Everyday Judaism · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Ask Away series on the Everyday Judaism podcast. To have your questions answered on future episodes, please email askaway at torchweb.org. Now ask away.

My dear friends, I have a special treat for you today. As you know, on our Everyday Judaism podcast, we have a lesson that we learn in Halacha and the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, which is the abridged code of Jewish law, and then we open up the floor to your questions.
But today, right now, it is 7.15 in the evening on Sunday, the 8th of February, and we're in the middle of the halftime of the Super Bowl, and I have some wonderful students here. Wonderful young yeshiva students who have questions, and they're going to be asking the questions for our Ask Away segment. So my dear friends, I present to you Ask Away number one, junior Ask Away. So now I'm going to turn the floor to who's ready to ask a question.
My name is Aryeh Buchwald, and I'm in seventh grade, and I'm 12 years old. And the question that I have is, if the whole purpose of being in this world is to go to Olam HaBa, then why doesn't Hashem just put us straight there right away? Amazing question. This is actually a question that our sages talk about a lot, because if Hashem really wants us to be in Olam HaBa and to get all the reward for all of our good deeds, for
all the good things that we do, then why does He just put us there straight, instead of having to go through this whole detour through this world, just put us straight in there? That's a fabulous question, and I love your first name. Excellent, beautiful first name. So now let me tell you like this. There's something called na'amadiki sufa, you know what that is? Which is bread of shame, bread of shame. Let me ask you a question.
If someone gives you a handout, always, always giving you a handout, at some point you'll be very embarrassed. Because like, I want to earn my own living. I don't want someone to give me money. I want to earn it myself. There's something, some value about earning your own. What Hashem does in His unbelievable kindness is that Hashem gives us an opportunity to do and earn our Olam HaBa. So now you come into this world, you come into this world which faces a lot of challenges.
We have things online that are challenges. We have things with our friends that are challenges. We have things all around us that are challenges, trying to distract us, take us away from learning Torah, take us away from our growth and connection to Hashem. And then, if we're still able to overcome all of those challenges and accomplish our relationship with Hashem, then what happens is, is that we get the greatest reward because we earned it. And we all know that there's a concept called Bechira.
What's the concept of Bechira? Anybody know? Is that you have free will. You can choose. Hashem always gives us a balance to choose. The balance to choose. So here's the thing, if you want to sit and learn Torah, you know what happens the moment someone opens up their Gemara? Their mind gets flooded with all these dreams and imagination. That's your Yetzirah saying, no, no, no, no, don't learn now. Now you should, you know, do a good business deal, go make money.
And the Yetzirah tries to persuade you to do other things. What a person needs to do is stay focused. I'm here in this world for one purpose, and that is to serve Hashem. That is an excellent question, Aryeh. I appreciate you asking that question. And now, let's pass it on. My name is Shlomo Chaim Lieberman, and I'm 12 years old. My question is, why in parashat Yisro, do we refer to Yisro after the introduction of Yisro as Choshen Moshe and Choyen Midyon? As opposed to?
Just Yisro. Okay, it's a very important question that you ask about last week's Torah portion that we just read yesterday in our shuls around the world. So Yisro, as we know, was an incredible personality. He was not only the father-in-law of Moshe, but he had other titles as well. What were the other titles? He has, in fact, if you look in Rashi, Rashi says he had seven names. What is a name? What is the title?
The idea is, our sages tell us, that Yisro was an adventurer of religions. He would go and try to seek out Hashem in every religion. He didn't find it except in Judaism, and that's why he converted and joined the Jewish people. The reason why it's mentioned, all those different names as Choshen Moshe and whatever other titles that are mentioned for Yisro is because Yisro wasn't just a simple guy. Yisro went all around and tried every single religion, and then he concluded that the only
one that has emes, the only one that has truth, is the Torah. And that's why he ultimately joined the Jewish people and joined Chol Yisro as a member of the tribe. The reason it's saying those names is for us to understand that he had big challenges and he overcame those challenges notwithstanding. But what's incredible also about last week's Torah portion is that the way the parasha begins is Vayishma Yisro. He listened, he heard, he got the message, something that many people sometimes don't do.
They don't get the message. They listen, they read the paper, they see that so many miracles happened to the Jewish people and they still hate the Jews. They don't learn their lesson. And what people need to do is learn from Yisro. And the first most important ingredient to accepting the Torah, which is given in last week's Torah portion of Yisro, is to be able to hear the message. If someone wants to grow in Torah, Hashem communicates with us, we have to open our ears and listen.
Okay? I hope I answered your question. Great. Thank you. Great question. My name is Ephraim and I'm 13 years old. And my question is, when it comes to the halachas about going into places that have avodah Zarah, is one allowed to clean, let's say he does a cleaning business, is he allowed to clean a room that doesn't have the avodah Zarah itself, let's say in a church, but it's not
in the room of where they do the avodah Zarah, let's say it's in the priest's personal room, is he allowed to clean that specific room? So that's a very good question. If someone has a cleaning business and their janitor, janitorial work, and they're asked or hired by a church to clean the facility, are they allowed to clean? Is a Jew allowed to walk into a place that has idolatry? So I've asked this question with regarding to something else.
And it's, it's, it's rare to find today a place that has real idolatry. Now there are things that are contrary to Yiddishkeit, contrary to Jewish faith, but I don't think that that qualifies it to be avodah Zarah in the real sense. Now it would seem that if they're not walking into a place that actually has avodah Zarah in it, that it would be okay to walk in to do your job of cleaning. I would say that if someone is God fearing and they want no connection whatsoever to
anything having to do with avodah Zarah and to have no, no affiliation with it, I would recommend that maybe they send one of their non-Jewish employees to go work there and to clean instead of them. But that's a good question. I will have to look into it a little bit more. Okay. But that's the basic answer. I'm Yitzi, I'm 12 years old, I'm in seventh grade. Why does the Gemara give us a whole argument back and forth and back and forth?
Why doesn't it just give us the halakha? Oh, that's an amazing question. You know, I want to tell you an amazing story. I was once asked to do a program together with a pastor. You guys know what a pastor is? A pastor is someone who leads a church, okay? And they asked me to do something for the Holocaust Museum and I had to meet with this pastor who has 8,000 members in his congregation.
And we were going to, so we sat in Starbucks and we were talking about the plan, the schedule of what we were going to talk about. And in the, you know, introductory conversation of like, you know, who are you? What are you? What do you do? What's your, you know? So I, see, he asked me, you know, what's my congregation? I said, well, I'm torch. You know, what synagogue is that? I said, it's not a synagogue. We just teach Torah.
We teach Hashem's word to the Jewish people and anyone who's interested in learning about Judaism. Okay. He says, what are you teaching right now? So I said, we're actually asking, it's a question and answer series, and anybody in our class, just like we're doing right here, right now, anybody who has any questions can ask their questions. I turned to him and I said, you know, do you ever do that in your congregation? Do you ever just do question and answers?
And he stopped and he said, you forget who you're talking to. In our religion, there are no questions. In Christianity, there are no questions. In Islam, there are no questions. You take it or you're dead. What they call eternal damnation. You're going to hell. And that's the way they threaten people to just accept it, lock, stock and barrel. Take the whole thing or see in Yiddishkeit, in Judaism, it's very, very different. In Judaism, it's all about having a conversation. Every day we say the Shema.
What do we say? Hashem, Elokeichem, MS. Why do we say that? Because everything in Yiddishkeit is about seeking truth. Everything in Judaism is about seeking truth. Now, in order to find the truth, you're going to have to ask questions. You're going to have to ask questions. If you want to know the truth, you have to ask questions to verify that what you're talking about is truth. Every single page of Gemara has questions and has answers. If you say this, how can you say that?
If you say that, how can you say this? And isn't this verse that you're bringing to prove this, didn't you say that pasak elsewhere? You said that verse elsewhere. You can't use it for two different things. There's constantly that question, the back and forth and the back and forth for every single line of the Gemara. The reason is because we are seeking one thing. We're seeking the MS. And if someone is seeking the MS, you're going to have to ask questions.
I am not afraid of questions. You know why? Because I'm not afraid of saying, I don't know. Sometimes the reason why people don't take questions or don't like questions is because if what happens if they ask me a question I'm not going to have an answer for. Don't be afraid. It's okay. You can say, I don't know. And that's perfectly fine. All right. Let's move on to the next question. Hi, I'm David Welgelander and I'm 14 years old.
And my question is, are you halachically able to work in a non-kosher restaurant? That's a very good question. You see, the Torah says that lo seva shel g'diba chalei vimo. It says three times in the Torah that you are not allowed to mix milk and meat. Chazal teach us, our sages teach us that that refers to three different prohibitions. Number one is you're not allowed to eat it. Number two is you're not allowed to cook it. And number three, you're not allowed to benefit from it.
You're not allowed to benefit from it. What does that mean? Benefit, make a profit. You're not allowed to cook it. You can't put them in together and cook it and prepare it. And then the third is you're not allowed to actually eat it. So it would seem that it would be completely inappropriate for someone to work in a non-kosher restaurant where there's milk and meat. Now just in general, if someone's in a steakhouse that's non-kosher, I don't know why, according
to the Torah, that would be a prohibition. However, it's very possible that midrah banan, it's best for someone not to work there because they could be tempted to eat that food, even though it's not kosher, and fall to that temptation. So it's probably best for someone, if you're not allowed to do something, it's best to stay away from that action. But it's a very, very good question. And if someone was in such a situation, I would say the best thing to do is to reach
out to a bona fide Orthodox rabbi who can give you a clear answer regarding each specific case because the question will also differentiate by who's asking the question and in what type of non-kosher place. Because some places, like a vegetarian restaurant, is not necessarily not kosher. It just may not have a certification, which is something different. So I would recommend that for each specific case that someone may need an answer for, it's worthwhile asking a local rabbi. My name is David Balsam and I'm 12 years old.
My question is, how come you have to wait between meat and milk and you don't have to wait between milk and meat? That's a very good question. So we know the halacha tells us that you need to wait six hours between eating milk after eating meat. But from eating milk to eating meat, you only need to wait a half hour. So what's going on? So the first is, it depends, by the way, on what kind of dairy you're talking about.
Dairy that is like Swiss cheese, which is very thick, is the same halacha as meat because it stays, the flavor stays in your mouth between your teeth for a longer period of time. So from that, you can understand already that meat stays, the flavor stays in your mouth for a longer period of time than milk does. When someone eats a cereal and they just drink a little bit of milk, it doesn't stay in your mouth, that flavor of the milk, for that long.
However, if you're eating hard cheese, it would fall the same category as if you're eating meat and you would need to wait a longer period of time as well. So if someone eats meat, they need to wait six hours before eating dairy. If someone eats dairy, it's only a half hour. Now, if you notice in the story of Abraham and the three passers-by, the Arab merchants that passed by, they were really angels, they were just dressed up like Arabs, and he gave
them first chema v'chalav, he gave them butter and he gave them milk, and then, if you notice, the Passock says that then he gave them the meat. And that's because Abraham, although the Torah was not yet given, observed the entire Torah. Great question. Shlomo Wolbe. Ooh, I heard that name once before. My question is, for all Jews, then why do all the Jews have different minhagim? Excellent, excellent question. What is a minhagim? Minhagim is custom. So here's the thing.
I get that question a lot because people ask me, I don't understand, why don't you guys get your act together? We have so many different Hasidic types, right? You have Vizhnitz, you have Satmar, you have Skver, you have Babav, you have Chabad, you have Gerach Hasidim, Chernobyl Hasidim, you have all these different Chetvork, you have all of these different Hasidic dynasties. Everyone's got their own custom. You have ones that wear these kinds of fur hats and those kinds of fur hats, taller and
shorter and longer, and this type of bekisha or long coat, and this kind of socks and that kind of socks, and everyone's got their own custom. So here's what you need to understand about customs. When the Jewish people exited miraculously from Egypt, we had 12 tribes, and each tribe went in their own lane, and there was water between them. Hashem likes when each person has their individualized approach to serving Hashem. However, it's very important to always remember that although Hashem appreciates a different
approach by each person, the foundations need to be based on Torah and halacha. That means that a person can't just say, you know what, for me, resting on Shabbos means I'm going to go to the beach and drive there on Shabbos. That's my definition. That's my interpretation of it. No, that's against the Torah, and that's against halacha, and that we are forbidden from doing. However, if someone says, you know what, my custom from where I come from is that we wear
this kind of hat when we pray, that's fine. As long as someone has a head covering, that's perfect. That means the halacha gives us enough leeway for every person to have their own custom. Some people do it like this, and some people do it like that, but everybody does it, okay? Washing your hands, everybody washes their hands. Now some wash it like this, and some wash it like that. Some hold their hands like this, and some hold it like that.
Everybody agrees on the same principles, and that's the key. The key is for every person to make sure that we're abiding by the Torah and the halacha, and not to make up our own rules. How we perform that halacha, that is up to each custom to be—many places, for example, have their own minhag. Some shuls, they have a minhag to do something like this. Some shuls have a minhag to do it like that, but everybody does it.
Everybody does whatever it is that's in their custom according to halacha, but they have variations of how they observe that halacha. But they don't say, well, my minhag is—I don't need to observe it, okay? So it's important for everyone to have their own—you know, in your family, the way your family may have your Shabbos dinner may be different than the way someone else has their Shabbos dinner. But you both have a Shabbos dinner. Understand? Okay. Great question. My name is Shlomo Chaim Lioran.
Oh, we're back to Shlomo Chaim. I have a question regarding Shabbos. So what is the reason for an Eruv on Shabbos? So why do we do it? Beautiful question. So an Eruv is actually an invention of Chazal, our sages. Our sages came up with an invention that you can create. Now, there is a biblical prohibition. There is a biblical prohibition in Yisr du'ar Eissa of taking something out from one domain to another domain.
So if I am in private domain, I am not allowed to carry something from private domain to public domain. It is forbidden in the Torah. However, Chazal came up with a very clever advisement, a very clever idea. And what's that idea? The idea is that if you take a string and now you put it around the whole neighborhood and everybody agrees, so now what you're doing is you're making the whole neighborhood into one domain.
And therefore, it would be allowed, it would be permitted for one to carry in that area, which is called an Eruv, that now la'arev means to combine or to mix. Everybody becomes into one domain. So all of those homes that are inside that Eruv now become part of one domain. So going from your house to your neighbor's house is not going from domain to domain, but rather it's all one domain because of that Eruv. There are many particular halachas in this.
In fact, it's one of the biggest tractates in Talmud dealing with these laws, but it is a rabbinic invention. One of the only seven laws that were introduced by our sages, seven laws, that's it, that were manufactured by Chachamim. Netila Sidaim is one of them, lighting Shabbos candles is one of them, and Eruv is one of them. Okay? And therefore, a person should be very, very cautious to observe the laws of Eruv very meticulously.
If someone is in a place where there is no Eruv, you have to be very, very careful and alert not to carry from domain to domain. In most Jewish communities today, when there is a million of people who can go and walk to a shul, they usually put together a great effort to also make an Eruv in that community. Here in our beautiful Houston community, we have six, seven Eruvim. There we go. It's very important for there to be an Eruv because if mothers want to bring their children
to shul and they have a stroller, they would need to be within the Eruv, within this domain, singular domain, in order for it to be permissible to go from rishos l'rishos, from one domain to another. That's a very important, very good question. My name is Ari Bechold. Is one allowed to pretend to not be home when a mishulach, a poor person knocks on the door? That's a very great question. Okay. So, you know, there's this incredible mitzvah, which is the mitzvah to give tzedakah to the
poor. And what sometimes happens in some homes is that it becomes very burdensome for the household that there's so many people knocking on the door and knocking on the door and knocking on the door and asking for charity for many meaningful causes. And it can sometimes be burdensome for households and for people. So I think of it like this. This is my personal perspective. I think that it's the greatest privilege in the world to give tzedakah.
Hashem gives us money so that we give money and we show Hashem that we are good stewards of His money. If Hashem gives us money and someone comes and asks, we're obligated to give. It doesn't say how much you have to give, but you have to give and you have to give with a smile. It's a very important mitzvah. For me personally, I'm always excited when someone comes to my door because they have the opportunity to do a mitzvah.
Now, I think that it's a shame if one says, oh, I'm not available, I'm not home, or tell them I'm not home, because that teaches the children something which is dishonest and not truthful. We have to be very, very careful about being with a lack of truthfulness or teaching our children a lack of truthfulness. However, the halacha says that one should not say, I don't have anything, because that chas v'shalom could be an opening for the sitracher to say, oh, you say you don't have,
I'm going to make it that you don't have. So a person has to be very careful about that. But there's a special privilege that we have in our generation that we can be givers of tzedakah. And I'll just share with you that the Rebbeinu Bechaya, in the introduction to one of the parashios in Devarim, he has over there an incredible, an incredible introduction. He says that when someone comes and knocks on your door for tzedakah, just know that
that person is really Hashem asking and seeing how you're going to treat them. You hear this, Aryeh? It's a very powerful thing. If you want, I can show it to you inside, okay? It's Hashem masquerading as that poor person to see how loving and how caring you are going to be. It says in the bracha that Yaakov gave to one of his children, lubayn shinayim micholam, the white of your teeth is more valuable than the money that you give them.
I want to share with you a story that happened to me. I was home, it was a Sunday or Monday evening, and someone comes in and I realized that it was someone who was collecting tzedakah. So I invited him in and I told him, come inside, sit down, I'll give you something to drink, I'll give you something to eat. He says, no, I'm rushing to the airport, I don't have any time. He says, but I didn't have enough time to come here to collect tzedakah.
And I know that you can't give me a lot of tzedakah, but I know something that you can do that nobody else in the community does. You can give me a hug and you can give me a smile. He says, I know that every time I come to your house, you sit with me nicely and you talk to me and I feel like you really listen to me. And even though you can't give me a lot of money, I know that you care.
And I just came here on my way to the airport just to get a hug from you and to get a kind word from you. So to me, that was a very big compliment, but something that meant a lot to me that this is really the way we're supposed to do, in my opinion, the way we're supposed to do tzedakah. And this is what Chazal teach us. Our job is to make a poor person who comes and is embarrassed to knock on our door and
to ask for our assistance. It is the right thing for us to do, to welcome them into our home and to give them our attention, give them our love. And if you can help them also financially, I'm sure that will go a long way. All right. Any other questions? Because we have Passover coming up. What's Passover? Pesach. Very good. Just a quick question. An Ashkenaz person is invited to a Sephardi person for his Seder, and is he allowed to eat certain foods?
Not specifically like rice and those foods that Ashkenaz is not allowed to have on Pesach, but even something that's made out of that. Okay. So this is a very good question. It'll lead us to the previous question of different minhagim, different customs that was asked before. So Sephardic community have always been very careful that rice, for example, was never mixed in the same mill as flour. They were in different mills. So the Sephardic community never undertook the stringency of not eating rice on Pesach.
But the Ashkenaz did, because they used to use the same mills for flour as they did for rice, and therefore there was an extra stringency that the Ashkenaz community took upon themselves not to eat rice on Pesach. Rice is not chametz, but rice, because it was. Now once a custom is instituted, it stays. And since the Ashkenaz community undertook that custom, it cannot be rescinded. But if an Ashkenaz is invited to a Sephardic meal, he can participate on Passover.
On Pesach, he can, yes, participate if there isn't any of those questionable foods, or even if there is, just not eat it. And if it touches your plate, it's fine. It's not chametz. It's just a custom that we don't eat it. And it's appropriate for one to not put himself in a situation where he would be, means if they know, okay, an Ashkenaz is coming, and we're not going to be serving the rice, or
at least have the rice on a separate dish, so that the Ashkenaz can absolutely participate in a Sephardic meal, okay? Answer your question? Yes. Guys, this was fabulous. I look forward to doing this more often, all right? So till next time, we're going to sign off here. Thank you, my dear listeners, on the Everyday Judaism podcast. Thank you for joining us for the Ask Away Junior series. I look forward to hearing your questions to all of our listeners out there.
If you have any questions you'd like us to address in a future episode, please do so by emailing us at askaway at torchweb.org. Until next time, have a magnificent day.

You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by Torch, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.