You’re too young, but when I was a boy they had livery stables on every block and they ‘perfumed’ the whole atmosphere with a wholesome smell. You had to hold your nose. And that’s the same thing in movies. It’s worse than a stable. It has the odor of ripe manure that has been lying around for a long time. You’re holding your nose while you’re fixing the pipe. Not because of the pipe – because of the theater.
Entering The Shul
But lehavdil elef havdalos when you enter a shul, then you have to enter with yiras hakovod, with a nervous excitement. So stop before you walk in and think a moment, “I’m about to enter the place of the Shechinah. Now is the time to feel a regesh, an excitement. This is what’s important.”
You have to steel yourself against temptations. Somebody might make a joke. You don’t joke in the shul! You can’t converse. You can’t talk devorim beteilim. And you should make the right type of noise: Amein yehei shmei rabah! Hodu la’Hashem ki tov! Kadosh kadosh kadosh! Boruch kevod Hashem mim’komo!
You don’t mean it? Say it anyhow. It takes training and you have to practice up on it. Walk in with respect, with awe, with excitement. That’s how we train ourselves – we’re reminding ourselves always that respect, awe and excitement is only for the Beis Elokim, for places connected to Hashem.
Part III. Getting Excited
Live Once, Live Right
Now, I’m happy you came in from the cold to listen to me tonight. It’s a good thing when you hear things that rattle your nerves a little bit. Let it rattle. It’s very good to know that it’s only קִ ים ְ בֵ ית אֱ לּ בְ רָ גֶ שּׁ בְֵ ךּ נ ְ הַ ל that matters; that living as a Jew, living the Torah way, means that it’s only about things connected to Hashem, to avodas Hashem, that we make a commotion. It’s an important idea; more than you imagine. Think it over when you leave here tonight and let it settle in.
But it’s not enough to listen. You only live once! You have to live right! You have to take yourself by the hand and talk to yourself; you have to train yourself to think with this pattern of thought that only He is worth getting excited about.
Dovid Talks to Himself
You know who did that? Dovid spoke to himself frequently. If you study Tehillim, the book of Psalms, you see a number of times that he is speaking to himself. That’s not done by modern people. But there are great men who did it.
The Chofetz Chaim was known to have spoken to himself. On the roof of the yeshivah in Radin there was a little garret where the Chofetz Chaim would sometimes hide and sometimes a brash youngster used to walk up and stand by the door and listen in. He heard the Chofetz Chaim speaking to himself: “Yisroel Meir, who do you think you are? Why aren’t you grateful for all the great things that the Almighty helped you achieve in your life?” Or, “Yisroel Meir, is this the way for a decent Jew to behave?”
That’s the way of people who want to make something from themselves, people who want to achieve in this world. It’s a system of training oneself; not waiting for some outside influence to teach you. And Dovid did that always. Not only he did it but he recorded some of it for posterity. He left us a lot of his thoughts, his discussions, in his Tehillim.
When we find in Tehillim ָרְ כִי נַפְשִׁ י, הַלְלִי נַפְשִׁ י, בְּבוֹדִ י רָ ה כּּעו. Various leshonos, a number of times. ָ שׁ ִ מְ ךְּ לָ הּ אֲ הַ ל – I will be wild over Your Name, וַ אֲ בָ רְ כָ ה ָשׁ ִ מְ ך – I will give gratitude to Your Name. Dovid is actually talking to himself; he’s urging himself: “Dovid, don’t be a nobody. Don’t be slothful. Don’t be indolent. Don’t let life go by. Get out of the rut. Rise up and be what you’re able to be.”
Walking With Dovid
And if we’ll follow in his footsteps, ָ ךָּ וִד עַ בְ דְּשִׁ ירֵ י דְּב, we’re going to experience some of his emotions. Not all of them. This, I am sorry, I cannot promise you. But as much as you try to follow in his footsteps and recapture some of his feelings, that's how much you’ll be a ben Olam Haba in a small percentage that Dovid Hamelech is a ben Olam Haba.
But we have to study his words for that. Just saying Tehillim superficially is not going to acquire for you the noble attitudes that Dovid acquired. Just to mutter, to mumble the words is a very small accomplishment. Tehillim is effective only when it’s accompanied by a certain concentration of the mind. And so, it pays to concentrate and think and reflect on the noble ideals of Tehillim.
Every day a few times we say ָ ה לְ דָ וִ דְּ הִ לְּ ת – A praise of Dovid (Tehillim 145); we call it Ashrei. It’s a tragedy that Ashrei is so mistreated and neglected. If we had time, we would study all of the words together and we would see that Ashrei is a glorious experience. And the first thing we say is אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ךְ אֱ ל וֹ קַ י הַ מּ ֶ לֶ ך – I am going to exalt You! Ah! Aromimcha! That one word is enough! We could spend the whole evening on that! What does it mean Aromimcha?
Dovid’s One-Track Harp
Ram means what’s high, what’s big in this world. And Dovid said, “Ribono Shel Olam, before I begin my song I want You to know what this is all about. It’s for one purpose. I’m going to make You great in this world. I’ll make You important.”
But it’s more than that. Not, ‘I’ll make You great too.’ Aromem means ‘I’ll make what great? Aromimcha! Only You and nobody else!’ That’s what Dovid was saying: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s only You; You are It with a capital I and there’s nothing else. I am going to make You great and I’m not going to make anything else great in this world.’
Dovid’s harp was a one-track harp, a narrow-gauged harp. He couldn’t play just anything on it. He couldn’t play songs of war, of prowess, of heroes. His harp wouldn’t talk for such things. Dovid’s strings, as he put his finger on the strings, they wouldn’t utter sounds in praise of romance.
They wouldn’t play sounds of prize fighting, bull fights and hunting. There was no noise about putting on a red suit with white stripes and getting on a horse with baying hounds and with bugles and chasing a poor little fox; and the gentlemen and ladies all participate in the hunt or in fields. No noise about going to places of amusement. “Nothing doing,” said Dovid, “My harp is only for You. אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך – I’m going to exalt only You.”
Your One-Track Mind
And that’s what we’re supposed to think about when we say that word. We’re trying to imitate that attitude, to stir up that emotion within us: אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך – I’ll be excited only about You! I’m not going to be excited about a sports team, about a Super Bowl football game or a World Series. Restaurants and travel? Literature? Movies? Actors? I’m not interested at all! And even if I am, I won’t talk about it. I won’t evince any excitement about it because ‘Aromimcha!’ I will exalt only You! As far as I’m concerned, you are It with a capital I and there’s nothing else. I’m going to make You high, the highest of all things! Nothing in this world matters to me except You!
That’s the theme of our lives, to make Hashem important in our lives. Of all the things that we’re interested in, of all the things that we think about, of all the issues that are important to us, there is nothing but Hashem.
Excited About Sprinkles
Now, don’t get any wrong ideas. When Dovid said, “I’m going to make you paramount in the world,” it didn’t mean that he retired to a cave with an iron door and he said goodbye to the world. By no means! Dovid was speaking to himself always because, like us, he lived in this world and he was training himself to this ideal as a person living in this world.
And so אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך doesn’t mean you can’t eat ice cream. When you sit down to dessert and your mother is preparing the ice cream you have a right to say, “Ma, please give me the pink kind.” Or “Can I have colorful sprinkles?” And you won’t be considered a guzzler, a zolel v’sovei. But only on condition that before you take anything, you remind yourself: “Aromimchaaa! I have a job here! To raise You up.”
And then you make a big and enthusiastic bracha. ָ הּ אַ תְּךָּ רוּב – I bend my knees in gratitude to You! ִדְבָרוֹֹּל נִהְיֶה בְּשֶׁהַכ – because this ice cream is a manifestation of Your Will. It’s Your Word, Your Creation.
Thank your mother too. Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants that too – He says וְ אֶ ת אִ מּ ֶ ךֵָ ד אֶ ת אָ בִ יךַּ בְּכַּב – so be excited about that too. Thank your mother with a gusto!
Oh, now the ice cream is justified. You’re not excited anymore about the ice cream – you’re excited about the One Who gave you the ice cream! You’re excited about whom He told you to honor. That’s אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך – I’m going to make You great in this world! That’s all there is in this world!
Making Judaism Great Again
Now, it could be that when we hear these words today so they seem extreme; they seem to be over the top. But that’s because we’ve been spoiled. Our Torah attitudes have been watered down to such an extent that when we hear something that’s so basic, so fundamental to Torah living, so we’re surprised.
But actually that’s how our forefathers always lived. I’m telling you what the gentiles said, what they wrote about our forefathers. One goy writes as follows and I’m quoting from him. He says, “The Jews were in love with their religion.” Now when that goy said, ‘in love’ he used the words advisedly. He had something in mind because he had a parallel and he used the parallel for the Jews for their religion.
Hot Cold Litvaks
I cannot tell you people – you wouldn’t believe me – how hotly the love of yiddishkeit, the love of Torah, the love of Hakadosh Baruch Hu burned in the hearts of our forefathers not so long ago.
When I was in Lithuania, a kalteh Litvak, a cold Lithuanian Jew, once said something to me. “You came to Lithuania too late,” he said. I’m repeating his words exactly; only he said it in Yiddish. He said, “Had you come before World War I, you would have seen a yiddishkeit that was like a fire. It was burning like a fire here.” We have no idea how in the not-so-remote past our forebearers had no interest in life other than Torah and yiras Shamayim.
And that’s what Dovid was expressing with the word אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך. He wasn’t saying something that’s a utopian expression. He was describing a way of life; the way of Jewish living: “You are the only One Who is lifted up in our minds, in our excitement.”
The Important Alef
Now, the question is who’s going to do this? Dovid could have said, “Of course You’re great, Hashem. You don’t need my haskamah. You’re רָ ם ָׂ אּוְ נִ ש without my two cents. You were great before I came into the world and You’ll be great after I leave this world. You’re great just because You are.”
“No,” said Dovid. “I’m not satisfied with that. The alef in אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך means ‘I’. I’m going to do the job! AAAAromimcha! I’m going to make You great. I’m going to train myself to be excited only about You.”
AAAromimcha means “I’m not going to rely on anybody else to do the job. I’ll do it myself. I’ll compose a Tehillim. I’ll sing to You. I’ll sing about You. And my dream is that the entire Jewish nation is going to follow in my footsteps and be excited only about You.”
And therefore, Dovid Hamelech when he said this word, אֲ ר וֹ מִ מְ ך, he was speaking for the entire mamleches kohanim v’goy kadosh. He wanted us to say that word and be inspired like him.
Make Him Great
And therefore, our job is AAA! The aleph! I’m going to do it! I’m going to train myself, in my own little life, to be excited only about You; only about You and whatever’s connected to You. And I’m not going to rely, let’s say, on the Jews in Williamsburg or the people in kollelim in Yerushalayim. AAAA! I want to do it! AAAA means I!
I’m not delegating this great function to anyone. I’m not going to be inveigled anymore by what the world gets excited about. Travel? It’s lo klum, it’s zero. Art and music and sports and theater? A big fat zero. The best wines and the fancy cars and all the garbage that means nothing? From now on, it’s nothing to me because Aaaaromimcha!
I’m going to do my best to raise the Name of Hakadosh Baruch Hu in my life, in my stay here in this world, by training myself that קִים נְהַלְֹבֵית אֱלּ בְ רָ גֶ שּׁ ב – that only in avodas Hashem, in all things connected to You, that’s the only thing I’ll express excitement about in this world!
Have a Wonderful Shabbos
Let’s Get Practical
Excitement About Hashem
The mitzvah of terumas hadeshen was done in a manner to emphasize the excitement of the kohanim in serving Hashem, an especial commotion was made, because only avodas Hashem is worth getting excited over. This week, as I recite Ashrei thrice daily, I will bli neder stop for a moment at the word “Aromimcha” and think about the the final syllable – “I’m only excited over You”, and it’s first syllable – “It is ‘I’ who must raise You up Hashem!”
This week’s booklet is based on tapes: R-37 - The Honor of Hashem | 215 - In Dovid’s Footsteps | 364 - We Say Kedusha | 845 - Praise the Righteous | 981 - What Is Important | E-43 - Be Excited Over Me
