Monday Motivation with Rabbi Garfinkel
Aug 17, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
"THE KING!" Inspired by the Wedding of Tyler Friedman & Maya Goldenberg. What is a Jewish King? And why is a Jewish groom compared to a King? And what does it have to do with YOUR life? Find out!…
And the Torah, and I'm not going to read everything, but I'm just going to give a little perusal of some of the descriptions over here.
"So when you come to the land that Hashem gives you," okay, that's the land of Israel, "you're gonna say, 'I want to put a king over ourselves, just like all the nations around us.'" Now, that was actually a little bit of a foreshadowing of a criticism of the Jewish people, that really the reason why they should want the king is not because the other nations have kings.
It's because the king, as we're gonna see, is going to be the representative of Hashem, and the enforcer, quote-unquote, of what Hashem wants of the Jewish people.
So there's a little bit of a foreshadowing, 'cause in the book of Samuel, when the Jewish people did request a king, they did it for the incorrect reason.
They should have said, "We want a king because we want him to establish the Jewish people on the correct footing," but instead, they said, "We want a king like all the other nations." Nevertheless, and so the Torah then talks about some of the qualifications, has to be born Jewish, and as well as now, w- when you have this Jewish king, he can't have too many horses or Teslas.
[laughs] Okay, horses, horsepower.
Um, he cannot have too many wives that will turn his heart astray, and he can't amass too much money, because that also will cause him to stray.
So already we see an unbelievable thing.
We have quality control, we have checks in place that the Jewish king is not going to become a despot, a dictator that is gonna lord over the people with his own whims, because we're going to limit his power in the sense that it can't be about him.
How many politicians say today, "Oh, it's about you, the voters," and it's not, hasn't had anything to do with the voters.
It's all about them and their own power.
This, this lesson in the Torah of the king tells us how our politics should be run.
It's about a king who is not about self-aggrandizement, but about fulfilling the word of Hashem.
And in addition to that, this king, as we go on in the verses, has to have two Torahs, two Torahs, one that he keeps in his home and one that he literally wears on his arm.
It's like sort of a badge, right? Okay.
And that, folks, is the basic summary, obviously tremendous amount of details that go into that, but that is the idea of a Jewish king.
And the Torah, and I'm not going to read everything, but I'm just going to give a little perusal of some of the descriptions over here.
"So when you come to the land that Hashem gives you," okay, that's the land of Israel, "you're gonna say, 'I want to put a king over ourselves, just like all the nations around us.'" Now, that was actually a little bit of a foreshadowing of a criticism of the Jewish people, that really the reason why they should want the king is not because the other nations have kings.
It's because the king, as we're gonna see, is going to be the representative of Hashem, and the enforcer, quote-unquote, of what Hashem wants of the Jewish people.
So there's a little bit of a foreshadowing, 'cause in the book of Samuel, when the Jewish people did request a king, they did it for the incorrect reason.
They should have said, "We want a king because we want him to establish the Jewish people on the correct footing," but instead, they said, "We want a king like all the other nations." Nevertheless, and so the Torah then talks about some of the qualifications, has to be born Jewish, and as well as now, w- when you have this Jewish king, he can't have too many horses or Teslas.
[laughs] Okay, horses, horsepower.
Um, he cannot have too many wives that will turn his heart astray, and he can't amass too much money, because that also will cause him to stray.
So already we see an unbelievable thing.
We have quality control, we have checks in place that the Jewish king is not going to become a despot, a dictator that is gonna lord over the people with his own whims, because we're going to limit his power in the sense that it can't be about him.
How many politicians say today, "Oh, it's about you, the voters," and it's not, hasn't had anything to do with the voters.
It's all about them and their own power.
This, this lesson in the Torah of the king tells us how our politics should be run.
It's about a king who is not about self-aggrandizement, but about fulfilling the word of Hashem.
And in addition to that, this king, as we go on in the verses, has to have two Torahs, two Torahs, one that he keeps in his home and one that he literally wears on his arm.
It's like sort of a badge, right? Okay.
And that, folks, is the basic summary, obviously tremendous amount of details that go into that, but that is the idea of a Jewish king.
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