Shabbat shalom, good evening everyone. I hope you’ve had a good week. It’s definitely been a tough week, yeah, difficult for lots of reasons that I want to talk about. Everything we’re living through right now feels like we’ve gone back 80 years. The things happening are, at least to me, things we thought were long gone. Unfortunately, what the world is showing us, what we’re all experiencing, is a recycled story that actually started about 3,000 years ago.

It’s a situation that, just like it says in the Torah, repeats in every generation. But obviously, I’m talking about the Jewish people. I’m talking about what happened in Amsterdam, but yesterday it was Amsterdam, tomorrow it’s New York, the next day it’s San Francisco, then another place in the world. It’s no longer something unexpected. Kristallnacht—the Night of Broken Glass in Berlin—wasn’t that long ago when the whole story of the Holocaust started. When we talk about…

Talking about antisemitism today isn’t really any different than it was 80 or 85 years ago. There is one big difference though: today we have all the media, and we know what the Germans did during the Shoah. Back then, the world didn’t know, and obviously, if you don’t know, you can’t do anything. Today, that’s not the case because everything is known—sometimes you find out about something even before it happens. So now, you can’t say, “Oh, we didn’t know what was going on.”

There were concentration camps and millions of people were killed—people didn’t know, or maybe it’s not that they didn’t know, but let’s just say it was an excuse that could maybe be accepted given the times back then. Today, that's just not acceptable anymore. [Music] In fact, today we have governments that see what's happening, that accept it, that turn a blind eye and don’t do what the Germans did—this week they shut their doors, closed their embassies, shut down mosques, and basically said, “Enough. If you want to live here, you have to…”

Respecting the country's laws—there aren’t many countries like that. The Germans have learned something and are starting to take steps to reclaim a bit of what they tried to build democratically. This week, Trump brought back the whole “America, America” thing. I remember my dad when we arrived here; he talked about America as a place where he, as a survivor of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, just like my mom, could find a sense of freedom, a sense of peace.

What’s happened in America over the past few years— I’m not just talking about the last four, but the last 10 or 15—has been wild. It’s like people keep jumping from one thing to another without really paying attention or analyzing what’s going on in the country and within the community. The Jewish community couldn’t have imagined what might happen in universities, in schools, or even in stores. It’s something you just wouldn’t expect to happen in a place like America, but here we are.

Sure, the antisemitism today and the antisemitism from 3,000 years ago have something in common: hatred, hatred for the Jew. And if you look really, really closely into the Parashah Va'yeishev Hashem, you can start to understand why. From the very beginning—we’re talking about just 10 generations between Adam and Noah—something terrible happened during these 10 generations. The story is that God created the world, gave everything to humanity, and humanity already turned away from Him back then.

It was creation—that’s what was beautiful, magnificent, powerful, and possible—that Hashem gave to the world. But from the start, people didn’t appreciate it; in fact, they went against this wonderful creation. Back then, there weren’t Jews yet, but there was the Torah. The Torah existed 2,000 years before creation. When God wanted to create man and the world, He went to the blueprint—the Torah—and everything was already written there, laid out point by point. And Hashem with…

This is what created the [Music] world. Today we're talking about the first Jew, our father, the Father of the People—Avram, without the ‘h’, Avram, Abraham. Why was he so special? Because all of us should have the same feeling he had when looking at the sun, the stars, the sky, everything around him. But there’s someone who makes the day come, makes the night come, changes the sky, does all this. Who is it? It’s Him.

He thought about what each of us should think about every day – the greatness of the Creator, the world, the beauty of nature, the beauty of being human. And when God kind of realized that Avram was trying to connect with Hashem, Hashem started talking to him and saw, of course, where he lives, what he's doing, how he's fighting against idols, how he's handling everything, so others understand how he's moving forward to make it happen.

The connection between "truth," which is God, and the idol is that he destroyed all his father’s idols. His father went to Nimrod, who was at that time the power in the world, and said, "My son is destroying my idols by fire with him." But Abram came out of the fire, just like my parents came out of the fires of Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz—different kind of fire. Like the kids in Amsterdam who were attacked on October 7th—the ones who survived and those who were taken hostage. And where is the world in all of this? How far has it gone?

He traveled the world to find the hostages and to help beyond just doing what they’re doing. I don’t want to get into politics because, unfortunately, it’s a topic that’s destroying the one thing that could bring us back—humanity. The whole idea of humanity, the search for what makes us human, is lost in this world. It’s like God isn’t here with everything that’s happening. Where are the prayers? Where are the great leaders of the world, like the old kings used to be?

Lubavitch was a big deal, a place where everyone came and the door was always open. Everyone asked why, because they knew it was a door to peace. Where is our door to peace in this world? Everything needs to be rebuilt, what we’ve destroyed. It’s time, as Hashem says. So He told Abram, “Leave your home, your country, your father’s house, leave behind everything bad, and go to the land I’ll show you.” And the Torah says exactly these words—God speaking to Abram.

Far away for your own good, from the country, from the place where you were born, and from your father's house, to the land I'm going to show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you. I'll give you a great name, and you'll have the power to bless others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you. Every family on earth will be blessed because of you. In fact, they'll be blessed just for being like you. And the next phrase is, "Abram is…"

It went the way God said, and Lot, his brother's son, went with him—his wife, Sarai, all their stuff, everything he owned, and all the people he had already converted to the one true God who controls everything that happens in the world. They headed toward Canaan. How do you even do something like that today? If someone came up to you and said, "Go to Spain, go to Germany," who would tell you to move? Who would tell you to start a war? To go kill Hitler?

Hitler did it with nothing—he created millions of victims because of ignorance. A strong charisma in powerful people can build structures that bring either good or bad. Trump is a charismatic figure, someone who truly believes in what he does, who’s not easily swayed. Over the last four years, he showed that no matter what you do to him or how much you try to break him, he won’t bend. Got it? He won’t bend. And with this, he didn’t just show it to the big shots, but to the everyday person who’s working hard and just trying to get by.

Having a family, he showed the working-class kids what it really takes to survive. In a way, you could say it's something the Jewish people have done for over 3,000 years — they wake up, get back to work. When they came out of the concentration camps and went to a place where there was nothing but sand, they built a Garden of Eden. Who helped them? Who gave them a hand? Actually, no one did — they did it all themselves. Things aren’t just handed to you.

Exactly like you see it or like the media says, that’s how it is and how you have to look at it and understand it. We’re not who we used to be. Today, we’re a nation, we have a country, and we’re set up like Abraham was when he went to claim what God had promised him. God told him, “I’ll give you this, you’ll be this, and you’ll have a son and everything I want to give you.” It wasn’t promised to be all easy or a bed of roses. In fact, Abraham fought his first war against five kings, him and about 300 soldiers going up against them.

Thousands to take back Lot, but there was already a moment when he fought for it because the wars we fight are sacred wars we have to fight to keep what the people of Asem have chosen for themselves. Why do they hate us? Iran, Iran. How is it possible that from Obama’s time until now, everything has been going wrong for the whole world? I’m not talking about Israel; this is something hugely dangerous for the entire world—like the world allowing itself to be put at risk. What you don’t do for…

The other obviously isn’t for you because your neighbor is like yourself. So if you hate yourself, you’ll end up hating your neighbor too. And your ignorance about who your neighbor really is only brings more hate. Why hate? Why hate the Muslim? Why hate the Jew? Why hate any human being at all? Why? Why did Abraham have to fight a war? Why are there five here and four there, and they can’t live together? Why did God have to give 70 languages for the Tower of Babel? Because they wanted to destroy it.

God, because inside a person there’s this urge to be someone else or to have someone else’s life. Why? Because there’s no law, no humility, no understanding for one another. Like, someone came up to me and said, “You can’t organize a contest for peace and joy because it’s ours.” What does that even mean? This happened a couple of weeks ago, and I said I didn’t want to talk about it, but it’s absolutely necessary to understand that evil is everywhere, inside everything.

And instead of opening the doors to peace, opening the door to peace means that you’re equal to me, and I let you live your life, and you can pray to whoever you want. That’s not my business, telling you who your God is. You have your God, I have mine, and peace means God opens the door to love, not destruction. When there was a famine, Abraham and everyone went to Egypt. In Egypt, they saw incredible beauty—there’s never been beauty like that before, like it’ll be then.

And Abram told her to tell them that you’re my sister because he was afraid for his life, and actually it’s true—we're all brothers and sisters. But I don’t want to get into that right now. Anyway, they took her. She'll be with Pharaoh, but it doesn’t matter. We take whatever we want, it’s the same thing. But God stepped in, of course, like He does every day, every moment in our lives. God steps in, and we just watch—watch the miracles happening all the time.

Day after day, the troubles that happen… it was the last article that said God caused an earthquake, an oregano, no one, a war. People never talk about it; they talk about people, about leaders. But the leaders of the world, the powers of the world? No one talks about them. Avram saw that things with Lot weren’t going well. Lot wasn’t a good person; he was a bad person. So he left and said, “Listen, you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.” And Rebe says, when you know someone’s bad, you gotta walk away.

You gotta stay away from this person, otherwise they're gonna come after you. But talk about this stuff—who’s actually listening? There are people who listen, I’m one of them, trying to do what I can in my own small way. But if I know someone’s lying, not acting right, just using power to do bad stuff, I stay away. Then they come back and say, "Will you come back? Will you come back?" And I’m like, "Alright, I’ll try," but I see that…

I keep messing up, and I always mess up, but Hashem is there, Hashem sees everything, and in the end, justice wins. Justice wins, good wins, and God promises to [Music] Abraham, see everything I’m about to give you, see everything I’m giving you, and this is yours. I’ll make you into a nation and give you a son—not the one from Hagar you had before the circumcision, that’s not the one. That was Ishmael. But the one you’ll have with the wife I gave you—that will be Isaac, and he’ll be the real father and the strength.

Of your people, then comes Jacob, and those are the patriarchs—that's the strength of the people. And with that, the people grow. Abram listens, and even though he truly, truly loves his son Ishmael, God says, "I heard your prayer, I understand how you feel, and Ishmael will become a great, great nation." And it's true, but he’s not the one who will inherit you and your blessing—that’s the Jewish people. From the start, even when Abram said to Lot, "Let’s not live together…"

They split up when Lot was in trouble, and the kings who were at war took everything, including Sodom and whatever he had. When Abraham heard they took Lot, he went to war against five others and won. He was offered a huge amount of stuff, but he said, "No, I'm not interested. Give it to the guys who were with me, but I want nothing." There were 318 men with him, as written in the Torah, who were trained and ready, knew exactly what to do.

It wasn't really Abram or Elar or the 318 guys in the end—it was obviously God's hand. Like we see today, thousands and thousands of missiles, like 200 missiles a day, crazy numbers. We shouldn't forget an important phrase that God said: "My eyes are on this country from the beginning of the year to the end." Every day, the people suffer. The people suffer for reasons the Torah talks about and shows. If you don't listen to God's law, you're gonna suffer.

When the world doesn’t listen to Hashem’s words, it suffers—and the suffering grows bigger and bigger. Then comes the big, big turning point: Abram is 99 years old, and God tells him, “I want you to be perfect, and to walk before me in perfection.” Then God tells him to get circumcised and says that after the circumcision, he’ll have a son. This is huge because Abram asks God, “Why do you want to make me rich? Why give me all this if I don’t have a son to inherit it?” And God promises him.

At the age of 99, he and his wife Sara—who changed her name from Sarai to Sara, and Avraham from Avraham—at the age of 90 and 99, they will have a child named Yitzhak. It’s unimaginable, but actually everything is imaginable, and Hashem has no limits. So that gives us the chance to believe that we too have no limits in how much good or bad we can do, because the history of humanity shows what a human being is capable of when it comes to doing good.

It’s shown and I live it every day to change things. To change things, you need faith—a faith that, no matter what happens, you have to believe it’s God’s will. And God doesn’t give anything bad; even what we think is bad has a reason behind it, a reason to find the good. Because the Torah says nothing bad comes from heaven. When Sarah realized she couldn’t have children, that she was infertile, she gave her maidservant instead.

Hagar was the Pharaoh’s daughter, and the Pharaoh said, “It’s better if you stay with them—they’re amazing—rather than stay here, huh? You don’t belong here with everything going on in Egypt. Stay with them, it’s much better this way. You’re going into a higher class.” Then he says to Abram, “Take the girl, and maybe through her, I can have a family.” Think about the stuff people do nowadays—like paying someone to have a child for you, a surrogate mother. It’s crazy.

Here’s the thing, it’s crazy—right when Hagar got pregnant, Sarah felt awful and was really angry at her husband. She said, “Look at what she’s doing to me, how she’s treating me, and you’re doing nothing about it. It’s your fault.” So, she told him to send Hagar away. But not right after the first time—after the first time, Hagar lost the baby, got pregnant again, and had Ishmael. Ishmael was really, really loved.

Abram, things are really tough, super tough, because from the start you can tell this kid is heading in a different direction. And when Abram’s son comes into the world, things change—and we’ll talk about that next week. But after Abraham’s circumcision, everything shifts because everyone around him, all the men who’ve converted and are close to him, do exactly what God told Shem to do: they get circumcised.

If circumcision is part of the covenant, it’s the pact God made with Abraham to become the father, the patriarch of the people. And in everything we see, the word of God says, “At 99, you will become a father.” He will be 90 years old and will have offspring to carry on the word of God. From everything we see, understand, and learn, it’s always the same: You do what I ask, you follow the law. You have a child before circumcision, but that child doesn’t belong to what comes after circumcision. And here you are.

Perfect, and with this child, you’ll have the people, and words always come true completely. Everything the Torah says happens. The world we live in today is exactly what we see now, what the people are now, and it will stay that way until the end of time. In the Lamb, the word of God is what He gave and still gives. Follow the law, and you’ll be fine. Go against the law, and something else will happen. But peace—peace is being with God. You can’t get it by going against Him. You can’t do bad things and expect things to work out. Just think about it.

It might look like you’re winning, or maybe it seems like you’re winning, but in the end, you’re gonna suffer. What we want—I know it—what we all want is peace. We just want good things for ourselves and for everyone in the world. But to get there, we need to know the right way—the right way to reach that goal and to follow God’s word. And I know, I feel it deep down, that despite all the suffering in the world, leaders will come who understand that you can’t move forward through evil. You have to…

Seeking good is one of the most important things. Goodness is education, education is the key, knowledge is the key. Wisdom of good is the key to peace. I wish you a great week, I hope you all find peace in your hearts, in your families, in your lives, and may God bless you. Shalom.