Finding Miracles in Unexpected Places - Rabbi Dovid M. Cohen

[Music] our topic for tonight is finding miracles in unexpected places I'd like to begin with the following story there was a public school in Texas that had a very very rambunctious class every year whoever was teaching the fifth graders the students that arrive in fifth grade would come January the teacher would quit just couldn't handle the students finally a substitute teacher comes in and as many of us know from our own times in school substitutes were often treated with more disdain or with great disdain than even the initial teacher so this particular substitute had an excellent idea she said to herself I'm going to study up on these students I'm going to prepare myself so that I may succeed where everybody else failed she went into their files she looked carefully and she discerned that they had very high IQs one of them had an IQ of 164 another one an IQ of 170 another one an IQ of 174 and one of them even had an IQ of 180 which is very very very high IQ reportedly the IQ of prime minister bib Netanyahu of the state of Israel so arm with this knowledge that these students in fact although rambunctious had a very high intellectual Acumen she went into the class she invested in the students and lo and behold came June and the principal wanted to award her with the teacher of the year since she had such success where all of her predecessors had fallen short where they had failed and the principal said to her Madame I don't understand how you did it she said it was rather simple I looked in their files I saw they had very high IQs I invested in them accordingly and we saw success principal says I don't believe that I need to see for myself he goes into the office he opens up their files he looks carefully he comes back he says Madame those weren't their IQ numbers those were their Locker numbers I love this story it's a cute story because it shows that many times our perspective on events our perspective on the world can impact the way that things play out our perception can often become our reality one more similar anecdote just to bring this point to the four ronos IIT a great RV lived in the 17th century he once walking on European soil traversing the terrain in which he lived and the pets the non-jewish governor stops him in his tracks and he says where are you going and he says I don't know andit gets in big big trouble the Pats the non-jewish Governor throws him into prison for such AIC response that he has no idea where he's going a number number of days pass by and the pat comes to visit ronas son in prison he says to him I don't understand they call you the wise man of the Jews I asked you a simple question where are you going where are you heading and you tell me you have no idea so bionis said like this he said I thought I was heading to the base medish like we are here I thought I was heading to the study hall I ended up in prison I obviously had no idea where I was going and I think a lot of times we can find Miracles we can find Insight we can find transformative experiences amongst people that we don't always expect there are very special people embedded amongst us within the Jewish people within the World At Large and they can create Miracles they can create miracles in our lives they can transform our life experience by our interaction with them but we have to have the perspective we have to understand what we're looking at and we have to adjust our attitude to be able to ideally grow and glean Insight from each and every one of them I'd like to tonight share with you about some of those people in my own life before I do that I'd like to set the setting and the context in the tone by sharing a beautiful piece of Torah that is very much interlined and related to the p period in which we find ourselves we just read a double par this PAB next week we're going to read and we have waiting for us at the end of the book ofra we had at the end ofos we have also and Bidar certain years I don't know how it falls out this particular year but it's interesting to note that in the book of aayra where we find ourselves right now we have triplets of double paros and if you look carefully the the says it'll say often if it's talking about which means that the two paros come together when they are intertwin when they are bound together I heard a fascinating question is it just a coincidence that this time of the year on the calendar is where we find so many paros intertwined and interl and bound together did you ever Wonder to yourself why and toos aren't why don't we have other paros that are bound together I understand calendarical within the Jewish calendar accounting for skipping of paros for ETC but why do we specifically choose to connect them to bind them in the weeks of VRA and not in the weeks of the other paros so her explained something that I thought was incredible profound we find ourselves in the we find ourselves in the days of the counting of the the critical period between the juncture between p and Sh and we know until we are mourning over the deaths of the talim of RAB aka the students of RAB aka the Zim the pairs who unfortunately were not muin who Unfortunately zuazu they didn't treat each other with great Defence with great respect and because they fell short in their because they didn't treat each other with the proper difference and respect so we suffer the punishment of the loss of these students and ultimately we commemorate that loss by our acts of mourning or many of us mourn in this critical juncture of time so her explained as follows connecting the paros particularly in in this inauspicious time is to remind us that the tikun that the antidote the correction to the Pud to the breakage to the split that existed between the students of RAB AA is that CLA Isel needs to be that Jewish people need to be intertwined interlocked interconnected and different parot dispar parot which represent dispar suot different concepts different ideas different Jews from different Mah from different walks of life are bound together in the context of the book ofra predominantly and primarily to remind us of this value of coming together and of being uplifted and inspired through being connected to our fellow Jews I'd like to share with you now a story about a very unique Jew who profoundly touched my life and if I'm so fortunate to encourage you to purchase my book at the end of the lecture it's called we're almost there living with patience perseverance and purpose you will get to see this story a bit more elongated in writing in the entire context of the section of the book that talks about dating and marriage and living with Shalom Bas living in peace and in harmony I had the Misfortune or Fortune it all depends on your perspective of getting married a little bit later than most in the Orthodox Jewish Community I was fortunate I was blessed to find my spouse when I was 31 years old now I began dating to find her when I was 21 years old which meant that I had a 10-year sojourn attempting to unearth and discover who was going to be the lovely lady that I would be destined to spend my life with approximately 10 years into the process after dating many many young women and not finding the the one the Z the match so I found myself during the Asser Chua the period between rashash and Y kipur I found myself ding onia the day after rash at the at the Western wall and I was beseeching Hashem to help me find my Z explaining to Hashem how difficult it had been over the years and to beseech him and to ask him please to help me break through and to finally be able to get married after I completed daving I'm sure many of you have visited the cotel I walked out of the cotel plaza to the area where the taxis come down spiral down the hill up from Isa hotel and I ha a taxi and I get into a particular taxi and I noticed that the driver is mumbling he's not wearing a kipa but he's mumbling so I say excuse me what are you saying he says oh I'm saying to whenever I drive by the cotel I recite Psalms I recite toim in prayer then he turns to me and he says why I'm just translating from the Hebrew that he spoke to me and he goes why do you look so unhappy why do you look so sad so that was rather profound that he was able to read my face I explained you know I've been dating for a long time I really yearn to be married and hasn't been going and I just finished daving for a z he says to me come with me now to amuka literally translated as the depths come with me to a place outside the holy city ofat where the t yonatan benil is buried where his burial place is we have a tradition in our sources that the T the holy never married and those who go to his burial place to pray and beseech Hashem for a z he will intercede in Shay on our behalf B the fact that he himself never married and that's why there's a Minh that many Yesa students Seminary students they will often take a journey it's about three hours from yush Two and a Half if you take the more uh challenging routes shall we say and they often D on their way back to before they go back for whatever they're about to do from their experience learning in Israel they D in for a particularly Seminary students so I fought with him a little bit I said to him you know it's Galia I've been fasting all day I'm a little bit hungry it's a long trip I don't know you you're you're a stranger he says spontan you have to make spontaneous decisions don't think so much just go with your gut so after Heming and hoing for a while he basically convinced me he prevailed upon me and I embarked on this three-hour Journey with this strange taxi driver to amuka and we began to bond we shared life experiences he shares with me that he got married when he was 34 he understands and relates to what I'm going through and he encourages me and he tells me when you drive at amuka make sure to dve into hasem but and make calot accept upon yourself specific concrete actions that you're going to take in in spirituality that you are going to take upon yourself finding your so I thought to myself I prepared myself per his encouragement and we get there I'm a cohain so I can't go by the Kev of the Tana I can't go all the way way inside so I sent Yakov my taxi driver inside to getaka on my behalf and to DAV for me and I stood on the outside and I began to dve now we get to amuka it's right between rash y kipur it's pitch black 11:00 at night amuka is all the way down in the depth you have to drive these windy roads to get there and it's pitch black there's nobody there except for a few other Yeshiva students and all of a sudden out of the corner of my ear as I'm ding at the side of the k for my Z I hear the following I look and I see there's a circle American Yeshiva Bak from the Mir Yeshiva and they're singing the song that many of us are familiar with that we hear often played and sang at a at a wedding so I'm like wow what's going on so Yakov comes out of the cavern he says David go join the boys in the circle I feel like something mystical is transpiring so I go grab hands I sing with them dance with them it was very very uplifting I'm hoping that maybe something is happening on high something is opening up and then I take the taxi ride all the way back to with Yakov we arrive about 2:00 in the morning exhausted and he says to me David I feel like a burden has been lifted something is going to open up I feel like something is about to change for you the very next night I go to meet my friends in I walk into my former roommate's home the first thing his wife says to me is I have a love girl that I'd like you to meet while you're visiting here in Israel I lived in New York I was visiting Israel duringa I hesitant I say look I'm only here for a few days even if I meet somebody how am I going to follow through she wouldn't take no for an answer she says go ahead try it you never know she's an interesting girl she's from Vienna Austria was not like a typical I've gone out with girls from many places but Vienna was a a new place and my uh on the agenda I didn't even know exactly where Vienna was I looked on the map and sure enough I began to date my wife and we went out a number of dates and there were various Crossroads shall we say in the has many there's ups there's Downs you're not sure where things are going and I accepted upon myself that evening at amuka two interesting calot one cabala was that I was going to give a, contribution for to help another young man and young woman get married I was going to contribute that amount to Charity B hopefully boomeranging and helping me in my with my plight and the second cabala the second thing that I accepted upon myself was that I was going to teach a Torah class somewhere in Queens actually I had been living in Queens by Main Street area two gardens Hills many years ago and I said to myself upon my return I'm going to find a place to give a Shear in that period of my life I had left the rabet I was practicing law in Corporate America I had stopped formally teaching Torah and I said you know what I'm going to try to do this again so interestingly enough around Thanksgiving time on the calendar I came back to Israel to continue dating my student to be kala and then my wife and when I got to Israel I discovered that there's an amazinga an amazing charity called yer that for exactly ,000 makes weddings for destitute brides and grooms so I said to myself you know obviously things haven't come to fruition yet but things are moving in a good direction I want to be a z i want to write the check write that in there and to move things along I did that and then we're continuing to date I spent some time in Vienna on that trip getting to know my future in-laws and when I arve back in Queens after my trip i d inak in one of the Min I come out of the Min and I run into a woman on the street who I haven't seen in about 11 months and she says to me Rabbi K hi it's so nice to see you again I don't know if you remember but we hosted you for a meal on Shabbat about a year ago and we talked that evening about maybe you teaching a class to some of the women in the neighborhood I I didn't even remember but I did remember that I accepted upon myself to teach a Torah class so I jumped on that opportunity and I said sure let's put together a class and sure enough my second kabala came to fruition and soon after I was fortunate enough to get engaged Kana time to my wife this story dates back 14 years ago now my wife my in-laws decided to throw an engagement party in yush after we got engaged so I arrive inim for the party and I'm exhausted jet lag Etc and I go to bed I go to sleep and take a nap for a few hours and I get woken up by a phone call it's my taxi driver Yakov gersan from months earlier we had stayed in touch peripherally he says David you're not going to believe what just happened I'm driving in your and I pick up a lady and her daughter in my taxi and I listen to them talking and I hear them say something about a an engagement so I turn around I say what's the name of the groom and they say you you don't know you're a taxi driver at Israel what you don't know him said Mah said David Coen he says David cohain from where he say David Cohen from New York he says from New York I was the sh I brought him to amuka calls me upav you won't believe what just happened I picked up your kala and your future mother-in-law in my taxi in the middle ofam Yakov was at my wedding and Yakov to this day when I have the to visit Israel is my private taxi driver who takes me around but he doesn't just take me around and he didn't just open things up for me and help me have the opportunity to find my Z but he has often served as a source of this organization is called kazak well he serves for me as a A kazak or auk whenever I come simple guy drives a taxi he always has the most profound insight and we talk about finding miracles in unexpected places often times the Miracles are the encouragement that we get from unexpected people in unexpected places I want to share also something that I think is very profound because finding miracles in unexpected places doesn't always mean just looking around us it also means looking with a more profound depth into ourselves but at the same time not getting too carried away with ourselves because one of the I want to ask a question here of the audience I assume there are people in this room such as myself I have an I have an iPhone okay does anybody else have an iPhone does anybody have an iPad anybody have a iPad right a dumb phone okay now why why do you think Steve Jobs created a device called the it's all I this I that that why is it called the iPhone anybody ever think about that what's the message it's about me right I right right there's an interesting says that a person has to carry two pieces of paper in their pockets in one pocket right it has to one has to have a piece of paper that says right the world was created for me the world is my oyster right it's all about me the other pocket I'm supposed to have the I am like the dust of the earth and it's a profound question how we meant to resolve the tension of on the one hand the world is my oyster on the other hand I am like the dust of the Earth Steve Jobs came up with an incredible idea he understood was a brilliant man he understood that in our super techn technological motivated age and in the age of social media that we very much live in the eye generation it's all about me right there's a narcissistic tendency there's self-promotion there's a joke that they often say that ABA I can give you a braa that your life should be as happy as it appears to be on Facebook meaning like you know everybody's portraying creating an image everything's so great everything's so perfect so the eye devices represent a yod a foundational concept that the entire world right it's all accessible to me with one touch of my button right it's all it's all me all the time and in truth I can access through the internet almost anything in the world with a touch of a few buttons it's simple I have a child who has has a disability and when he was four or 5 years old he was maneuvering an iPad like a genius and then I read a biography about Steve Jobs and I came to realize that he constructed the device with the intent that even a four or five-year-old would be able to use it that was exactly the purpose its focus is to access the entire Corpus of knowledge that's extent that exists in the world to anyone who wants to access it whether it be Torah whether it be secular knowledge it's all there at our fingertips so it's all there to service me now I don't know how many of you are familiar with something called Ted Talks TED Talks are a very interesting contemporary organization it's about conveying communicating ideas it's highly selective who gets to give a TED Talk and chief Rabbi Lord Chief Rabbi Jonathan saaks the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain was invited just last week to give a TED Talk in Vancouver he's been obviously very famous and very prestigious and has received many honors in his career in his illustrious career published you know 25 30 books this's a good joke people like you know so if I were with Chief Rabbi saak I would say Rabbi saaks and I together have written 31 books he's written 30 I wrote one but that's like a nice way to communicate you can make yourself look good but ultimately Rabbi saak shares the following story and he shared it in his Ted Talk and it's a transform transformational story he said that when he was in his early 20s he was a student I forget if it was Oxford or Cambridge one of the fancy universities in England and he had like an early life crisis was trying to figure out what he should do with his life Professor Rabbi Barrister he was kind of stuck at a Crossroads so there was aabad on campus the sh gave him an he said why don't you send the letter to Reb at 770 Crown Heights and the Reb could advise you and guide you so Rabbi saaks drafted the letter two-page letter said hi my name is Jonathan Sachs I'm a student of philosophy I'm also a student of political science I'm married I have two children I have conflicting interests I'm not sure if I could do this or that Etc the weather is pretty nice here in London whatever else he filled up the letter with sends it off to Crown height sends it off to 770 a week or two goes by he gets a letter back from 77 he opens it up he finds out he discovers that the piece of paper inside is exactly the same piece of paper he sent to 770 it was almost like a return like a boomerang returned to Sender except it came in a different envelope so he looked a bit more carefully at the letter and after looking a bit more carefully he opened it up and he discovered that everywhere where he wrote the letter i I'm 24 years old I'm married I have two children I'm studying philosophy every eye in the letter was circled and the page had a lot of circles on it and he thought long and hard to himself and he drew the following conclusion he understood that the rebi was saying to him as follows if you live your life about I if it's only without being tempered with and what I think it means that the Bish has to be tempered with the it means that a person has to think with great depth that it's not just me if I'm giving gifts or if I'm giv talents then I was placed here as a conduit as an emissary as a messenger of God explain and my task is to channel it for the betterment of the Jewish people for the betterment of clel it's not just about me said it was the most transformative moment of his life and it helped him understand it didn't really matter what he chose to do which pathway if his kav if his kavana was where he could best serve others and impact others and help others that's where he would have the greatest impact and the greatest level of satisfaction that's finding miracles in unexpected places often when we change as we spoke at the beginning about the Locker number the IQ number we shift our perspective a little bit and we understand that it's not about I there's I there's so much ey in the world but the ey someone even told me there's a device a technological device called the wi I'm not familiar with it but it's spelled with two eyes apparently w i i like even the wi is with eyes right there's so much I I I but at the same time Miracles transpire from understanding that why the Miracles transpire because when Theon sees that we get Beyond ourselves and we see ourselves as his vessel he says oh you want me to be your if you want me to be your partner I'm going to help you I'm going to open things up for you things you never imagined miraculous things if you think you're going to do it alone if you think it's about you that's great you don't need my help you could do it on your own and often we can't do it on our own or often at a certain time we run into various obstacles that are often self-created but for able to peel back and get past the eye and to bring in the an asak has so profoundly done in his career and we're able to look at other people and to say it's not about me I'll tell you a beautiful story The Great Ros Sal the r z he had his yard site one maybe his 25th almost something like that over PES PES it's a beautiful story that he often would would teach his in the summers in Boston and one year came early it was still the summer months it was early August and the r was profoundly impacted by alab mamid in his Youth and he very much enjoyed the writings of the bat Torah T and he was very profoundly moved by these works and he felt that it was wasn't adequate that the T and Ella were learning the gamar using the logic of the mind they also needed to access the logic of the heart and he felt it would be helpful to study with them the works of the bat particularly the Torah the Deep esoteric writings of so we began studying with them and the RV discerned after a few days that it wasn't going it just wasn't going the TM weren't getting it they weren't into it and at a certain point he just remarked this F he said all they want is Sal's mind they're not interested in Sal's heart he was frustrated but he closed up the Torah and he went back to to the gamar that's very profound that's that's I'm here I'm here to teach you I'm here for the T it's not about me it's not about what I think is best it's about what speaks to the T I'm G to try because I think this would be good for them but if I see it's not going if I see it's not working so then I'm not going to insist like many teachers do I'm going to jam this and RAM this down their throats and I'm going to insist that they have to learn this material He adjusted he adapted to the to the needs of the in front of him and that I think is also a very large a very big foundational Concept in the world in which we live to be able to look Beyond ourselves and to find the Miracles in the unexpected places to go deeper into ourselves and to recognize Shem created us with we call that we have a soul that is so holy that's a piece of God that's Transcendent and it's so beyond the physical world and so beyond the Goof and it's so beyond our own do Amos and often we can find the Miracles by traversing the limitations that we often have within our own narrow scope just want to share also two other very personal stories that happened to me both within the last week and I think they reinforce this idea of we can find the Miracles we can find the light we can find inspiration in places we never expect and we can feel what's called that not only does Hashem orchestrate events of the world but he also orchestrates events in our personal lives each and every one of us he's Mas on us he cares about us and he's guiding us and directing Us in the very best places when we say we just Hades and the shabas before right after PES we bless the new month of year we say we all have many desires of the heart we all have different things that we yearn for but we ask that it Hashem should fulfill the desires of our heart for good meaning we don't always know what's best for us and we count on God to lead us to what is in fact best for us this past shabas I live on the upper west side of Manhattan my wife had prepared chabas lunch many events happened my mother-in-law was supposed to join us for chabas in the end she cancelled another friend was supposed to come he cancelled it was like destined that there shouldn't be guests at our shabas table and then we go to SCH on shabas and a friend of mine who I haven't seen a few months extends to my family a shabas lunch invitation no usually you make plans before shabas it was not it was a little unique that he would invite me in SCH to come for lunch and I didn't anticipate that my wife would agree to go considering that she had prepared shabas lunch so I told him you know I'd love to come I happen to like this friend very much and his wife is a superb cook my wife is also an excellent cook but his wife really really goes all out I knew this my wife had been working very hard this week I knew it was kind of a a lighter shabas so I was uh had a various motivations to go if my wife agreed so I came home from scho I was waiting for my wife to come home she was in a different sh she comes home I said do you mind going to our friends for lunch she thinks about it after some hesitation she says yeah no let's go why not so we go to these people for lunch we don't know who the guests are turns out that they had two other families for lunch one of the families was guests to the West Side they live in the five towns and they were visiting the west side for shabas we had never met them before happens to be that we are in the midst of contemplating a move to the five towns so every day of the week my wife and I are handling houses communities you name it like we're talking about these issues and we're struggling to find resolution and sure enough this wonderful lovely couple who's sitting at the shabas table they have the answers to all of our questions and the entire shabas meal we were able to bombard them with our various queries gain tremendous insight and helpful information to help us in our personal lives and then we went home and I said to myself like wow like how does this evolve how does this happen that we ended up at this shabas table and these guests happen to be at that shabas table how does that happen right it's it's all about finding miracles in the most unexpected places at times if we let go and we just trust that which is before us and what Hashem is sending to us and guiding us many amazing amazing things can happen to us tell you one other amazing thing right after PES so my my father should have a his name is my father had open heart surgery the day after PES it went nicely and he's recuperating well and it wasn't uh an emergency type of thing it was it was diagnosed and he had some time a few weeks over pesak to prepare and immediately after pesak he went in for the surgery now La it should never happened to anybody here to ever have to be in a hospital for a serious type of procedure it was my first experience in this realm we were in an amazing hospital called St Francis Hospital in rosin New York and we're sitting there in the waiting room and I always you know you've seen on TV or I've heard from other people or other ranu have spoken you know how that's kind of a great equalizer when you're sitting in the waiting room and a loved one is on the operating table and you're waiting for good news and it was so profound how we're sitting next to a non-jewish family also a son a mother was me and my mother a son and a mother both families waiting for our fathers our husbands and we're just sitting there like best of friends like we literally had never met best of friends we have everything in common and we get to know each other we ask about the procedure we ask who the doctor is and this keeps on happening and then I spent shabas in the hospital I was very fortunate to if you ever need you shouldn't need but there's a wonderful lovely R and Ritson the blocks in Roslin and they have a very lovely sh in rosin New York and I call them up I didn't know them before this week but I was fortunate to be able to make their acquaintance and be their guest for chabas and there were many other guests at the shabas table many of whom I knew from other walks of life and places in life and spent a wonderful shabas at their home and walk to the hospital and I come to the hospital on chabas and my father has a new roommate also a non-jew the wife is from CA she tells me she had a Jewish grandmother way back when and the man who had the procedure her husband he works for a a f Orthodox Jewish man and he says to me what time is Shabbat out and we became so close giving hugs to each other at the end because so much more that binds us than divides us it doesn't even have to be Jews for sure even non-jews right everybody we all have one God we're all human beings we all have the same frailties we all have the same needs that's theod we began we talked about the we talked about the talking about the need for of connection that's why the par they are intertwined they're connected in this period of the year and it's incredible how much happens in our lives that we're not sensitive enough to the messages I once heard a say that k for every person to have prus Notebook on a daily basis to put down in writing one thing that we are A Ware of that Hashem performed for us something that he did for us something that impacted our lives where we can see the Y Hashem in our day-to-day existence and our day-to-day life and Hashem is always speaking to us and always sending us messages and we find miracles in unexpected places because the unexpected places really is just Hashem orchestrating events for us ensuring that we come in contact with this person or that person or that opportunity and a lot of times we just go through the motions and we think it's rot the ram talks about in like like it's just the way we go about life very wrote see somebody has the saer of the ra and the audience and it's it's the opposite it's we're in a period now of it's a period of aod it's a period of refining character it's a period of working on MOS it's a period of ascending to to of being at the Pinnacle at the Apex the Mish comments the very first Mish we just started learning many of us now in this time period between P Etc we spell out the progression of the M of the transmission of the Torah and many commentators point out mosha Torah literally means mosha got the Torah from the mountain should really say m t he got the Torah on the mountain m Torah M got the Torah from Hashem MOS M Tor he didn't get the Torah from the mountain he got it from God he got it on the mountain why is the mishna formul the M Torah so I saw the following beautiful explanation how did mosha understand how to be a maab of the Torah how did he understand how to be a a CLE a vessel to be a conduit to transmit the Torah to the Jewish people for all generations he learned how to do that from sini because what do we know about seni it was the humblest of all the mountains that's why it was chosen as the local for the transmission of the Torah so the m means what Moshe understood how to be of the Torah from where he understood it he gleaned it from where from that's and that's the mess that's the message for each and every one of us in this critical period what's called by the r of sorts between p and we find ourselves in a period of aod it's a period of Yearning it's a period of growth it's a period of mourning it's a period of introspection a period of reflection also a period of Celebration and most of all it's a period where we yearn and we Aspire toward Jewish unity and greater greater connection one with the other so I'd like to just quickly review some of the major Concepts that we brought out this evening I'll make a a brief remark about the book just tell you what it's about and uh with that we will end okay so we began this evening talking about the story both of the public school in Texas as well as the story iitz about often life is impacted by our perceptions perception doesn't always have to be reality say perception is reality and often times the way we perceive events whether we perceive that we don't know where we're going and we kind of let go and we trust and we watch and whether it's if we have an attitude towards something even if it's if it's based on a fallacy but we believe it wholeheartedly it can profoundly imp impact our actions and finding miracles in UN in unexpected places demands of us a shift in perspective a searching a Looking For What Lies Beneath the surface to uplift us and to catapult us forward we talked about my taxi driver Yakov gersan his phone number is in my book if anybody uh wants to reach out to him the Miracle Man the Magic Man how he whisked me away from the cotel brought me to amuka and brought me to a place that I had yearned to achieve for many years we talked about the ey the story of R and getting past the eye and balancing we talked about my personal story of chabas recently this this past chabas and we also talked a little bit about our ability to connect with people Beyond ourselves I just want to end with one final story before I get to the book there is a a well-known renown reic court that has katal that has many Jews who come on Mo Shabbat to get a from the rebba and one particular Saturday night there was a long line of many and there was one person who was out of place there was a young man with tattered jeans a t-shirt big white yamaka looked different from all the other he was waiting online to meet with the rebba the gabbi the assistant to the Reb was skeptical he looked ascon at this young man what he was doing there and his interest was picked what he's going to speak to the rbbi about so when he finally got into the inner sanctum of the rebba the Gaba was listening in from the outside and the Gaba hears that this young man asks the rebba to DAV for for David Ben SAR okay the young man comes out the Gabi approaches him he says I'm sorry I overheard who is DAV Ben SAR in your life that you waited on this long line to get a br from my Reba for this d s the young man explains as follows he's wearing his jeans his T-shirt big white yamaka explains as follows he says I'm a counselor in a camp called Camp Hask it's a camp for special children and I had a camper this summer who was a member of the yidic sect and his birthday is this week but because of his disabilities he wouldn't appreciate a technological Gadget something that many other children his age would appreciate I thought what would be a good idea would be to get him a special BR from his rebi in honor of his birthday so that's why I'm here he looks up he sees the Gabi is balling he's crying hysterically says I'm sorry did I offend you why are you crying gab says you don't understand D Ben Sarah is my son at which point he embraced him and he hugged him and he thanked him 20 minutes before he's looking looking at him what's this guy doing on the line here he doesn't belong here half hour later he's embracing him hugging him with tears in his eyes because there so much more that binds us that unites us that divides us and we live in a world where people judge people by externals by exteriors but the are teaching us it's all about what's inside it's about you know it's about it's about different mid it's about higher levels it's about things that bind us and bring us together I had a a special over a number of years to to author this book it's called we're almost there living with patience perseverance and purpose and the book is is built around a concept that I learned from my wife my wife is training to become a midwife to deliver babies she taught me in her training she was taught the concept of hold the vision and Trust the process a lot of times in life trying to get somewhere that's why it's called we're almost there trying to arrive at a destination is taking much longer than we anticipated and we get frustrated and we lose our calm and we lose our cool and we have to hold the vision we have to trust the process in the birthing process a woman who gives birth I've observed and I've been told thankfully have not done that but the body as It prepares to release a child from the womb it's excruciatingly painful but the woman knows to hold the vision and Trust the process she understands that this is the process that the pain is actually a good sign it means that she's progressing to where she needs to get to and many of us in our own lives experience pain and hardship and and frustration and things not going the way we want but we have to understand that at times that is a process that Hashem is orchestrating for us to arri to arrive at our destination now I explore this principle this concept through six different millu in the context of the book I talk about the one of the Realms I talk about aim is finding one's spouse and not only getting married but hopefully staying married we have a section we talk about life in communal service dealing with other people a section that deals with f friends family and community members how we interact with those closest to us there's an entire section on raising a child with special needs I'm the parent of a special needs child so lessons in parenting there's a section on being present and living in the moment paying attention carpedm seizing the day and finally there's a section on strengthening faith in turbulent challenging times so through each of these constructs and sections of the book we explore the concept of holding the vision and trusting the process of we're almost there and it had to inculcate the values of living with patience perseverance and purpose be Hashem my BR to all you I want to thank all of you for coming such a nice robust crowd on a Sunday night I know it's very busy and people have other places to be so I appreciate such a nice turnout and my BR to everybody is that we should be Z to meet the miracle people in our lives to find Miracles and unexpected places and to be uplifted through the through the Hal holy day of and ultimately to arrive at the period of the the resurrection of the process of cabal T of entering the the mik Torah the Y to be able to be immersed in closeness to God and to break through all the barriers to connect to our fellow man to be able to bring them all together to the thank you so much