! You’ll be happy in this world?! What’s that about? Mimeila, ‡ָּבַה םָלֹעוָל¿ךָל בֹטו, I understand; but ה∆ּזַה םָלֹעוָּבָיך∆ר¿ׁ ַ̆‡?
Yes. That’s what they’re telling you. Once you learn the secret of Shabbos, the secret of happiness, it’ll be ה∆ּזַה םָלֹעוָּבָיך∆ר¿ׁ ַ̆‡! You’ll become a happy person with all of the simple pleasures of life. He eats bread and he’s happy because he practiced on Shabbos with the challah. He dips it in salt and he’s even more happy.
How good salt is! Salt is a ta’anug. Did you ever think about being happy with salt? It never even entered your mind. Because wherever you go, you’ll never hear these words. Only in this little place, we talk about being happy with salt.
And so, next time you take salt, just to be yotzei—after all, a Jewish table is like a mizbeach and when a Jew eats it’s like a korban l’Hashem, an offering. So he dips it in salt and he thinks he’s doing a favor to Hakadosh Baruch Hu! “Look how frum I am!”
“Oh! But what about enjoying it and thanking Me for the salt?” Hashem says.
Water Fun
And then the water. Maybe on Shabbos you practiced up with a little wine for kiddush, maybe a little juice by the seudah, but now it’s a regular Wednesday and you’re ready to enjoy a cup of water. It’s such a happiness when a person can drink water. Ay, ay, ay! It’s such a simcha! It’s mayim mesukim! It’s so sweet. That water is better than anything in the world!
When I came to Slabodka, you couldn’t drink the water because there was always a concern of typhus from the well there. So you had to cook the water. People gave up; they didn’t bother drinking. In the yeshiva, there was no water to drink. All day long, not a drop of water to drink. There was a barrel of water when you came in to wash your hands, but chas v’shalom to drink that water. It was a sakanah; they never washed out that barrel in fifty years. So all day long, not a drop of water! When you came home to your shtanzeh, you wanted a drink, you had to ask the baalebuste to cook up some water for you. So sometimes they did it.
When I came back to America, I learned to appreciate it—open up the faucet, a mayim chayim! What a blessing it is! Water! And you can drink it without cooking too! And so, I learned a little seichel when I came back to America.
Expensive Bottled Water
And so, you take the glass in your hand and look at it and say, “„ֹ‡¿מ בֹטו!” You don’t mean it, but say it anyhow. After saying it a few times, little by little, ֹ̇וּיƒימƒנ¿ּפַה ̇∆‡ ̇∆ר∆רֹעו¿מ ּ̇וּיƒנֹוˆיƒחַה – he begins to appreciate the glass of water. Each time he drinks water—by the way, it’s good to drink a lot of water— he gets into the habit of drinking water, holds the glass in his hand and looks at it, “Ah! How beautiful it is! If I had to buy water in the drug store, I should have to pay a hundred dollars for a little bottle!” You can’t get along without it.
Some years ago, Macy’s was selling water for two dollars a bottle. They took water from the sink and put it into Macy’s bottles. So I was thinking, “It’s a wonderful thing! It reminds us that it’s worth money. Two dollars a bottle? It’s worth a thousand dollars!” A person in the Sahara desert, he’s looking for a little bit of water before he drops dead, and then you have this (the Rov was holding the bottle of water from Macy’s). “How much is it?” he says. You can ask him for a thousand dollars. He’ll give a thousand dollars! Happily!
The Happy Porush
And therefore, we have to know, every time that we drink water, we’re being saved from extinction! Hakadosh Baruch Hu is saving our lives. It’s happiness; for a thinking man it’s a real happiness!
And so the happy porush eats a piece of bread and he thanks Hashem as if he's eating the most luscious of all forms of appetizing food. He eats with appreciation. He takes his piece of bread and dips it in the salt, and he chews with relish and thinks “what great happiness this is!”. Then he drinks a cup of water and smacks his lips! “Ah!,” he says. “It’s so good.” Bread, water, a little salt and some thought, and you’re a happy man!
And that’s the trick, how to work on happiness. Because you can't just tell a man, “Be happy.” That's like saying nothing at all to him. You're not helping him a bit; happiness takes training. It’s a science. I won't be able to say it all tonight because I'm going to draw this to a close in a couple of minutes but briefly: the joy of life is not one thing—it’s the combination of many things, many happy details.
Drunk on Cocktails
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say breathing. You draw it deep into your lungs and learn to enjoy it. Air is a special mixture, a cocktail. If it was all oxygen, you’d be intoxicated; you would reel, and you’d fall down dizzily. If it was all nitrogen, then you couldn’t live a minute. It’s 20% oxygen, 80% nitrogen. Ah! That’s exactly a good proportion for you, for happiness.
Breathing is fun! I once told you about a simple experiment, didn’t I? It’s an experiment anybody can carry out at home. Take a bucket full of water and put your head into it and remain there for thirty seconds. And then think how good it would be just to have one breath. Don’t breathe under the water. Then you pull your head out and take one deep breath. Ahh! Isn’t that delicious?
The truth is, it's always delicious, but a person who has been breathing all his life never once stopped to enjoy it. We take so many breaths, that they become unimportant to us and we become obtuse; we are spoiled because of habit and ingratitude and we become blind to the fun of breathing.
So you say, “Well everybody else is blind, so I’ll also remain blind.”
No. That’s why you came here. To learn that Hashem doesn’t want you to be blind. He wants you to train on Shabbos—that’s the day set aside for it—and to take it with you during the week. On Shabbos you open up your eyes and get a pair of Shabbos eyeglasses and through the eyeglasses you look at the world and you see the truth of Hashem’s briyah. יƒיעƒב¿ׁ ַ̆ה םֹיו ̇∆‡ יםƒ ֹ̃ ל¡‡¿ך∆רָב¿יַו – He blessed the Shabbos in order you should see how good it is to have air in the world! Ahhhh! Breathe deeply. Most people never fill their lungs; just the top.
They’re lazy. If you fill your lungs, breathe deeply so the bottom of your chest is bulging out. Ah!
And the same is with thinking. Most people think shallowly. The bottom of the brain is never used. So think deeply! Then you’ll start enjoying the happiness of this world. You don’t need ice cream. You don’t have to go to Manhattan on motzaei Shabbos for movies. Right here, wherever you are, breathe deeply and thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu for this cocktail! Baruch Hashem it’s tov me’od.
From Bread to Bannisters
And so, if bread and water make you happy, so two things cause you happiness. If salt and breathing make you happy so it’s four. If you’ll be happy with a cool breeze and the sunlight, that’s already six. And your eyes! Ooh! It's a pleasure to use the two cameras you have here. And they take color pictures all the time. To have eyes is a very big simchah. It's a ta'anug, a delight. It's an ecstasy as I look around with my two cameras. Ahahaha! That's life.
Even when you're walking down the stairs and you're holding onto the banister, so you're thinking, “How lucky I am to have a banister.” Imagine such a thing! A person who is happy with a banister! They’ll say he’s meshuga. It’s true—he’s meshuga with happiness.
And so if you learn fifty things, fifty things will cause you happiness. If you're wise enough to study a thousand things, then a thousand things will cause you happiness. The more subjects you study, the more phenomena you study, the more happiness you're going to get out of life. That’s the recipe for happiness in this world because to live with joy means you’re living with the sum total of tens of thousands of phenomena. And it's necessary to take each phenomenon separately and study it and enjoy each time you encounter it.
A Serious Shabbos
What you’re hearing now is not leitzanus. It’s most serious. And we’re nitba—we’re going to be judged for that. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “It’s chatas! You’re missing out in life!” The purpose of life is to see chessed Hashem mal’ah ha’aretz. ה∆נָּבƒי „∆ס∆ח םַלֹעו! He made the briyah, the whole creation, for one purpose: „∆ס∆ח¿ּב יםƒּיַח ל≈ּכ¿לַכ¿מ.
And that’s why it’s of the utmost necessity to understand that Shabbos is the fertile ground upon which a happy life grows. Shabbos is the day of brachah for that purpose, so that we should utilize it to learn how to be happy in this world. And when you’re happy in the world, that’s how you come to the great madreigah of love of Hashem, the madreigah that best prepares you for the World to Come.
Happiness Forever
That’s what the Gemara says: ָּ̇בַּׁ ַ̆ה ̇∆‡ ‚≈נַﬠ¿ּמַה לָּכ – If you cause ta’anug, pleasure on Shabbos, יםƒרָˆ¿מ יƒל¿ּב הָלֲחַנ ֹלו יןƒנ¿ ֹ̇נו – so in the Next World they’re going to give you an estate that has no boundaries. It’s talking about physical pleasure on Shabbos—eating, drinking, resting, other things—and for that you’ll get such a reward without limit.
Now what that means exactly I can’t tell you because I don’t know myself— but it's something tremendous. We can picture, l’mashal, you’ll be sitting in your stratosphere airplane and travelling through the skies and visiting hundreds of worlds, huge worlds, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu has given to you as a gift. That's part of your estate now.
It's still a mashal but the mashal is for something that's grand, beyond our ability to understand. And it's set aside for a person who enjoys the food on Shabbos or he rested on Shabbos; the physical pleasure of Shabbos. Because that’s the number one brachah of Shabbos—it’s the day that is intended to teach you a lesson of the great happiness that awaits you in this life! And if you’ll study it properly and remember always the One Who is giving you that happiness, that’s how you’ll merit a happy life, not only in this world, but you’ll achieve also the tremendous and infinite happiness of Olam Haba.
Have a Wonderful Shabbos
