Always ready to crack a joke about anything, anyone, any subject, always saying foolish things, that attitude of unseriousness means that you’ll never amount to anything.
A Davening Ruined
Here’s a man who finishes davening. Let's say he put in a good hour davening, whatever it was, forty five minutes davening. On the way out he stops and cracks a joke by the door. It’s all wiped out. The Gemara describes davening as דברים העומדים ברומו של עולם – words that stand at the top of the world; it means it’s a very noble and exalted thing, the highest of the high. But the leitz underestimates it. He’s from the בני אדם מזלזלין בהן – from the people who underestimate that opportunity (Brachos 6b). And so his kibbitzing ruins it; that man doesn’t even realize that the leitzanus upended everything he accomplished.
You should take your davening with you as you walk out of the shul. After the last kaddish don't stand around joking. You can't laugh. You were speaking to Hakadosh Baruch Hu all this time. Such an achievement you’ll let slip away? And so, as you walk out, on the way home try to retain the effect as long as possible.
In case there was no effect, make it your business next time there should be an effect. That's the purpose of davening. Otherwise what good is it? And when you walk out retain that effect as long as possible, and then the next time you daven you add on top of that another effect. It grows more and more each time if you're careful not to lose it in between by hatzchok vehalatzon, by jesting and kibbitzing.
And it’s like that with everything! All of the important issues of life have to be taken with utmost gravity. Everything is important in this world and when we understand that we all can become great! All of us, men and women, boys and girls, we can walk on the Path of the Righteous.
Part III. The Biggest Leitzanus
Unfocused Living
Now I’ll ask you to be tolerant of me because I’m going to expand the subject now. I hope you people will accept the following idea and not think it’s too far off. It’s another level of understanding this subject, a deeper look into leitzanus.
Up until now we said that the leitz, whether he realizes it or not, takes his mind off the seriousness of life and all the important things don't make much of an impression on him. Because his mind is always frothing with a mood of lightheadedness, of unseriousness, so he lives an upside down life. The unimportant things become important and the important become less important.
Now that leads us to a very big subject, because you know what the most consequential thing in the world is? The Next World!
I’ll say that again because it’s so important: The most serious thing in this world is the Next World. In this world our minds have to be most focused on what’s going to be with us in the Next World. And so the person who removes his thoughts from Olam Haba – instead, he’s living for this world – that’s already a leitz.
Even if he’s not cracking a joke or laughing, but if he forgets that he’s in this world only in order to be successful in his preparations for Olam Haba, that’s the biggest leitzanus there is; because to live for this world means you’re ignoring the most serious thing in life.
Leitzanus About Coats and Cars
Here’s a lady; she has to go buy a coat and she’s talking to her friend on the telephone. “You know I was running all over New York today looking. I'm so worn out. I couldn't get a coat.” She went even to Manhattan. She’s waltzing around in a place of crooks and perverts, putting her neshamah in peril for the sake of a coat. “But I couldn’t find one,” she says.
Around the corner there's a place where she can get a coat! But she couldn’t find one. You understand already what the story is. She’s an Olam Hazehdige woman, a leitz. It’s a certain type of coat she needs; certain buttons or a certain color.
A man is the same thing; only instead of coats it’s other meshugasim. He’s very interested in his car. On Sunday afternoon instead of being busy in the beis medrash preparing himself for Olam Haba he’s busy cleaning his car; with sprays and waxes and vacuum machines.
And the poor fellow who can’t afford a car? So he has other gadgets, less expensive toys, that he’s interested in. And so he too is busy with the unimportant things of this world. Only an unserious mind could live like that. It’s a life of leitzanus.
Legalizing Pot
And they train the children the same way. I see fathers and mothers buying their children expensive watches, all kinds of expensive toys. A father buys his child a $95 toy. A meshugeneh! When a child comes and visits me I can't give him my 25 cent toys – it doesn’t mean anything to him because his parents already made him into a leitz. So the parents are making the children into little leitzim.
What happens? So eventually they grow up into big leitzim. Because if that’s the chinuch they grew up on, that Olam Haba is not the most serious thing, so other things become most important. Good times! Oh, of course! Good times! So when the big children are told that it's ‘good times’ to go to Manhattan, so these meshugaim go late at night to Greenwich Village and they sit on the floor – there's no furniture – they sit on the floor, and they smoke pot.
Now why do they smoke pot? Because they're told that that's called living, that's fun. It's fun like a hole in the head. Only that leitzim never learned what it means to be serious and so they’re always adopting false ideals, empty dreams. Everything foolish becomes important.
Talking to Ourselves
But I’m not talking now to the bums in Greenwich Village. They’re not interested in my words anyhow. I’m talking to myself, to us. The whole world is full of false ideals that have captivated our minds. Everybody is under the spell of Olam Hazeh.
Here is a home which has a basement that's fitted out like a gambling den in Las Vegas. And one side of it is furnished like a Western bar room. It cost thousands upon thousands of dollars. And these people bring their guests to show off what is their pride and their ideal and that's the example they hold out to their families. The fact that they consider these matters important implies that all the important things of life are unimportant. Their ideals are empty as could be.
But even a regular Orthodox home. If you walk into an Orthodox home and you see chandeliers that cost many hundreds of dollars and sofas and rugs that cost thousands, these people are leitzim. That house is a moshav leitzim because they're putting the emphasis on what is not important.
Living With Both Worlds
I’m not saying that the desire for a nice home or a handsome dining room is a contradiction to Olam Haba. If you’re a serious Jew, a Jew focused on Olam Haba, it doesn't mean you have to become a beggar. It doesn’t mean you live in a cardboard box. No. You're justified in living a nice normal life. You're entitled to have Olam Hazeh; why not?
After all, a person can be a beggar and a batlan and a shlemazal and still not live for Olam Haba. One thing doesn't have to do with the other. Hashem wants you to live a normal life and to be happy.
Only you can’t be a leitz; you can’t ever lose focus of why you’re here. You live happily but you live for Olam Haba. Even the Olam Hazeh you have is for that. You'll spend time thanking and singing to Hashem: “I sing to You Hashem, You gave me a nice home. I love You Hashem that you gave me a kitchen and a dining room.”
A Happy Sober Nation
Oh, that’s called being serious! That’s the opposite of leitzanus because you’re preparing for Olam Haba. If you sing to Hashem in happiness about all of the benefits He gives you so Hashem says, “Oh! I like to hear you sing. I'm going to let you continue singing in this world and in the World to Come too. And there you'll sing even more.”
But it’s not easy. If a person is not serious, if you’re not sober and thoughtful always, it’s impossible. Because then you’ll live only with this world. You’ll live with coats and cars and toys. You’ll live with furniture and rugs. You’ll live with politics, with the news – what happened here, what happened there; it means nothing at all but if you’re unserious it means everything. The leitz is repeating always the things that people in the street are saying, all the unserious things of Olam Hazeh.
That’s what Sarah Imeinu is teaching us, to throw away all of the leitzanus we find in ourselves. We have to learn that the Next World is what pays investing all your efforts into and you can’t do that if you’re unserious. And that’s why Yishmael had to be sent away. Because the holy nation can only live successfully if they’re a serious nation. That’s what it means not to be a leitz – we are a serious people, a thinking and introspective people, a sober and pious people.
Cheer in Williamsburg
Now, that doesn’t mean we’re not a happy nation. The Am Yisroel is cheerful. The Am Yisroel is friendly. They smile at each other. If you ever pass through Williamsburg in a bus, what you see more than anything else is that people are all smiling at each other. I passed almost every day for a certain time through Williamsburg, and I noticed people standing at the corners and they were all smiling and laughing. A fact; I saw it every day. I didn't say Flatbush – I’m talking about Williamsburg because Williamsburg is more Jewish and so it’s also more happy.
The frum Jew smiles and laughs in this world. He’s happy when he sleeps peacefully. He’s happy when he gets up in the morning healthy. He’s happy there’s peace in the land. He’s happy with his food, his meals. He’s happy with his family, with his children. His children, after all, respect him and give him nachas.
He’s happy that he’s succeeding in life, preparing for the Next World and so he doesn’t need the entertainment of the moshav leitzim. He’s not even interested because all it does is take his mind off the road, off the mesillas yesharim, the path of the righteous. The frum Jew doesn’t need leitzanus to live happily – he lives happily and successfully just because he doesn’t have it.
The Last Laugh
And then one day, אז ימלא שחוק פינו – our mouths will be filled with laughter even more. In the Next World we’ll be the ones laughing! That’s why when Yishmael went away, who was left in the tent of Avraham and Sarah? Yitzchok. He’s not called Sachak – he laughed; Yitzchok means ‘he will laugh’. The Jewish people, the descendants of Yitzchak, they're going to laugh at the end.
So let the gentiles laugh now. This is their world for laughing. The gentiles are sitting in the amphitheater, in the arenas, and they're watching as human beings are being cast to wild beasts. That's how the Romans sat and laughed. It was fun! And it never stopped. The gentiles always laugh in this world. For centuries and centuries they’re laughing at all wicked and rude things.
Hitler's cohorts laughed. As they led Jews to the gas chambers, they laughed. You see pictures of them laughing in the camps. And it never ends. The gentiles laugh at dirty shows. They laughed at foolish and empty things.
But we know ותשחק ליום אחרון – the frum nation who live today with a seriousness, a happy seriousness, will laugh on the last day. The Romans and the Nazis and the Hollywood people, they won't laugh in the end. But Yitzchak's descendants, we’re going to laugh. The serious, happy, successful nation, we’ll have the last laugh!
Have a Wonderful Shabbos
