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.

Welcome back everybody. Welcome back to the Ask Away series of the Everyday Judaism podcast. It is so wonderful. This is our 28th episode of hearing y'all's questions. For those of you online, for those of you listening on podcasts, for those of you watching
this on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter, on all of the other interwebs, please do us a favor. First is please like and share our videos. But also send in your questions to askaway at torchweb.org. Ask away at t-o-r-c-h-w-e-b dot o-r-g. We look forward to addressing your questions. We have answered many, many, many questions from our online listeners and viewers, and we are excited to hear your questions. I'm delighted that Marilyn here said that she's going to stump me today. I'm looking forward to that.
It brings me great joy and excitement. So let's begin with the first question. Eliana, you grabbed that microphone you wanted to ask. I look forward to hearing it. Go for it. Okay. I don't think this will stump you. It's okay. I'm not, I don't claim to know everything. I claim to want to know everything. Okay, well maybe this will help. So if I don't know, I'll have to go do more research and learn more. And I'll be very thankful for that opportunity.
My question is, with so many Jews making aliyah, even more so now, with all of the things that are going on in our world, my question is, if I stay here, what is my role as a Jew during these times? As opposed to, if I make aliyah, and I'm answering that call for everyone? Okay, this is a very good question. You're asking about aliyah, and there is a massive, a massive movement of people making aliyah. I just met a friend of mine yesterday.
He's been talking about making aliyah for several years. And just yesterday, I saw him in Jewel. I said, Nusa, what's going on? When are you guys, are you guys going to ever do this? He says, well, my lift is coming on the 8th of January, and my family's moving on the 24th of January. 24th, I think, yeah. The 24th of January. It better not be a Shabbos. He's not going on Shabbos, that I know. I just don't want to make a mistake with his date.
But on the, not 24th, the 26th, he's going on the 26th of January. I think that's incredible. I just this morning heard someone stated from one of the great rabbis who was on a panel in the, one of the big conferences, not a Zionist movement, not a Zionist retreat, just regular Jews. And they had a panel, a question, question and answer series. And they got over 250 questions written in. Over 40% of the questions were about making aliyah. 40% of the questions.
Because it's front and center in our lives today. So let's talk about what it is, okay? There's a prophecy that we're very, very aware of where, and we pray for this every single day, that Hashem will bring all of his children from all four corners of the world for the coming of the Messiah. Now our place is the Holy Land of Israel. That's our home. The fact that we feel comfortable here in Houston is a little bit of a flaw and a mistake
on our part that we're forgetting what the big picture is. We were talking this year focusing on intentional, becoming intentional Jews. We can be intentional in our reasons for living in Houston. One of them can be our livelihoods. Another could be that we have a job to expose as many Jews to Torah Judaism, which for me is my responsibility. My grandfather spoke about this many, many times. He says we have so many Jews that need to learn about Judaism.
It's our responsibility to go share our knowledge, share our Torah with the world. And that's why I am here, why my wife and children, why we're not living in Jerusalem. We lived there when we got married. We moved to Jerusalem and we lived there for three years. And immediately after receiving my rabbinic ordination and the basic training of how to do some public speaking and teach classes and things like that, I moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. And from there we moved here over 20 years ago now.
And I'm so thrilled to be in Houston, Texas for this to be my place. And my children have asked me, is there ever a time that you foresee yourself moving back to? So I said yes, when everybody knows about Hashem. When everybody in our community knows about Hashem and we're able to spread that word, to me that's the end game. That's the goal. The goal is to share as much Torah with the Jewish people. Now the rabbi said something very interesting on that question and answer series.
He said if you have a livelihood that is easily transferable to Israel, make Aliyah and move. If you don't, then hold off a little bit. I mean, it's not a good thing for people. I've seen people who are extremely Zionistic and they're very, very principled, they're very passionate about the land of Israel and being with other Jews. And you know, why am I living out in San Antonio or Houston, by the way, a tremendous number of people in Houston have made Aliyah, tremendous number.
And they feel close to their brothers and sisters when they're in Israel and they feel close to their Judaism when they're in Israel. That's a very, very good thing. My mother, by the way, if you wake her up at any time of day or night and you tell her we're moving to Israel, she's like, okay, what time? Where are we going? Like she's ready to go. She's ready to go. You don't have to say, you don't have to, you know, persuade her.
She is ready to go at any given moment when it means going to Israel. So for someone who has a way to support their family, that's, I think it would be a great mitzvah. Every moment in Eretz Israel, living in Eretz Israel is a mitzvah. Every moment you live in Eretz Israel, in the land of Israel is a mitzvah. By the way, every four Amos that you walk in Israel is a mitzvah. Israel is a very, very special place. It's a place like none other.
We talked about this in our Talmud, Thinking Talmud, just last week. We talked about the preciousness of the land of Israel, that it expands like the height of a deer, that it just keeps on expanding and keeps on expanding from within, not from outside. It's a tiny little spot on the map that is overwhelmed by all of the 70 Arab nations around it. It's like you look at any of the smallest of the Arab nations and Israel is microscopic next to it.
And yet look how much it flourishes and look how incredibly blessed the land is. So I definitely think that there's great merit for one to consider making Aliyah, but not to do it irresponsibly. So if someone is going to move to Israel and have no way to support their family, there's no mitzvah in doing that. If someone's going to move to Israel and have no way for their children to be educated properly, because it's a different culture, which many of my rabbis have said, having children over
the age of six is suicide to take them there, because it's a completely different culture. As American parents, if parents do not speak Hebrew, you're going to be living on a different planet than your children. They're going to speak a fluent Hebrew in three weeks, six months. They'll know every single slang word. They'll know everything. They'll learn it from playing with their friends. They'll learn, and you're going to be, as an adult, it's much more difficult to integrate into a language.
You're going to have a broken Hebrew. It's going to be very difficult for you to communicate with your children. And then your children say, ah, they just don't get it. And that's definitely not good for raising healthy children, where you're living on two different planets, where they're completely absorbed in Israel. And I've seen this, because I learned in an Israeli yeshiva. When I was 15 years old, I went on my own to yeshiva in Israel, and I saw the guys who
were Americans that moved to Israel, that made aliyah, and their parents couldn't speak a word of Hebrew. And they were fluent in Hebrew, and like, my parents just don't get it. They're American. They don't understand, like, our culture. They don't understand, like, they don't understand the language. They don't even speak the words, you know, say, is. So the kippon can only help that much, which is Hebrew training, Hebrew school. But it's not, it's not, I don't think it's adequate to get someone to really absorb it
once we're older than the age of 16, 20, 25, 30, right, when we're pushing it. It's very difficult. Yes, you may be able to understand the words, but to really flow with the Hebrew is going to be very difficult. So there is that barrier as well. And then there's a cultural barrier. The culture in Israel is not a very simple one for us to, as Americans, particularly those, you know, one of the beautiful things about living in Houston is that you almost
never hear another car honk their horn. You almost never hear it. In Israel, you almost never don't hear it. It's a completely different culture. So if you come there, and they want to go, what do they want from me? What's going on? Why is everyone honking a horn at me? Right? Like, it's a different culture. Over there, they're on their tippy toes every day, right? And I explained this, I've said this numerous times.
We don't know what it's like to wake up every single morning of our lives with rockets, with ballistic missiles facing our doorstep. We don't know what it's like to be in the past two years, how many hundreds and hundreds of times families at 2, at 3, at 4 o'clock in the morning have to get up out of their beds and go into the safe room. We don't know what that's like. We'll never understand what a concept that is.
You know, we go to sleep, we leave our doors open, unlocked. You know, we want to get fresh air, just open the door, close the screen door, we're good, we feel safe. Maybe we don't. Fondra in Southwest is not exactly the safest place in Houston. So I can tell you that it's a huge cultural shift. Huge cultural shift. People don't have the patience like you have here. You know, over here it's like, you know, no one would dare cut the line at the bank, right?
But you'll be there in the bank. And I'm not saying a negative thing about our brothers and sisters, heaven forbid. I'm just trying to get you into the culture. It's like, just one second, just like, just, right? Like it's a different world. It's a different culture. So yes, there is a lot of fabulous merit to considering it. Now you asked another question, which is what do I do when I'm in the United States and I'm here, how do I prepare for it?
So number one is doing what you're doing now, which is learning, growing, connecting, absorbing as much Torah as possible, and preparing ourselves spiritually for the coming of Moshiach. That will hopefully be speedily in our days. But today, today, today, come today, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go. So by the way, our sages tell us that it is appropriate for one to have a bag ready to go. You know, in espionage, in all of these, they have a go bag, they always have a bag
ready where they have, we should have a go bag, we should have a bag that's ready, packed with whatever you need to survive for a week, a little bag that if you suddenly hear the shofar calling, Moshiach is here, you get your bag and you run to IAH, get on a plane and you fly, no time to waste, no time to. So I think like this, I think preparing ourselves for Moshiach means that we're, we're, we're
trying to get all of our ducks in a row, getting ourselves into a position where we can be close to Hashem every moment of our lives and nurture that closeness, that dveikut to become what we want to do is become close to Hashem. And Moshiach is only going to magnify that. So if we are dedicating our time every day of our lives, investing in that relationship with Hashem, the coming of Moshiach is going to illuminate that and make it so much brighter
and make it so much easier because what he's going to do, by the way, we mentioned in our introduction to this class earlier, we talked about, you know, some of the actions that are done politically in the world today. We pray for that every single day. In our Amida, one of the things that we pray for is for the removal of Maduro. Yes, let me show you. In our Amida, we say this. May you speedily uproot, smash, cast down and humble the malicious sinners speedily
in our days. Right? We're talking about the people who are evil people, wicked people, sinners, hurting, harming other human beings. There's no sin that's greater than that. We pray for this and we're seeing this actualized in front of our eyes. It's a phenomenal thing. So it's an excellent question. Hashem should bless us that we should continue to see these miracles that we have begun to see in front of our eyes.
The last couple of years, we've seen open miracles transpire in front of our eyes, in front of the world. Hashem should continue to shower that blessing on us. So that we can continue to be inspired and we can continue to grow. We can continue to elevate our journey and become closer to him. So that was an excellent question, Eliana. Thank you so much. And Bruce. Anna, and tattoos on the hands.
So a tattoo is not considered to be something which is on the surface of the hand. So first is, the Torah says not to get a tattoo, okay? So that's just like, if we're already talking about it. Now a henna is not, according to most opinions today, a henna is not prohibited. But a henna, you should be careful not to have it on the lower part from your wrist down because that would be an interference or interposition between water potentially being washed on the hand and the hand itself.
So a henna that's from the wrist up is probably okay. For those, again, ask your local bona fide orthodox rabbi regarding the halacha of a henna being put onto your flesh. But definitely a tattoo is forbidden in the Torah. The Torah is unequivocal about it. But if someone already has one that's not on the flesh, that's in the flesh, right? And that would not constitute an interposition between the water and the skin. Last week we discussed Jewish family values.
In today's internet world, promiscuity and infidelity are on the rise. And we discussed King Solomon last week. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. When did the first human become monogamous so we can bless our children to be great Jews and live with intention? Okay. Excellent question. There's a lot of pieces here to unpack. A lot of pieces to unpack. So first it's like this. What was the beginning of it? Okay.
So let me start with the online and the infidelity and the promiscuity and the inappropriateness that's online. Yes, there is a lot of challenge online. But along with that challenge, there's a lot of good that can come from it. And we, as Jews, have always been educated to find the good in everything and to use the good, not to run away from it. Now there's two different categories of people. There are the people who shouldn't be exposed to that because there's no need to. Let me explain.
A yeshiva student learning in yeshiva who's learning Torah, who's learning, you know, doing what every Jewish boy and girl should do, which is study and enrich their consciousness with Hashem and his Torah. What do they need to be exposed to television, to radio, to internet? For what? There's no need for it. Now, if someone is in business and they need it for business, they need it for, right? So now entertainment. So today you have an enormous explosion of Jewish entertainment that is appropriate.
In fact, I have some very dear friends that are among the big producers of modest, healthy Jewish content, appropriate Jewish content, enriching Jewish content, because the reality today is that many people, even those who shouldn't have internet, have internet. Everyone has internet. There's no house without Wi-Fi. In fact, there are many cities that have Wi-Fi. The city provides Wi-Fi. You are in your house and you have Wi-Fi. Now there are many people, like many of my children, who have kosher phones.
There is no internet on the phone. They don't have applications that can connect to them. They have a phone. It's a small little flip phone, and they can make phone calls. They can send a text message, but they don't have all of the apps and all of the stuff that connect them and can potentially be harmful to their spiritual state. I think that one needs to be very, very deliberate. We talk about being intentional Jews here, which is our focus.
We have to be intentional with what we allow ourselves to be exposed to. If you find that you're wasting too much time with a specific app or with a specific distraction, get rid of it. We don't have to have apps on our phone. There's a very easy solution to it. Delete it. Uninstall it. If you feel that you're not in control of some area of your life, get rid of it. Okay?
So we do see that there is, though, Merrick, right now I'm saying this while I am on Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitch and X and Rumble and all of these different platforms and Zoom and podcasting on all of the different podcast platforms. I ensure that all of those platforms also provide things that are not wholesome, that are not good for one's spiritual state. So use it for the good. I had someone just last week ask me, I heard that you have some of your content on TikTok.
Don't you think that that's a little bit inappropriate? So I said, I'm not on TikTok. My content is. Great. If I can inspire one person to connect to their Judaism from TikTok, great. It doesn't cost me anything. I'm not spending my time flipping through TikToks, whatever they call them, shorts or whatever they, you know, I'm not on that. I don't have that. I don't have the app on my phone. I go, I upload it and goodbye. I don't want to spend.
I don't want to be immersed in that culture. I don't want to be, you know, it's like, excuse me. The conversation also continued that, you know, this guy posted a video, it has 10 million views. And that guy posted a video. I said, look, if I started doing a dance video, I'm sure I'd get 10 million views. But when you do pure Torah, it's not as attractive. Okay. So that's the reality out there is that when it comes to Torah content, it's not always
going to be as exciting and attractive as, you know, I could, maybe Mark, you want to do one? You want to do a dance video or something? We'll go get a lot of views, but I don't know what the, oh, there you go. Relationship advice. That's what I'm talking about. All right. I, I, I, the truth is we intentionally did this. I will. Before we went on TikTok, we sat with a professional TikTok advisor. This is someone who manages only TikTok.
She told us that if you don't have 6 million followers, I don't really waste my time with you. But she gave us time because it's Bruce's daughter. And so she gave us time and was very, very kind of her. And she, she gave us a whole, a whole crash course into the world of TikTok and all of these, these. And it took us a little bit of time to just figure out the right thing, what is the right thing for us to do and whatnot, you know.
But it was mainly with her guidance that she, she was, she was sharing with us how it works and what works and what doesn't work. I remember I was sitting right here at this desk here and we finished our call and I was sitting with the other Torch rabbis and basically she said that if we did, you know, some type of dance or some type of entertainment, we'd get thousands or millions of views. And then we just turned to each other and said afterwards, that's not our job.
We're rabbis. Right. If I want to be a TikTok influencer, I'll be a TikTok influencer. I'm sure I'll be very popular, but that's not my goal. My goal is to share Torah and to spread the word of the Torah. So doing that is not going to be the same as dancing and suddenly I jump up and I'm in a sweatshirt and I jump up again and I'm in a suit and tie and I, you know, I can do that, but that's not, that's not what we're about.
Okay. So, so we have to know that there's great, great forces and powers in this world. It started with print, the first book printed ever by a printing press was a Bible. The second was pornography. Do you know that? No. Yes. I heard this from a great rabbi. He said, because immediately when you have a power to do something so great, you also have the power to do something so terrible.
So we have to understand that the same thing is with television and with movies and with internet and with social media, you can use everything for good and you can use everything for terrible. The same exact thing that can help build someone and make someone closer to God can distance some someone from God. So you understand that this is the challenge. We're always going to face that challenge and that's going to be our choice.
Each one of us is going to have to make a, it's what we call Bechira, we have free will to choose. Do we want to use the good or do we want to use the no good? And that is, we should never put ourselves into a position where we only have the no good. We should never put ourselves in a position, don't go to a place, don't go to Vegas and say I'm not going to gamble. Don't go. Don't go.
If you know that you're going to be tempted, why are you putting yourself into a place of temptation? And the same thing is with the internet, which is why I highly recommend and urge every responsible adult, definitely every child, should have a filter and should have a way of accountability so that it's an extra protection to remove a person from doing something which they'll later regret. All right? So now, what was the next question? You said about King Solomon. Infidelity with the, with King Solomon.
So I'll just tell you about 10 or 12 years ago when Facebook was really, really big, I heard from an attorney, a divorce attorney, he said that over 50% of divorces had Facebook as the reason because he met up with his old classmate and had an affair. She reached out to her old boyfriend and they had an affair or whatever it was that these things were causing problems and resulting in many, many divorces. So yes, so infidelity is something that hasn't changed since the creation of the world.
The Torah teaches us to stay away. The Torah tells us that a man has no business talking to another woman he's not married to, just casually having conversation. For what purpose? We know how these things end up. The Torah tells us that if you see a sotah bikilkula, if you see a sotah is a woman who's accused of an adulterous affair with another man, she's accused by her husband. If you see such a situation, you should remove yourself from wine because the two portions
of the sotah and the Nazarite are juxtaposed. So the Torah tells us why, the Rashi comment right away on this, the commentator, he says why is one portion right next to the other? Because if you saw that, it's an alarm telling you, be careful. Because how did that relationship go awry? She drank. She got a little drunk. She did something stupid. So it's a wake-up call, don't do something stupid. When we see things on television, Baal Shem Tov says that everything you see is a mirror
reflecting back to you. It's a message for you. If you see on television a random story, you're in the middle of getting dressed in the morning, you're getting dressed, you're buttoning your shirt and you turn on the news and you see oh, there was a police chase for a murder or whatever it is, you know, why did I need to see that? They could have been talking about healthy food habits. You know, they could have been talking about other things. Why did I need to see that?
Maybe Hashem is waking me up to be more cautious about other people and their value. Maybe I'm not going around killing people. I'm not going around stabbing people or shooting people. So why do I have to see that? Well, our tongue is more lethal than a bullet or a knife. We could be murdering people by saying unkind words. So maybe that's the lesson. Every person has to take their own lesson to know what is the message that Hashem is sending them.
Now, about King Solomon and his thousand wives. So you know what, well, so like this. First is there were wives, so he was married. King Solomon tells us don't do this. Okay, I tried, it didn't work. It's not a good, this is not the way to go. So King Solomon specifically says that, you know, maybe we'll take some time to learn up all of this episode with King Solomon and we'll shed some light on this whole story so that we can be enlightened by it.
But either way, our sages decreed that this is a rabbinic decree that a man should only be married to one woman at a time, obviously. So he can get married to a thousand different women if he so chooses, get married and get divorced, get married and get divorced, but each one has to be with a proper marriage and a proper divorce. But the Torah wants us to stay away from promiscuity. The Torah wants us to stay away from things that are inappropriate.
And being with a woman that we're not married to would be inappropriate. So therefore, a person should take heed to what the Torah tells us about being appropriately in a relationship. And there's, I think there's a lot that we can discuss and unpack in this, in this, on a full length episode dealing with King Solomon and dealing with that dilemma for all of us. B'lin Eder, without promise, we will get back to it and we will have the opportunity to discuss that further.
When I was first learning Netila Yadayim, I thought it was every single time I washed my hands. So I was like saying the prayer constantly, a good thing. I learned it. But that's only before bread or first thing in the morning. So what about when we're washing our hands before other foods? I know there's blessings for other foods, but does there need to be a blessing with the hand washing before other foods or it's only with bread?
Only bread, only bread is required to have a washing of hands or fruits that are that are moist or wet. And additionally, a person should, there's no obligation to wash one's hand. It is important for one to have clean hands when they eat, but there's no obligation for one to wash their hands unless it's bread. And then we recite on the Netila Yadayim, but only then are we required to do so. Also, we were talking about it has to be of your own force and whether or not external
vessels available. So I was wondering about two different items. So, you know, sinks today disengage. So if you disengage the sink, that's your own force. Is that a correct assumption? No. The force of the water flow needs to be human force. Now, it doesn't have to be your human force. Someone can wash your hands for you. I do this for my children. My children, when before we wash hands for for sitting down for a meal with bread, we will wash our hands.
I will I will fill up the the the cup for them and I will wash. They'll put their hands into the sink and I will wash their hands for them. That's human force. When when you just take that that little nozzle and take it off, it's not changing the human force. It's just changing the positioning. So now you can go around your sink and clean up or do whatever you need to do. But that doesn't change the human force aspect of it.
So if you turn on the faucet and then turn it off, that first flush of water is is that is human force. The first one. So, you know, so in a case where you don't have you turn it on, off, on, off, and then you do the other hand on, off, on, off, and you're good to go. So on Shabbos, are we permitted to turn the water on and off? No, because the hot water ignites a fire. Right. OK, so great question.
So regarding Shabbos, Shabbos, you're allowed to turn on the water. Yes, but not the hot water. OK, that's why we have two separate handles. Right. The hot and the cold. The hot should not be used on Shabbat because that would trigger the you'll hear your boiler or your if you have one of those Renai tankless water heaters, you'll hear that machine turn on the second you turn on the hot water. It starts to flow. It'll light a fire in which, by the way, is very interesting that you
mentioned this. I realized about a year or two after we moved into our new home, new Erholm, about seven or eight years ago now, I realized that we have a tankless water heater and one of the previous owners put it in and you can see where the other tank used to be. But they, you know, they took out the tank, they put in the tankless water heater, the Renai. Every time you turn on the hot water, that machine turns on. So on Shabbos, it was never a question.
But on holiday, you're allowed to use the hot water because for whatever reason you're allowed to use it, but not the Renai, not the tankless water heater, because you're because. OK, how does how does the other tanks work? It works with the flame. Correct. But the water that you're using is the water that was already hot in the tank. So I'm not heating up water for my shower. What's happening is because I'm using this water and now there's more water being put
in that's cold, it causes an effect that now is not direct. It's an indirect result called the grama. It's an indirect result of me taking the hot water that now cold water is being mixed in with it and now triggers the thing. So it's an indirect result that triggers the fire to be turned off. It's not direct with the with these tankless water heaters. It is direct. You turn it on, it goes. So on holiday, you can't use that water either.
It becomes a problem because you have sometimes a three day holiday. You got to shower. OK, that that could be problematic. So we do we do have a solution to it. But what we do is we have our housekeeper so she can turn on the hot water and then we can extend the. So once the machine is on. We can use the shower. So, you know, sometimes she'll leave the house, we'll have her leave a faucet, the hot
water on, and that way the machine is just operating, everyone take a shower and then we can. No, not the whole Shabbos, not the whole Shabbos. Yeah, yeah. No, no. But if if she's there, you know, in the afternoon, but that would be that would be a situation where we that's that's the only way we can you can do it. My wife is like we have to change the system. It's really difficult. It's not it's not there is a way to to to circumvent this.
But it takes a lot of engineering and intention, really skilled plumber who knows the laws of Shabbat to had it had it circumvented. But it's it's not an easy thing. Thank you for your beautiful question, David. Go ahead, sir. So we know hopefully the Messiah is coming soon. I mean, and do you think when the Messiah comes that all the countries that are currently against Israel are going to change their mentality because we received our
Messiah and all the missiles that are facing Israel will be, I don't know if you want to call it washed away or will those countries become worse because we received their Messiah? OK, so this is a very, very powerful question. Very powerful question, David. So our sages teach us that. Let me let me give you a I'll give you I'll give you first an example. OK, I remember when AT&T came out with their first mobile mobile phone plans.
So they had a that their their video, their advertisement on television or video, whatever I saw, it was of a guy riding his bicycle on Fifth Avenue. And suddenly there is a very, very bright light and another bright light. And he's just like being overwhelmed with this light. And basically it was their way of saying, we have more bars. OK, and it was like the bars of the of the cell towers that we have cell towers everywhere. And it was so bright.
He was like, I was like, that's that's what's going to happen in the time of Moshiach. What Moshiach is going to do is shine such a bright light on the world that everyone will see right from wrong. Everyone will see truth from falsehood. Everyone will see good from bad. Everyone, what's going to happen is then suddenly everyone is going to run into their corners. All the big Maduro's are going to disappear. They're going to be terrified because they're going to be like, well, no, no, we didn't
mean to harm the Jews. No, don't don't don't don't put that light on us. That's what's going to happen. My grandfather used to say that when Moshiach comes, he's going to tell the Arabs get out of the land of Israel and they're going to run just like they did in 1967, the Six Day War. They were running. They were running to Jordan. They left their shoes and they ran. They ran. The same is going to happen.
It's going to happen. There is not going to be a single Arab in the land of Israel when Moshiach comes. They're going to be so terrified because we're living in a world which is masked with a lot of honesty, dishonesty. We don't know what's truth and what's not truth. And there's like this whole veil of uncertainty with regarding to what our news media tells us, what our television anchors tell us, what all of these pundits tell us. We don't know what's right and what's wrong and what government officials.
We have no idea what's right and what's wrong. We don't know. What do we know about the Ukraine and Russia? We we can pick a side, but doesn't mean it's the right side. We don't really know the whole story. We don't know what's going on. We again, we we're pretty confident that we know what's going on. But that's what they've been telling us in the news. We don't necessarily know that what we've been told is the truth.
So when Moshiach comes, all of that confusion is going to be gone. Everyone will know that Hashem is God. They will know who the Hashem, who the God is. They'll know exactly every detail. They'll know that whatever they were serving, all of their idols, that it was all false. The whole world will know. It's going to be an unbelievable time. And the nations will, there will be peace in the world. Real world peace. What's that? Will they all transform to Jews?
No, no, no. It's going to be too late then. No, it's going to be too late. You got to get in when when when it's when it's not easy. Right. Then it's going to be so clear. Everybody's going to want to convert. And then the lines are sorry, we're not taking any more customers. So it's going to it's going to be a very it's going to be a very, very, you know, difficult. But but we see a huge influx of people converting now, a huge influx.
There's never been a time like this where so many people have shown interest in converting to Judaism because there's a certain light that people are seeing. They're like, this is not this is surreal. This can't be an ordinary people. There's something special here. And they start investigating and they start learning. And it really we had in this classroom just an hour ago, or maybe a little bit more than two hours ago, there was a group of people who are not Jewish, who are all
Bnei Noach, who are all accepted the seven Noachide laws. They accepted it not only independently on their own, in public. They denounced all idolatry. They denounced all deities, anything other than Hashem. And they accepted publicly in front of a Bet Din. I know this because I was a member of that Bet Din, where they declared their complete devotion to the seven Noachide laws and denounced all idolatry. They denounced all deities. So that's the real, according to the Rambam, that is the ultimate acceptance of the
seven Noachide laws, not just like, OK, me and my family do that. No, we have to intentionally denounce, publicly denounce all idolatry and commit ourselves to the seven Noachide laws. That's an amazing thing. Well, in what generation do we have such a thing that people just like accepted the Noachide laws, which is a beautiful thing. So, yes, there will be an absolute clarity. Those people who have rockets and missiles facing towards Israel will quickly turn them away. No, no, no.
We don't want we don't want them to see this. We don't want them to see that we were against the Jewish people, the people who are the chosen people. That's a very, very good question. Very, very powerful. Go for it, Bruce. Just a little bit of construction knowledge for the general public. If you live in an apartment complex or a condominium project like I do, many of them have continuous loop hot water where the water is always being heated and always
being circulated throughout the entire, the entire complex, whether you turn it on or you don't turn it on, the water is always being heated and always flowing. So if you're in that situation, obviously you can use the hot water whenever, right? Most likely, I'll have to look into that a little bit more regarding Shabbos, but definitely for holiday, that would that would not be a problem because there are different laws that apply to holiday than do for Shabbos. I'll look into it to see to see.
I'll get back to you, God willing, next year. It's called called continuous loop hot water, continuous loop hot water. OK, now doesn't the Torah set a limit of eight wives for a king? Isn't that right? And David only had eight wives. Well, so, yeah. So, again, I want to I want to address this. I want to I want to spend time doing all the necessary research on on King David and King Solomon and all of the others in our great lineage who had more than one wife and
understand that a little bit more. And then we'll do a dedicated session to understand this. So I will blean out there without. Well, it is sort of a marriage. Yes. I mean, Yaakov had two concubines, too, Bila and Zilpah, and their their children were considered his children. They're part of part of the tribes. So they were they are actually a wife, even though they were servants to their to his wives. Yeah, go for it, Mark.
We might need to change the name of this class to stump the rabbi. Perhaps. And it's kind of adjacent to Mrs. Robinson's point. Great name, by the way. Great name. Kukukuju. So you mentioned sort of tying some of my concepts, ideas you mentioned to always the ethos of the Jewish way and values is always looking at the bright side, always finding the positive, always finding the silver lining. And now you have a situation where you mentioned Zilpah and Bilhah, what would be the
silver lining from their point of view, from their perspective that, you know, their husband is a patriarch, but has multiple wives. How do they in a Jewish value through a Jewish value lens, you know, try to find like the silver lining between these situations? They were honored and thrilled to bring children for the great patriarch, Jacob. Do you know what a privilege that was of all the women in the world? They were chosen to be concubines to Jacob and to bring of the shift they call of the 12
tribes of Israel. Four of them are from the wives are from the concubines of Jacob. What an enormous privilege. So I think that that's the bright side of it. Definitely, by the way, mistreatment if there was of any of the children of the concubines was seen in a very negative way in our Torah. So even though they were not of the top tier of Rachel and Leah, they still, there's no reason for them to be treated with disrespect or with dishonor.
OK, Jacob was a good guy to be married to. Actually, I didn't have a question, but since you're forcing me into it, I am on Shabbat, if you're in a place that only has an automatic toilet that flushes and you have to go to the bathroom, are you allowed to do that? All right. So let's just back up a little bit, you know, manipulating any what is prohibited on Shabbat with regarding to this question that you're asking.
Any type of creative labor, anything that you do to manipulate and create a circuit, create any form of change or creative, we loosely say the words you're not allowed to work on Shabbos, but that's not accurate. You're not allowed to perform creative labor on Shabbos. So while someone can host many, many guests in their home, it's a lot of work, but that's not creative labor. Flicking on a light switch is creative labor. You're creating that light that is shining for us.
And OK, so that's important for us to have that definition. Now, regarding the use of all of these automatic sensors and things like that, if there is a way for a person to not use that, that would be best. That's not always the option. For example, if you go to a hotel sometimes now, wherever they will have a Shabbos program in a hotel, they will always make sure that those toilets are not automatic. Or if they do, they'll have a sign saying down the hallway, you can find the
bathroom that does not have the automatic sensors, because that would be problematic for Shabbos. Now, if you have no other choice, right, so there's probably a side to lean on, which is that you're not intentionally doing that. It's not your, it's not your, meaning there's, there could be a side to look at it as it being an unintentional, unavoidable action. OK, so it's not, it's, it's, it's what, again, what we mentioned before is a grammar, it's a result.
It means you didn't do something, you didn't press a button, you moved and your motion triggered it. So that's a, that's a, that's an unavoidable, but also unintentional use. Definitely not something that someone should install in their home, but also something that if you have no other choice, I don't know what, I don't know what, what alternative there is. You can stay there the whole, the whole Shabbos so that you avoid it. I don't know. It's a good question.
I have to get back to you about that. Exactly. The trigger, the trigger is the problem. The flush is not a problem, but, but there's a, there's a, there's a battery or some type of electrical dynamic there, which is causing it to flush. And that's what you're triggering. So it's, it's a, it's a good question. I'll have to really look into it to see if it's again, we're in a situation where you don't have the choice because you realize that after the fact, right,
which is a big problem, by the way, in some of the synagogues here, they haven't sold those automatic flushers in their bathrooms. So it's, if someone's going to use the bathroom and synagogue on Shabbat, it's unavoidable. Why would they do that? Why would they do that? That's so it's, it's problematic and it's something to, to, to inquire. So they have the automatic lights. You walk in the room, the light turns itself on, look out, it turns itself off. Right. That's also problematic.
But then your whole house can operate like that. That's not, that's definitely not the spirit of Shabbos. Definitely not the spirit of Shabbos. So, you know, you can do that for your conditioning too. Right. Today, well, today, the thermostats, which are motion, motion, uh, you can have them in a setting of motion sensing. And when it senses that you're home, it'll make sure that it stays cool to a certain temperature. You can turn off that setting though.
And I have turned that off on all of my, I have all the smart, uh, thermostats, but they're all off of the sensors. So they don't sense motion that, that the component is turned off from those devices. So if you set your thermostat for 72 before Shabbat, it doesn't matter that it's turning on and off because you're not doing it right. Yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Okay. My dear friends, this concludes Ask Away number 28.
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