Why Does God Tell Us No? | 10@9 | 2026.10.15

Good morning. Today is Thursday, October 15, 2026. Robnachom Tversky, also known as Robnachom of Chernobyl, one of the early Hasidic masters, he was a Talmud, a disciple of the Baal Shem Tov. He wrote, Vayi Ere Vayivoker, and it was evening and it was morning. That's a formula that's repeated each of the days of creation at the beginning of Bracias. So he writes that those words are more than just the description of that particular day. They are rather fundamental words that set up and describe to us the way the world works. Vayi Erev, Vayivoker, it was evening and it was morning. First is always evening and then comes morning. He wrote, The lack proceeds fulfillment in all things. There is always the lack first, in this case Erev, dark darkness, and then comes Bocher and then comes light in all things. This is a most fundamental and one of the most repeated underlying themes of the entire Torah. I'll share with you just a couple of examples so that you see and you should be able to see on your own how there are hundreds, if not thousands more throughout the rest of the Torah. And he focuses on, right at the beginning, the first sin, when Adam and Chava, Adam and Eve eat from the Eitzadas, the Tree of Knowledge. And he asks, What in essence is that first sin and how do we exercise caution to prevent it in the future? And he answers boundaries, restraint, restrictions. Let's look at the Psookin, back in last week's parasha. Vayikach Hashem Elohim Esa Adam Vayinichayah Be'ganedin Le'avdil Hashem Ra, God took Adam and Eve and placed him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to guard it. Vayitsava Hashem Elohim Elohim Le'emar and God commanded Adam and Eve and said, Me kol Eitzagan Tochol Achol Tochol, You can eat from every tree in the Garden, Wum Eitzadas Tov'aral Lo Sochol Mimenu. And from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil you should not eat. So we find a no, we find a lack, something that you cannot have. And what this teaches us is, at the very beginning of the Torah, there are boundaries. There are laws, there are rules. In life there is the permitted and the forbidden. There is the proper and there is the improper. Not everything is permitted to us. And immediately after the no, the lack comes the yes. Vayom erilakim. God says, Lotov hayosah dom levado. It's not good for man to be alone. Esala ezakonegdo. I will make a helper for him. So now there's a gift. There's a restriction. Nati from this tree. And then there's a gift, an amazing gift. Ezakonegdo. Adam had Chava had Eve with him. Incredible gift of intimate partnership. We can't even imagine the world without it. But now with this single prohibition, Adam and Eve fail. Va tera haishakitov ha etzlemachol. Eve Chava saw that this, the fruit of this tree, of the etzadas, of the Tree of Knowledge, it looked good. Vritava hileinayim. And it was tempting to the eyes. It was a delight to the eyes, the fruit of this tree. Ve nechmad ha etzlemashl lahaskil. And it was something that it seemed desirable. If you're telling me that this is a Tree of Knowledge, it seems like that would be a good thing to eat from this tree, to have knowledge. Va tikach mimpiryo va tochal. She took fruit from this tree and she ate it. Va titein gam laishakah imal vayochal. And she gave it to Adam also and he ate. Why did she eat? God said, Nati, why did she eat? There's a safer called srar hamar, written by Avram, Rabbi Avram Sabah. And he explains that this is the first exposure to what becomes an eternal dilemma and it applies to every single one of us. That which is evil is not always ugly. It would be easy if what was permitted to us was beautiful and tempting and what was prohibited to us was ugly and disgusting. But that's not a way it is and it's confusing. Because you have a tree that's forbidden, but it's beautiful and it's tempting and it seems desirable. He writes, she saw that the tree was good to eat and something that kills in the words of God should certainly contain a deadly drug or some bad smell or some other disgusting characteristic. But I see that everything is described in opposite terms. The tree was good for eating and a delight to the eyes. And that is the first instance of what exists for all of us for all time from that day until now, whatever glitters just confuses us. It attracts us. It tempts us even though it's bad for us. And so the sin of eating from this tree on its most basic level, the most primary level is that there is forbidden and there is permitted. There are restrictions times when we are told no and again that is followed by gifts and times we are told yes, limitation is the prerequisite for freedom by he Arab by he vocer. The Arab must come first and then it is followed by vocer rabbi do be zinger a contemporary rabbi says all we need is love. It sounds like the line from the Beatles. But what he meant was all we need is love spent the Hebrew word spelled Lama Lama. I'll have love. All we need is love. No, we need no in our lives. And if you pay attention to what goes on in the world, if you listen to the news, so much of the negative stuff that happens that we read about is from a lack of ability to control ourselves. Scandals headlines people in business who have no limits when it comes to making money people who do not understand the limits of relationships between men and women. People who drive without limits on how they drink or how fast they go. Everything begins with a lack of ability to distinguish between what is forbidden and what is permitted. I've shared this with you before and it's something so important. It's worth sharing and repeating. A number of years ago. Dr. Walter Michelle passed away and he is the one who developed the famous Marshmallow test. Michelle was born in 1930 in Vienna to Jewish parent parents. I'm sorry to Jewish parents who emigrated to Brooklyn. They fled from the Nazis. In the Nazis, 1938 arrived in Brooklyn 1940. In 1956, Michelle finished his doctorate in psychology. He did research and taught at Harvard, Stanford, Colombia. He became one of the most influential psychologists of his generation. When Professor Michelle was a boy in Vienna. His grandmother used to speak to him about zits fly. Zits fly is a word that's kind of hard to translate, but it means. Patience, endurance, staying power, perseverance as the ability to sit and not to wiggle around and not to be able to be diligent. Zits fly. Decades later, he wrote as a psychologist. He developed a series of experiments under the title rejecting immediate self-satisfaction self-satisfaction in kindergartners in favor of a paradigm of delayed but coveted prizes. All right, that's a long title. The more popular title by which it became known is the Marshmallow test. And this was a series of tests, a series of experiments that were carried out over a long period of time from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of 1970s. And some of the children, the first children were from his own daughter's kindergarten. So experiment work like this. The professor had the children sitting in an experimental laboratory that was called the surprise room. And each child, these are kindergarten children were provided presented with a dilemma. Enjoy one marshmallow now, but if you wait, you get two. So the children were tested on their ability, their capacity to delay immediate gratification in order to get greater gratification. Two thirds of the children did not wait. They ate the marshmallow right away. One third of the children, however, succeeding in exercising self-restraint for 20 minutes in order to win the double treat of two marshmallows. And Michelle observed how one third of the children managed not to surrender to their immediate desire and he concluded these children are doing what Adam and Eve did not succeed in doing in the Garden of Eden. And then he continued to monitor these children through their lives and discovered an amazing thing that those who succeeded in delaying gratification as children had much greater success at adult as adults. They earned higher grades on tests. They were better at reaching their goals since they did not give in to harmful adult temptations just as they had when they were children. They save more money for their retirement, etc. etc. And a whole list of accomplishments. These children were significantly more successful than their counterparts who ate the single marshmallow right away. And the truth is since Michelle, this experiment has been repeated many times and the result is always the same. Delayed gratification is the key to success in all areas of life and this is what the Torah teaches us at the very beginning. Vayi e'ra, Vayi v'ok'er. This is where it starts. First there's the lack and if you can have patience through the lack then you will get to the morning. Then you will get to the yes. Many years ago early in our marriage, Marcy and I used to stop shop at a store in New York that was called Conrans. It no longer exists. It was in a place, a store for inexpensive but stylish furniture and home furnishings. And we used to go there a lot. We bought a few things there. And I remember they wanted you to get their credit card, of course, for their own reasons, but their Conrans credit card and they had an ad slogan for this credit card and it was a big slogan. It was all over the building. So I remember right over the escalator as you were going down and as you're coming up, you're looking at this ad and the ad is for the Conrans credit card and the ad says instant gratification because who can resist instant gratification because with a credit card you can buy all you want and you can buy it right now and you don't have to wait until you can afford it. And so you may not think as much about whether you can afford it and so it's certainly good for the company, but that's what a promise instant gratification. You don't have to wait. In contrast to that, our sages say in Pyrrhic, of us, Ezeh Uggibor, who is a strong person, a covacious Yitzhira, a person who is able to subdue their temptation, a person who does not immediately give in to temptation. And this is in this present tense, Hakovesh subdues current present tense because we need to work on this every single day because every single day in our lives, every one of us has a tree of life that appears before us, something that is tempting, something that looks good, but we know we're supposed to say no to it. And this attitude of instant gratification has become so ingrained in our society that it becomes harder and harder to fight against. A while ago, there was a commercial on TV and it was about a food delivery service called Grubhub. Grubhub is similar to Uber Eats and the commercial was brilliant. The commercial shows a man who's on his couch and he wants to order dinner for himself. And so he opens the Grubhub app like you would Uber Eats and he orders everything. He wants everything. He wants Chinese and he wants Italian and he wants falafel and he wants Indian food and he wants salad and he wants dessert and he wants everything and he's and he's just clicking, clicking, clicking of all these different foods that he wants and the commercial shows you all of these different kitchens, 10, 20, 50 different kitchens that are fulfilling his orders. Order so they show you a Chinese kitchen making Chinese food in a kitchen making Indian food and they're all, all these different places are making the food for his order and the doorbell rings and he opens the door and he sees in front of him his entire yard is filled with Grubhub deliveries, maybe over a hundred different deliveries of every kind of food in the world that all comes to him instantly and while this commercial is going on, there's music and the music is great. The music is by Queen, one of the great rock bands of all time in my opinion and Queen is playing this song and the lyrics of the song are I want it all, I want it all, I want it all and I want it now and that's the tagline for the commercial and that is one of the greatest problems in our society. I want it all and I want it now and there's no such thing as no, there's no such thing as Erev that precedes Bokeh. I've quoted to you a few times someone who very much impresses me with the posts that he puts on Facebook Dr. Afshin Emrami, a religious Jew of Persian descent. He lives and practices medicine in Los Angeles. The older I get, the more grateful I am that Judaism does not let me do whatever I want. When I was younger, I might have called that restrictive, but now I call it freedom. There are ways the Torah tells me that I cannot make money. There are things I cannot eat, there are desires I cannot follow just because I want them. There is money that I earn that I have to give some of it away. There are mornings where I may be tired or busy, but I still have to put on fill it weekday mornings and I have to dovet and then every Shabbos I have to stop. The world can continue without me for a day. We live in a culture that tells young people that freedom means having endless choices like grubhub and like conran's. Do what you want, follow every desire, answer only to yourself, but after living a little longer, I've learned something. There can be tremendous freedom and rules and tremendous slavering and having none because if there are no other rules, if I don't have any rules, then something else will make the rules for me. It could be my appetite, it could be my ego, it could be money, it could be anger, it could be other people's opinions, it could be my phone. Give me enough time and I can find a good reason for almost anything I already want. And so it's a relief for God to simply say, no, no, you don't get to make money that way. You don't get to speak to another person like that. You don't get to satisfy every desire and Judaism then gives us beautiful yeses. Yes, honor your parents. Yes, give charity. Yes, visit the sick, come for the mourner, feed the hungry, be grateful, rest on Chalbis, repair what's been broken, make ordinary moments holy. These are not chains. These are not shackles. These are directions. A river without banks is not more free. It becomes a flood. The banks are what allow the river to go somewhere. Torah reminds me that my time is not entirely mine. My money is not entirely mine. My body is not entirely mine. And it doesn't make my life feel smaller. It makes my life feel more meaningful. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever I wanted. Now I think real freedom is one what I want. No longer controls me by he Arab by he vocare. The lack proceeds fulfillment in all things. My friends, I wish you a great day and I look forward to seeing you soon in person.