Yirmiyahu chapter 35. The word that came to Yirmiyahu from Hashem in the days of Yehoyakim son of Yoshiyahu king of Yehudah, saying: Go to the house of the Rechavites. This is not a garage (mosach); the house of the Rechavites is a family, the family of Rechav. Go to the house of the Rechavites and speak to them and bring them to the House of Hashem, to one of the chambers, and give them wine to drink. Bring them to the House of Hashem, to one of the chambers in the House of Hashem, and give them wine to drink. And I took Yaazanyah son of Yirmiyahu son of Chavatzinyah and his brothers and all his sons and the entire house of the Rechavites. And I brought them to the House of Hashem, to the chamber of the sons of Chanan son of Yigdalyahu, the man of God, which was beside the chamber of the officers, which was above the chamber of Maaseyahu son of Shalum the doorkeeper. He brings them to one of the chambers in the House of Hashem. And I set before the members of the house of the Rechavites goblets full of wine and cups, and I said to them: Drink wine. Hashem commands him: Bring them, give them wine to drink. This is still completely puzzling; we do not understand what the matter is.
And they said: We will not drink, we will not drink wine, for Yonadav son of Rechav our father commanded us, saying: Do not drink wine, you and your sons, forever. Our father gave us a clear instruction: Do not drink wine, you and your sons, forever. And not only that: And do not build a house, and do not sow seed, and do not plant a vineyard, and do not have any of these, for you shall dwell in tents all your days, so that you may live many days upon the face of the land where you sojourn. Our father did not only command us not to drink wine, he also warned us not to build a house, not to sow a field and vineyard, but rather what? To dwell in tents all your days. He also told us why: so that you may live many days upon the face of the land where you sojourn.
So he told them: and do not have any of these. What is the meaning of "do not build and do not sow seed and do not plant a vineyard and do not have any of these"? It means: do not say, fine, I will not build a house, I will not plant a vineyard and I will not sow a field, but I will buy. I will buy a house already built, a field already planted and sown. No, and you shall not have any of these. Rather, in tents. What is the advantage of tents? They are portable. They are portable, one can move them easily from place to place. What is the reason? So that you may live many days upon the land. The Metzudat David says, let me read to you what the reason is. The Metzudat David says: for a house and a field and a vineyard contain something that holds a person back in the place where they are. Whoever has a house here does not leave the place easily. Whoever has a field or vineyard here does not leave the place easily. And sometimes he will perish along with the people of that place. Some trouble comes, and he cannot leave, he is tied here to the ground, he cannot leave, and he will perish with the people of that place. But one who dwells in tents and has no field and vineyard can easily move from place to place.
To understand this well, let me tell you a story that happened. Rav Shach, may the memory of the righteous and holy be a blessing, may his merit protect us and all of Israel, related it. Rav Shach says: when I learned in yeshiva, and Rav Shach was among the outstanding ones in the yeshiva, if not the outstanding one among them. And in those days it was customary among the Ashkenazim abroad in Europe that the outstanding students would be married off with, wealthy men would come, men of great means, and they would ask the rosh yeshiva: give me the choicest of the yeshiva, I want him for my daughter and I am willing to pay. To this day among the Ashkenazim the matter of matchmaking is much bound up with money. That is to say, according to what one pays, so one receives. Among us Sephardim it is not so, it is not built that way. Someone once told my mother, she said to her that she has a very very very special son in law, but she says to her: he cost me 100 thousand dollars. An Ashkenazi chasidic woman, from Kiryat Tzanz. In any case, that is how it was customary among them. And the wealthy man who pays, in truth, this serves a purpose, and the purpose is positive. The purpose is that this person, the young man who is now getting married, should have no matters and no dealings with earning a living, with worries; he was accepted, they would tell him: you are for 10 years or 15 years at my table. No matters of livelihood occupy you, no worry, no banks, everything is on me. You just sit and learn only. And indeed in this way many great Torah scholars grew, many great Torah scholars grew up in this manner, because he did not have to invest himself in anything. Now from the outset he took someone with great potential, and thus in any case many great people grew, and truly Torah grew and multiplied in this way.
Rav Shach says: they proposed some match to me, but her father had no money. Now Rav Shach, as we all know, was an enormous tzaddik, and what did he care about? He did not care about money. And there were many such righteous people who from the outset did not seek a wife with money. Why? Because they said: if I take one with money, that is one whose habits are on a high level. She has lived all her days in style. It is not for her to sacrifice for Torah. It is not for her to live a life of hardship and poverty, the main thing being that the husband occupy himself with Torah. So it turns out that his reward is offset by his loss. And many times such situations would arise where suddenly the father loses his fortune, was unable to support her and him, and then the man is left with a wife who had grown accustomed to a life of comfort, and she constantly nags her husband: go work, go find yourself something, go do this, instead of him occupying himself with Torah and growing to be great in Israel, he begins to look for himself some occupations. Rav Shach says that he made a match with a woman whose father was not very wealthy. Rav Shach says: three days after the engagement I was ashamed to show my face in the yeshiva. The first question they would ask a fellow after he got engaged: what did you get? Among the Ashkenazim there is an expression called "siddur maleh" (a full arrangement). "Siddur maleh" is not a siddur with all the prayers. Rather it means he received an apartment, he received this, he is set up. "Siddur maleh." Rav Shach says: I for three days was ashamed to show my face in the yeshiva so they would not ask me what did you get. And he says: and my friends, he says, because I truly received nothing. He says, or as it is customary among the Ashkenazim to say, I received a fever. And, God forbid, not about his wife, right? Rather in the financial sense. And he says: my friends, this one got a house, that one got a field, this one got such, that one got, each one received property.
Not a long time passed, and the Second World War broke out. I and my wife lived, where did they live? It is a wonder of wonders, what terrible poverty. His father in law had a one room apartment, and the one room apartment was divided into two with a plywood board, and in half of it slept Rav Shach and his wife, and in the other half slept his father in law and mother in law. You understand what this is, what poverty is being discussed. It cannot be measured or described. It is not like today when they say, fine, he does not have much money, he only has a three room apartment, he does not have six. No, now we are talking about a person who divided the room with plywood and there he slept. War broke out, winds of war began to blow, people understood that it was dangerous to remain here, and the sword was turning above their heads, and the noose was tightening around their necks. He says: we understood that here it is dangerous, so I and my wife packed up all we had, and everything could fit into a single suitcase, we got on the first train and left that place. My friends had property. They could not leave. He has a house, he has this, so what do you do? So what, do you sacrifice your life over this? No, listen, Hashem will help, it is only a war, it is temporary, it will pass, and so on. He says: and they, may Hashem have mercy, not one of them remained. The Nazi oppressor came for them all, may Hashem have mercy. He says: and the one who was saved was me. He says, this is how he told his students in the yeshiva then. He told his students in the yeshiva, he said to them: you will say, you think this is about looking at how much I received, and there is one who does not want to get married, why? Because they did not give him according to his worth or according to what he thinks and estimates of himself. He told them: it is all nonsense and vanities. He says: here, see today, thank God, I lack nothing. I lack nothing. You know that through Rav Shach, through Rav Shach, millions passed. Millions. Millions of dollars passed through Rav Shach. And he would not take a penny. And after his death Rav Bergman related, who is the rosh kollel of Rashbi, who is his son in law, his choicest son in law. He said that Rav Shach never gave him a single dollar out of all those millions that passed through him. He says: I know that he gave to hundreds of yeshivas. I did not receive a single dollar, so that there should not be, God forbid, any suspicion or any slander that someone would say Rav Shach gives to his son in law. They bring him money, ah, he gave it to his son in law. Once there was a wealthy man who knew this, and he came to Rav Shach and says to him: Rav Shach, I want to give you a large sum, it was say 100 thousand dollars, and he told him: I want the Rav to give from this, however, 10 percent to his son in law, so and so. Rav Shach took the money, returned it to him, and says to him: if you want, distribute it however you wish. What you give me, leave it to my discretion that I will distribute. He was in fact hinting to him: if you want to give to my son in law, you give it directly, so it does not pass through me. The man was clever and he understood, took 10,000 dollars, gave 90,000 dollars to Rav Shach, and the 10,000 dollars he went and gave to Rav Bergman so he would have it personally to be able to sustain his kollel. We see what this is, at what level we are speaking. Millions passed through him and he lacked nothing and needed nothing. Once they wanted to replace his glasses, they told him these are glasses that will help and such, so he said to them: wait, these are expensive glasses, what, not everyone has this, I do not want it. No, they told him, no, these are glasses that exist today, many people already have them, it is not that, and you need it for the... only then did he agree. Without that he would not agree in any way. The Steipler, after all, until the end of his days they wanted to put an air conditioner in his home. Until the end of his days he did not agree. He did not want an air conditioner. He said this is one of the pleasures of this world. They told him but a person can learn more. So he told them: now on Shabbat what will I do? On Shabbat there is no air conditioner. So it turns out that a weekday would be more honored for me than Shabbat? He did not agree, because he says the Steipler did not use electricity on Shabbat. Do you understand? So what, a weekday would be holier for me than Shabbat? In no way was he willing. Rav Chaim Kanievsky they say was the opposite, that he too for years did not want an air conditioner, and afterward they put in an air conditioner for him and he said: had I known that one can learn better this way with an air conditioner, already 20 years ago I would have agreed. That is what Rav Chaim Kanievsky told them.
So this is what we, what the father of the sons of Rechav told them. He told them: do not build a house, do not sow seed, do not plant vineyards, be mobile, live in tents. There is a problem, you immediately leave the place, you have saved your lives. Why not drink wine? Because wine, as is known, leads to all kinds of bad things, and therefore he told them: distance yourselves from wine. Today this is what is called all the alcoholic beverages; in their time it was wine. And we obeyed the voice of Yonadav son of Rechav our father in all that he commanded us, not to drink wine all our days, we, our wives, our sons and our daughters. How does a nazir make kiddush? A nazir, after all, is forbidden to drink wine and to become impure through the dead. How does he make kiddush? On the bread, on the bread. And not to build houses for us to dwell in, and vineyard and field and seed we shall not have. And we dwelt in tents, and we obeyed and did according to all that Yonadav our father commanded us. And it was, when Nevuchadnetzar king of Bavel came up against the land, that we said: come, let us go to Yerushalayim from before the army of the Kasdim and from before the army of Aram, and we dwelt in Yerushalayim. He said: everything he commanded us until now we did. But they tell him: regarding the building of houses we were not able to fulfill it to the end. Why? Because when Nevuchadnetzar king of Bavel came against the land, it was already dangerous to dwell in tents outside, and then we said we have no choice, come let us go to Yerushalayim from before the army of the Kasdim, for here it is already a matter of life and death. And here they say, here we are not considered as rebelling against the word of our father. Because why did father tell us to do this? So that you may live. As we explained earlier, when you are bound to a house, it can, God forbid, be dangerous. But here they say to him: on the contrary, by leaving the tents and coming and entering into Yerushalayim in order to dwell in houses, we have no choice, in this on the contrary we fulfill the command of our father, for the purpose is so that you may live.
Up to here is a section that seemingly is not understood. This whole dialogue is not clear to us. What is this, bring them there, give them wine to drink, they tell him stories, father told us not to drink, father told us not to build houses. The explanation begins here. And the word of Hashem came to Yirmiyahu, saying: Thus says Hashem of Hosts, the God of Israel, Go and say to the men of Yehudah and to the inhabitants of Yerushalayim: Will you not take instruction to listen to My words, says Hashem. The words of Yehonadav son of Rechav, who commanded his sons not to drink wine, were upheld, and they did not drink to this day, for they obeyed the command of their father. See how wonderful. Father says and they do. But I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, and you have not listened to Me. Oh, what a terrible rebuke. They, father told them not to drink wine, not to do this, this is not easy, this is not simple, to live in tents, not simple. And they listened to him. They did not outsmart it; whatever father says, so they do. But I spoke to you, rising early and speaking, and you did not listen to Me. And I sent to you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending, saying: Return now each one from his evil way and improve your deeds, and do not go after other gods to serve them, and dwell in the land which I gave to you and to your fathers, but you did not incline your ear and you did not listen to Me. I did not ask you to live in tents. Dwell in the land, plant, only listen to the voice of Hashem. And you did not listen to Me. For the sons of Yehonadav son of Rechav have upheld the command of their father which he commanded them, but this people have not listened to Me. Here a father gave a command and they obey so completely. Here it is the Creator of the world who commands and you do not obey.
Therefore thus says Hashem, God of Hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Yehudah and upon all the inhabitants of Yerushalayim all the evil that I have spoken against them, because I spoke to them and they did not listen, and I called to them and they did not answer. And to the house of the Rechavites Yirmiyahu said: Thus says Hashem of Hosts, the God of Israel: Because you have obeyed the command of Yehonadav your father and have kept all his commandments and have done according to all that he commanded you, therefore thus says Hashem of Hosts, the God of Israel: There shall not be cut off a man from Yehonadav son of Rechav standing before Me all the days. "Standing before Me" means that they will sit in the Sanhedrin and teach in matters of Torah. Some say that Yonadav son of Rechav, they were descendants of converts. And they ask: how can it be "standing before Me," which implies serving and ministering in the Heichal? How can it be? Even an Israelite does not enter to serve, how can they? Rather, what is the meaning? That they will sit in the Sanhedrin and teach in matters of Torah, this is the meaning of "standing before Me all the days." And also that their daughters will be married into the priesthood and from their grandchildren some will offer upon the altar. But no, the meaning is their daughters, if his wife marries a kohen, then my grandson serves upon the altar. If I am an Israelite, my son can never serve upon the altar, but my grandson can. If he is my grandson through my daughter. He can indeed serve upon the altar. So this is the meaning of "serving before Me all the days," you will merit that your grandchildren will indeed serve before Me in the Heichal in the Beit HaMikdash.