Speaking in the name of Hashem; he’s stating the principle we’re studying and he says as follows: יƒּ ̇¿חַ ָ̃ל¿ו הָחָּפ¿ׁ ̆ƒּמƒמ םƒיַנ¿ׁ ּ̆ו ירƒע≈מ „ָח∆‡ ם∆כ¿ ̇∆‡ – I’m going to take you out of exile one from a town and two out of a whole family, ןֹוּיƒˆ ם∆כ¿ ̇∆‡ יƒ ̇‡≈ב≈ה¿ו – and I will bring you back to Tzion (3:14). One day we’ll go back to Tzion, but not everyone. One out of a town! Two from a big family! You hear that? All the rest will go lost. Of course, if you live on the right block, in the right town, it could be that the whole town will be saved. Absolutely. But it’s a terrible thing to hear, such a frightening prophecy.
Don’t we know that in Budapest, in the decades before the World War, thousands of Jews were baptized every year. Entire families gone forever. In Germany, intermarriage was even more than marriages between Jews themselves. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu is watching and allowing the procedure to go on because He’s waiting for the good ones to remain. “I’ll take one diamond out of a city,” Hashem says, “and two from a family. And only them, the ones that remained most loyal to Me, I'm going to bring to Tzion.”
Now we have to listen prayerfully to these words because they are an ominous warning to many people today. Because in America, it’s the same thing. There's no question we're in the middle of that process. As I always tell you, take an old telephone book from forty years ago and you’ll see names, families, that are not in existence anymore. They got lost. All lost.
Bad Memories
I myself, I look back at the last seventy years of my life—I'm older than seventy but I look back on seventy years when I had some seichel already—and I remember names of families that went lost.
I remember a family in Williamsburg; before the chassidim came to Williamsburg, there was a family, a shomer Shabbos family. They had six sons. Six boys. Not one remained from that family! Not a single one! When they were dying out already somebody pointed it out to me. “You know,” he said, “no one is remaining from that family. Not even one grandson. Nothing remains.”
Today is the worst period in our history—assimilation is consuming a larger number of Jews than ever before. There are cities full of lost Jews who will go down into the ground and be forgotten from the nation. Sometimes we are comforted with one who returns. An entire city of lost Jews and here is one baal teshuvah that comes back, ירƒע≈מ „ָח∆‡, one from a city.
One From a City
Like once a young man called me up from Grand Central Station. It was eleven o’clock at night and I picked up the phone.
“Is this Rabbi Miller?” he asked me. “The one who wrote Rejoice O’ Youth?”
He tells me that he came from a city in the Midwest and he read my book and he decided he wanted to visit me.
“But it’s eleven o’clock at night,” I said. “And it’ll take you another hour to get here.” I go to sleep early, you know.
He said he has no place else to go.
What can I do? He read my book after all. So he came in.
Today he’s a frum Jew. Not because of me. The Satmerers took him in and today he’s a Torah Jew.
So you see it happens—his entire family, even his entire city, went lost and he was plucked out.
What is Hakadosh Baruch Hu doing? He’s choosing the good ones and the other ones die out. Who will remain? The good ones will remain.
Pushing Our Descendants
And that’s a very important point for us to consider. Because we want to remain the good ones. And not only we ourselves—we want to give a big enough push that our children should remain too. And our grandchildren and great-grandchildren too. And so we have to consider the matter in a very serious way, thinking about ourselves and our future generations.
Everyone desires to remain forever in the Klal Yisrael in both worlds, but the question is who will be the one? Who will be those families that remain attached? And the answer is, it’s up to you. You know there were families among the Aseres Hashevatim who moved away from their neighbors; they moved to Eretz Yehuda and were saved. Make sure that you and your family are the ones! Make sure that you’re the best!
It doesn't necessarily mean that the peshutim, the hedyotim, who just live with the minimum will go lost. No. They won't go lost. After all they are shlomei emunei Yisroel, they're frum Jews that fulfill the Torah. They won't go lost. But we want more than that—we want to give such a push that it’ll be forever, that we and our descendants will be forever.
Be Like Avraham
Why were Avraham and his descendants chosen? יוƒּ ̇¿עַ„¿י יƒּכ – I am interested in him, ןַﬠַמ¿ל – in order, ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ יוָרֲחַ‡ ֹו ̇י≈ּב ̇∆‡¿ו יוָנָּב ̇∆‡ ה∆ּוַˆ¿י – he is going to command his children and his household after him, 'ה¿ך∆ר∆ּ„ּרו¿מָׁ ̆¿ו – that they should keep the way of Hashem (Bereishis 18:19).
Avraham, with his great heart and great spirit, gave such a push that we're still running from that push. We're still running from that impetus. Because he exerted himself to see that his children will carry out his great tradition. He went to extremes. He did everything with far-sightedness, with the utmost stubbornness, because his whole soul depended on it; like a man does something to save his life. And Hashem said, “That's why I love this man. Because I know that he's going to carry it out.”
So we're hearing now what makes Hakadosh Baruch Hu interested in a man. If you are going to hand over the great ideals of Hakadosh Baruch Hu to your children, that's the way to make Him interested in you—“interested” means you’ll be forever in His mind.
Mesirus Nefesh of Parents
That’s the father who is sitting now someplace and hammering into the head of his unwilling son Hamafkid or Arba Avos Nezikin. The boy comes home from the yeshivah and he says “Pa, the Gemara is too hard. I feel like quitting the yeshiva.”
And his father takes out the Gemara—the father is tired after a day's work, but he feels that the most important thing in life is to give his boy the taste of Torah. The father would prefer to cut off his arm than to allow his son to leave the yeshivah. And so he takes the Gemara and starts struggling because he insists that's what's going to happen.
The mother too. She’s taking care of a busy house, but at the forefront in her thoughts is that her children should be frum Torah Jews. She teaches her daughters tzniyus, how to dress like a Jew, how to talk like a Jew. She sits down with her little boy, reviewing the Chumash from the cheder. She’s breaking her teeth with him but she does it anyway.
It means also you have to choose the best yeshivos, the best Beis Yaakovs. Some people are indiscriminate. They think, “A yeshiva is a yeshiva. I’ll send my son there. A Beis Yaakov, that’s all I need to know.” No. The fact that it’s Orthodox is not enough. You have to find out. Not all are the same quality. You want the best!
And you have to beware because today there are institutions that are of inferior quality. Now I don’t want to speak up and say the names because there may be some institutions that have patriots to defend them and I’ll just make more enemies, but there are those too. And therefore, your child has only so many years that he can spend in a Torah institution being molded by Torah ideals, and so you have to look for the best.
The Best Homes
And you can’t rely only on the yeshiva either. You have to make sure that you and your family are included in the chosen ones by making your home the best. If you have a television at home, go home tonight and put it out with the garbage. It's poison for even the best, the most convinced Jew. One look at what's going on leaves an impression, a stain, that will be on his neshamah forever. You just can't help looking at reshaim and being influenced.
Now, I know there are a lot of Jews who still poo poo it. “It’s nothing,” they say. “It depends what it is. You can control it. You turn it off.” And these people are making out of their homes a receptacle with all the wickedness and filth of the gentile world poured into it.
And therefore the time has come for people to stop being so foolish and so stubborn. Television is worse than a treife kitchen. There's no question, it's much better to have a kitchen with chazir than television, because chazir goes into your stomach. Television goes into your neshamah. Of course you have to have a kosher house. Your kitchen must be kosher. Your bedroom must be kosher. Everything must be kosher. But the mind must surely be kosher.
And when the time will come, there will be a separation between those who had a kosher mind and those who didn’t. How can you expect your family to remain forever with the Am Yisroel if you’re ruining their minds? Even today there’s a separation; people ask me today about shidduchim, so they say a nice boy, yeshivah boy, fine, middos, learning, ba’al kishron. But do they have television in the home? It's a question today, and it's a very important question. Was it a television home? Shidduchim are rejected because of that. But what if chas v’shalom you’re rejected altogether? Chas v’shalom, chas v’shalom.
Advanced Greatness
I’ll tell you more. If you’ll advance to the stage of not owning a radio and newspapers, הָכָר¿ּב ם∆יכ≈לֲﬠ ‡ֹבוָּ ̇. The radio, even if it’s just the news, it’s all adulterated with the opinions of the people writing the news scripts, and the people announcing the news. And most often these people are low people, degenerates; people, who if you saw them, you wouldn’t think of talking with them. People whose minds are full of the sewage of the outside world.
Now, I’m not going to tell you not to listen to the news; I’m not going to tell you that as a p’sak halacha, but you should know that what goes into your ears will never come out again. That’s all. And what goes into your eyes will never come out again. Once you let it into your head, it remains in your head forever and ever. It becomes part of you forever.
That’s why if a young man marries a young woman today and he says, “Look; on one condition. No radio in our house,” so she might be somewhat surprised because her parents always had a radio. They didn’t have a television; that much she understands but a radio? The answer is you want to be from the very best!
Move Closer
So that’s the way to save your family forever. And even if you live way out in Scarsdale and all your neighbors will laugh at you—“You heard? Barry is going crazy! He’s throwing the TV out of his house”—who cares? You be that one family in Scarsdale! Or better yet move to Flatbush.
If you live in Flatbush, move to Williamsburg. Or make yourself closer to tzaddikim, talmidei chachomim, the frummest, most loyal Jews. Whatever you can do to be more loyal to Hashem, more loyal to the Am Hashem, that’s what you should do.
Marry a girl whose father is a talmid chacham. ֹלו ׁ ̆≈ּי∆ׁ ̆ הַמ לָּכ םָ„ָ‡ רֹוּכ¿מƒי םָלֹעו¿ל – A man should sell everything he owns, םָכָח „יƒמ¿לַּ ̇ ַּ̇ב ‡ָּׂ ̆ƒי¿ו – and buy himself a daughter of a talmid chacham. You're a girl? Then sell everything you have and buy yourself a talmid chacham. Or have your father buy for you a talmid chacham. It's worth it. Whatever you do, make that your focus in life. ם∆הָּמƒעּינו≈ ̃¿ל∆ח יםƒׂ ̆¿ו! We want to be together with the best ones!
And we must know that those who persist in their loyalty, they are the ones that Hashem had in mind at the beginning of our history. םָר¿בַ‡ּב ָּ ̇¿רַחָּב ר∆ׁ ֲ̆‡ – You chose Avraham, ָיך∆נָפ¿ל ןָמ¡‡∆נ ֹבוָב¿ל ̇∆‡ ָ ̇‡ָˆָמּו – because You found that his heart was loyal before You. Hashem is looking for the especially loyal ones that will remain with Him until the end. And then all together, we and our descendants, will be with Him forever in this world and forever in the Next World.
Have a Wonderful Shabbos
