I was asked to speak today – am I right – on ‘The True Path to Inner Happiness’? About which, my immediate response was, ‘ Halevai that I should know!’ And if any of you know, please tell me!īut, it was a challenge: The True Path to Inner Happiness. So, thank you for the thrill of being in your company. We don’t have anything quite like this, where I come from. I confess that I’m very humbled by the sight of this extraordinary Beit HaMidrash. K’vod HaRav, k’vod haRabbanim, friends, I’d say it’s a huge honour to be with you. I introduce to you for the first time in his current role, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. It is really our great privilege to have him with us today, and for the coming months and years. To sort of take a step back and to put into perspective what it means to be a Jew, what it means to be an Orthodox Jew, what it means to be an Orthodox Jew today. To sort of look and help us appreciate the Yiddishkeit that we have, and the opportunities that we have to practise Yiddishkeit. The opportunity to hear Rabbi Sacks speak is to get a little bit of that sense of someone who is coming from a different perspective, on some level a perspective of an outsider, someone from the United Kingdom coming to the American Jewish community and the Yeshiva University community to speak, but also someone who’s coming with a voice, to sort of look from above. But there is a special feeling when one gives tzedakah that they’re serving somehow to do something, to help, almost to serve, to function on behalf of the Ribbono Shel Olam. It’s true with other mitzvot on some level as well. You actually serve as an agent of the Ribbono Shel Olam. And in that sense, you sort of serve as a shaliach. The money is really going through you to the person, from Hakadosh Baruch Hu to the individual who is receiving the money. I’m doing some reading about this, this week, to prepare for a shiur, that a person who gives tzedakah, really serves it. One who gives tzedakah, especially one who gives tzedakah to the poor, really serves as an agent of the Ribbono Shel Olam. The mitzvah of tzedakah is unique, in the sense that it truly raises up the individual who is involved with it. Terumah, though, means to raise somebody up. In this week’s parsha, Terumah, we have the mitzvah of tzedakah, of giving to an institution, something I’m speaking about a lot these days, about the collecting for an institution of Torah. Rabbi Sacks will be in and out, because, if I understand correctly, you can only be outside of the United Kingdom for so long and remain a member of the House of Lords, so he will be coming back and forth, both to be at YU, and at NYU as well, over the coming semester and beyond. In 2005 Rabbi Lord Sacks was knighted by Her Majesty The Queen, and has taken his seat from October 2009 at the House of Lords. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from September 1991 until September of 2013. He’s an author of 25 books, and a leading moral voice. Rabbi Sacks is a world-renowned scholar, philosopher, religious leader.
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