Rabbi Label Lam on "The Hidden World in Which we Live"

Right, we have a big responsibility to carry on the the life and the the hood and to deliver the hood the living have big responsibility. And I think by coming here tonight and joining together for a sheer we can do a lot. Not just by listening to a sheer and like taking a shower in the words even if you happen to enjoy it but walking out like nothing happened but by uh taking something in and letting it grow inside and from the total out well I'll come back to that word later on hopefully better than I shall please God we'll be able to add many many system cuz the Talmud says that Sadiq him a feeling of being a system Sadiq him even in the time when they're not alive Nicole him are called alive because they leave behind a legacy that continues to feed them. Pre-Sadiq 8 time maybe maybe someone say Yuri was the was a Sadiq that was we don't know but I met cool on Sadiq him and what I heard tonight and I'm probably going to took a look at the picture and said of course I met Yuri, you know, whoever he met he touched like that he has a Sadiq inside and he was able to touch and bring out the sickness and bring out the greatness and the and the and the sweetness inside everybody else. So better than I shall we'll be able to accomplish a lot tonight. And I I I every time I just even hear the words Kazak I have to say call it a code to to to the mayor of brothers for all that they do for the community. It's unbelievable Kazak Kazak and it's Kazak. They should only grow stronger and stronger in the work that they do better than I shall. I think we're going to look back and we're going to see one day you know there was a somebody's name was Rab Feivel Mendelovich who came he was here in America in the 1940s and sometimes maybe shortly after the war and he basically he revolutionized Judaism in America for the Ashkenazi that were coming over. They were immigrants and most of them got lost and they melted into the sidewalks of America, reformed, conservative, you name it. And he picked up a few people and he picked up a few members of the community and they made a revolution. And today we find that the the growth of the Jewish community, a lot of it can be credited to a few people who had the foresight, who had the vision, who had the understanding. I think we're going to look back in a number of years and maybe take a decade or two before we have that full perspective and we'll see that there was a few brothers, there was a few caring people that decided that they weren't going to give up on the community, they weren't going to give up on their family, they weren't going to give up on you and me and that they that ultimately they were able to create a revolution in Judaism and to strengthen Judaism. Khazak, Khazak Khazak. Whatever we can do to help them and to be a part of it, we have an equal we have an equal merit. This when it comes to when it comes to owning stock in something in the physical world, if you own 5% so you don't own 95% but when it comes to Torah and Mitzvahs and spiritual things, you can own everybody can own 100% even if they contribute whatever they can contribute to be a part of it. Okay, I'm going to I'm going to go into my topic tonight which was amazingly dovetailed and seemed like seemed to be created for the events of this tonight although I hadn't planned when I was listening to Rabbi Rotenberg, we had spoke briefly and realized that what we're talking about tonight has a lot to do with the subject of of the life of Uriel Raphael Bensarah. So let let me tell you first of all, I have a cousin um this name of the tonight's lecture is called The Hidden World in which we live. And I have a cousin and he's a famous off-Broadway actor. I'm not expecting anybody here to know the name of any off-Broadway actors over here, you know, it's it's a sort of a small world by itself. Those people who I I've met people who went to off-Broadway go, "Oh, Ronnie Bright, he's your cousin? Wow!" You know, like suddenly I'm getting reflected glory from from from from being from being his cousin. But anybody else, never heard of him. So, one time he needed his crazy cousin. He needed me. You know why? Because he was putting on a play that had a Jewish theme. The name of the play was called The Immigrant. And what was it about? It was about a fellow that that immigrated from Europe from Eastern Europe. He settled in in Texas of all places. And there he later on brought over his wife and he started to make a living and they had one, two, three, four, five children. And the So, it was about a Jewish fellow that was settling into and assimilating and accommodating into American culture. And there were a few scenes in that play. I guess little did the the author of that play know how far his prophecy, I'll say with a small p because things are predictable, but that a little Jewish boy from Long Island who was producing the play, when it came time when he wrote into the script that there's going to be a Mincha, an afternoon prayer service, that this young fellow wouldn't know what to do. He'd be he'd be stuck because it's assumed that everybody would have known what's Mincha, what's Mincha, right? And then when it said that there's going to be a Shabbat meal, so he didn't know what menu to put in cuz they didn't give all the details in the script. So, he was afraid in New York, you know, somebody might walk into the theater that remembers that has at least a little bit of a smell a remnant of the authentic article and he's going to expose himself to criticism. So, therefore, he hired and he brought my wife and I down, didn't pay us, but he he brought us down as the Jewish consultants. We actually made it into the back of the program, Label and Hillel Lam, Jewish consultants, right? That when we when we came, we actually went to see the play. We checked it out to make sure it was a clean play. And we actually went to see the play. I have to tell you, it was a dubious distinction, a very doubtful honor that we got. And I'll tell you why, because when we got to the play, he he forgot to ask us when it came time for the actual menu itself. He served at the Friday night meal. They served chicken soup immediately followed by cheese blintzes. Okay, you know, he was just trying to keep it Jewish over there and I said, my wife and I were looking how can we get our names expunged from the from the program, but it was too late. Some of the things that we had to show him how to do over there. Number one, I showed him how to dive in Mincha, right? He and in the seats that we happen to have, I don't know if you arranged it on purpose, but in the seat that we had, it was this intimate sort of theater, this close theater and and where he dive in where he dive in was I could feel his hot breath. I was the one that told him how to dive in and he was in the play carried on for months and months and months. I just happened to see it one night. And what a Mincha, what a dive in in he did over there. I just showed him that, you know, you take a look at it here and you go you move your lips like you're drawing up one long piece of spaghetti. You know, I I had to give him some kind of a, you know, way to think about what what what he's doing with his mouth. And I told him how many times he has to pound and how long he should count before each pounding on the chest and the bowing and how he has to bow and how he has to come up and all these different I showed him I just blocked it out just the movements. And he put in I showed him a couple of these a couple of, you know, you know, eye squeezes and hand squeezes and I showed him a couple of raised hand motions and he did it. What a Mincha, I'm telling you what a fiery Mincha. I wish at Neil and Yom Kippur I could achieve such a Mincha, you know, like like like right right before Neil and Yom Kippur like he had. For that Mincha he won a he won an OB by the way, which is like a like a Academy Award for that know if it was for the performance or for being the director, but what a what a what wow, what a what what a hot Mincha. And it it was just you know, I I was think I told my wife afterwards, you know, I think it was so good, I think that he could probably dive in most congregations get away with it. In certain places he could probably even lead the congregation, you know. It was so it was it was special, it was something something amazing. But my wife, one of the things my wife had to had a task of showing I hadn't heard that there was a shortage of Jewish actresses in New York. Right? But they they invited this uh little red-headed She had They couldn't find any other Jewish girl to play the Jew the Yiddish mama the Jewish mommy except a little red-headed Irish girl with an Irish brogue no less, like this the speaking like with an I and she had to make over her her accent and everything. My wife had to show her backstage and I was there when she showed her how to light the candles how to light Shabbos candles. And my wife was showing her over and over again that she you know she lighted the candles and you know the the waving in front of the eyes and she goes, "Am I scratching my eyes out?" And I said, "No no no no that's the religion down the block. This is nice. It's pleasant." So they and then and then my she did it again and again. My wife lit the candles and she lit the candles and my wife lit the candles and she lit the candles. And then she did it the way my bubby lit the candles. It was so beautiful I felt like immediately launching into singing Zmirot. Something it was It was It was stunning. And then this little red-headed Irish girl asked the question that maybe an only an actor or an actress can ask with their method acting. And she said the following thing. She goes, "Now that I know how to light the candles," she says. "And now that I know how to emulate the action and to do it the way that I was just taught. Now for her internality for for for for the motivation she says, "What's my motivation?" That's what she wants to know. That's what she asked my wife. And my wife and I were both taken back. What a stunning question. Of course we gave her the local answer when you're lighting the candles for Shabbat that means you're coming to a point of rest. You've been working and hustling all week long and now all suddenly, you know, that's it you've thrown a blanket over everything. You're going to light those candles and now there's nothing more to do. You're not going to pick up another hammer. You're not going to clip another nail. That's it. It's Shabbat. The food is cooked whatever is ready is ready and you can take that deep sublime breath. Beautiful. So, but the question still resonates through the cosmos of my mind, what is our motivation? We have a whole menu, a whole Shulchan Aruch, a whole code of Jewish law that tells us when to bow, which direction to face, which candles to light, what to do first, what to do second, when to eat, when to stop eating Yom Kippur, who and how to marry and all these different things, but the question still remains, what's my motivation? Why do we do these things? So, the truth is in order to understand anything in life, it has to be understood in context, which means anything taken out of context can easily be misunderstood. If I go to the bank with my children and I put money into the bank and the lady hands me a little pink slip, you know, after giving her, you know, a thick wad of bills, so he says, "Well, well, well, well, well, why come you got a little piece of paper back and she keeps your money? What did you get for it?" He doesn't understand, you know, that I just deposited something, so there's something missing in his information, so he thinks that somehow I lost something, didn't realize that I had invested something. Misunderstandings can happen all the time. There's a shul uh where I go to daven on Shabbat, they have to walk through a junior high school field. And there I'm watching people, they're playing during certain seasons they're playing uh soccer and another season they're playing cricket. There's a small window they're playing cricket. Anybody know cricket? Cricket, it's something like baseball. Baseball I know. Baseball I love. Baseball uh you know, I can talk about baseball. Cricket, they got a flat bat, they got this ball, the guy bowls it with a stiff arm, they got the and the fellow comes in and hits it like this. I don't know what I'm looking at. I don't know what the he hits the ball. Was this practice? How come he didn't run? Is that a foul ball? Is that considered a hit? Did somebody score a point? I don't know what's going on with cricket, doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm walking to shul and watching on the way there and the way back a couple of Pakistani guys playing, you know, playing cricket at this season. And I'm sure they're also wondering who's this guy with the barcodes on his shoulders, you know, what's that all about? So, when people are looking at the things that we're doing, so it's of course out of context it doesn't make any sense, and the things that we're watching them doing it doesn't make any sense cuz you don't understand the rules of the game. So, let's take a look and try to understand if we want to understand Mitzvot, we have to see it in the context of all contexts, okay? And that's going to be the introduction, the first layer to our shear over here today. There's a beautiful Mishnah in Pirkei Avot that says the following amazing thing. It says my mother never the world was created with 10 statements. And then the Talmud, the Gemara, the Mishnah asks the following question. What does it come to teach teach us? What does it come to teach us? He says, it isn't it that could not have created the world with one statement? Nothing limits the world. So, why did he create it in 10 statements? Right? If an artist can say it and can with one brush stroke, so why does he need 10 brush strokes, right? He can do it with one brush stroke. Why do you need 10? If the poet can say it with one word, why did he need 10 words? There's an implied economy of motion and economy of action. So, the Mishnah gives the following answer that's not so easy to understand. It says, "In order to take payment to exact payment from the wicked people that destroy and sabotage a world that was created with with 10 statements. And to give a proper reward to the king in order to in order to give also a proper reward to those righteous people that endorse and help and support and and and and and and and give to a world that was created with 10 statements. So, what What is that about? What's the 10 statements? Still doesn't explain what the 10 statements are. And why was the world created with 10 statements? So, the Mishnah gives an answer, but the answer doesn't seem to make any sense. In order to punish the king in order to reward of So, in order to understand this, I think we have to take one step back. And again I'm going to ask everybody just for a few moments over here to put on your um your mystical seat belts over here because you know, we might hear mystical concept. I want you to hold on to yourself not to fly away from the world. Stay on to stay attached to the world over here. When we go back to the beginning and we see what were these 10 statements. So we go back to Bereshit and we find out we count there were 10 statements with which the world was created, right? That's what the next mission tells us. What were these 10 statements? And we find we count and we find Vayomer Elohim Y'hi Or, Vayomer Elohim, Vayomer Elohim, Vayomer Elohim and we find out that there were only nine. Oh my gosh. So the mission that tells us there was 10. And now we find out there was nine when we count them. From the beginning of of the creation after the Bereshit until the creation of man, nine statements. Nine times of Vayomer. So what is the what is the comment is in Hagigah say? It says, "Bereshit Nami Maimer." Bereshit itself, even though it doesn't say Hashem spoke, is considered the all-inclusive statement with which the world was created. The world was created with words. And the first statement is Bereshit. Now how is that a statement? Now let let's look let's focus in for a second. Bereshit the commentaries tell us was the all-inclusive statement that was like the world now came to discover the truth about a certain paradigm in science in the last 50-60 years of the of the previous century. A thesis in in theory in science that was called the Big Bang Theory. Anybody heard of the Big Bang Theory? Torah has always believed in There was two primary approaches. One was the static state theory that the world always was. How can something come from the world was always always was? That's how that's that's a world. And the other state the other approach was it started from a certain point and and it started from a certain vector and they came up to prove that there's something called the Big Bang Theory. Now, we've always believed in the Big Bang Theory. Right? The Torah starts with a base. And the base seems to have three walls on it. It starts actually starts with a giant base and the mission and says don't look what's above, don't look what's behind, and don't look what's below. These are things you can't know about. The movie seems to be moving in a certain direction over there. History started from a certain dot, from a certain point, and from that point the whole world was created. So even though the mission says don't look what came before and don't look what came after, we're going to take a peek over there for 1 second. How can we take a peek? So that so that so that so we can ask the following question. What preceded the base of Bereshit? What preceded the base of Bereshit? Can anybody tell me? What was it that we can get a hint over here? Why did the Torah start with the letter base? It should have started better with the letter aleph. So what preceded the base of Bereshit? And the answer is the aleph of Adon Olam asher malach beterem kol yetzir nivra. Adon Olam asher malach beterem kol yetzir nivra. Before anything was created, there was Adon Olam, there was a master of the world before anything was created. That's what we say. It's not just a nice song. Adon Olam asher malach beterem kol but before anything was created, there was an there was there was a master of the world. What was the base of Bereshit? Bereshit means not that Hashem created something. This is what the the actually from a physical standpoint Bereshit bara means the actual creation of something from nothing. Every something was There was no particles. There was no electricity. There was no large attraction. There was no small attraction. There was no There was no neutrons. There was no There was no protons. There was no There was no electrons. There was none of these things that existed. There was no gravity. So, what existed? What preceded? So, what was created with yesh ma'ayin? Something was created from nothing from a physical standpoint. The safer Tanya says the following thing, that actually the world was created at that time, pardon me, nothing from something. Because before the world was the most important something was Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Let's just imagine that we have a giant ocean and or ain sof, that's how it's referred to. We can't even say what it is. We can only say that it's or a light ain sof that doesn't end. We have an ocean of endless light. And in this ocean of endless light suddenly opens up a little dot, a little black spot, a little bubble, right? And into this bubble now comes into this little dot that's surrounded by light. That is where Hakadosh Baruch Hu is connecting. He withdrew himself, so to speak, from that spot. And there's an illusion of an emptiness and an absence of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. But Hakadosh Baruch Hu was hovering over and looking at and observing that spot. So, if we'd be at the center of this spot over here, we would see a straight line that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is looking at us and staring at us. It's as if the the boss says to the secretary, "Please, I want you to begin to type and, you know, produce these 10 letters that I need for later on today." And then he stands there and watches and the boss is watching. So, she's not going to deviate, take a coffee break, or do anything that he doesn't want her to do because he's staring there. But a smart boss, who maybe wants to test her loyalty, says, "You know what I'm going to do? You know, Margie, could you do me a favor? Type up these 10 letters. Okay, I'll see you later on." And he goes back into his room and he draws the curtain on his window. And little does she know, but he has a one-way mirror and she may go over there and begin to check herself in the mirror. And he also has like a little, you know, a camera in the corner. And he's observing what's going on to see whether what she's doing in a way that she can't see. So, there might be a curtain that was drawn down and a and and some kind of a and the and the shades were drawn but still he's able to observe what's going on. He's only covered himself up. These 10 statements the commentary say is a process of covering himself up each and every time. From the beginning of creation the world was an obviously extremely spiritual place. It was an extremely weakness of place I shall be so obvious. There's no free will we were like angels we would have been like angels right at the beginning of creation and that was one of the first creations. Let's go back to the first statement. What was the first of the 10 statements that's that said not besides what would be the first statement anybody? came Let there be light. When we want to speak about this before the sun. This is before planets. So we understand that this or is talking about a different type of an or a different range of light than that what we're used to experiencing, right? That's what we're talking about over here. So in person has a spiritual awakening what do we say? A light that something happened a light went on in our minds. People have a near death experience they also talk about going to the light. We'll talk a little bit about that later on. So there's something about light which is the most spiritual thing in the whole universe that on a physical plane. Let's think about that for a second. Light and then what happens is everything becomes thicker and thicker and thicker the world becomes a darker and darker place. But everything starts with light. Energy equals mass times okay the speed of light squared everything starts with energy and then becomes sublimated into darker and heavier stuff. And the world is really made up of sublimated energy the sublimated light. If I would tell you for example that I'm wearing sunshine on my shoes on my feet today you'd say what is that a poetic way of saying that you want to go dancing? I like dancing I'm in a good mood I feeling good I'm feeling light on my feet. No I have sunshine on my feet. I literally have sunshine on my feet. What is the sunshine I have on my feet? The sunlight came pouring down onto this earth from 93 million miles away. Set up in an open field someplace are these incredible solar panels, which is called grass. Right? And through the process of photosynthesis, somehow chlorophyll is created. And along comes Elsie the cow, munch, munch, munch, and she grabs into some some of that grass. She takes it into her system, and she converts it into leather that now grows on her back. Yeah? So, now along comes the shochet. He checks the cow. It goes off to cholent on Shabbos. And the leftovers, they say they don't want to waste any parts, so they send the rest over to the Echo Echo Echo shoe factory, and I'm wearing genuine cowhide leather shoes, and I'm wearing sunshine. It's sublimated sunshine on my feet. The world became a darker and a thicker and a more viscous place until the Talmud says that Hakadosh Baruchu said to his world, "Al mala alamo." Hakadosh Baruchu said to his world, "Dai. Enough." Like we have on the mezuzah, "Dai." Dayenu, like we say at the Pesach seder. Dai doesn't mean that's enough for the seder, let's get on with the food. Dai means that it's just at the right shin dalet yud means that the world is exactly at that balance point where the world is physical enough, it's thick enough that if a person wants to get lost in this world, he can get lost in the world. It's spiritual enough, it's it's still translucent and tinged with enough wonder that if a person wants to find Hashem like Avraham Avinu began to do, then a person can find Hashem. It's shaded. The shade of the glasses Hakadosh Baruchu made it just dark enough that you can get lost. He made it just light enough for the so there's there's a something called free will can take place over here. If it were to be a little bit too light, then Hakadosh Baruchu would be obvious, and he would overwhelm us with his spirituality, and we'd have no free will. If it would be too dark, then we'd have no chance of finding Hakadosh Baruchu and doing the right thing. And therefore, Hakadosh Baruchu set up this world in such a beautiful balance point over there. And that's what the word world word olam means. Olam comes from the Hebrew word ayin lamed mem, which means hidden. It's a hiding place. And not that we're hidden from Kodesh Baruch Hu, it's the boss looking through the one-way mirror. We're on the other side. We're on the reflected side. So, we see a diffracted and and a disparate world, but from Kodesh Baruch Hu's vantage point, everything is visible. Kodesh Baruch Hu is bokeh in the bubbles. He sees everything right down to the core. He sees everything in a perfect unity. From our vantage point, we see a splintered world. And therefore, Kodesh Baruch Hu is the one that's hidden in the world. And the world came down to that physical. The last thing to be created is man. And man in certain ways is a summary of the darkness of the of the of the depth of the physical creation. But on the other hand, Kodesh Baruch Hu breathed the breath of life into man. Vayehi apah apav nishmas chayim. And and therefore, man stretches like that Yaakov Avinu's ladder. V'hinei sulam mutzav artzah v'rosho magiya shamayima. And we stretch somewhere from from the tops from from from before creation, from the breath of Hashem, all the way down to the depth of this earth over here. If a person will let go from the from the earthliness from here, lech l'cha me'artzecha, from the earthliness of this world, he'll go flying up to the heavens like a rubber band. And if you'll let go of the heavens, somehow he'll go plummeting down into this earth over here. And that's the balance point, and that's the struggle, and that's the stage that was created. And that's really what the Mishnah comes to tell us, that man was created with the world of creation with 10 statements, cuz there's layers of creation over here. And it was set up in such a way, it's been tinted enough that if a person wants to find Kodesh Baruch Hu, he can find Kodesh Baruch Hu if he asks why hard enough and strong enough and he and he looks deeply enough, he'll find it. And if a person doesn't want to find it, he can go into Manhattan back and forth, and he can surf the net, and he can do whatever he want, and he can click, and he can and and get whatever he wants for 70 years and never find it even once. That's the way the world was set up. They say with a great person's name was the Ohev Yisrael. And this great rabbi called the Ohev Yisrael, Rabbi uh Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, that was the name of his book called it was called the Ohev Yisrael. He say he was meeting with his Hasidim, they were all gathered around him. And then one one one day a boy who was crying, was weeping very strong, came rushing towards the Rebbe and the sea split the the the Hasidim move over and the boy came right to the Rebbe's heart. The Rebbe you know spoke to him and some of the Hasidim were listening in and the boy was describing what happened. He says, "We were outside and we were playing hide and go seek." And he says, "And it was Shimon's turn to hide and everybody found him. And it was Chaim's turn to find and everybody found him. It was Yaakov's turn to find hide and everybody found him." And then the boy started weeping heavy heavy. He says, "And then it was my turn to hide." He says, "What's the Rebbe, what's the matter? What happened?" HE SAYS, "NOBODY LOOKED for me." And the Rebbe held him close to his chest reached into one pocket and gave him a candy, reached into another pocket and gave him a coin. The boy smile came started to grow on the boy's face. He gave him a kiss on the head and the boy left feeling a little bit consoled. He at least he the Rebbe was able to would talk to him a little bit. So when the boy left to the the Hasidim say, "What a great Rebbe we have." He says, "What?" He said that you were able to feel that empathize and feel the pain and the and the difficulty of that of that poor little boy over there. He says he cuz the Rebbe himself was crying. He says, "No." The Rebbe says, "That's not why I was crying." He says, "Why were you crying then Rebbe?" He says, "The reason why I was crying cuz now I understand how Hashem feels." Because when it's my turn to hide, he finds me. When it's your turn to hide, he finds you. When it's this one's turn to hide, he finds. But when it's my turn to hide, mi mevakesh? Who's looking? Who's searching for Hashem? So Hashem is the one that's in this hidden world. Now we have enough information to ask the question that really going going us into action over here. That was all a baseline. And the question is something that my son asked me, he must have been 7 or 8 years old, and we're sitting at the Shabbat table, and I got sideswiped. I got I didn't expect this to happen. And he asked me a question that was so profound and so deep, I knew the answer to it. But what shocked me was here I was, I must have been 40-something years old at the time. And here I have a young man asking me a question that I didn't begin to even think about this until I saw an essay by by Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler that that's called that's called that's called that's called time and life. He wrote an essay in the fourth volume in Hebrew, in the fourth croc. It's called three-four page essay about time and life. Asman Vahaim. Haim Asman. And and my son asked me a question, he says, "Abba." He looks me square in the eye, like it's really bothering him. He says, "What happened to yesterday?" "Abba, what happened to yesterday?" You hear the question? "What happened to yesterday?" "What happened to yesterday? What happened to last year?" You hear the question? You ever have one of those days that was so hard? And then what happened to it? Went away? You ever have one of those years that was such a hard year? My wife gave birth to twins one year, we didn't sleep the whole year. My beard turned white that one year. At the end of the year, put my head down, we cried, we said we can't believe we made it through the year because sleep was a vocabulary word. We didn't we didn't do it. And then it became the past? That's it. What happened to it? And it's not just a light philosophical question. I meet college students also. And and sometimes someone will ask me, "Rabbi, do I exist?" Right? I bumped into that. You have you have already heard it. "Do I exist?" I have an answer for that. A very practical answer. Let me hold your wallet until you figure out the answer to the question. Oh, no, no, no. You know? So, okay. So, I see that you presume that your wallet exists. You know, you don't want to yield your your credit card to me. You don't want to trust me with it. So, it must have in your mind some kind of a a feeling of a reality to it. Yeah? So, this is not one of those those types of questions. This is a real practical question. Why should I put so much effort into tomorrow if it's going to become yesterday? I remember sitting one time in a sheer in long in New Jersey someplace. Nobody wanted to be there. Okay? Maybe people don't want to be here either. What can I say? And and and and and I I started mentioning this subject. And and some nice lady a Russian lady from from from from from Moscow she belts out like an opera singer. And I said, "What happened to yesterday?" She goes, "All the yesterdays are building up TO A BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW." SHE SAID LIKE AN opera singer. And everybody applauded like, "She really zapped the rabbi this time." And I told the madam, "Please, but what happens WHEN THAT GREAT TOMORROW becomes yesterday?" You know? When I used to visit my mother in the Bronx, so she said, "Label they have the incinerator over there. Throw me down the shoot." Mom, I won't do that. Mom, you're my mother-in-law. No, throw me down the shoot the the garbage. I said, "Okay, Mom, that'll do." You know? So, I throw it down the shoot. It looks eerily similar to the guy at the end of the work day, right? Who takes the that that brown burlap bag and he goes to the bank and he opens up the same thing and he puts it in there. How does he know he's not putting it into a Why work the business all day long if you're putting it in into the incinerator? It's just going to get burnt up to pieces. So, same thing. Why work the whole day if it's going to go into the incinerator? Is it going into the incinerator or is it going to be banked away someplace? So, Rabbi Dessler gives the following answer. Listen to this. He gives a three-dimensional model because time is something which is very hard to to hang on to. It's interesting that at the time that light was created, time was created also. So therefore, it's one of those spiritual things, time, that's hard for us to grab onto, just like it's hard to grab onto light. When time was created when light was created, time was created. Cuz you can go faster than the speed of light, you go back in time. Okay? Anybody understand that? Anybody not understand that? All right? If we if something's going time is limited to the speed of light. That's why it says right at the creation of light. So therefore, it's very hard to put a hand around it, but he gives a three-dimensional model. Imagine that we have maybe you never saw it before, one of those disco balls. You know what I'm talking about? Okay. You don't have to acknowledge it, okay? And you have one of those balls with the little mirrors and glass things all around it. You know what I'm talking about? Like the sun that's suspended in silence. It has no wires attached to it. Can you imagine setting up such a universe like that that there's no wires that's holding up the That would be a great thing to see if somebody can invent a chandelier that has no wires or anything attached. It just sort of sits and floats in the middle of thing, huh? Got something to work on now, okay? Great. I see you got Don't beat me to it. Remember, I get a piece of the okay, the action. So so and you got this thing that's hanging over there like that. And around it around this light glowing ball, we're going to put a very thick dark, let's say like like a tennis ball thick, we're going to put like an opaque dark cover around it. And we're going to open up a window now for you guys on the side that's going to be a 1-in by 1-in window. Now you can see into the ball and only see 1-in one square inch into the into the middle of the ball. Yeah? You got what I'm talking about? Then you see the light coming out. Now what happens is I'm going to move the ball, Reb Betsalel says, on the outside. This is life and time. I'm going to move the ball on the outside. You're looking at a certain square right now. I'm moving the ball and rotating around the outside. Now you're looking at another square inch. The square inch you were looking at a moment ago was just covered up. He says, "The part that was just covered up is called the past. The part that's just been exposed is called the present. The part that's about to be exposed is called the future. And what happens after 120 years? What is olam haba? What is the next world? The next world is the cover falls off altogether. And the person is exposed to the world of eternity, which is v'hu haya, v'hu hove, v'hu yiyeh, v'hu hu machave et hakol adon olam asher malach beterem kol. We come into the world of Hashem, his name yud and hey and vav and hey is a contraction of those three concepts of past, present, and future. He was, he is, and he will be, and there is no more time. Everything is in a certain static revelation and an endless revelation of the or ein sof of the light of Hashem. Wow. That's what it's all about. Okay? So, actually the Gemara in Berachot tells us that there's totsaot. I think there's 903. The gematria totsaot is 903 different types of ways that a person leaves the world. One is called askara, which is very difficult. That's the hardest. They say it's like pulling wool, separating wool and thorns that get meshed together. There's another moshol that's given of pulling rope through boat. It's very hard because the neshama and the body don't want to separate from each other. It's very hard. Breaking up is hard to do. Remember I'm passing by in 47th Street and seeing a guy his his delivery van got was was being towed away by the DOT. And this fellow came out and he said, "I just went to deliver a package. I just I I I came right out. I'm here." And he was lying on the front of his van over there and he wouldn't let he wouldn't let them tow it away. The neshama is also climbing away. They don't don't take away my body. Don't take Don't Don't displace me. Don't throw me out of my house. Now comes the lightest form is called the mesha shell neshica, which is the kiss of death, not the mafia's kiss of death. That's something else, okay? What we're talking about over here, we're talking about over here that somehow the neshama separates from the body very easily and the gives a mashal, it's like pulling a hair out of milk. I remember my rabbi asking us 30 somewhat years ago, "Since when is the goof Since when is the neshama pulling the hair out of milk? Since when is the neshama compared to hair? Asav was called the hairy one. He was hairy. And he he he he went to a mountain that was called Har Seir, which was really a mountain of hairs. Hairs represents physicality, materialism, you know, being so concerned about hair, hair, hair that that Yosef was was playing with his hair. The hair represents materialism. And milk represents light, spirituality, represents something which is pure and and and nourishing. And the rabbi says that's exactly the truth. Because it's just removal of the body, it's removal of that shell and suddenly we're in the olam haneshamot, and the world olam haba is just it's here. We're in the olam haneshamot, except we happen to be in the hester, we're in the hidden world, in the in the world of olam. Now, I always had this question. So, the world therefore is like is like a map. Even though I'm traveling down to the I-95 South and I'm going to Florida. Let's say I was never in Florida before and I have hotel reservations, I have a date with destiny over there. But as I'm traveling there down to down to all the way down to Florida, I'm somewhere in Virginia and I think to myself, "Is New Jersey still there? Is something that Nowadays you have to check. You have to give a call home to find out, yeah? Is is Is New York still there? Is Queens still there?" Well, you know, you assume that of course it's there. Just like Same thing in in time, you assume that yesterday is still there. It just got wound onto the film. And and I happen to be here now and then tomorrow the ball will pass over, the light will pass over, the exposure will come to another point over there that I'll be in Florida. That's my next date with destiny. But I always had this question. How come when you hear that somebody is passing the drowning, I never had the experience but there's always somebody who comes up to me later on says I had that experience. They They always have the same experience. What was the experience that they saw their life? They saw their whole life pass in front of them in one moment. I always wondered, how can your life pass in front of you in one moment? Right? If it took 40, 30, 20, however long, 70 years, and suddenly the life passes in front of you, right? Why is one moment like that? It was 70 years to live it. You're waiting for the train to come. You're waiting for him to call, right? All these different things and life seems to be going on and it's so slow and it's you know, one one drop of sand coming through the hourglass at a time and all of sudden you see the whole life pass in front of you. How could that happen in one moment? So I I I I was thinking like this, using a little bit of Rabbi uh Dessler's model of a of a physical world, is sometimes you take the globe and you could press it against the wall over here. And a person is sort of like painting by numbers on a scaffold. You ever see these You see these You see these scaffolds. Of course, we're in we're in Queens, right? And you see in the highway they have a giant scaffold. Let's say that somebody's painting by numbers. He's doing it by hand. And he's out there and he has blinders on, these myopic blinders that only allow him to see what he has in front of him. Not to see to the right, not to see to the left. And they're little these little blobs and blurbs that you put put you know, six means red, five means blue, two means green, boom boom boom. And he's painting by numbers. He's coloring coloring the line. He's doing what he's supposed to be doing. And then he moves along to the next station, the next station. There's 365 along one row. Then he goes down to the next row and he gets 365 back across the other row. Then it's 365 and he keeps on going down. If there's 70 or 120 or 24, however, he pushes back away from the painting and there it is, the painting that he created. There it is. There's the whole thing. As long as he's working up close, he doesn't see it. The minute he pushes back from it, then he's able to see it and he can catch it in one full glance, all the dots and all the jitters and all the little movements that the person made and the results of those movements. And this was confirmed in a book that I saw one night when a fellow came to me on a Thursday night late on a Thursday night, a guy that never found his place in our community in Muncie. For whatever reason. It had a lot to do with him, I do believe. But we used to house him and hold him and hang on to him. He came with a lot of baggage. But his baggage was just wasn't psychological or emotional baggage. His baggage was he came with a whole menagerie, a whole giant farm of animals that were traveling along with him, right? And after a while it became burdensome hearing chickens and roosters and everything all night long and clackling and and the people said eventually we have feathers, we have we have we have flies, we have to take these cats and these dogs and whatever you have and he had to move from place to place so he never felt settled and he always went with his animals. One late Thursday night I get an emergency bang on my door. What is it? David, what's going on? He says, you'll find out. Everyone will find out. You all know. You'll find out. You'll see. You'll He's ranting. I said, what? You'll see. What see? Who see? What? Who's what? What? What are you talking about? He said, well well well well I'm moving. I'm going. I said, what's with your animals? Well well I'm I'm going to take them. I'm going to I'm going to drown them. I'm going to kill I said, no. You You love your animals. You gave up so much for your animals already. That's not the way to And then I realized that he was so over excited that he was hinting at me that he was going to do something a terrible thing. And what was he going to do? He was going to commit I didn't even say the words the most terrible crime. The Gemara says "Aizo hu tipeish?" Who is a foolish person? "Hama'abed mashi'ahu beyado." Who destroys "kol mashi'ahu beyado." Who destroys what you're given. You give a kid a glass of grape juice, he spills it on the white couch. You give him a car, boom, he crashes it. You give him a thousand dollar bill, he goes to Atlantic City and he lights it up with a cigar, right? That's it. And and and and and he and he comes back wasted. What did you do? I gave you something good and you destroyed it. I gave you an education and you destroyed it. I gave you things and you destroyed it. I gave you life and you destroyed it. I said, you can't do it. It's the biggest crime. You're You're allowed to do it. He he me, I don't care. I don't care. I don't care." And I said, "David, you can't come here and tell me that you're going to do this and then go out and do it because I love you. I care about That's why you came to me, obviously. And since I care about you, you'd be hurting one of the people who cares about you the most. I won't let you do it." He started reciting poetry. I said, "What do you think you're going to get out of it?" He says, "I'm going to a light. I saw" He must have He went to a Grateful Dead concert. I don't know what he was sipping, okay? Whatever it is. He says, "I saw a light. I saw this and that's what happened and I'm going to go there. I'm going to take a quick, you know, run there." I said, "David, I don't think so." We stayed up all night long. He was reciting poetry. I recited a couple of poems. I said, "I want to see those poems. Do you have them written anywhere?" I said, "You can't just go and not let me see those poems and see, you know, what they're all about. You sound like you got some amazing talent." He uh we ate all those Chaba's cookies and and and milk before he he left and I let felt comfortable he should go at 4:00 in the morning. The next day he came back to me with the poems and meanwhile I had a chance to run through the book and I found I found a library of book that I'd seen something once before, light after light, something and it showed that people who had who had tried to take their life, aborted suicides, and they went instead of going down this glorious tunnel into a light of accepting uh and a loving embracing light, they found themselves when they were getting closer that they were getting rejected and they were told, "Go back, you fool! You fool!" Like the father who who who looks with a with with a look of uh of uh of a glare at the kid who spills the grape juice on the on on the white couch. How dare you do such a thing? And and and and and and so I showed him account after account that don't think you're going to get a happy reception. Don't think it's going to be what you expect. So, he got scared off from that. But, the real prize was I turned another page or two and I saw that this woman is describing a gentile lady and a few other accounts are describing what happened. Instead of going down a tunnel of light, which is only one type of account, this lady goes into She sees her world in front of her like a series of dots. Isn't it interesting? When you take a look at a picture of somebody, right, in the newspaper, you open up the big Gabriel magazine and you see, "Oh, there's a picture of the Rishon LeZion. There's a picture of the of the of the Chief Rabbi of Israel." But when you see him, you're not seeing him. That's not his nose. That's not his eyes. If you take a jeweler's loop and you put over it, what do you have over there? Dots, pixels, right? That happens to be a clear picture because it's small pixels, the details. So, you're only looking at at at pixels. She will see her whole life as a series of little dots, these little pixels, these little paint-by-number dots. And she decided, "Let me go into one of these files, one of these icons. Let me click it and go into this world." She goes into that file, and suddenly she finds herself being enveloped into an experience of something that happened 30 years ago. And in that experience from 30 years ago, she describes that she's in a department store, Macy's or whatever, and on the third floor there's a child that got separated from their mother. And the child is crying and anxious, "What am I going to do? What's going to be? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy." She took this child, she said, you know, give a call out that there's a child on the third floor. They're looking for What's your name? Melissa. Melissa's looking for her mommy. And then they announced it over the whole store. Meanwhile, she has the child on the counter, and she's talking to him, telling him, "Your mommy's on her way. She's looking for you. She loves you, and she's here. She didn't give up on you. You're going to go home and sleep at the same house with your mommy." And she's talking to the child. She described how as while she's talking to this child and trying to calm her nerves down and make her feel good, she's feeling in this world without barriers. Right? Normally, when I you tell give somebody a compliment, say, "You look nice today." Or you give somebody a piece of chocolate cake, and you watch it go down their system, you see the smile on the face, you can only assume based upon your experience and your reading that they're having a good time, but you don't feel it what they feel. She said she was feeling washing back on her whatever good she was doing for somebody else, she felt it coming back on her in waves and waves of of of sublime goodness, like she had never experienced anything before in her entire life. It's incredible thing. And she says, "This is the experience of the next world." Is that you experience whatever it is that you did to the other person, "Vi'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha." Wow. She goes, "That's unbelievable. It was such an incredible experience. All I did was put a couple of nice calming words to somebody else, make them feel a little bit good." She backs out of that experience and she goes into another little window over there. And she And she goes, "Let me try this one." And over there she was saying hurtful words to her mother. Boom! And she felt the pain and she felt the angst and she felt the hurt that she was giving to her mother also multiplied and amplified. She goes, "Oh my gosh." And then this gentile author writes the following thing after giving a number of accounts. So, listen to this. This is stunning. She says, "If this is true, if this is what the experience of the next world is, that whatever it is that we did to other people, that's what we experience, and I remember telling an Israeli cab driver while we were on the way to the airport and we're passing by Tel Aviv and they have this giant monolith of a building which I guess is the equivalent of their Pentagon, and I was trying in my best Hebrew that I could to explain to him this concept with this lady said. She said, "If that's the experience of the next world, I can think of no greater punishment for those Nazi perpetrators." She says, "Then that they should experience what they did to other people. They took a mother and daughter, they took a family, they marched them out into an open field and had them dig a pit naked in the freezing cold and humiliated them and then they shot them to die and to squirm to death out there in those situations, that that's what they they should experience forever." Hashem yeracheim. Lo yeracheim. And the mission says, "Al tityaeish min haperonius." Don't give up, there's such a thing called payback. And I told this Israeli fellow over here this this driver, I said, "If a fellow thinks he's going to walk into a pizza shop with nails and bombs and rat poison and he's going to go to the next world and it's going to be some kind of a discotheque club and they're going to take care of his personal needs up there, just the opposite is true. You know, fly a plane into a building, the holy terror that he brings down onto the minds and the hearts and the bodies of the families and the survivors, that's what he's going to experience forever. That's what they're going to soak in. Just the opposite. In me the Torah Maruba. Al akas kama vakama, how much more so in the other direction, the positive direction. Avraham Avinu understood this. That when you go out into the world and you you find a wayward stranger, Yuri understood this. Yuriel understood this. You give a smile, you give a hisuk, and that's what you experience forever, what you gave to somebody else. Give a give a deli sandwich, Avraham Avinu understood. Cool off somebody's feet. Teach them about a Kaddish Baruchu. That's the greatest pleasure. Kevod Elohim Letov, that's the greatest good. Turn on turn them on to a Kaddish Baruchu. Complete them. Give them a feeling of accomplishment in life. And when Avraham Avinu went and did those things, that's what he's going to experience forever. What comes out from this? Is an amazing thing. Few amazing things. We see that the 613 mitzvahs, even though from a physical standpoint, the bodily standpoint, they feel like mitzvahs, the 613 things that our body says, "We got to do. I got to bench. I just ate." Right? But from a fair spiritual standpoint, from the neshama standpoint, the Zohar says it's 613 eitzot, 613 eitos, 613 things, advices on what we can do. Ve'ahavta lere'acha kamocha, zeh kol haTorah. The Torah says, "You want to be in a movie that you that you want to be feel that's a movie forever? That you're going to feel good about? You know what? Then do it to somebody else as you would want to be done to you." Because when you're going to behave to that person, then it's going to be you're going to feel the pleasure. Hillel told the Ger, the potential convert, that if it's hateful to you, if hurtful to you, don't do it to somebody else, because that's what you're going to that's what you're going to experience forever. And I have a very big kid that I want to share with you. It's not just when you give somebody a piece of cheesecake, you experience the cheesecake. And you give somebody good word, you experience the good word. It's even much more than that. Because sometimes my wife and I have the experience we look out the window on a nice spring day and we see the kids are swinging in the back. And suddenly somebody falls off the swing and they get a boo-boo and they're crying and you watch this. You even watch this. The little one picked The big one picks up the little one and washes off the boo-boo and gives a kiss and makes it all better. Or you peek into the living room sometime and you see that in the morning this one is pouring that one a bowl of cereal. And not only they're going to get a a a the the the the and and and they're reading a book. The little big one is reading to the little one. I got a couple couple of people once or twice you experience that, right? Yeah, me too. Okay. Once or twice you have that experience. And when you're looking at it, not only are they going to get the experience of pouring a bowl of Cocoa Puffs with their brother or sister on Shabbat or wiping off the boo-boo or making it feel better like that lady did. But there's a wide angle lens they're going to get nachas ruach. They're going to get a pleasure from the parents. Therefore, somebody gives nachas ruach to their parents, they have a reishas yamim. What does reishas yamim mean? That they're always giving nachas ruach to their parents. They asked one nice young lady in a shul one time. I heard a rabbi ask. He says, "What's your parents' greatest source of pleasure?" Big smile came across her face. She says, "Me." He says He says, "What's your parents' greatest source of pain?" She says, "My sister." Kids can be the greatest source of pleasure. They can be the greatest source of pain. Somebody's honoring their parents is giving them pleasure all the time EVERY TIME I THINK OF THEM, they give me pleasure. And that's what it means it's a reishas yamim that their their entire existence is is is a life of meaning cuz the parents are getting the pleasure that they're to their parents all the time. They're constantly giving pleasure, not just when they're giving Cocoa Puffs to their brother and sister. Not when they're giving a a kizzuk to their friend. But all the time. And there's a bigger wide-angle lens, cuz it's not just the nachas ruach you give to your parents, it's the NACHAS RUACH LA HASHEM. How many times is that mentioned in Chumash? That a person's giving nachas ruach la Hashem. They're getting the greatest wide-angle lens is the person is giving pleasure to God. And therefore the pleasure they give to Kadosh Baruch Hu is the pleasure that they feel. That's what the Mesillas Yesharim says. Olam lo nivra ela leshanek al Hashem. The world was created to enjoy in the THE PLEASURE OF HASHEM. And the pleasure the person giving pleasure into that in in into Kadosh Baruch Hu and Kadosh Baruch Hu is reveling in that pleasure they have from that person. You might think that's only bein adam l'makom. But every mitzvah bein adam l'chavero was also a mitzvah bein adam l' l'makom. As Rabbi Lichtenberg said before, because when you're nice to your nice to the children, the brothers are getting along, the parents is happy. And therefore it's potential that everybody that somebody does something all the time they're giving nachas ruach to their parent. And they're giving nachas ruach to their friends, that they're giving nachas ruach that that that that every moment is lit up. It's not vacant moments. Not wide yawns. Could be somebody else they only they put on their bar mitzvah fillin that was the only mitzvah they have. After that they buried the bag. And they went out and they started shopping for some other bag. Something else to do. They come back to find that that's all that they had. That's all that they have yet. So now the good news and the bad news comes out of here. The good news. I I feel like I have to forward and deliver the good news and the bad news I have to tell you a story, a joke, okay? Pardon me. Cuz it's going to relax me for a second. There was two guys, Jim and Joe, they're arguing about whether there's baseball in the next world, okay? Very important deep philosophical. Some people ask, "Where is baseball in the Torah?" In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. We went through that before, right? Actually, we said before, it's mistranslated as in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. It's really in the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth, the earth was void and emptiness. That's what we said before. Hashem created emptiness. He created a voidness. That's what it means. But these guys were arguing, is there baseball in the next world or not? Joe and Jim They stink. They stink. They don't have any reasonings to bring to their argument. Just one says yes, one says no. So they agree with him, "Listen, one of us is going to get satisfaction in this world. You know, we'll make a pact between us. Whoever goes there first is going to come back and tell us whether there is or there isn't." So Jim kicks off. He comes back a week later to Joe, hovering over Joe. Joe, "What is it? Jim, is that you?" "Yes." He says, "Is there or isn't there?" He says, "I got good news and bad news." He says, "The good news is there's baseball in the next world." He's all He says, "I'm so glad. I know all the teams. I follow all the sports. I have all of those statistics. I love to play. I love to watch." He says, "What's the bad news?" He says, "You're pitching tomorrow." So the good news is just in case you thought nobody noticed you, you were never honored by the shul, you were never selected as as Time magazine man of the year, woman of the year, right? You never got the kavod, you never got the proper honor. You're doing quietly things under the radar. Nobody ever noticed you. Don't worry. Everything you do is a ray of eternity. Everything you do is forever. And the bad news is everything you do is forever. And that's the good news and that's the bad news. So that if once a person realizes that everything that we do is really painted on a canvas of Yud Kay Vav Kay and it's forever. It's a ray of eternity because it was created by Hashem. Oh boy. So while we're alive, the mission of Pirkei Avot says "shall choose a mighty tove and all of this because I love a bar." Even though the deliciousness of the whole next world doesn't add up of a course route of this world doesn't add up to all the pleasures of this world, but a moment of tove and mighty tove and all of this world is worth everything. We hear in this world we have an opportunity in this world called a and many many of tove and mighty tove and all of this world says what's the what's the of this world says before we mentioned who's the who's the foolish person? He destroys what he has. Another definition who's the wise person? How do all of the person who sees the future? Now, doesn't mean that he's going to pick only stocks and he sees the consequences the immediate consequences of what he's saying, but he sees the ultimate future of what he's doing right now how it's going to play out in eternity. And the world says the goal of the world in says tove and mighty tove and all of this world good deeds and tove and all of this world means psychoanalysis. We're going to pound our chest and we're going to go into deep state of depression for the month of that's what the that's what means. But means let's say I'm typing the story of my life. I said let me write out my biography my autobiography and as I'm writing I'm doing two things. The one day I'm writing 15 pages. I'm going further and further. Then I look back and I said you know something now that I just understood what I understand now about my life I don't think I want to print this. And I don't want this being told about that person. That might hurt somebody if I print it this way. I understand life differently back there. I want to go back and edit. And I spend the next two days now editing. I can always edit. There's a possibility of editing. I can edit the past. So, I'm either doing two things. I'm doing which means I'm editing. I'm going back into the archives into the film or I'm doing tove and or I'm acting out and I'm acting I'm living life forward in an active way. Those are the two things. I put in your life I put in your hands life and death the Torah says in the end the end of I put in front of you today life and death. The Torah says what is life and death? You have you have you have your past, you have your future, the opportunity to turn death into life. Melach maymis machaya matzmiach yeshua. You can take things that happened in the past, you can do chuva on them, you can turn them into even into into mitzvot. If a person does chuva from ahavah. There's many many different examples. I may ask a couple of weeks ago in shul how come Miriam we're not allowed to speak lashon lashon hara about Miriam. We're not allowed to speak lashon hara. So how are we saying lashon hara about Miriam? Miriam we have a zecher of Miriam. We say lashon hara about Miriam all the time. Torah has to live up to its own standard. How can Torah say that Miriam got lashon got got got tzaraas for saying for saying lashon hara and now we're saying lashon hara about about Miriam? Remember remember every day with Miriam. Right? Good question. I asked my rebbe that years ago. And he said that Miriam would have wanted it. Miriam wanted it. Because she made that she did chuva and she says use me as the poster child of what could happen. And therefore every time somebody mentions and stops themselves from speaking lashon hara because of Miriam, so Miriam becomes the example and now she has a whole garden in the next world based upon the chuva that she did. She never did chuva and if she never says you know let me be the example, so then we would never have spoken about it. But she never she gained from that mistake. Kamti kein nafalti. I got up because I fell. There's a great opportunity when a person makes a mistake. It's not like I made a mistake and now I have to be sad for the rest of my life. Just the opposite. It's an opportunity to be mesukan. Eina Torah miskayemes ela b'me. If the person fell on it first. Once you trip on something then you can make something out of it. The Chofetz Chaim said that he was a that he was a held himself to be a baal kash. Not that he even violated the line. We can't even imagine such a thing. But he felt himself that he was pulling in that direction. He wouldn't have to become the Chofetz Chaim. He wouldn't have understood the taivas inside people's hearts to speak if he didn't feel at least there was some kind of a magnetic pull in that direction. In order to get away from it, he had to become the Chofetz Chaim. So, THERE'S A SHACHARIT OF CHURBAN MAIS AND churban maseh. So, if a person is in this world, he can edit something. And that's the beauty. That's That's the tragedy when a person is taken. But, that's the beauty of the survivors that we can do something. We can do amazing things while we're alive. We can take out those things that we don't want to be forever. And we can change them. We can learn from them. And we can take the things that we know that are going to line us up to 613 piece of advice the Torah gives us on how to be good and how to connect with other people. They have to The whole Now, all these statements in this context make perfect sense. They're not just nice phrases and aphorisms. We understand to talk about maseh. Person works all the week long trying to find a customer, somebody buy something. Finally, he makes some money and he gives tzedakahs and all the chasing the bus and all the phone calls and all the again, now suddenly got converted into helping somebody else out. Now, it became a mitzvah. It became life. All that is part of his living movie. What's gehenna? What's the next world? Reb Dessler says, if a person gets there, it's editing that takes place on the other side. The pay later plans are always much more expensive. When it gets edited against our will in the light of extreme truth on the other side. Of pure truth, we'll say. So, now we have enough information, we'll finish up to ask one question. And that question is the following. What is the difference between me I'm just using me as an example and Steven Spielberg? Yeah? I know some people think about $800 million, okay? But, you don't know what I have in my bank account. We don't know what he has in his bank account either, okay? What's the difference between me and Steven Spielberg, the famous Jewish movie maker? Interesting, Spielberg a spiel in Yiddish is a play maker. Like Spielberg is a play guy. And again, I I I it's a set up question cuz I didn't answer it right. What's wrong with seeing he and I in the following context? Let's say I go on a on a a vacation with my wife. I don't know we didn't get a chance to go away. What can I say? Not in the last couple of years anyway. Let's say we got away for a week and we went down to the to the Bahamas. I mean the Bahamas, okay? Spent the week over there and we had a little camcorder. Whatever those things remember you know and then we come back and if you say, "Hey, hey look hey we're so rested a good time yeah great time." And we invite over Motzei Shabbat our 10 best couple friends, you know, we're all going to sit together. We're going to have falafel, we're going to have all kinds of different we're pizza, we're going to oh spicy fries, you name it, you know? And we're all sitting together and while everybody's sitting enjoying suddenly press a button a screen comes down and says watch this guys, you know, we're now in the viewing theater over here. I press a couple of buttons and there is an hour an hour and a half film of our trip to the Bahamas. And like there it is, you know, there she is riding look take a look at the camel standing next to the camel look at the camel they forget about okay whoa whoa you know hey look at the waves in the back. Wave to the crowd okay wave you know wave wave and we start to move along in about 8 minutes everybody will have excused themselves and left the room, you know? As we're just showing this film of you know us waving and standing next to the you know the natives and the locals and you know and and riding on the camel and all the different things that we're doing and you know and standing from the hotel back and people just going to get up and start to you know excuse me we got to go. So where you going? I got to go home the babysitter said we should be home by you know, 9:30. We just arrived 5 minutes ago. Yeah, we had to have a very you know babysitter has the finals tomorrow you know. And says you know, I got to go home. I have to have an injection. I have to get my Mylanta." Mylanta? We we we have Mylanta. No, no, it's my Mylanta. Your Mylanta's not going to work. Let's go to you know, and they're going to be out they're going to be out out out the door. In in in the last the last 90% of the film, my wife and I are going to be sitting there watching by ourselves, and I can guarantee you one thing, these people will never come back to the theater again. We've alienated our best friends. Because they're always going to think anytime we come over we're going to drop the movie on them. We're going to start to show them home movies. Nothing more painful. Steven Spielberg makes a three and a half three and a half hour epic wow of a film a za, what can we say? You know, that that that that people are nauseous and having nightmares and they're vomiting and they're going crazy from it and their and their heads are spinning and and they're showing it with subtitles in in in hundreds of different countries and and with with also with people with with with dubbing and it makes hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and and people lining up they can't wait for the next one and they'll even watch the movie about how the movie was made with all the outtakes. And he's inviting strangers into living rooms all over the world and I've alienated my best friends. What's the difference between his movie and my movie? Hello, help me. We have all the information we need. And the answer is? Anyone want to venture a guess quick? Huh? They don't feel Why don't they feel like they're in my movie? Huh, why is it what's You know what the you know you know you know why I didn't do a good job? Cuz when I was making my movie, I wasn't I wasn't thinking about them. I didn't edit my film. My film was just a straight shoot an hour and a half of me of of of sound and fury signifying nothing. You know a good speech needs three things. Has a good beginning, a good end, and those two should be as close together as possible. I'm sorry, I'm in deep violation of it tonight. But this has no beginning. It has no end. If you don't know where you're going, doesn't matter how short it is or how long it is. But I promise you that Steve Spielberg is not walking around with a camera going like this. If I were to ask you what do you think he's doing right now? You know what he's doing right now? Listen to this. He's reading scripts. He's reading scripts. He's looking to see, oh, this one is good. This one is good. This one I don't see people are not going to like that. He You know they have to know who they are. He knows his audience. And when he finds something says this is going to excite, this is going to wow, this is going to possess, this is going to jazz my audience, then I'm going to bite into that one and I'm going to make those 365 scenes and I'm going to make each one I'm going to go to the bank. I'm going to tell them I want to make these scenes. I'm going to blow up a mountain. That wasn't good enough. We're going to build a mountain and blow it up again. We got to make a father and son scene. We got to make a husband and wife scene. We have to make a mother and daughter scene. We have to make a family scene. We have to make a community scene. We have to make all these scenes and we got to get it and then we and 95% of them are going to end up on the editing room floor. But from that 5% that is left over, he has a 3 and 1/2 hour MOVIE OF A WOW. Because he was thinking about his audience. Who's going to watch this and what experience are they going to get out of it? It says multiple times in Chumash that Abraham lifted up his eyes. He didn't turn on his camera until he gave himself permission to see what it was that he was going to take a movie of. He wasn't going to go, "Ooh, cool. Ooh, ooh, ooh. Ooh, look at that. Ooh, look at him. Look at her." Look at him and her. He wasn't walking around with his camera like that. He knew what he was going to look at. He knew what he was going to glance at. Or eat the apple. Look at the sweet. With kavana. See the blue. Reminds you of the sea. Reminds you of the sky. REMINDS YOU OF HASHEM. Should be so humble like you saw me. The camera's on. I'm making a movie. Right now, I'm making a movie. You're all cameo appearances in my mind. And I'm making a cameo appearance in your movie. But we're all making movies. And when a person is studying Torah, we had an invitation to come out and learn. What is a person doing? They're sitting in the Beit Midrash, they're learning Hilchos Shabbos, they're learning how TO MAKE A SHABBOS SCENE, TO MAKE IT RIGHT. You're learning Hilchos Brochos, you're learning how TO MAKE A BROCHA SCENE. You're learning Pirkei Avos, you're learning how to make a bein adam l'chaveiro scene. And if a person makes meaning out of every interaction, out of every scene that he has in his life, that's called arichas yamim, a long life. That's what we heard about Uriel before. When a person lives a life that's disconnected from Hakadosh Baruchu, disconnected from people, so there's a possibility during life to go to be mesaken to fix it up. But if a person doesn't, they could be left with 5 minutes worth of worthwhile stuff. But the rest of it has to be burned off with the with the with the with the intense lights of truth, which is painful. And actually, that's what the Mishna the Navi says. It says, umagid l'adam maasehu, which told a person what is his conversation. Meseches Chagiga, afilu sichas chulin bein ish l'ishto. Rashi says, kol maaseh porit lifnei Hashem, misaso, he says that this is what's detailed in front of a person at the end of his life. That's what we said before. Da mah l'maalah mimcha, know what's above from you. Know what's above, mimcha, from you. Ayin ro'ah, an eye that sees. Ozen shoma'as, an ear that hears. V'chol maasecha b'sefer nichatvin, all your deeds are written into a book. So we're making a movie. So, we ask before, what's my motivation? This motivation is called Yiras Shamayim. It means living with an an awareness that we're with Hakadosh Baruch Hu even though we don't see Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And the Torah comes along not to burden us and then not to make life difficult. We're living in physical bodies. We're in a hidden world. Our neshamos are hidden from us. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is hidden from us. But when we come aware of it and we search and we find Hakadosh Baruch Hu like Avraham Avinu did, so then all of a sudden we become lit up and we realize that we can make meaning out of every moment of life. Suddenly we we're searching, can the Torah help me make meaning out of my home life? Can it help me make meaning out of Shabbat? Can it help me make meaning out of davening? A person sitting sitting and saying, "Baruch Ata Hashem" 100 times a day, "Blessed are you." Peeling back the layers of creation saying, "I found you, Hakadosh Baruch Hu." 100 times a day. Those become tender scenes. How do they feel to a parent when your kid or your grandchild, your child comes running up and puts their arms around you and says, "Hello, I love you." How does that feel? 100 times a day when we put our arms around Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We send a little note to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And with davening, it's not just somebody there's something you talk you're drawing up one one long piece of spaghetti, but something the person is actually talking and and and and and and and and and and and feeling that they're talking to Hakadosh Baruch Hu Noach Pnei Hashem. Right? So, that when a person becomes aware of that and that's what we call Arichas Yamim. When a person does teshuvah and maasim tovim, it turns the whole life into meaning. Even the mistakes that we made now suddenly become meaningful. So, that's what the Torah is about, teaching us how we can each and every one of us, not that there's one Academy Award winner or one Obi, one gets the off-Broadway award, but each one of us is has the possibility of making a movie. The Torah is challenging us, "Uvacharta Bachayim." Choose life. Choose life means that we have the ability and we have the challenge in front of us to try to make a movie that will make us into Academy Award winners because we know the audience that we're going to be playing in front of. Who's the audience? The audience is Avraham Avinu and Yakov Avinu and your Bubby and your Zaidy, and your children, and your grandchildren will be watching that movie. will be watching that movie. The Sanhedrin Hagadol will be watching that movie. The Shiv'im Z'keinim will be watching that movie. Melech will be watching that movie. David Hamelech will be watching that movie. Wow, right? That's something that that that that that that that that's that that should steer that should stir us into into into a a stage of of awe and fright about what we have in front of us. So, every time every moment of life Yaffa Sha'ashu'a Shel Torah Shel Ma'asim Tovim Ba'Olam Hazeh, and that's how we can B'ezrat Hashem grab onto an academy and award-winning life that we have the opportunity to live over here. Thank you very much, everybody.