What Will You Bring Before Hashem?

Everyone wants to succeed. Some people dream of financial success, while others hope to accomplish something meaningful with their lives.  

You want money? 

You want to bring Jews closer to Hashem? You want to succeed in inspiring others to return to Torah? Hopefully that is your dream.

Because there is nothing greater than bringing others closer to Hashem.

The Small Notebook of a Torah Giant

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ZT"L was one of the greatest Torah giants of our generation. His knowledge of Torah was extraordinary, and his monumental halachic work, Yabia Omer, stands among the greatest Torah works of our time. There is nothing comparable to it.

Yet Rabbi Ovadia Yosef shared something remarkable about what he would bring before Hashem when he reached the World of Truth.

He said that he wouldn't come with all the books he had written, not even his extraordinary works of halacha.

Instead, he would come  with a small notebook.

What was written in that notebook?

The names of the people he had brought back to Torah. The Jewish souls he had helped return to Hashem. The people he had introduced to Judaism and helped come to know their Creator. And to put even more simply, the distanced children he brought closer to their father that missed these children so dearly.

Think about that. The Gadol HaDor, a giant among giants, who devoted his life to Torah and authored some of the most important halachic works of our generation, wanted to stand before Hashem with the souls he had brought closer to Him.

It was as though he was bringing Hashem the most beautiful gift.

"Here, Father, I brought Your child back to You!"

When you bring another Jew closer to Hashem, you are bringing a precious soul back to their Father in Heaven, like a sweet fragrance before Him.

People don't understand what it means in Heaven to bring even one Jewish soul closer to Hashem.

If we truly understood, we would leave our homes and Torah classes with so much energy like lions, searching for opportunities to inspire others.

We would stop someone on the street and say, "My brother, do you know there's a Creator of the world? Come with me! There's a Torah class happening right now!"

We would want to bring everyone.

Because bringing even one Jew closer to Hashem is something whose greatness we can barely comprehend.

A person might see a rabbi standing on a stage, speaking confidently, inspiring hundreds of people, and assume that he was simply born into that position.

But what about everything that happened before he reached that stage?

Rabbi Igal Cohen shared that when he was in America, someone once told him how much he wished he had been born the son of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef.

Imagine growing up in such a home, surrounded by Torah greatness, with that kind of foundation from the very beginning.

But Rabbi Igal explained that he hadn't been born into Rabbi Ovadia's family. He hadn't grown up in his home. Not even close.

Hashem had chosen a completely different path for him.

A path filled with tremendous tests and challenges. Not necessarily the most difficult path in the world, but an incredibly difficult one.

And those challenges had a purpose.

Perhaps the purpose is to best be able to help others around us come closer to Hashem, exactly in our shoes, in our family, in our neighborhood, in our town is where we're needed.

And if our greatest desire is to bring Hashem's children closer to Him, then even the challenges we face along the way become part of that mission.

Based on a shiur by Rabbi Igal Cohen.