Bitachon Workshop (Spiritual Tools for Emotional Wellbeing)

okay before we get started with the learning we want to mention that this is the 20th annual women's summer learning event at evergreen estates and this was started as a personal initiative by mrs tamar pevzner and happy birthday yeah this is actually a birthday party you didn't realize that but uh this was started because mrs pavzner's birthday is zion of the day after tomorrow and she shares that birthday with her father oliver sholum whose birthday is also zion of we want to mention her father [Music] yankev ben shabsi oliver shalom his neshama should have an aliyah and also him mrs patenter's mother esther elberg whose birthday was yesterday dalid menachem of yeah mazeltov and the women's learning event started as a novel way of having a birthday party during the nine days you can't exactly do all the modes of celebration because it's a time of mourning but you can always study torah and that's how it started so we're we're learning toyota and today's topic or this year's topic is be talking but the way that this started was learning concepts of meshiach and gaoula so i'm going to try to include that as well in addition i just want to tell you that today hey menachem of is the york site of the arizal in fact it is the 450th york site of the holy ari which is certainly auspicious also tomorrow tonight and tomorrow vav menachem of is the first york site of harav hagon rabjoyal his first yard site tomorrow so i wanted to try to touch upon all of those things meshiach the arizal rabio and of course our advertised topic of the talking so hopefully those will all come together there's a rabbit who every week he would get up and give a sermon and there was a particular congregant who would always by the end of the sermon be asleep the rabbi's sermon would always put this uh congregant fast asleep so one shabbos the rabbi gets up to the pulpit he is about to start his sermon and he looks out in the crowd and he sees that this particular fellow is already asleep so he says to him you didn't even give me a chance i understand you normally fall asleep at some point in my sermon but i didn't even start yet you're already fast asleep rabbi i trust you so if you want to know what betohen is how do you translate the talking in one word trust yeah i trust you so this fellow he doesn't have to wait until the rabbi's sermon bores him to sleep he knows the rabbi's sermon is going to bore him to sleep so he's he's asleep already and if you want the 30-second version of today's learning i know we're going to be learning for several hours a real marathon but if you can't say it in 30 seconds then you can't make it clear in three hours either so here's the 32nd version but talking is trust and trust means in the simplest most down-to-earth most relatable practic practical actionable terms trust means a state of mind and heart where your behaviors are aligned with a situation which has not yet become revealed just like haim knows to fall asleep before the rabbi even starts the sermon because he knows what's in store but means we know what's in store and even if we're not seeing it yet not only we expect that we're going to see it but we're ready to start now living as if because we know it's a certainty that's the that's the 32nd version of today everyone got that right yeah the 32nd version everyone got that okay so if you got that then at any point if i say anything that sounds too lofty or esoteric or you feel that i lost you just know that whatever i said was just another way of saying that same point over and over again if you got that point you're never truly lost means that we're ready to start now living as if we see what we don't yet see because we know that what we don't yet see is real in fact i'm going to add a little twist but it's not a departure from the main topic i'm only going to repeat the same point over and over again even though we don't see it yet not only we know that it's real but in some ways it may be realer than what we see so i'll start with a a story of rabbi oil a story that rebelled told many many stories and some stories were stories that happened to him so this is a story rabiot would tell but also it's a story about him he said that he was once waiting for a bus i believe in williamsburg was getting a bus from williamsburg to crown heights and he was kind of pacing around i guess at the bus stop it wasn't the bus that he normally took so he wasn't really sure if he's standing in the right spot or if this is the right time for the bus so another hosted saw him and came over and said you know can i help you are you uh you're looking for something are you are you waiting for the bus he said yeah i am and i'm just really not sure is is the bus coming so this this other hostage says to him is the bus coming halawa if only mashiach would come like that bus is coming so rabiot said i don't understand what you're saying 100 guaranteed is coming because that's something that it says in torah the bus coming who says the bus is coming at all what just because it came yesterday and the day before the day before there's nothing written into the code of the universe that says the bus is coming but mashiach's coming this is something that we know is a hundred percent certainty so the guy says to him you must be a habadnik he says yeah yeah yeah i knew it i could tell from what you just said so later on when that that was the interaction so later on rabiot was fabreganging and he was telling that story and he said why did the guy call me a chabad nick because of that statement is it because i was speaking about meshia no he was the one who brought up meshia he said it first it must have been how i was speaking about meshiach and then he started to explain that siddhis and particularly siddhis khabad is a world view and it changes the way that you understand reality so that an idea like mashiach not just that we have a world we have a reality we have a life but we know at some point into that life into that reality into that world we'll enter this concept called meshiach no that's not it when you learn siddhis what you realize is that the entire reality that exists even now before the was only created for the sake of gaula and redemption and mashiach and that it's not that something that comes as an addition to everything else but that every moment of reality since the creation of the world has been part of a process that culminates in redemption so that the entire concept is not an additional concept but it's literally the fabric of reality it is the essence of every moment is the possibility of redemption and that that possibility of redemption in every moment is actually more real and more dependable than things like expecting buses to arrive just because they've arrived every day for as long as you can remember in other words we our souls and bodies and so we experience reality for now during this embodiment phase that we're all going through right now right we're not human beings having a spiritual experience we're spiritual beings having a human experience so right now we're having a human embodiment experience our souls are eternal they always existed but now we're having the embodiment experience and in the embodiment experience we gather information through our senses our five senses we see and hear and smell and taste and touch and then we decode that information and we start to figure out reality around us we start that from the time we're babies right and we start to try to make sense of what reality is what's real and we become very enamored with what we feel is the tangibility of reality we call that by the way materialism materialism is not contrary to popular misconception materialism is not conspicuous consumption that is one of the outgrowths of materialism you know needing to have nice new fancy stuff all the time that's conspicuous consumption but materialism is a lot more basic than that materialism is simply a world view that says that all reality all things real can be reduced to physicality and if it's not physical it's not real a guy once came to me after a speech and said rabbi very inspiring i'm also a speaker but i speak about business i'm a business speaker so you speak about spirituality i speak about reality i was a religious jew and i said to him you know you're a religious jew i just want to protest you should it's okay if you want to say i speak about spirituality i i hope i do but don't say that that's distinct from reality and don't say because you speak about business that you're the one speaking about reality i would like to think we both speak about reality just from two different angles there's the spiritual aspect of reality there's the material aspect of reality i would also hope that you as a religious jew believe that the determining reality or the determining aspect of reality is the spiritual one and then the material is a manifestation an outgrowth of the spiritual so we start collecting data with our five senses and trying to make sense of the world around us and we come to a a world view that is materialistic if if i can't see it hear it touch it taste it smell it it's not real and that's why we can become very enamored with the scientific method and empiricism because the scientific method does a very good job of learning about things that we can see and hear and touch and taste and smell it is very good for that um it's not good for figuring out what's true or what's right or what's wrong or what's moral it has its limitations but it's it's a useful tool the problem is if you're a materialist so then all reality is only the physical reality and then the scientific method becomes the end-all and be-all i remember i was speaking on a campus and a young lady challenged me and she said is what you're saying logical i don't remember what i had just said but she objected she said is what you're saying logical so i said i think it is i mean i don't think i'm saying nonsense yeah i think it's logical so she said is it scientific i said to her i could answer that question but before i do i just want to make sure you understand that you're asking a new question when you ask me is it logical i answered you now you're asking me is it scientific you're aware that that's a totally different question correct she said no it's the same thing if it's not scientific it's not logical so i said okay um i hear you could i make a statement and you can tell me whether it's true or false she said okay i said all right here's the statement the statement is the scientific method is the only way we have to reliably know about the world around us she says yes that is true statement i said do you know that that statement itself cannot be proven by science there's no scientific experiment that you could conduct to prove that statement you could argue it logically and i could argue other statements logically and we could disagree but that statement itself is not scientific she didn't get that not because she wasn't intelligent she was intelligent but because she'd been so thoroughly accustomed to our view of reality being reduced to only what we can process through our senses so she wasn't even realizing that her trust in the scientific method as a way of knowing about reality was itself the process of logical reasoning that cannot be demonstrated through a physical experiment you guys following i know there's a lot of noise in the background they're moving chairs they're schlepping the pizzas online they probably don't hear all this because they we have a clean audio connection here but in the room there's a lot of stuff going on in the background so the question is what's more real what my five senses tell me or [Music] what the creator has revealed to us rabiel is at a bus stop and a guy is telling him machia essentially i'm decoding i'm unpacking the conversation here by the way if you don't want to be seen by thousands of people don't walk in front of that camera now i tell you [Laughter] the guy is essentially saying mashiach is an abstraction i mean anima principles of faith what's faith mean faith means you have to have faith in it i believe in it i haven't seen it i believe you the boss i've seen i've seen the bus i've seen it day after day after day after day i've experienced it so what's more real to me something that i've seen day after day after day after day or something that's only been described to me i've never seen it and i just have to imagine it i have to believe that it's real and from a materialist point of view that makes a lot of sense that argument makes a lot of sense of course the jewish perspective is that you know the answer to any jewish question when formulated as is it this or or is it that what's the answer both it's yes is it this or is it that yes so what's real the material world or the spiritual world yes hold on which one is it it's very easy to have faith if you deny the reality of the material world it's very easy to say this world is just a dream it's not real there's a a world of truth we didn't get there yet but that's that's the real world that's easy it's just as easy as the other extreme which is this world the physical world is the only reality and anything else is a fantasy both positions are denying the other in order to uh i guess simplify things i i used to study with a uh a buddhist priest now you want to take one guess in the world why i used to study with a buddhist priest he was jewish of course of course because when a jew becomes a buddhist god forbid he can't just be a regular buddhist he's got to be the buddhist priest right like they say the jews are like everybody else only more so so he was he was a brilliant guy he was a genius smartest guy i ever knew actually and yeah it was actually heartbreaking because i i studied torah with him actually we used to study character together which is the second volume of tanya and he was so quick he used to grasp concepts and consider so quickly you know what the sign of grasping concepts quickly he would not only he would be able to say back to me the ideas that we had studied in his own words but he was able to make jokes about what we had just learned and the jokes were actually funny that's the sign of real command of the material so he was a very special person and and i could talk to you all day about him but i'll just mention one thing actually this your site is is coming up i'm going to look it up i have to look up the date i believe it's coming up very soon he passed away i'll just tell you a little bit about his background because it's pertinent to the story he had a phd from princeton in um philosophy and he was sort of like israel you know moshe's father-in-law isro he worshipped every idol worship in the world until he came to believe in the one god so my friend he never got to the second part he uh he never got to officially proclaim his belief in the one god although every time we would study together he would put on filling and he would tell me there's nothing in buddhism that prevents me from putting on phil and i told him i'm not worried he was worried i'd feel guilty i was making him do a buddhist aveda i said i'm not worried anyways um people always ask me that question whenever i tell that story they're like oh so he did chuva and he became from no no he didn't but he used to study torah with me and uh so like i said he had a phd in princeton from uh in philosophy so he had studied every philosophy in the world and being a man of integrity he came to a point where he said i have to adopt one of these philosophies as my world view and i have to live according to it so judaism was the first ideology that he crossed off the list because he had been to hebrew school and he had a bar mitzvah and based on that experience he knew that judaism had nothing to offer unfortunately that's the story of so many american jews who were given a very distilled or very rather diluted version of judaism and it was a turn off for a person like him so he explored finally he found buddhism and he committed himself holy to that and became a buddhist priest so what i'm telling you is just remember bear in mind for the story that he was an expert in all of the world religions and philosophies and ideologies at any rate we were studying once i don't remember what i said that triggered this but i remember all of a sudden he starts screaming that's radical and i said what he said that what you just said that's radical i said what did i say he couldn't calm down he just kept saying that's radical that's radical i said what's radical and finally after he calmed down he explained it to me he said nobody says what you guys say nobody and remember when he says nobody says this he knows what he's talking about because he had studied all the ideologies and philosophies and religions in the world so when he said it he meant it he knew what he was talking about i said what what does nobody say but us he said now listen to what he said there are those who will argue that the phenomenological universe does not exist the phenomenological universe means the world where stuff happens the physical plane so there are those who will tell you that that is an illusion doesn't really exist there are others who will tell you that it does exist but it only exists as a stepping stone in order to get to a more important reality then of course there are atheistic materialistic worldviews who say that only the physical world exists and there is no other reality but nobody says that the physical world exists the spiritual worlds exist and that the ultimate purpose of it all is in the physical world he said that is radical that was a huge eye-opener for me because it never occurred to me that that was a unique concept after he said it a lot of things clicked for me like why at the end of all of this when history finally culminates in a perfected world why will all those souls in paradise who've been ascending year after year on their anniversary of passing on the york site they go to one level higher in ghanaian in paradise and think about the soul of meisha beno moses is 3 300 whatever how many years since he ascended on high he's that many levels up there in paradise and at some point redemption will come to this physical plane the world will be perfected and mashed up along with all the other souls in paradise are going to make a u-turn and they're going to come back down into physical bodies why because at that point the physical world will be so refined that it'll be holier than heaven and the only way that a soul will be able to have an ascent is by descending because the physical plane will be the ultimate place of godly revelation like the prophet says that all flesh will see that hashem has spoken that hashem speaks the world into being that the existence of reality is divine speech and that will perceive that with our fleshly eyes not as an article of faith as an abstract notion that we believe in but it's something we observe empirically so my friend helped me to realize that that was a uniquely jewish concept the material world is real in fact the ultimate point of it all takes place down here but the material world is not certainly not the only reality and what we see and hear and smell and touch and taste is not the final arbiter of what is real or not real so what do you trust more that the bus is coming because you've been on that bus and you've seen that bus and it came yesterday and the day before the day before that or that mashiach is coming because the entire world was only created for that purpose and that every moment that mashiach has not yet here is still a moment full of mashiach potential which is more certain which is more reliable which is more real so what i want to explain to you is this is not a tool that will enhance your life or even enhance your judaism be talking real better will radically change your life and your judaism if you want to simply take this thing called the token and import it into a pre-existing world view that's not what we're talking is real better is a new way of thinking about everything you understand it's the difference between there's a world that i live in and that's real to me but at the end of that all there's this thing called redemption there's this thing called meshiach that's one view and the other world view is every moment of reality only exists as part of a process of revealing oneness in the world every moment meshiach is not yet here is actually a moment of mashiach potential like the yalquic mani tells us when the khurban occurred when the by a solution when the vesa migdash was destroyed at that very moment meshiach was born that even the destructive parts of the process are part of the process so mashiach isn't something that happens at the end of the process meshiach is something that's been happening all along even in the horrifying moments of our collective history and of our personal lives about yakiva and his colleagues who went to the temple mount and uh they saw the mikdus in ruins they saw the the site where the holy temple had stood on the temple mount they saw that it was in ruins they saw foxes running around for us foxes might sound like kind of exotic so yeah i don't think it triggers the right reaction in uh in this crowd but you know think about like raccoons or something some type of varmint some type of pest that goes through your garbage and you see you know it's annoying enough when raccoons get into your bins on the side of your house imagine it raccoons are running around in the holiest place a place where only the queen galdo could go once a year on the holiest day on yim kippur now these varmints are running around it's uh it's a horrific sight and uh there'll be a kiva laughed and the other sages asked him why are you laughing he said why are you crying and he proceeded to explain that there's a prophecy in michael the prophet michael the place of the holy temple will be plowed over like a field so this is a prophecy and he says just like this prophecy i see coming true so to the good prophecies about the redemption will come true and that's why i'm laughing and after he told them that so they told him you have comforted us akiva you have comforted us he asks a dozen questions about this story which i won't get into but just a quick question i understand that rabbi akiva was consoled by the knowledge that just like the negative prophecies came true the positive prophecies would one day come true as well but laugh okay i'll ask another question too presumably rabbi akiva believed that meshiach was coming not because he saw foxes but because it's a basic article of our jewish belief he needed to see foxes in order to know that meshiach is going to come eventually that's another question all right i'll ask you a third question why did they say it twice akiva you have comforted us akiva you have comforted us white twice you following there was a yid in russia he got thrown in prison and his wife wrote him a letter and she said that it's time to plant the potatoes and the ground is so hard i can't break the earth i can't plant the potatoes i need to plow the the potato field and uh i'm just i'm not strong enough to do it usually i relied on you to do that so she wrote him this letter to him to him in prison and he gets the letter and he writes her back from prison and says don't go near the potato field that's where i hid all of the weapons she gets the letter the next day a truck full of soldiers roll up to their house and they come out with shovels and they start tearing apart the potato field looking for the hidden weapons because of course all of the mail that went to and came out of the prison was all inspected it was all red so they knew exactly what he had written to her so she writes him back and she says the soldiers were here and they tore apart our yard with shovels and axes and he writes her back and he says to her now you can plant the potatoes was that act when the soldiers were tearing up the yard with shovels and axes was that act an act of destruction or an act of growth depends if you're looking at a picture or you're looking at a movie if you're looking at a picture you only see a snapshot you see a slice in time and that moment is a moment of destruction but if you're looking at a movie and that's just one scene in the story you know the end of the story the end of the story is the soldiers whether they knew it or not were doing this woman's work for her and plowing the field by the way plowing is one of the 39 prohibited forms of of labor on shabbos the 39 prohibited forms of labor are only prohibited because they are productive if it's prohibited on shabbos it's because it's an act of productivity so tearing up the ground is not destructive it's productive if it's for plowing that's what rebbi akiva meant when he cited that particular verse in the book of mecca he said that zion will be plowed like a field that what i see in front of me is not wanting senseless destruction if you take a snapshot it is but if you know the whole story the bassamigdash wasn't destroyed it's just going through a process that's going to help it to grow even bigger like when you plow you're not destroying you're fostering new growth that this itself is all part of the redemptive process so what questions did i ask about the story why did he laugh why did he react to that particular detail of the foxes running around and seeing the bassam magdesh plowed over didn't he already believe and why did they tell him twice you have comforted us very simple of course akiva believed that would come but you think that mashiach coming you think redemption means one thing you think it means only one thing it means a lot of things there are a lot of different scenarios of how the redemption can look and a lot of different levels when meshiach comes there's going to be a revelation of godliness in this world how much of a revelation oh that depends the revelations that will come when meshiach is here depend on the process that we went through while we were working through this phase called called gullus called exile so it's not just that meshiach either is or isn't even the idea of mashiach has gradations there are different levels qualitatively in other words it can be a big redemption or an even bigger redemption so rabbi akiva when he saw how thoroughly the destruction was in other words how much plowing there was he said oh you do that much plowing then proportionately commensurately you're going to have that much more growth so he laughed because it wasn't just he was consoled by the idea that eventually there would come a redemption after the destruction he laughed because he saw an act which to him was part of redemption and the reason why he was so pleased by seeing the bassam mikdish plowed like that why it meant something significant to him and not just the general belief in meshiach coming is precisely the same reason because now he's understanding that the degree of redemption will be even greater based on the degree the thoroughness of the destruction i knew mashir was coming i always knew sheikh was coming but such a mashiach and that's why they told him twice akiva you have comforted us akiva you have comforted us because he didn't just comfort to comfort them that there will be a redemption after the destruction he also comforted them that the destruction itself is part of the process of redemption so that's a double comfort that's also why the shabbos after tish above shabbos the prophet uses the double expression console console my people what's the double consolation that not only after the period of exile there will come a redemption but the double consolation is even the moments of exile are part of the process of redemption so you hear what i'm saying it's not just that mashiach has something that comes after reality as we know it mashiach is actually the underlying reality of the entire process that we are experiencing which is a redemptive process even the moments of destruction even the moments in your life when your personal holy place has been torn apart it is not being destroyed it's being plowed for the purpose of greater growth than would have been possible without the plowing so it's not just that after we go through the pain we're going to get the comfort what kind of cruelty is that a zero-sum game hashem is going to put us through all types of torture and at the end he's going to give us a hug and make it all better god forbid you think that's what it is it's a whole different way of looking at reality even while we're going through our pain we are already engaged in the redemptive process understand i'm going to say it again it's not just we go through reality as we know it and all the pain and all the travails and the tests and the horrors and at the end of it all hashem makes nice and comforts us god forbid it's that the entire process all along was a redemptive process and in fact the more harrowing it is the more deeply the plowing the greater the growth that will follow i mentioned today is the york site of the arizaw a teaching from the arizona the rebbe spoke on his father's yacht site huff of which is coming up in a couple of weeks tough shin members and uh shared a teaching in the name of the arizona the holy ari i told you 450 years right it's a big deal i don't know what it means but it means something you know how old the arizona was when he passed away by the way 38 yeah somebody said that 38 yeah remarkable and he was only really known as a teacher for uh less than two years he used to walk around fast with kai in vital he told him you don't have time right now to write i'm just going to dictate and very soon there will come a time we're going to have you know plenty of time to write and then arizona passed away and vital sat down and transcribed all of the teachings of the ari that's why the name kiswi arizal is a misnomer because the arizona didn't write it kind vital wrote it at any rate a teaching from the holy ari there's a passage that when meshiach comes death will be swallowed up forever and hashem will erase or wipe away the tear from every face death will be swallowed up forever and hashem will wipe away the tear from every face okay the aries says dima the word for tear imha i said in english the word dima for which means tear in that verse death will be swallowed up forever and god will wipe away the tear from every face the hebrew word for tear dima when you do gematria sometimes you add one more for the word itself so dima is 119 dollar mem i and hey dalet is four mem is 40 iron is 70 hey is 5. that's 119. you add one more for the word itself that's 120. 120 is mayad member of ayandalad which means a holiday or a festival so dima tear ima coilo is the same as mayad a party a happy occasion what does that mean tears and parties i guess that's the source if it's my party and i'll cry if i want to what does that mean tears and parties a tear is the opposite of a party and what's this imakoilo business it just seems like a cheap trick right you know like uh they say about gematria that you can make up a gematria for anything like they say you know that kugel is begumatria shabbos you say hold on a second shabbos is 702. kugel is 209. okay have another few pieces of google right so what is this a joke so demo ima koilel megamatria mayade like come on you know there was a guy uh from uh from eretz israel who used to collect dhaka here in america his name was don what was his name don rabdon and he collected for a kyle in yerushalayim so he used to come to america and he'd go to the office buildings in manhattan and he would collect from uh different businessmen so for his coil he had a coilo he knew line so one time one of these guys from manhattan was inaudible and he went to the address where he'd been sending the money all these years and he finds it's an apartment it's just this guy don just lives there with his family there's no coil so he gets home and he writes this don a letter and he says now i know why don is big matriar ganev your name don is becoming a ghana of ghana is a thief so don writes them back he says well actually that's not true because don dalid is 54. ganev is 55 it's one more dawn is 54. ganev is 55 one more the guy writes back don imhaquello is begomatria ganev okay ima kayla what's this ima kayla business it's not a joke it's the deepest reality if hashem is only going to come at the end of all of this and take away your tear then what purpose did it all serve like i said before that's a zero-sum game that's like investing a million dollars and only getting back a million dollars so you didn't make a million dollars you made back your investment you broke even when you dig a hole and you fill it up again you didn't accomplish anything so at the end of this all hashem is going to just comfort us oh it's all better now or better now better now thank you but what about all the hell that i went through until now nobody thinks about that you're afraid to say that you think it's heretical it's not heretical it's radical not to say it if you're going to tell me at the end of it all below movisler netsuck death will be swallowed up forever great but what about all the people who had to die until then that's okay um we'll wipe away the tear from your face no more tears like the shampoo bottle says okay great no more tears what about all the tears that were shed until then so here's the vart it's not destruction it's plowing for greater growth every moment of loss was the preparation for greater gain descent for the sake of a greater ascent you see a snapshot of a guy crouching low is he high or is he low well he's low at this moment but he's crouching low in order to leap up and in fact the lower he crouches the higher he's going to leap the more thorough the destruction the more complete the ensuing redemptive process will be so here's the vart how the rabbi explained it dima on its own is 119 and it will never amount to my aid which is the celebration the good times that are coming it's here means the big picture a coil means when you take it all into account in fact once you see the big picture you realize the tears on their own were actually non-existent they weren't real on their own taken completely on their own what do i mean they're not real they serve no they shift no function they serve no eternal purpose and what's the greatest proof that eventually they'll be removed forever so if it'll be removed forever for an eternity then all the time that it temporarily existed means it wasn't really so real because that's the point tears on their own serve no function or purpose tears as part of a process ima koilo with the big picture serve a function and that's what i'm telling you be talking isn't merely i have my life i have my sense of reality i have my sense of how the world works but now i have this new thing which is i can look forward to at some point things are going to be good let's not be talking but talking is a completely new world view that doesn't just change how you look at the future it changes how you look at and live in the present moment now that even now before my yeshua before hashem has answered me and this second before redemption i'm already engaged in the process of my redemption and there are no setbacks and there are no detours because everything that happens is only part of the process there's a big question how hashem could have even destroyed the basa mikdash in halacha it says you're not allowed to destroy yeshua let alone destroy the basa mikdash and we know the medici tells us magi devoted the yankees of mishpot of israel that hashem only commands us to do his rules the rules that he himself keeps so what about that hashem destroyed the biggest shul that ever existed he destroyed the base of megdus you're going to tell me no no did it hashem himself says i sent navigate it was my shliyak hashem admits he did it so how do you how do you explain the whole thing you look in shock and over there the rama explains the only time you're allowed to destroy a shul if you're doing demolition for construction the only way hashem was permitted to take apart the base of mikdush is if he was in the middle of building a much bigger better one the only way hashem was allowed to put you through any type of discomfort even if we're talking about so much as a paper cut was not so at the end of it all he could hug you and say sweetie it's all better now don't tell me it's better now why do they go through it until now dima imha you have to look at the moments of pain within the big picture if redemption and the good times are only something that's going to happen after reality as we know it then why are we going through it now redemption and the good times have started already from the moment that creation began the redemptive process began the spirit of hashem hovered over the waters like it says gracious in the description of creation what is that the spirit of hashem that was present in the world from day one of creation was the spirit of meshiach so what's more real the bus because it came yesterday and the day before and the day before that or mashiach because the entire reality as we know it has only been every moment of it has only been one big process of culminating in this incredible revelation where the physical world will be holier than heaven where the greatest revelation of god will be here on earth where the greatest experience of godly revelation will be not disembodied souls in paradise but souls in bodies the ultimate paradox of the finite and the infinite merging which ultimately is the only true infinity you can wrap your head around that infinity which excludes finitude is still excluding something so it's not true infinity so true infinity is when the infinite can coexist with the finite so god is not spiritual or material he's infinite he's above both classifications so what's the ultimate revelation of godliness when there will be the spiritual and the material the finite and the infinite soul and the body completely harmonized which is why the ultimate purpose of it all takes place in the physical world in its completely refined state and that everything we've experienced as a nation and as individuals has been part of that process of refining the physical world there's there's a letter in the igras kurdish i don't know how many people studied with me uh before ural of nissan we did 30 letters in 30 days if you haven't had a chance yet to do that it's on youtube and on soulwords.org and on spotify and it's on all the platforms in santora any time but uh learning the dub is egress letters correspondences i tell people all the time that i for eight years i wrote a column in ami an advice column and i had never seen a real advice column i didn't know how to write one so i just stole the style from from eager skydish and it it worked people seemed to like it but if you want the real original advice column it's it's egress so there there's a ladder in the igris actually the date is nissan that have his birthday tough shin tess zayn from 1956 and that ebb is writing to the president then president i think longest serving president of israel yitzhak benzvi and the rabb apologizes to him for not addressing him with his official governmental title of nassi you know there's russia prime minister and there's nasi the president so the rabbit says i'm sorry that i'm not addressing you with that title but that word nasi or nasi we would say nasi how we would pronounce it that word nasi that ebba says in this letter has very particular meaning to me and it's impossible for me to use it out of context you see a nasi intunasi is a leader of the jewish people mashiach is called a nasi who has no authority over him but god himself and so i've been saving that term for a real nasty and that apologizes and says i know that you're an ish ms you're a real guy and you wouldn't want me to flatter you so i'm telling you as it is but in this letter there's a very rare glimpse into the devil's personal life very rarely did that ever speak about himself that ebba says how deeply rooted that vision of of redemption is for him and describes something deeply personal the never says there from the day that i went to hader and even before the vision of the complete and final redemption of our people and the world began to take form in my mind is describing as a little toddler he was already imagining what the world is going to look like when meshech is here and then the rabbit continues and says such a redemption that all the pain and the suffering and the persecution of our people will be sufficiently placed into context so that we will be able to say to hashem like the prophet says i thank you hashem for having chastised me for having acted angrily toward me not only you understand what that what that verse means not only when redemption comes will i say thank you hashem for saving me from all of this pain i will be able to thank hashem for the pain sounds sadistic yeah if pain is just pain but if it's part of a process if it's not destroying the field it's plowing it for greater growth if it's not destroying the building it's demolition for a greater building project then i can finally thank hashem that every moment of my life especially those moments that at the moment maybe i rejected or i wanted to reject i didn't want to show up for that moment of my reality because of how painful it was even those moments especially those moments will have special meaning to me i will cherish it all as a necessary indispensable part of the redemptive process so this is what i want you to understand mashiach isn't something that comes after reality as we know it and makes it all better meshiach is an understanding right now that the present is a completely different type of reality than what our five senses are telling us not to deny your five senses remember we're not saying that the material world has to become an illusion in order for the spiritual world to be true what we're saying is there's more than meets the eye there's more than we can see right now in the spiritual world it's all mapped out already in the material world we're only experiencing it one snapshot at a time there was a philosopher who said how do you define time you said time is that which keeps everything from happening at once so down here we're trapped in the time space continuum we only experience reality one snapshot at a time but if you have a spiritual world view that means that you can see the purpose of it all even while the process is still working itself out it's not that good times are coming it's that good times are here it's not that when meshiac comes there will all of a sudden be a radical change from reality as we know it but to the contrary everything that was going on will finally click into place and we'll say ah that's what it was all about i wish i had figured that out earlier well i got news for you today is an opportunity that results your site 450th yard say it's got to be worth something right today is a day when we can start to appreciate the good times are here and that even when we're going through what we perceive as setbacks even when we're going through what we perceive as pain it's part of a process and hashem would never put us through it if it weren't necessary and if it weren't going to lead to something greater than what he could have led us to if he would have taken us through the comfortable easy route you guys still following i still only said the same point that i said from the very beginning right i was consistent or i switched it on you what did i say at the very beginning i told you the joke rabbi i trust you i trust you then i said what's what's the talking is trust what's trust in 30 seconds living as if it's right now it's a state of mind and heart where before you see what you know you're going to see you're already living as if you've seen it isn't that what i said at the beginning now i'm just explaining it i told you one point at the beginning and i stick i stuck to that point i'm just explaining it there's a story about the ten martyrs that's in the maxer any kipper any kipper davening we read about the 10 martyrs one of the things it says over there is that at one point the brutality was so intense i mean i'm not going to get into the graphic descriptions but it describes pretty graphically how the sages were tortured and killed and at one point the brutality is so much that even the angels in heaven can't stomach it so to speak and they cry out this is torah and its reward this is torah and its reward you say sages scholars of the torah and now they are meeting such a gruesome end so uh a heavenly voice comes out and silences the angels and tells them not another word or i'll turn the world back into nothingness what what what kind of a response is that somebody asks a valid question and they're not asking the question to make trouble it's coming from a sincere place that the angels are witnessing something that is shocking and they express that it doesn't make sense to us that sages are being tortured in this manner and the response is you be quiet and if you keep it up i'm going to take apart the entire world oh see i touched a nerve right when the student asked the question that the teacher yells at him for he must have asked a pretty good question so what's up with that so there's a parable told about a king who had a subject who was a tailor and the king liked the taylor he was friends with the tailor and of course the king had an advisor who was a bad guy and the bad guy was jealous of the king's relationship with the advice with with the tailor the king told the tailor make me a suit out of a fine bolt of cloth which i will provide for you the king bought this material very rare material that only the king could buy very very precious very expensive material he gave him the bolt of cloth he said make me a suit so so the tailor goes and he makes the suit for the kink and uh he brings it back to him and the king tries on the suit he loves it he loves the suit king says to the tailor uh i love the suit the advisor's getting really jealous he comes over to the king and he says ask him for the extra cloth you know because when you make a suit from a pattern that's how you make anyone here as a seamstress knows that you cut from a pattern you cut out of the cloth and then there's scraps so it's a it's a known thing the tailor's supposed to give you back the the parts of the cloth that he didn't use so the advisor tells the king ask the tailor where's the extra cloth he didn't give you any extra cloth he's stealing from you remember it was really expensive material so the king hears this and yeah you're right i got a point so he says to the tailor listen uh i paid for the cloth i gave you the cloth you kind of owe me the cloth where's the extra cloth so the tailor says uh no problem i'll show you where it is give me your hand the king reaches out his hand and this the king the tailor takes a pair of scissors it goes to the seam of the new suit and he's about to cut the first stitch the king recoils he says what are you doing this is a beautiful new suit i love it don't cut it up so the tailor says i kind of knew that your advisor was going to make trouble so here's what i did i just i designed a pattern for this suit that utilizes every single square inch of the original bolt of cloth there is no extra cloth normally there's extra there is no extra here it's all used in your suit but to prove it to you now i have to cut along the stitches and after undo your whole suit and then i'll lay it out on the table in front of you and you're going to see the entire original bolt of cloth there every single square inch of it is there and accounted for because it's all in the suit so the king says you know what i believe you leave it all don't cut up my suit i like this suit so that that's a parable what's the lesson the angels are watching a snapshot the brutalization of the sages and they cry out how can this exist in your world god and god answers them truthfully you want to know the answer to how this moment makes sense okay i'm going to have to undo the entire i'm going to have to return it to its pre-created non-existence i'll have to take you back to toyota value to void and nothingness and from that perspective you'll be able to see how every square inch of cloth so to speak how every moment of reality is accounted for and was planned and was indispensable but if you're in reality already as it's unfolding in the time space continuum if you're already in creation you can't see it just like you can't see the entire bolt of cloth when it's in the form of a suit you can wear the suit but you can't see how it's a complete intact bolt of cloth so what's uh we're gonna break for lunch in a minute let's be talking is knowing that even right now the suit is a complete bolt of cloth everything is here already the good times are here now yes as we're living it souls and bodies it unfolds as a process but i promise you where the process ends up and if you know that that's how it all ends then you can relax now you can act as if now rabbi i trust you i trust you you don't have to wait to hear the boring speech that puts you to sleep you start sleeping as soon as the rabbi gets up to the podium you don't have to wait until mashiach arrives and everything makes sense you can start feeling that way now hashem doesn't need our worry it's not productive but deeper than that if the if these kinds of things matter to you and i assume you do if you came here for a day of learning not only is our worry not productive it's a fundamental denial of the nature of god's reality why are we worrying when the process is always on track it all ends up perfectly fine and every moment comes out not only as like i said hashem takes away the pain but we finally get to see how the pain itself was part of the process so we can relax now we can be happy now we can enjoy life now if your life is on hold right now because of some problem that you're going through some challenge marriage your kids health finances whatever it is unfortunately until mashiach comes we do have those experiences what i'm telling you is that it's possible and it's true it's aligned with truth to be at peace right now to not feel that your life is on hold until whatever it is gets resolved your life's not on hold until whatever it is gets resolved your life is moving it's in flux you're alive right now this is part of your story in fact apparently a pretty darn important part of your story for it to be worth it and justified to be going through discomfort because hashem would not put you through discomfort if it weren't necessary the most edifying definition of talking i ever saw was in a letter from the rabbit to somebody i don't know what they were worried about but that ebba says you need morbid talking and in case you don't know what be talking is i'll tell you what it is you know that feeling of complete relief that you're going to have when your current troubles are finally behind you merely means having that feeling now let's breathe just relax we're in good hands it's good now it's getting better it's getting even better but it's it's good now tell you my favorite story in the whole world and then we'll break for lunch my favorite story in the whole world and i love it because there's nothing dramatic in it there's no put it there's no dungeon it's like the most boring story in the world it's actually just a bunch of people talking my favorite story in the world every time i hear it i like it more they tell me they are margaret was sitting around having a uh what they call dmc right dmc deep meaningful conversation and uh they were discussing the subject what would you do if you were hashem so uh levitrog berdichev said you know he was very loving and kind he said you know if i were hashem i would create the world with more acid with more loving kindness the world would be a gentler place pinchas he was known for his tough disposition he said you know if i were hashem i would create the world with more buddha with more divine discipline so that the wicked people wouldn't be able to cause any problems and the balatanya zalman said if i were hashem i would create the world exactly as hashem is creating it right now you understand not if hashem were me if hashem were me the world would look very different if i were hashem meaning if i had infinite wisdom if i had infinite perspective if i truly knew exactly what is good for everyone and i was able to pull it off in a way where everyone had the best possible growth experience and to put together a universe where every single entity in that creation had the most complete and fulfilling and meaningful story and to put it all together as one reality if i could do that you know what reality would look like open your eyes and look around you're looking at it you're looking at it right now this is what i want you to understand we don't have to close our eyes and deny reality in order to relax and to feel hashem's love and protection open your eyes look around we're living in the perfect moment now now that's faith not fatalism fatalism means whatever is the way it is right now is always going to be that way it's not true things are in flux things grow and there are some areas of our lives that are in a plowing phase right now i'm not going to deny that there are some things in our lives right now that are in the demolition phase and not the rebuilding phase just yet there's a sign in front of certain areas of our lives that says pardon our dust while we renovate so it doesn't mean that everyone's gonna everything's gonna stay the same no no things are moving and they're they're working themselves out and everything is culminating in a healthy positive outcome for everyone involved so things are growing things are in flux only for the better but what i'm saying is now is a perfect now not a second from now because a second from now is a different now but now is perfect for right now okay you want a break for lunch what look at my phone the next session will be starting at 1 15. we're going to push it a little late because i spoke too long i didn't see anyone falling asleep and we want to thank the ladies of evergreen for making this lunch possible okay we'll break to 1 15. okay a couple of orders of business as we start our second session first of all as mrs pastner mentioned we are going to do q a so if you have a question you can write it down and we'll god willing we'll get to it also people may have noticed that there are these books this is the gate of trust english translation of sharabitaken along with commentary that was put out by the editorial staff of kayenu which is a torah periodical for daily torah study and this particular book gate of trust as you may notice if you look in the fine printed top it says the phallic edition i believe later at the end of this session we're going to be joined by a special guest who uh was involved in the publishing of this groundbreaking work and we're going to talk a little bit to him about about the book people who are on the other side of the mekitza and talking even though you can't see us we can definitely hear you i know that you can't see us but we can hear you okay oh it's much better okay we spoke about a lot of deep stuff during the first session and there are probably a lot of questions that that evoked and there will be q a at the end god willing but before we get to the q a i wanted to talk a little bit about the particular text shah habit of the sakura not to be confused with rebec to use the arabic title properly lived in spain about a thousand years ago from 1050 to 11 20. common era and he composed a book called jevis lovaves which means duties of the heart as opposed to the duties of the limbs duties of the limbs refer refers to the behavioral code of judaism the things that you have to do how to observe jewish ritual cleves duties of the heart is talking about the emotional aspect of judaism what you're supposed to feel and there are ten shaadim ten gates or sections of s one of those sections is known as charabitakin the gate of trust and it's all about the subject of trust and i'm going to take a look at the text a little bit now if you're looking for a real in-depth class on char rabbit talking i will recommend here's a little self-promotion but uh there's a 46 class series that i did on charabitakin we go through the entire text every single word of it we read it in hebrew we translate into plain english and you can find that on soulwords.org you can find that on youtube you can find it on tour anytime you can find in all your favorite podcast platforms like spotify and google podcast and apple podcast but we're just going to give you a little taste today of shah rabitakan in the beginning of the book there's an introduction there's a hak dhamma and um tells us something very interesting about bittoken he tells us that betohen is essentially a choice these are my words regarding the narrative that we tell ourselves about reality and the kind of life that we're going to experience i'll just read a few words from the actual uh introduction he says if one does not trust in hashem say he trusts in something other than hashem um and someone who trusts in something other than hashem hashem removes his supervision from that person um and places him under the dominion of that within which he trusts let's talk about that a little bit if you're not trusting in hashem then you're trusting in something else it's very interesting formulation because i think many times we labor under the assumption that the options are trusting in a sham or just not trusting at all but it's not true there's no such thing if you don't trust in hashem you're trusting in something well what does that mean we we place our trust our trust in things without even realizing that that's what we're doing remember we're talking about in the first session the the materialist worldview the reductionist world view that all reality can be reduced to physicality physical phenomena and that which i can experience with my five senses well you might think that that's devoid of any particular value system but the truth is living that way is implicitly a vow of loyalty to a very particular lawyer a value system if you operate under the assumption that what you experience is real that's a belief if you operate under the assumption that what you gather and interpret based on your five senses is meaningful that's an assumption that's a trust so someone who's not trusting that hashem runs the world it's not that he has no trust he does have trust he trusts that nature runs the world or some people the way they call it today cause and effect runs the world it is a belief it is a form of trust i know in the past in human history polytheism was much more popular i would even say rampant so when people didn't trust in hashem they chose an idol to believe it but just because one does not believe in an idol doesn't mean one hasn't chosen an alternative god trusting your five senses to tell you about the nature of reality is an alternate belief system so rebecca tells us if you don't trust in hashem you are automatically trusting in something else in other words i'll give you a different word for it you are putting stock in another organizing principle of reality another way of answering the question why why do things happen cause and effect you do this you get that or maybe your answer is why do things happen no reason at all entropy chaos which is also an explanation and rebecca says whatever your narrative is whatever your explanation is for why things happen that's going to become real to you he says when you stop trusting in god you trust in something else so hashem places you under the dominion of that thing in which you are trusting in other words hashem agrees with you he backs you up he gives you evidence to back up your belief now we have to explain that because seemingly that implies that there could be another reality that's not engineered and orchestrated by god that the one who lacks trust in god is living in a reality that indeed is not run by god is that possible is that even is such a thing possible so what's rebecca talking about one of the things that i love about this book and is you absolutely unique about this version of of uh shattered token is that the commentary not only has all of the classic commentaries all of the famous commentaries on charaba talking but in addition it has hasidic commentary taken from the rebellion of chabad and particularly a lot from the lubavitcher absolutely circus i'll just share with you uh one little sample or taste there's a secret secrets that speaks about some very deep concepts in terms of protest how hashem's providence actually works and among other things this sikh deals with a seeming conflict between the rambam in mairahanovuchim and tyra sabal the rambam in meruhan the guide to the perplexed says that there are two types of protests specific supervision and general supervision specific supervision means that hashem is orchestrating every minute detail clawless general supervision means that it's not specific it's general so if there's a town with a thousand people and ten of them are going to perish in a plague god forbid so the number is chosen which which people are going to be the ten we'll see and he actually says that even in the human realm only tsaddikim who have vegas hasekel who have a high level of god consciousness experience hashkaja pratas and then the rest of the people don't and then in the non-human realms of animal vegetable and mineral then they certainly all operate under clause so hashem doesn't decide which stone is going to be used in that building or which tree is going to grow in that field he decides a tree is going to grow there not witch tree that's how the rabbit explains it in mira of course the baal shamdev believes in radical hashkaja practice not just that hashem is supervising details but to the extent that i'm sure you've all heard this little story about the leaf falling from the tree and twisting in the wind that's real ashkajobratas and it's not just in the realm of humanity it's even for lower levels of creation as well so which one is it remember i told you in the first session if there's a jewish question formulated as is it this or is it that what's the answer yes the answer is yes okay so how do we explain that it's both explains the inner and the outer hashkaja xiaomi we're good video is good yeah we're live streaming right now can something be true and we when we don't know it i'm asking can something be true and we don't know it yeah sure does our not knowing it make it less true no okay so here's how the rabbit explains this and i'm oversimplifying there's a subjective reality and there's an objective reality the subjective reality is based on the narrative that we choose so if we believe the world is subject to cruel random fate that will be our experience and the events of our lives will reinforce that belief in fact the events of our lives will have an uncanny ability to constantly remind us and reinforce for us that pre-existing belief how does that happen how do the events of our lives so perfectly reinforce our pre-existing belief what's making our life line up in that way that reinforces our confirmation bias or should i say who is orchestrating our life so impeccably that every detail of it is reinforcing what we're already looking for who's doing this hashem if you tell hashem hashem you don't run the world hashem says no problem i'm now going to meticulously orchestrate a reality for you in which it appears i do not run the world so even in hashem not running the world he's running the world i probably shouldn't share this but huh yeah i i i'm conflicted whether i should share this for a number of reasons but there there's a documentary about a serial killer he was a mob hit man he killed thousands of people so he claims and they called him the iceman because he showed no emotion and they interviewed him in prison and he was talking about these gruesome murders and he spoke about it so nonchalantly like it was nothing and there was one time when he showed any internal conflict he said that he was about to murder a guy and the guy started begging him not to kill him and then the guy started praying so this hitman the iceman says to the guy this is terrible he says to him oh you think god's gonna save you okay no problem pray for 10 minutes and it if if god saves you he saves you and if not i'm killing you at the end of the 10 minutes he says this guy was praying for 10 minutes praying his heart out the end of 10 minutes i told him i guess god didn't answer and i killed him and then at that moment it's very interesting just for a split second you see something behind his eyes you don't see the rest of the time you see this inner conflict this just this twinge of of guilt or remorse and he says i shouldn't have done that that was it and then he goes on describing gruesome murders it struck me the fact that this guy he murdered was murdered in the end even after he prayed that unfortunately that happens that happens in the world but what was fascinating to me is the punishment of this murderer the only murder it seemed that bothered him from all the thousands of murders was that one because at that moment what did he do to himself to himself he placed himself in a completely godless world and you could tell he didn't like that even though i suppose for him to believe in a world run by god would mean for him to believe that he was headed for some punishment but you could tell it bothered him that at that moment he proved to himself that there is no god and it disturbed him in other words whatever happened to the guy who got murdered okay that was supposed to happen i i don't mean to say it flippantly it's horrific but what happened to the murderer in some ways is even more profound he basically created an experiment and conducted an experiment that would prove that there is no god and he got his results and now he has to live with them now we all know who orchestrated that moment hashem for whatever reason in his divine wisdom this guy was the murderer and this guy was was the murder victim like like our sages tell us why does it happen that some guy falls off of a ladder and inadvertently he lands on somebody and kills him and then the guy who fell has to go into the cities of refuge so they tell us that hashem works it out that this guy was a murderer and there were no witnesses and he's really liable for capital punishment and this guy was a murderer but it was inadvertent and there were no witnesses and he's really liable to go into exile in the cities of refuge so hashem works it out that these two guys stay at the same inn at punduk at the same inn at the same tavern and they meet each other and this guy falls on this guy so this guy gets his capital punishment and this guy gets sent into exile hashem works it out for everybody so somehow not that it makes it less horrific but there is divine justice in that but what's to me much more disturbing is the psychological torment that the denier is able to bring upon himself by espousing a narrative that there is no hashikaka there is no divine supervision there is no detailed providence and then hashem reinforces that for the person so the detailed providence reinforces the position that there is no detailed providence so explaining over there that is talking about the subjective experience the balchamtv is talking about the objective reality the subjective experience the way it feels the way it looks is it's all random it's cruel fate because that's what you were looking for confirmation bias hashem's backing you up and that's why the rambam says it doesn't apply protest doesn't apply to anything non-human because a non-human entity doesn't have a consciousness and then even within humans the rambam says that it only applies to tsadikim because in order to be able to have such a subjective point of view you have to be very spiritually refined so what the rambam is saying is is the subjective experience only for a select few the belshantiv is reporting the reality that even if you don't see it even if that's not your experience the objective truth remains that everything is not only for you and all humanity but even for the vegetative the animal the inanimate even the buzzing of subatomic particles inside of an atom every movement is divinely orchestrated ah so back to shadow talking you would read a line like this and shot of a talking on your own and he says if you don't believe in hashem then automatically you believe in something else and that something else that you believe in hashem will now put you under the dominion of that something else you're left with a big theological question oh what you mean there are other something else's that can run the world other than hashem comes and explains what that means he'd be left with a major question what does it mean hashem puts you under the dominion of these things no it means hashem allows you not only allows co-creates with you the reality that you've chosen however what's the good news what's the good news the good news is that when you realize that even the seemingly godless world you live in was divinely orchestrated for you from there it's a much more logical next step to start believing again in fact all the evidence i was given to make me not believe i realize is evidence that i should start believing because who could who could orchestrate in such an uncanny way a reality that would reinforce my confirmation bias so well it would have to be divinely orchestrated okay that's just one one example of uh one of the ideas in charitable token has explained [Music] i'm wondering maybe we should do this i know this q a and i see that my friend uh let me just see what does this say here felik edition my friend uh gatsy felig is here so maybe if we'll pull up a chair and a second mic he'll join me up here we'll talk a little bit about this book can we uh three to one motion these guys are the best [Applause] your as a subconscious associate i wasn't deliberate okay so uh i we're good yeah you want to do a mic check and get so you want to do a mic check mic check perfect good okay so we were talking about charabataken and specifically about oh i should do the product placement right now at the front of the room there are copies of this book for sale right there's still copies for sale yeah okay so the copies of this book for sale uh as you leave the room i should also mention i think names are being collected for a pond to bring upon to to the oil to be read by the rabbi so if you want to leave your name um at on the pond just is that also it's there yeah okay you'll pass it around okay you're passing it around okay all right so rabjetsi this is uh this is your javascript mine yeah but it is on the same cover page so it must mean that you endorsed the book and i'm assuming that uh it's based on personal experience actually i know that it's based on personal experience that's why i actually wanted you to join me because i feel like sometimes rabbis can be very rabbi-like is that a redundancy is that a truism and sometimes it's good to get a another type of perspective because you know if i tell you that the shadow talking is all that in a bag of chips you'll say well you're a rabbi you have to say that you know that's how you make your living but uh i figured i'll have somebody normal and see if he agrees with me so uh uh maybe tell us a little bit how shadow bit talking entered your life and how you ended up making the book enter so many more people's lives sure first of all thank you very much for the organizer for having uh organizers for having myself around my town events like this are at the founding point of why it is that my wife and i got involved in this project and i'll share a little bit about that with you but i will tell you for a fact that uh some of you if not all of you hopefully your lives will change guaranteed for the better you may not realize it today or tomorrow but it will and uh it's not just because uh we're selling a book because i'm not the publisher i make no profit it's because it really does i think it cost you a few bucks to make the book in fact on the way over here another rabbi reached out to me on the text and i i don't know if you spoke about this before but today is actually the 450th yard side of the arizona and he was reminding me that the arizal would have his students study every day and he wasn't the only one the vilna gayan i think almost every siddhas that i have heard of has the khaiba-savavas in their repertoire or suggestive reading so the safer itself was written over a thousand years ago or about a thousand years ago has literally been passed generation to generation from whatever segment of judaism one was in it had a relevance and i think that that in it of itself speaks volumes that today in 2022 i'm in the business world rabbi taub is in the educational world that two people from two different spectrums probably can come together and agree on a safer that really is uh life-changing and things that you see and then things that i might see so that being said i want to just kind of go take a step back into how this whole thing began and i i will say that it's not just me it's my wife and i my wife eliza so anything i'm going to say is might point to my journey but it really i think i can say both of our journeys and our family so going back about 17 years ago my wife and i were married for just short of a year and we found out that our first son had was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and i was 21 she was 20 we were obviously new at this game and clearly very new at the game of being a special needs parent or parents and it was uh extremely emotional and confusing and not really sure where to go and having grown up in a chabad home the first thing we did was we went to new york to queens to the ihel to write a letter and ask for a blessing and as is customary by some afterwards you can there's many volumes that the arabic of letters that the rebbe had sent over the years to different people and they published i don't know how many volumes it is maybe it's 30 or 40 i'm not really sure how many there are but many many many volumes and some have the custom of opening up the book and to try to find some kind of you know wisdom or answer or something to kind of walk away with and we did and we opened up to a letter and it was a letter to a i can't remember if it was a couple or an individual it was all about strengthening your trust and that you have to learn this book called travis which i had no idea what betaken was i knew the english translation trust that was translated for me and i certainly had no idea what javascript was i never heard of it now at the time i really didn't put much to it in fact my wife and i think we're probably just dizzy with emotion and trying to wake up in the morning but what was most exciting at least or inspiring was that we went to the idol we got some kind of letter about trust and it said at the end it should be good and it was that was pretty much what took us you know to the next day and it kind of just fell through the cracks and as my son's treatment began and our life was turned upside down or upside right depends you know from which angle you look at it we began to at different times write or look for inspiration or learn something and this concept kept on coming up to us again and again to strengthen your battalion and i told you to learn javascript why didn't you learn cleveland you're supposed to learn it not once but three times and over a course of two years and i actually thought i had these letters with me here in new york but they're in storage we had i don't know maybe 10 of these different letters or different sperm that we i came across that was the same topic so really what kind of took it over was my son was having a surgery at one point and the letter was written to a couple about a surgery that they were gonna one of them was gonna have and it said stop worrying i told you to learn already learn already so at this point i i kind of got the hint and i i bought the book and feldheim had a little not this book no this safer didn't exist yet so this one was the feldheym translation it's probably at this point 30 years old and it's a little pocket edition and i bought it i flipped through it you know now the word bittachon was on our minds as trust what does trust really mean i would you know ask whoever i thought can explain it to me to explain it to me we weren't really engaged in the safer maybe young kipper afternoon when i was feeling particularly holy i would read it or if i was going through a rough patch i would read a chapter but again there was not bridging the gap i had the safer i looked at it from time to time and the closest thing i came was i someone explained to me that a muna is like a tree and bhitakhan is like the apple is if you have a munna which means if you're a tree not necessarily are you gonna have an apple which is bettah but if you have a batakin which is your apple you certainly have a moon which is your tree because you can't have one without the other which was great because now i knew that i hardly had a moon and i certainly didn't have the talking and that was perfect there was nothing happening so that was very good that's from that by the way so there you go that's sourced that's what it makes you didn't have it that's what you didn't have that did not have either okay so then comes an interesting point that uh wasn't a letter but was actually a dream and i don't know i think i i may have alluded to this in a previous discussion i don't think i've ever told it out you know publicly but basically i was living in atlanta with my wife at the time and our children and we were going through a very very difficult time financially and we weren't sure if we just stay in atlanta or we should move to miami and get involved in community work by my father it was a bachelor in coconut grove and it was very confusing i was working on an opportunity that i knew was about to hatch and as soon as it hatched i was going to be a billionaire retired life was going to be fantastic but it wasn't hatching and in the meantime it was a struggle and i fell asleep one afternoon because that's what you're doing when you're trying to hatch a plan and not employed and i had a dream and i was in 770. now i'd never had a dream like this before i'm not a big dreamer um but i was in 770. i knew it was 770 but it was a different 770 because it was a clean 770 and there was stained glass and there was this beautiful light coming in from the windows and there were everyone that was learning there all the buck room i was in the men's section had little short black you know hats and like black glasses and it looked like they were out of the 60s so i realized i was in 770 in heaven that's where i was so i'm very excited because now i'm thinking this is my first opportunity the reb has got to be here somewhere right and he's this is his bot and i'm looking and suddenly there's a big there's a big noise in in the room and they say the reb is coming he's coming down to go to his place in 770 if you're familiar he has an area where he would dive into the corner and suddenly everyone's spreading away and i'm like i'm like heaving i can't believe my luck here i'm having a dream i know i'm having a dream i'm in 770 the reb is coming i'm here that's it he's going to tell me what to do about atlanta you know what the winning i'm going crazy but my luck as everything's separating i can't get in front of the line because there's so many people there and i'm trying to push and i'm like oh my god i'm such a i'm finally here and the rebel is going to walk by i'm not going to see him he's not going to see me and it's over and then i'm going to be the guy that said i had a dream the rebel walked by so i got very depressed and as the rabbit starts to walk by and i'm thinking that this is my doom and gloom there have been stops and he turns to me and he parts the crowd and he tells me to come over and i'm like i just burst out crying and i'm like i'm standing by the rabbit like like this distance and i'm like ah i have a kid special needs i'm broke i don't know what to do miami my wife my kids my life i i i i'm just my whole life is just crying out of me and the rebel looks at me with a big smile and he says two words well three he says ghetzel which is my name and then he walks away and he smiles and i wake up now the word bettah and i at this point knew which i didn't have any so that i got the basimka part i didn't understand at all and i asked a few people and no one really had heard that combination of words before bettah and bessimka so no okay maybe be happy about trust but after that dream was the first time that i kind of looked again at this safer and at this concept and this message that had been being delivered at that point for probably the better part of six years and my wife and i made a decision we're going to go to florida it's going to be good let's just go there it'll work out and that was my first batakin story because when i got to florida i had no money and i had just starting a new job just trying to get back on my feet and a friend of mine told me you have to buy a house just buy a house i had no credit no down payment nada he said just buy it okay so i started looking for a house i found the house i made the offer on the house the house the offer was accepted i still had no way to pay for it or put the deposit down or get a mortgage or anything else and like out of a magical fantastical movie or a book i get a call that this thing i was working on in atlanta just came through and even though you left there's a big whopping check that's on its way to you so where should we send it i said to the lawyer for my deposit on my house because i don't have any money and that was probably the first time that i felt and saw with my own eyes that when you let yourself go and really just trust in hashem magic happens magic when they say abracadabra is really a catalystic hebrew word so means hashem speaking the world into being exactly so magic and let me see so sometime thereafter my wife and i at this point understood clearly that this was a major part of our life and every morning we started to learn a page of the feldheym version of the safer together we tried to do before the kids woke up and before everything started and i would say that that is if there's anything you're going to do that's probably the best advice to take away from from this whole thing is trying to learn a little bit every day and for shaolin bias if you can do with your your other half it's even more powerful and shalom biased advice it two for one it's a twofer for sure and since it's right in the morning and hopefully before your kids wake up so there's two things that happen you have a cup of coffee with it so you say the bra which literally means it's going to be the way he wants it to be and then you open the safer and before your text messages or if you're working your emails or your kids are nagging for breakfast or the lunches or the school notes etc when you can start your day with the foundation that everything that's about to come my way is for the best and hashem created i mean he knows exactly what i need it's it's unbelievable how your day will change unbelievable it will literally be flipped upside down and when you engage in whatever positive or seemingly not positive thing you'll go back to it and it's it's very strengthening now it's not a magic pill i just want to jump in right here because you said something very very big and it people might just gloss over it the detail that you gave specifically about doing it first thing in the morning that this is key remember we were talking about in the first session that there are two ways of looking at reality two different two different narratives for reality you could say what's real what i see with my senses or what hashem has told us you know which which is more real if you don't check in first thing with a torah alignment for how reality really works if you don't plug yourself in first thing in the morning then before you know it all the you're going to get bombarded by all the stimuli of the world and it's going to set you up to already assume that the kazakh the presumption is that reality is whatever my senses are telling me but if you can check in first thing and align yourself with a more spiritual view and then go out into the world then you have best of both worlds because you'll see the real physical stuff you'll see it from a spiritual perspective where you realize it's not a conflict where it's all one hashem and the spiritual and the physical but you've got to set up the spiritual first before you go out into the into the material world so i just want to stress the cup of coffee and the sitting with your wife in the morning absolutely whatever time that happens it should happen before the sun comes up if possible now you're getting good just saying if you want this if you if you want the formula you probably a lot of babies at home that's the way to do it we have seven kids can i and her so we have to make it work okay so when we started to really learn this every day and i would say now this is already seven years ago eight years ago so we've probably learned it 40 times together if not more is we decided that we wanted to do something because we knew we had to do something to help with this book safer a lot of the language in the at the the of the english version that was out at the time or that's still out by feldheim is antiquated and many of the words we needed to you know ask us siri or go to google and find out what it meant and the vows and the shells and the he's and the vows and the knots and it's a little bit complicating so we decided that we would get behind a new translation of the book and being as though we know nothing about publishing or where to begin or what it costs or where to go or any of this we figured it it'll make sense somehow and we'll figure it out and around the same time i got invited to go to jli and i had an idea it was before covid so it was the one in dc and the idea was i was going to meet a friend of mine there who was a presenter who was also an author and i thought when i saw him there i'd sit down with him and pitch him the con the idea he'd be a perfect author and he certainly knows who to talk to about these types of things you go to cohost you go here you go there what do you do so my wife and i head to the event and it's a beautiful event and he speaks and he sees me after the event that we had been roommates and yeshiva i said oh my god i'm here with my wife and you're why it was great we should get together tonight and we should all hang out and say hello and catch up and i'll call you and you'll call me and it's wonderful so there it is i'm all set up for my big meeting and that night at the the time he's not there so i call his phone his phone is off and i'm waiting for like a half hour or whatever the time that i hung out and the guy does not show up okay so of course lost times to catch up with an old roommate but also i knew that this conversation wasn't going to happen so the next morning i woke up and my wife and i are heading downstairs which is the last part of the event and we get into the elevator and there's another gentleman another couple with a baby in the elevator and it's yasi pelz from kayenu and yasi is the director or he's in charge of hyena and they print this this weekly booklet of learning of english learning with the hebrew counterpart and at the time he was putting one page of javier solvavas in the weekly book so that from feldheym and what he was doing that was different was that he was combining it with like a hasidic thought on whatever the theme was and it was just a project that wasn't you know probably within 30 things that they you know that they cover on a weekly basis so i said them by the way i love what you're doing i want to write a book so he goes to me i love what i'm doing too we want to write a book and i this is like from the fourth floor to the first floor i said i don't know how much it cost to make a book because i never did one he goes either dwight i never did one either i said great so we'll talk he's like yeah we'll talk so the elevator opens he's excited i'm excited i now have a publisher for my book and i don't know what it's going to cost or anything about it but we've made some major progress he makes a left and then lo and behold my friend walks towards me gets the oh my god last night my cell phone it got burned it drowned it hadn't flew away didn't work i'm so sorry i'm running to the airport now i gotta get out of town my flight leaves and we'll see you next time and that was that and the rest was history and the book was printed and i'll say that that what what's what's most amazing about this particular safer inversion i would say is is is two things i want to kind of before you talk about the book the whole story that led to sharabat talking or this edition of shahrukh takhan is itself a story of bittorrent because you had your plan your plan i didn't think about that that's a good point it didn't go the way you planned hashem had a better plan and now we have the book my wife's saying she knew that earlier i never thought of it okay tell us about so yeah so i'll tell you a couple of a couple of uh thoughts that i that i kind of kind of important differentiators in general about this safer and and then you know why i think that is extraordinarily um different so first of all if you ever read or have learned any excerpts he's extr the book is is written very witty he has an unbelievably sarcastic sense of humor and i want to just put this remind you it was written a thousand years ago he has one line that i think is underlines the sarcasm to its most is that by the way i heard it's even funnier in arabic in the original the original a lot of people don't realize even the lush and kurdish that we have is true is the translation of uh even actually there was a there were a whole family of translators the son of ibn tibun who translated charabataken was the ibn tiben that's the family name who translated the rambam's so the the latin kurdish the hebrew that we have is ibn tiben the original is arabic i spoke to a professor of arabic studies and i asked him about some of the language and he said yes very much that style is very like witty yeah woody so he has this one line where he says you know i don't understand people that are worried about their fortune about their money because maybe they're gonna die and it'll be spent by their wife's next husband that's what he writes like just you're reading and then he gives you you know five different sukim as which he's careful to say it's not so i'm proving to you that what i'm saying is true it's just so you have a point of reference to remind yourself later but he's constantly writing that and he talks about like bribing children with candy nice he goes nice suits or like a new stylish um chariot which is like you know and it's like talking about like buying a kid a car it's just he the way he writes is very funny in in certain ways and he's also he speaks to your dreamer so in the very beginning he talks about why having betahren is more powerful than an alchemist and an alchemist a thousand years ago was maybe what you would call i think you you you use the comparisons of sona prince money yeah counterfeiter counterfeiter like imagine if you had a printer in your house how life would be so great just print and everything was great and he talks about that a thousand years ago for what was relevant so his whole style is not it's not a safer that you're diving into that you have to try to translate what he could have possibly meant then and then maybe what could mean today it literally is a timeless piece and i personally have never learned another safer that has that timeline what i think the funniest for me now you're mentioning that you you like ruben bakaya's wit to me the funniest line in there there's a zinger in there the story about the guy who traveled to you know to a town for for business because he couldn't make a living where he lived so he traveled to another town and while he was there he met an idol worshiper he calls him the amgoshi he met this idol worshiper and the idol worshiper asks the guy who are you and he says i'm a jew and i worship god who runs the heavens and the earth and he says well you're contradicting yourself he said how am i contradicting myself he said you told me you believe god runs the heavens and the earth says yeah so the god who runs the heavens and the earth couldn't find you business in the town where you live you had to come here it's a zinger and the guy left to come here and the guy turned around and he left and he took on a life of spirituality that's right yeah that's the rest of the story so his writing style is very it's very i mean it gets your attention um and then i would say that the fact again going back to how i started just with how many years this safer has been a center point of so many different areas of yiddish kite and constantly being utilized as not just something to strengthen the these different rabbanim and rebellion their students but they themselves utilized it as a tool to keep to keep it going so to me that that speaks volumes as far as far as to how important it is to uh to bring it into your home and it's amazing to me that you know like the that it's considered to be many people have heard of it many people have not learned it a lot of people never heard of it nor learned it and it's just unbelievable to me that somehow it got lost somewhere and i don't know if that's only in chabad or if it goes outside of khabad but it it just it's mind-blowing that this safer literally has been at the forefront of anybody who's been pushing people to help gain trust in hashem and somehow there has been a big i call it renaissance of interest in this book and i i hope it's okay for me to say that you've been you and your wife are a big part of that happening yeah um i mean i was also a little part i taught a class in it so can i get applause joking okay at any rate can we talk a little bit um we don't have a lot of time left and i know people have babysitters to run to um but being the as you as you mentioned that i'm in rabbinics and you're in business maybe your maybe your testimony here will be or your perspective here will be more appreciated can we talk than mine can we talk a little bit about because i haven't spoken about this yet uh shadowbittoken and its perspective on money financial stability is that could you like throw me something a nugget or uh well last week i had better and i won the lottery it's not not true at all um sure so you know what i actually prepared a few different parts of that speak to me as it relates to business i know that i'm speaking to a crowd that may or may not be engaged daily in business many of you are i'm sure many of you have have spouses or family members that are but there's no question that the travis speaks a lot to the financial struggle to occupation also to health and to you know to relationships but financial you know the financial topic is hot and heavy in this in the safer so for me i would say there's two points that he discusses here and that the book also safer brings commentary a lot of commentary from hasidic sources and other sources on these topics and i guess i'll narrow it down to two which is the first is he discusses at length how to choose the right job and how to figure out what is the right occupation to go into you know if we if if we are taught that a job is just a caylee it's just a vessel to which to receive what god's going to give you and that's not the focal point of how it's going to get to you well what are you supposed to do maybe i should become a babysitter or why why become a rabbi it's interesting you picked this because when i teach this in seminary uh i've taught shout out talking in in base certificate seminary in crown heights for a few years this section is the one that surprises them the most this part that you're talking about right now catches them off guard they're not expecting your banana to say what he says here about choosing the job yeah yeah okay i'm going to help it's the right section yeah i'm sure it is so he explains there how he actually looks at the animal kingdom and he says how yeah this is the second okay perfect good planning yeah so he says out of the animal kingdom if you look at the different animals every animal is created with the tools it needs to survive for its for its instincts right so something that's a a line or a tiger that eats you know that uh hunts other prey it has it runs very fast it has claws it has teeth we'll compare it to a cow doesn't have any of those uh those those um qualities cow wouldn't be a good hunter cow's not a good hunter and he explains it's because a cow eats grass and a lion needs to chase the gazelle so hashem gives each of the the different creations that which it needs and so he says that by human beings god creates us with certain attraction to certain things he creates us with a certain skill whether it be a physical skill or an a emotional skill or a skill of the mind and whatever we're attracted to or that we see that we have a strength in is where we should go so he says for example if you're muscular and you're not of the he uses also some witty expressions there but basically says you know you're more muscular and not strong in the mind you know look for something that's labor intensive and not necessarily uh much thinking but if you're a heady type of person don't go to the field go work in accounting or something and he uses many examples and he says that's how you should actually find your job because hashem created you with certain talent and certain abilities and certain attractions if you're attracted to art well that's not just a mistake that's where you belong and that's where you can express yourself and do the away of having a job so do you know why the seminary girls are shocked by this i don't should i tell you please they know that we say we meaning the establishment the rabbinical establishment that the official perspective on making a living is it's just a vessel it's just holding out a cup that hashem will fill and so they're absolutely certain that we will tell them that it doesn't matter what cup you have just take any old cup doesn't doesn't make any difference they're shocked when they find out that not only you can but you should find the vessel the cliff for parnosa that is appropriate to your personality your strengths your abilities they're shocked that a torah perspective would take their individual story and background and personality into account and that but that's the whole concept of creating in that space something that another person cannot if everybody was a rabbi there would be a big i wouldn't like that no that'd be terrible for business very bad you know about the guys the two tailors no there was one tailor came to the taylor says you know i was in seoul and the rabbi just gave a speech about mashiach is coming and there's going to be uh trees him there's going to be resurrection of the dead so i'm very excited because all the dead people are wearing takrten they're wearing burial shrouds we're tailors we're going to be in business you know we're going to be able to put suits on all the resurrected people so business is going to be booming so the other tailor says no you think for a second in the resurrection is going to be resurrected all the other tailors from all the generations it could be terrible competition he says you're right he says no but we've got the latest styles yeah anyways so not everyone could be a rabbi not everyone could be a rabbi so you have to choose the occupation which is followed by the next you have to have good jokes like that to be a rabbit absolutely good jokes by the way i was always thinking that the rabbi should write a joke book that's a good idea i don't know why you guys don't you and yyj together can write a great addition maybe so then the question becomes how much time to spend at your job right okay so i know now that i'm not just supposed to do any job because i have to use my talent and that it's a shaka practice that i'm doing that job it gives me the ability to make an impact in that segment or sector or whatever it is but now how much time should i spend should i work at the job from nine to two is that enough battalion time is it you know twelve to three and this question actually gets asked probably out of all the questions i've ever been asked this is the biggest one but now you speak about another thing so you were speaking about like we said once you find your job once you're fine now how much time should you spend that job okay now you found what you're doing what you're doing where you can express your unique talents but before we move on to the next thing where you're talking about how to figure out budgeting your time just another comment i want to make about that it's not that making a living is a necessary evil of living in a body and in a physical world that's a ridiculous way to look at it why would your soul have to come to the world just to work let your soul stay in heaven where it doesn't have to work the hasidic view of this is that you know we spoke about this earlier that ultimately the refined physical universe will be holier than heaven that this physical world will be the holiest place to the extent where all the souls in heaven even on the highest levels will make a u-turn and come back for the resurrection to be in bodies again so the fact that the soul came to the physical world was to refine the physical world and that we have to realize that each one of us came to the world for a special mission a special schlichus and one part of the world to refine so you look to your talents you look to your predispositions to get a clue where it is that you may have a unique contribution to refine the physical world and to understand the reason that you have a job is not because you need money hashem can send you money however he wants to the reason you have a job is so that you can do your schlitz that when you're not that i know so much about this firsthand but you're closing a business deal and you mention to somebody um oh i have to go davin oh what's that you know the whole point of the deal was that you could mention something jewish something holy because if it were just for the money hashem could have sent you the money hashem could have put it in your bank account like uh manna from heaven the point of being involved in the world is because your soul came to the world to refine the world in other words we didn't come here to get anything from the world we came here to give something to the world you didn't come here to get your money you don't even need money if you would if you just stay this day in paradise you came to the world to give the world your unique contribution part of which will come to light when you follow your talents and your skills and your preferences and and you shine in that area okay i just wanted to mention that a practical example is it doesn't have to be mentioned in minha the rabbit would always always i've seen many examples let me just rephrase that where the rebel would tell someone to take a dollar and put it in a charity box in the business and the bank and the hospital wherever they were running a business and say that put a charity box in the business and the obvious reason was is not only so that the reba's blessing should be there but that people should give charity in the business that if someone is doing a deal and i've been involved in this multiple times they people literally put a dollar in the stucco box and at that moment that little dollar has a huge impact much more meaningful than the bigger amounts of dollars that might be happening in the room and i can personally attest to have being involved in those situations and jews and non-jews alike around the table are just floored bits for fernando is also buy that right box exactly yeah so okay so now you've found so you found the job you know what's going on you're not a comedian you're working in real estate that's what i do so what are you supposed to do how many how much time is too much time how much is too little time how much am i supposed to worry or not worry about my deal that i'm working on as an example i have no clue i'm still working on it that's the real answer but but but the other answer is is that what i've seen and there's many more examples that are brought in the safer is two things that speak to me is one is the example of washing dishes has everyone here washed dishes before i've washed dishes many a time you rabbi all the time you know the story the the rebbe's story that someone says i need help with shalom bias should i wrap my uh sorry he heard that it was a school of for shalom bias if you if the husband folds his tallest after shabbos he wanted if it's true or not so the rabbit said i don't know about that but i'll tell you what's true fold your sleeves up wash the dishes that's definitely going to help for sean buys so i've been i've washed dishes now and again i'm happy to so when you wash dishes you know if you're lucky you're dreaming that's if you're lucky give yourself the gift of a dream you don't think so i don't know i don't i i don't fold my towels but i wash dishes never wash dishes her father never washed dishes different folks different strokes i don't know all the men are off the hook okay i guess i'm wrong ladies we tried we tried oh i'm not knocking i don't think the rebel was knocking it but he was also saying you've got to be a part of the family to have sean bias you can't be worried about that only but i don't know i'm just a simple guy so that's a good point so the it threw me off oh dish is dishwashing so when you're washing dishes if you wash dishes right usually you're dreaming what are the what's the kavana for washing dishes well that's what i'm getting at you're dreaming if you're lucky if you're not lucky you're on your phone and now with the stupid things that we have all in our ears you're probably talking to somebody about some annoying conversation that you've never wanted to have but you have to have because you're washing dishes and now's a good time when you're going to call the person back but usually you're not in your own world not in the present world rather which is interesting because you're washing the dishes right you would think that you would look at the sponge look at the palm olive you would say okay i'm going to squirt three squirts onto the sponge and pick up the pan i'm going to rub it three times that way three times that way put it on because that's what you're doing which would make all the sense in the world that that's what you would be thinking about because you're really you're auto pilot you're completely not present try it next time you wash the dishes you are absolutely not thinking about your dishes and i've heard that one example might be an extreme example when it comes to the workspace is that you're supposed to look at it as washing dishes is it shouldn't drag you down too much where you're so busy with your sponge and your pot because at the end of the day it's just a sponge and just a pot and you're just doing the work under the faucet and the faucet of course being the blessing that comes from hashem either way so that was one example that i saw and the second was a i believe it was the rabbi can i just respond i love the the visualization here of basically all work is like washing dishes i want everyone to understand that that doesn't mean that you do your work mindlessly and inattentively and irresponsibly because i i teach shadow talking in seminary so in seminary i get all this pushback when i say these things they won't let me get away with it be like oh so basically should be irresponsible you should be dreaming while you're working right doesn't mean that you are totally checked out what it means is and i think this is the the point of the dishwashing metaphor is that even when you're doing it and you know what you're doing and obviously you know if like you're a surgeon you're paying attention to surgery if you're a pilot you're paying attention to flying the plane but what it means is as a means to making money you're not emotionally attached to it as if this thing itself the more you focus on it the more financial security you'll get from it in other words you take the financial security aspect out of it out of the picture you remove it as a factor and you say my financial security comes from hashem now how much focus do i need to do while i do my job as much as it takes to responsibly do my job but i don't have to immerse my head and my heart into it thinking that that will create more income because it doesn't the two are totally not connected or to use the famous uh punch line from the story i'm sure you know this the famous uh story about the khasid who went to lobavich the actual town of lobavich he spent shabbas by the rabbit ashaab the fifth khabad and this guy was a manufacturer he made he had a factory what did they make they made galoshes rain boots and apparently all shabbos he was preoccupied about his business and that ebert ashab said to him you know i've seen people before with their feet in their galoshes this is the first time i meet someone with his head in his galoshes right so yeah show up do your job responsibly but as much as it takes to do it responsibly don't think that giving it more head space or heart space is going to create greater financial results because the two things are absolutely not connected what's the uh let's say mercedes line on this uh oh from dirk mitzvah and you can't properly learn the subject of be talking in the in the realm of paranosa without learning a mimer from the tsam sadiq in derek mitzvah called means the shaving of the biblical leper and it sounds like it has nothing to do with financial worries but you have to learn it it's in english as well and uh basically has a great line over there the tamartadek says that your means for making a living is like a suit a suit of clothes everyone needs to have clothing but it's not necessarily that the more of a suit you have the better it is to the extent that a person would say well you know what if this size suit fits me you know what give me uh give me three sizes bigger than i need and then it'll be even more functional it'll work even better everyone really realizes no you just have the suit that fits you and in fact if you have a suit that's too big he says you trip on it you end up tripping on it so it's just a suit just make it big enough to fit that's it you don't have to make it extra you don't have to supersize it so and if it's too small by the way you can't breathe that's another thing so so to come back to the point is that the two things i've seen in figuring out the perfect equation of time is yesterday's is one which rabbit table for sure quote because i'm going to misquote it and that the rebel wrote to somebody that i don't know how much you should work or not work but you know you have go to shul in the morning you have to learn every day you got to help your wife with the kids you got to go to minha you got to help your wife in the afternoon you got to go to myrev so in between there you know you should go to your work do your work so i think it's it's it's it's really a function of trying to remember like rabbi taub said and what the entire safer is about is that don't get lost too much in the details you got to focus in on the core point here which is to have bettah in god and i want to say that betohen is a muscle and this is directly from my wife so i think all the credit goes to her on this one you know there's no it's not a self-help book this is not i'm not tony robbins and this is not you know you're not going to go have better tomorrow and win the lottery and you know i don't know go to the gym five times a week suddenly it's not how it works it's a muscle that every day as jews we are meant to work on and we are challenged with things and sometimes we are blessed to see the outcome with our eyes which is what we darven for every day that we should be revealed good and revealed blessings and revealed um you know whatever it is we're looking for but not always does it happen when it doesn't happen the message of the talking is that's the moment when you can say to yourself that i trust even though i'm not seeing necessarily how this is good that it is good and will be good and the more you exercise the muscle the more as time progresses something comes your way you you've got the stamina to overcome and it doesn't mean you whitewash your human emotions that's also not what that means so if if something is scary if you're looking at a financial challenge a health challenge whatever that story is that the whole world tells you freak out go crazy now is the time to lose it but talking is not okay just forget it god it doesn't matter it's not real that's not what it means feel it you're a person go through the emotional experience feel the fear fear all of it and that takes you to what pitakan really is which is after that the end of that process is and now i can trust in hashem that it's all going to be good and going back to the batachan basimha that's what i think it's all about which my wife pointed out to me is that when you have bhitakhan it's and you work on it you go through the challenging times you feel the process and on the other end of it is a trust that's full of joy and of trust that's full of happiness because you know it's going to be good and you didn't pretend that like the human experience didn't happen i think we call it spiritual bypasses the best way i've heard of that the earlier session before you were here that's all we spoke about was going through the process and the process doesn't mean to live in denial and pretend that whatever's happening isn't happening but it's to realize that you can even be basimka now because the process will work itself out and hashem's in charge it's leading to good things and we can relax and just show up just show up for our own lives you see that was my massive ending that i was gonna get this thunderous applause and you did it for an hour oh yeah yeah okay i'm done thank you [Applause] should we do about the q a we'll do some q a are the ladies going to be quiet or there's going to be a rush for the door i'll do q a if people okay we're doing uh q a okay this is only going to be possible i'll do q a but it's only possible if everybody who's done learning can go outside what i yeah but it's not it's not really possible it's it's not really possible i'm so sorry i unless unless the people who are conversing can go outside we can't really do q a i understand many people have to leave you have other places to be that's that's fine um okay good it's a little quieter now all right so i'm gonna go through some questions that were handed in and we understand that if you need to leave please go about your business whatever you need to do and thank you for joining us until now all right question here i never saw this before why do bad things happen to good people never saw that before okay i wasn't prepared for that okay actually in sharabattakin in charabitaken asks this question he is certainly not the only sage in jewish history to have asked this question in fact may himself asked hashem this question and since then all of the prophets and all of the the great teachers have asked this question conversely there's another question that always goes along with this question which is why do good things happen to bad people why do the wicked prosper and i'm going to tell you now what it says in sha'a bittakhan and i'm going to tell you what i always emphasize when i teach this in seminary in shaar bhattakhan he goes through a number of different reasons that explain why bad things happen to good people and why good things happen to wicked people some some of it has to do with intergenerational stuff that needs to be sorted out some of it has to do with testing people or making an example of people or sometimes it's about a person's liability that nothing he did wrong but as a leader he's responsible for other people's wrongdoing he gives many many many examples when i teach this in seminary i always tell them i don't care if you remember any of these reasons all i care is that you remember one word the word is mayhem mayhem means from these or from among these ladies you don't realize but if you're talking very quietly on the other side of the pizza it makes it hard to learn over here it it can you hear me because i hear you and i've got a microphone yeah thank you the bana bakaya makes a list of many different reasons and he makes it clear that this is not an exhaustive list please if if you're finished learning if you're do you hear me if you're finished learning please go outside because it's not possible for me to focus we can hear you if you're in the if you're in the room you're in the same room as us even if you're on the other side of the makitsa you're still in the same room as us sound travels thank you so much i'm sorry to be a stickler about that it's probably not easy for the people who are still here this is a big commitment for you to be here and i want your time to be well spent i always make a point to my seminary students i don't care if you remember all the different reasons urbana behind gives why the wicked prosper and why the righteous suffer i want you to remember that he gives us many different reasons and he says these are among the reasons meaning to say there are a lot of reasons these are some of them and there's a lot more what's the implication remain first let me tell you what is not saying and i think this is super important especially for religious people who have a special weakness in this area he is not saying i have given you a multiple choice list to figure out why good people suffer so when you see a good person suffering pick one of these things from the list it's one of those things and then you'll figure out why this good person is suffering god forbid that is not his point and that would be a terrible perversion and misuse of shah rabitakan his point in listing examples of why the righteous suffer is not to give you a way of figuring it out when it happens his point in giving you a list is to let you know there are a lot of different reasons a lot of complicated factors here and in fact what i'm listing to you are only some of them there are many other reasons and therefore please know that these things are complicated there are a lot of reasons some of them quite mystical and unknowable the point of rebecca giving us explanations for why it might happen that the righteous suffer the wicked prosper is to humble us into embracing the fact that there are so many different factors here and so many different reasons some of which are completely concealed from the human mind that when we see it happen we should have one reaction which is a two-sided coin on one side we should say there's definitely a reason why this is happening on the other side of that coin i definitely don't know it there's definitely a reason why this is happening i definitely don't know it be very careful of those who volunteer to give you the reason the explanation that they know why a certain person is seemingly undeservedly suffering so in short the answer is hashem has his reasons but we would be arrogant and cruel to think that we can know in a case by case basis why it ever happens it's a little bit of a paradox you basically need to trust yeah that's the whole point you need to trust you cannot question i mean you you you can question because there's an answer you can question god there's an answer to the question the answer is there's a reason it doesn't mean that we will ever be able to wrap our minds around the reason you understand that these are two very different things just because something is true doesn't make it knowable the exception to that remember when i was telling you the uh the metaphor of the suit disassembling the suit so that you can see how every square inch is accounted for you would have to have been privy to hashem's infinite perspective before creation in order to see how everything makes sense right so the exception to this is that when meshiach does come then we will see with hashem's perspective and we will be able to see the reasons why everything happened and then like i mentioned earlier i told you that letter to ben sv when he spoke about since he was a little child he was envisioning what gaulah would be like and he specifically mentioned the verse to be that when the comes i'll be able to thank hashem for my troubles why will i thank hashem at that point because only then will i be able to see how it all makes sense but until such a time i don't have to know how it makes sense i just have to know that it makes sense big difference huge difference okay i want to go to another question because we could stay on that question all day um oh yeah my personal dima tears remember we spoke about dima imakolo begamatria and the perspective of mashiach for my own destruction i can do what do i do when it's friends and family going through their dima that is a question yeah everyone understands so here is another paradox we've had a number of paradoxes today i in fact i think everything that's true is a paradox if it's not a paradox it's only half the truth the truth is so complete that it embraces and contains within it opposites so if something isn't a paradox it's probably not true here's a paradox when it comes to my troubles and my challenges i can see meaning when it comes to someone else's troubles and challenges i'm not allowed to see meaning well how can i have such opposite views of essentially the same thing and i'll try to explain it to you very simply there's an expression our sages use to describe dealing well with adversity they call it actually to be mekabul yasurimba'ava to receive or to accept pain with love to lovingly accept pain i think that word accept is very important if amazon accidentally brings to my house a shipment that was meant for my neighbor am i allowed to keep it why not it's not mine i can only accept that which is mine if hashem sends me adversity then it is my teacher and by accepting it i will gain i will learn i will be refined i will be elevated or at the very least at least i'll be me i'll be showing up from my life which probably also means learning from it and being refined by it and all those things as well but the point is it's mine so it's for me and it benefits me to accept it but how is my neighbors suffering a teacher for me how do i become refined how do i have a growth experience because someone else is being put through the ringer that's absurd the only response that i'm supposed to have to somebody else's hardships is compassion well compassion and if you can do something do something and if you can't do anything then at least say to him at least feel bad for them or preferably both your heart breaks and if you can bring them a cougar you bring them a cuckoo whatever it is that you could do but don't learn from it don't say oh my neighbor's suffering has refined me so much i'm so enlightened by watching other people suffer not only is it cruel it's foolish it's not how it works i can't gain spiritual elevation by witnessing other people suffer in fact i only experience the opposite i become spiritually demeaned i become a lower person by watching people suffer and being nonchalant about it and particularly if i use religion as my excuse and my comfort why i'm unbothered by other people's suffering then not only have i demeaned myself i've demeaned god so we have very different responses and that's why it's super important here is probably the most important practical tip for the day that i can give you after you leave today you're going to be on fire you're going to be all hyped up about the talking i hope please keep it to yourself because we don't realize how inadvertently hurtful we can be when we are sharing our clarity and someone else is misinterpreting it and hearing it as being ambivalent about their pain it's so so so important to be careful about this that's why when when people will ask me people who ask a real question they say you know i'm going through a hard time what do you say about that even though i'm a rabbi and implicitly it's like implied that if you're asking me you're probably looking for a religious answer i don't even make that assumption i'll use i'll usually ask them do you want me to give you a religious explanation right now or are you asking me as a human being because you asked me as a human being my response is i'm sorry i i feel bad if you want a religious explanation i'll give you one and even then i'll only give it to you and tell you this is what i do i won't tell you this is what you should do i'll say this is how i deal with whatever i have to deal with but we have to be really really careful because i i think it's a great kill hashem in the most literal sense of desecrating god's name by making god look bad when his believers behave in a in an unbecoming way if our excitement about emunah and betahn will ever come across as being apathetic about other people's hardships clarify i mean it was a 10 minute answer i should do more what do you want people don't want to sit here all day i could what what about giving kizok if they want it you have to be careful about that as well because sometimes people don't want your encouragement they just want your empathy you have to figure out what people want you have to ask you have to ask people what they want um there's a new one that just came in i see here somebody wrote is a person allowed to ask why is it a lack in amunet i think i answered that before but uh worthy to repeat you're allowed to question as long as you know that this question has an answer and you're ready to accept the answer and the answer is because if you're not going to accept that there are things that we can't understand then the problem isn't that you're questioning god the problem is that you're refusing his answer okay um here's another one how do we reconcile the feelings of wanting the gashmius of this beautiful world with really being that this world is just a passage in a preparation to the real world are we supposed to is it okay to love gashmias too okay that's a great question that's today's hiya yay you want to bring me a high name what right there oh it's on the board i can't uh look at it and remain on camera no one has a safer yeah man huh yeah but no one's gonna hear you online maybe uh right so you're saying why don't they know that haiyan yeah well i i refuse to answer the question and grounds that may incriminate me i got it i pulled it up ah now we have a real saver everyone knows about how you aim okay how you aim is a safer that the the labacher compiled before he became rabbi and it is a daily book of meditations organized by the calendar year every single day has a different short little passage usually a paragraph usually not that long at all sometimes just a line or two and it's all taken from excerpts from the rabbis rabbi from the rabbi rayats and it has a subtitle it's a calendar of seeds of light seeds are tiny things but they grow infinitely like they say anyone can count the seeds in an apple only hashem can count the apples in a seed because when a seed grows it creates a tree which creates many more apples with many more seeds which create many more generations of fruits with seeds so every little hyena is a tiny little entry but it grows on you oh i was talking about before having that morning ritual where you check in and get your reality alignment before you go into the world i would have definitely encouraged that to be part of your repertoire to learn the uh hayem in the morning before you tackle your day okay so anyways it says that uh hey turn away from evil these are the words from tehillim from uh capital medalled turn away from evil and do good seek peace and pursue it what does that mean said regarding this in every physical thing that's permissible and let me stress that's permissible because if it's forbidden then there's no good in it but every physical thing that's permissible has both good and bad in it their gas me is the physicality is bad and the godly energy that's enlivening the thing is good and i should explain before i go further it doesn't mean that physicality inherently is evil it means that physicality divorced from its divine purpose physicality for its own sake for no other reason than physicality that becomes ra because now it's devoid of any meaning but obviously when the thing is used in alignment with the divine purpose for which it was created that's not ra that's me the person who uses the physical thing has to get away from the evil nit velen which means he shouldn't be drawn after the physical pleasure of the physical thing um rather he should do good valencia he should go look for the good which is the divine sustenance that's in that thing in other words you have a permissible thing you could use it in a selfish meaningless hedonistic way as just a tool for your own physical pleasure in which case the entire event is meaningless or you could engage that physical thing in a meaningful way so you can eat the food just because it tastes good or you can eat the food even though it tastes good and you're not pretending it doesn't taste good but you're eating it because it has divine energy which will allow you to do your purpose in the world it's up to you how you engaged that thing both possibilities exist a few more lines here it's not long back failure remember the verse was go away from evil and do good seek out peace and pursue it so he said go away from evil means don't get pulled into the mindless senseless indulgence of physical pleasure that's go away from evil do good means find the purpose the usefulness of that physical thing how it can be used as a tool for serving hashem and then the third thing seek out peace and pursue it but [Music] now you make peace between those two things between the physicality and the godly energy which enlivens the physicality in other words the best of both worlds don't have to deny the physicality in order to be spiritual to the contrary you should make use of it you should engage the physicality you don't have to take a vow of poverty and renounce your physical possessions no you can have nice things but how do you make sure you're using your things and your things aren't using you is making sure that your relationship with them is not that they are giving you anything but you're giving to them they shouldn't be providing you with pleasure or amusement or comfort or distraction you should be providing the things in your life with an aliyah with an elevation by using them for a divine purpose and that harmony is called shalom it's called making peace between the physical and the spiritual so to answer your original question what do you do about this beautiful physical world that hashem made the question really was based on a premise that there's a conflict between the two between being a spiritual servant and being involved in the physical world and without this understanding that's encapsulated in today's hayem it does seem like a conflict and the best that you can manage without this important knowledge it's it seems to be just basically jumping back and forth between the two and calling that balance you see people who do that one for me one for you right i'll have a little personal indulgence and then i'll say some til him and give hashem some of his indulgence hashem i was good for you i did a mitzvah now it's time for my chocolate cake can you sort of switch back and forth which is a real kafka it's a real slingshot to be in now i'm spiritual now i'm physical now i'm spiritual i'm physical it's no way to live the solution of siddhis is that you can harmonize the physical and the spiritual by realizing that everything that exists that is permissible again i will stress that word permissible because if it's forbidden then there is no there is no productive use for it but anything in the world that's permissible has a godly purpose for which it was created and if it didn't have a godly purpose it wouldn't have been created and if you as a jew can use something in this world whether it's the food you eat to get calories to dominant to learn into the mitzvahs or it's the car you own in order to to do carpool and to take your kids to to go learn toyota or it's the house that you own in order to have shabba's guests or whatever or your money that you earn in order to pay tuition give tzedaka to do all types of expensive things that uh being an observant jew sort of require you to do then you are using the physicality for the purpose for which it exists and then you are having the best of both you are in the physical world you're involved in the physical world you're not denying the physicality but you're not allowing it to control you and to dominate you by sucking you into that allure of getting your needs met using physical things to meet your needs is a very very poor idea we rely on hashem that he takes care of us he meets all of our needs and that if we're given physical things it's only because something we're supposed to do with those things as a contribution as a way of being helpful and useful to him and his children into the world does that answer the question do you need a rolls-royce to do carpool it depends who's in your car pool so and and that's why assailav istalik minnesotak get yourself a mentor and remove all doubt that's a real question to ask amashbiya and by rav i don't mean like a poisic i mean a mentor somebody who is objective and you respect and you can ask you know i want to buy a rolls royce for my carpool you think that uh is justified i don't know see what he says find out don't argue when he says yeah i think you'll be okay with the bentley you don't need the rose you can do yeah okay i could stay here all day but what are we doing here huh huh we're good this is pepsi what do you say yeah we're good okay thank you everybody and happy birthday again okay