CHAZAQ’s Torah Talks #25: Rabbi Yaakov Moskowitz - Elul is Here - Now What?

welcome to yet another tuesday's timely tour talks tonight we have with us yet another very special guest all the way from florida rabbi yaakov welcome rabbi how are you doing thank you very much ramirez it's amazing to be here doing great so happy thank you all our pleasure and it's great to have you down over here at the kazakh headquarters and tonight's topic is elle is here now what but before we delve into the topic rabbi if you could tell us a little bit about yourself about your background to our broad audience absolutely absolutely thank you very much ramirez and i'm really so honored you know to be able to be here to be able to be at the kazakh headquarters and to be able to have a chance to talk with everybody today i really thank you guys so much and for all you guys do our privilege for kaiser all it's amazing um okay a little bit about myself so you know i grew up in syracuse new york upstate over here uh yeah i'm the youngest of three brothers and um you know it was really amazing growing up like you know we grew up in a in a town that really didn't have such a religious community we were religious all the years but you know my brothers and i we went to we went to a day school that uh you know didn't have so many religious students up till sixth grade and then seventh and eighth grade um we were in a non-jewish prep school and after that is really when we went off to yeshiva and kind of really started a more formal jewish education and you know i went to the yeshiva rochester for high school in upstate new york and then after that i made my way uh into yeshivachavitzhaim in queens right here in the neighborhood it was really you know driving in now by the way it was really just amazing coming back into queens i didn't like officially feel that i was back in queens until i realized that it took me almost just as long to find a parking spot as it did to drive here from the catskills but uh you know it's really amazing being here and then um so getting back to after high school i'm sorry i was in yeshiva time here in queens um for a number of years got married to my wonderful wife who's also from the neighborhood here and after i received smith from the yeshiva i began i began working in stony brook university as the campus rabbi over there in long island i was working for aish and for olami and for roots for a few organizations there i'm serving as the campus rabbi trying to be makarev and bring back some of the students and then after that my wife and i made a decision to move down to florida down to north miami beach uh where we are today and we work with yeshiva tourism taurus ms where i am one of the rebellious as well as the director of adult education uh where i have the opportunity the big such that on behalf of the yeshiva to try to really reach out to the local communities and we prepare shiurim and give classes and lectures all around the various various communities in south florida and broke hashem we're seeing an amazing growth not just this year with all of the you know all the people from up here from new york heading down to florida but just really in the past also past number of years we've had this past year we had around 1100 students and it's going up to almost 1300 this uh this coming year in the yeshiva so it's really amazing amazing growth and we're you know we're able to do uh thank god thank god really some awesome things down there amazing rabbi unbelievable great yagura tour of yada you should continue spreading the torah all over the world amazing tonight topic is here now what so uh rabbi says now then when and one often approaches the beginning of l with uh some laziness towards growth so the question is how can we uh address these challenges and hold this uh you know what's holding us back from becoming better people and and growing that's an amazing question rabamiro thank you that's it's also a loaded question so i mean i'm sorry about that you said you said the interview is about four hours or so 30 minutes that's it oh my goodness all right we're gonna try to address this quickly but you know i think that the first thing that we have to think about is really what is it that holds us back like you know i i can't speak for you i can't speak for everybody out there but i know that for myself personally um you know they told me this is a confessional session so i'm just gonna i'm just gonna say it like it is but you know when it comes like ella and we hear it's rosh chodesh my honest thoughts are like oh boy you know not that again you know el i i gotta grow i gotta change it's not so easy i'm not as excited for ello as i am for purim you know it's not the same feeling so the question is why why uh why don't we feel excited why aren't we motivated and i think there's really three reasons um the first one is follows i want to share a story with you that happened about 15 years ago i was on a flight to arizona with a few friends of mine and um it turned out that on the flight it just so happened that rav shmuel berenbaum the rest of shiva of the mir yeshivazatsa was on that flight and uh we were asked to join a minion with him for chakras on the back of the plane it was really a big big zuchus and after the minion i was walking him back to his seat and all of a sudden the all of a sudden the the pilot announces over the loudspeaker he says that there's a lot of turbulence going on on the plane everybody has to sit down now riv shamur he did not he didn't hear the announcement you know he was older at the time he didn't hear it so he just kind of kept on talking to me and i heard the announcement i felt kind of awkward like what do we what do we do now do i end the conversation or not but we kept on talking so finally one of the israeli flight attendants he comes over and he says he says rabbi you know you have to sit down now the plane is shaking you have to sit down. and rashmul looked at him i still remember this like it was yesterday he was holding his tallest bag and he said to him he said it's filling it's filling and the man said huh what are you talking about and rushmore again with his big smile he said phil inspiring and said why don't you take my tv and put them on why don't you do a mitzvah today and the man looked at rip smoothie said no no no he said rabbi no he said rabbi i haven't put on finland since my bar mitzvah and since that time he said i've done so many sins and i've done so many crimes hashem doesn't want my to fill in anyway and rav shmuel put on that smile as people who who knew him know you know that beautiful smile and he said to him he said okay okay okay no problem he said but i'm telling you this feeling will help but the man didn't want to and rashmul you know smiled at him wished him a good day went back to his seat after he left the uh you know the flight attendant looked at me he said he must be some very special rabbi isn't he and i explained to him who he is and uh you know and that was how the story ended i was thinking about it you know like this individual he feels that he that he's done so many sins so many crimes i'm such a bad jew and therefore hashem doesn't hashem doesn't love me hashem isn't interested in my prayers and that's really one of the things that kind of hits us whether it be consciously or whether it be subconsciously that we kind of feel the same way sometimes like i've done so many sins so many aveiros like it's not going to help what i'm going to grow i'm going to change forget about it you know i think that's one of the things that really gets us that feeling just like the flight attendant the second thing is that you know for all of us listening this elo this is not our first rodeo you know we've been down this road some people are 40 50 60 70 years old i've done this every year i tried to make my changes and guess what i failed every year i tried i said rabbi i'm gonna learn more torah i'm gonna dive in better and guess what i didn't do it so i failed i feel like a failure so why should i do it again and number three i think is it could be even the most prevalent is that we feel like you know why should i do this like i really i have my life i want to live i have my job i have my work i don't want to be bothered by growing i just want to i just want to do my thing leave me alone with all the speeches and the inspiration and the growing it's too hard i i just don't want to just leave me alone you know so those are really the three points and i think that to address it we really need to think and to understand the reality you know as far as the flight attendant what what we should tell him and what we should really tell ourselves when we think you know i'm so low i've done so many sins i'm so terrible is that you know we just experienced tish above and that was really when the jewish people sank to the lowest of levels to the extent that the basa mikdash the holy temple had to be destroyed yet at the time that the bash was about to be destroyed what does hashem tell um tell jeremiah to tell the people what are his words you would think his words would be you're going to give it to them you people messed up so bad but what are his words his words tell them i remember the that way back when ah that love that bridal love like a bride to a groom that we felt me and you hashem and calistro way back when left by midbar when you followed after me in the desert and all i want is to have that relationship hashem is telling us no matter how far we sink no matter how low we go hashem wants us to come back always and you know if that was true in the time periods when you know of the basmitis when it was going to be destroyed i think certainly that's true by us as well you know and you know as far as point number two like i failed so many times we got to get ourselves into the right mind frame you know we were talking before rabbi about you know how i was doing uh how i was doing kirov in stony brook university i was the campus rabbi over there in long island and you know i remember there's there's a lot of stories that happened during those years but there's one that really stuck out and uh there was a fellow by the name of brandon who i was learning with we were learning the silica sharing together for two years and it was amazing it's really a whole story how we ended up learning together in the first place but okay that's for a different interview but we we're learning and one day he came in and he said to me the following we often would learn over lunch together in the kosher cafeteria eat our lunch and have our you know have our seder studying together and one day he comes in he says rabbi i i made a decision that today i want to do everything right as far as this meal goes whatever the jewish laws are as far as the meal i don't know what they are but you tell me what they are and i want to do it right for this meal i've never done it before and i don't know if i'm going to do it after but i want to do it right i said brandon that's awesome that's amazing so okay so let's start first we're going to start with the kipa okay so we put on the kippah and then i said we do netilatya dying we wash our hands we went over to the sink got the washing cup he made the bracha then we got back to the seat he was about to eat i said no no wait wait you know we got there we say the hamodsi the brother and then finally after the meal after it was over we said that we do bakatamazon we bench and we thank god i took out one of the ncsy benches that we have over there and uh you know and he and and he said as much as he can and it was amazing and he left feeling great about himself and i also left feeling so good i went home i remember i told my wife i said guess what i said brandon did all the halachos for having a meal today and she said whoa that's amazing i told my friends you know they said wow that's an incredible accomplishment and you know and it is an amazing accomplishment and i stopped to think about it i think that you know listen brandon didn't do it before and he never did it after or it could be he did but you know i don't know of it and you know but but yet we celebrate that accomplishment like it's so huge and i stopped the thing i said you know why we celebrate it like it's so huge because it is so huge and why is it that we can't celebrate that same accomplishment when it comes to myself when it comes to my own accomplishment we say you know oh i made a commitment i'm going to learn a lot of torah this year but but i failed i'm going to learn the whole masek this year the whole track date of the gemara and i didn't do it okay okay yeah but how much did you do you did 10 blot you did 10 pages that's amazing but i didn't do the other 60 70 80. okay but you did 10. that's awesome that's incredible you said you made a commitment i'm going to dive in with kavanagh this year i've been dubbing the first blessing in this monastery with kavanagh and i only did it for a week and then i fell out of it okay but do you know what you accomplished when you did it for that week your feeling was so elevated it was amazing you improved in your field you improved in your ammuna your relationship with hashem is so much different because of that one week so i think that we have to reframe this whole idea of taking things on and what i you know failed in that really we grew a tremendous amount half you know a cup is half full half empty you know we got to focus in on that and realize our amazing accomplishments and when we do that we're going to you know take that inspiration and just push ourselves forward and you know as far as point number three like i don't want i just don't want to i just don't want to it's just it's too hard well i think we have to ask ourselves like do you want to be happy you know do you do you want happiness in life you know tal ben shachar the positive psychologist who wrote the book happier as well as many others he's a harvard psychologist he writes at the beginning of the book happier he says that he started out in harvard university and they asked him to give a small course on the topic of happiness he said eight students signed up two dropped out of the middle of the semester he was left with six students okay but he gave the course giving people tools to grow in their happiness and he said the next semester there were over 300 students that signed up but then the next semester there were over 800 students that signed up and tal said that it became the largest course in the entire harvard university wow and he asked the question you know he says what these are the most brilliant minds in america the people who are set up for success why is everybody searching for happiness you know and the answer is really what the magi mishna tells us he says that really simcha you want to know where simcha comes from real true happiness he says real true happiness comes from a person recognizing what it is that they need to accomplish and doing it and when a person is really in that state where you know what i'm i'm accomplishing i'm growing i'm doing what i'm supposed to do that's when they feel real happiness you know amazing yeah yeah so when we reframe it you know it's a whole different picture and then like hey i want to grow sign me up for this you know for this ello thing you know amazing physical inspiration but as we all know all beginnings are difficult so rabbi how should we view these initial roadblocks on the journey to becoming our true selves to become happier people become better people it's going to be difficult in the beginning absolutely yeah absolutely that's an amazing point and that and that's usually what hits us also that this is really challenging this is this is hard and you know i think that you know to answer that we have to really take a step back and understand what like what does hashem want from us during this time period of ello through yum kippur etc and i saw beauty there's an incredible safer out there that recently was published into uh into english it's called the sikhos the talks of hoffman and ursula hoffman was a student in the chevron yeshiva for many years and he said like this he's a very interesting little anecdote that one day he was walking around yeshiva when he was a student many years ago it was it was during the asari mechuva between rosh hashanah and yum kippur and he was very sad he was like very down at this frown on his face and the rosha shiva review he said why are you so sad he said well because it's the aserashi mechuva and he said huh so why does that mean you should be sad why shouldn't you be happy he said well because i'm supposed to do chuva and according to the rambam i'm currently maimonides that means very high levels of changing myself and and and turning everything around taking on a new leaf i'm very sad because it's very hard and review we don't ask him like the ramba he says we pusk in like we we determine like who says the following he says all we need to do in order fashion to be happy with us come yom kippur is for us to be messiatse valderotov to get onto the right path he gives a muscle and his muscle the story goes back to the times of herbie cilantro and if i may i'm going to try to americanize the muscle a little bit you know because he's talking about israeli towns etc but imagine you know there's a fellow who moves over to america from israel and he doesn't really know the country that well but he settles over in baltimore and he knows he has a friend a close friend of his who lives in new york and he wants to go visit so he has a day off and he has somebody how do i get there so they say listen you got to get to the highway and take interstate 95 straight to new york take you straight there you're good to go all right he gets on the highway he starts driving he sees the signs for interstate 95 and he gets on he's driving he's assuming it's gonna take about three and a half hours and three and a half hours later he's you know he's looking and he starts he sees signs for like welcome to north carolina he's like come on up you know i don't know i'm assuming that that's somewhere near new york so i'm just going to keep on driving so he keeps on driving and eventually south carolina georgia florida but i'm assuming they totally go this way so i'm assuming this is the route to new york until eventually it gets all the way down to miami beach and he and he gets out of the car he stopped by the beach he's on collins avenue you can't drive any further and he gets out and he says yes somebody there you know is new york somewhere around here and they look at him like he's crazy new york you're 19 hours away from new york what what's wrong with you he said well i was in baltimore i went to get to new york what happened phil says ah you got you went the wrong direction on the 95 you went north you should have gone south what you have to do is get to the highway and get back get back on the right road it's going to be a long drive it's going to be about 19 hours but eventually you're going to get there and if stopped and he said you know what if you stop right there in the film right there in the movie and ask the following question at what point in this trip was he closer to his destination and many of us would say when he left baltimore right he was he was a much closer he was only three and a half hours away he says no no no you're making a big mistake he said when he left baltimore he was the furthest from his destination you know why because he was heading in the wrong direction he was headed on a trajectory to never get there but he says now even though he's 19 hours away now he's on the path to head in the right direction and he says that that's what we need to do that moment that you turn around on the highway that moment that you just spin that car around and now i'm headed in the right direction that's what hashem wants from us you know comes uh you know comes yum kippur and the gemara says you know that yom kippur is mahaprabhu atones for those who are doing teshuva it doesn't say le shavu for those who did teshuva it says for those who are doing teshuva those who are in the in the process just getting on the right road that's all we have to do you know amazing yeah what inspiration robbie muskrat's evolving i love it we're all doing chuba we're all getting inspired so rabbi all too often when we are inspired we bite off more than what we could shoot but we know that it says that you grab too much you won't grab anything so what small steps rabbit can we take to make this a meaningful hello amazing amazing thank you and i like that word small steps you know we're going to be getting more into that you know as we go let's not get overwhelmed don't get scared with your answers exactly don't get scared you know we we the first thing is you know the music sharing from ramosha mozarto he tells us that we have to do something called nephesh we have to really stop and internalize and think he says we have to think about the big picture of what like my goals are for life what hashem wants from me overall and he says the second step is we have to think about how do my actions that i'm that i'm doing right now or that i'm not doing or that i could be doing whatever how do those line up with the big picture and you know i was really i was thinking about this and i gave a class uh down in south florida a few years ago um on around this time period and it was called steps towards real change and one of the things that i put out there and we'll see if it's up there on the screen but i put together like this idea of points to ponder and something to think about is that like our avodah hashem our service of god really could be broken up into different parts you know we have our tfilo which is definitely a big part we have our total learning we also have our relationship with our spouse and with our children that's a big part of our avocados hashem we have our relationships at work and how we deal with life's challenges as they come up and work we also have the big things that hit us you know in life sometimes somebody gets sick etc how do we address it how do we you know how do we react towards that and i i said and i put down on this paper that really we have to stop and think about these little categories take 10 minutes out of your day and stop and think you know for example when it comes to my home let's ask ourselves can my relationship with my spouse my children my family be even better than it already is and if so in what way what can i do to make that happen we stop and we think about our tila and our broncos do i understand the meaning of the prayers that i'm saying is my feel on my daily breakfast causing me to appreciate that hashem is providing for me am i thanking hashem enough for my amazing life like let's let's ask ourselves these questions you know my tougher life situations do i feel that hashem is giving me these challenges for my good for my growth we know that's the truth do i feel that my ammuna is being tested in these moments are any of my medos being triggered during these situations is there anything i can do to increase my trust in hashem throughout these difficult circumstances ask ourselves these questions these areas in life you know my career my tila my learning my family is there any area there that i feel that i could that i could grow that i could get even better at by mosquitoes love the inspiration the words are coming out of the rabbit's heart and into all of ours as well rabbi i really really enjoyed all that we could ask you for one last final message for our broader audience the last uh you know grand slam well the grand slam thank you very much rabbi great really we're going to do one step before the grand slam and that is the step before the grand slam is that after we think about the areas we want to improve you know we got to pick something really really small their picks are really small you know yeah amazing that's what we were talking about before the small steps you know revolby said a really cool story he said that he was um he was asked to give his to some israeli soldiers a number of years back who were fighting on the front lines in egypt and he was being dru he was being flown i'm sorry he was being flown on the plane to uh into egypt and as soon as they got they crossed the border into egypt he said that the plane took a nosedive and it was going really fast you know down like down to mother earth and he was very scared and he asked the pilot what's going on and the pilot said to me he said well he said when we go into enemy territory they could detect us on the radars so he said we have to fly really low and if we fly really low to the ground then the radars can't detect us and revolby said isn't that an amazing mashallah wasn't it an amazing life lesson for us especially when it comes oh you know the yetzer hara tries to get us and he knows that when we take on these big things and you know i'm gonna this year i'm gonna finish all of shas this year i am never gonna get angry at anyone you know we tried these big big things and that's when the guitar said oh i'm gonna get this guy i'm gonna get you because then all of a sudden the day at the moment after jim kipper he's obviously getting so mad because he didn't get the first piece of cake you'd have to break the fast so we take on these big things the itahara gets us but ravobi says that if we are able to fly real low and take on something real small and simple in the area that we want to grow in then he says that then the izahara has a much harder time at getting us we could fly under the radar and so that's why we have to take on some really really small thing you know if a person wants to improve their relationships especially their relationship with their spouse their relationship with their children you know can we commit ourselves to give one compliment a day one compliment a day to my spouse can i do that that would be amazing that one that one thing and that's going to help us improve overall in all of our relationships you know can i say one bracha a day one shahakon bidvara with carvanha we do that that's that that should be kind of easy if we could do that then we're going to be growing in our brahos and all the brahmos and our moon our connection with hashem so it's really amazing and you know i want to leave off rabbi that uh you know if we want you know we want some inspiration we want some role models people to uh you know people to look at people that we say hey that person is growing that person is doing the right thing that person is accomplishing i i want to look at them as a role model whether it be a family member a friend a rabbi etc and i want to grow i also want to grow i want to be just like them and um you know i was really thinking that you know when i walked in here walking here to the office and just you know getting to see everybody in person and seeing all the work that's going on here on behalf of calyastro here at the khazak office you know i think really this is the place that everybody should come in to get their inspiration i don't want to flood the office here you know everyone's gonna be coming in come ella but come here to really get the inspiration you see all the incredible work that khazak is doing the work for the kids trying to get the kids into the trying to get the kids out of public schools and into yeshivas you know a few days ago robbie and i were talking and i thought the conversation was about this was about this interview you know which is how it started but then ravi was saying rabbi what could we do about in south florida to get the public school kids what could we do to get them into yeshivas i said these guys are amazing you know they're thinking all over the place and the kids into the shivas and the work for the teens and all of the incredible shiurim that all of us have benefited from you know the amazing speakers and everything all around the world and it's it's just really awesome and i'm just i'm in awe when i see and i hear about and i participate in all of the incredible work that you do and it really inspires me to grow to want to become better to want to accomplish more seeing your tireless efforts just on behalf of kalai's show is really amazing wow thank you very very much ravi masquez for the result for the inspiration and the ravi masters is definitely a role model as well and the great work they can do in south florida right south florida she was helping me at taurus but the twelve thirteen hundred students and it was a pleasure to have you on the program what inspiration welcomes you gave all of us you should continue strong and and and uh we reminded all of our audience to uh log in every single tuesday 8 30 p.m eastern standard time for tuesday's timely torah talks with amazing guest speakers once again amane thank you very much