☎️ Thu Dec 26 | 9 PM ET | Rabbi Shais Taub LIVE call-in show

Welcome to our live calling show and I'm not going to be playing the music I had theme music which we were using I'm not going to use the theme music because um I'm going to teach you a Hala you may or may not be aware of I'm not supposed to listen to music this year because unfortunately I am in morning my father passed away um about a week week and a half ago I just got up from Shiva from the traditional seven days of morning a couple days ago so I am not listening to music right now uh Acappella is okay where we sit and we sing with each other is okay um but no concerts no weddings it's a shame because I just love going to weddings and I love dancing it's one of my favorite things do I'm going to have to miss out on that anyone who knows me knows I'm being sarcastic okay um I'm sorry I'm a little bit late starting the live stream I'm going to tell you exactly why I am late I'm late because uh I have to get up super early what for me is super early every day now because I lead the prayers three times a day and the minion across the street well there's a 6:30 shakas and there's a 7:30 so 6:30 the only way I would be able to lead the prayers at 6:30 a.m. is if I would stay up all night um so I do the 7:30 but even to do the 7:30 is super super early for me which means I can't be such a night owl as I am used to being and therefore before we went on the live stream I wanted to finish rambam what does that mean finish rambam um R my manes specifically his work the Misha or yaka the volume compendium of all of the Halas of the oral tradition um we go through the entirety of ram Misha in a year cycle a little bit less than a year by studying three chapters a day so that can take a long time I didn't want to put it off until after the live stream because I knew I would be too tired and I'd be reading every single Hala five times and fall asleep in the middle which has happened to me many times and then wake up in the morning and be like oh no I have to make up one and a half chapters of ramom so I finished ramom first sorry I know I was supposed to I said I was supposed to start at 9:00 p.m. but I figured most people watch the replay anyway uh I think there are 27 people on right now with us right now so thank you for those who are with us live and I'm assuming that as the evening goes on more and more people will join us oh thank you from M David I bet you that's a relative of mine is that Mishi who did that we love you heart $10 yeah I bet you that's Mishi okay um it's very sweet by the way someone wrote my deepest condolences to you and your family for your father thank you so much um so speaking of uh my father so I have a friend which that itself you want to get to know me is that what what's the purpose of this call-in show is this because you want to hear me do Dr Laura you guys know who Dr Laura is do you is that before your time because you want me to do uh what what else can I call it you want me to do uh what's his name that southern guy doesn't like credit cards what's his name the southern guy doesn't like credit cards the southern guy doesn't like credit cards what's his name come on somebody what's his name the southern guy who doesn't like credit cards Dave Ramsey you want me that's what that's what you want you want Dave Ramsey okay or is this sort of like our hangout where you get to know me okay so I I'm not sure but for me I'm using it as an opportunity to be a little bit more unmasked not that I generally uh mask a lot when I create content generally I try to be as authentic as possible but Kim K just texted me Ramsey okay well Kim I'm about to mention you I'm about to mention you or did I already mention you because I said I have a friend and then I'm about to mention Kim K and I was then I paused and I said you guys want to get to know me because I don't really have friends jfyi and I don't mean that in a pugnacious way I'm not daring you to become my friend actually I would like you to not be my friend um I don't socialize well and it's stressful for me to socialize so I don't really have friends but there are few people in the world who if I were to have friends these people would be the closest thing to it and one of them is this guy Kim and Kim has a lot of friends he's a social guy and which is interesting to me but because he's also very very sensitive but he also has the outgoing social streak to him anyway so Kim came to the Shiva as is customary and he brought me a gift as is not customary but he brought me a cute little gift um so I'm going to I'm going to share with you the gift that Kim brought me and this is not a custom you're not really supposed to bring gifts out of Shiva house but he brought me this what is this this well this is a picture of buddy hacket who is Buddy hacket you may ask well he was a Jewish comedian well that's redundant Jewish comedian right okay but this is Buddy Hackett now why did Kim con bring me a picture of Buddy hack and it looks like by the way it's autographed Kim con has two um pathological qualities one is he's somewhat of a hoarder of marginally valuable uh Nostalgia meaning not utter garbage so you couldn't really justify throwing it away like actually has value to it so that's one of his quirks and the other thing is this like sort of codependent giftgiving um Obsession so what happens is with if you hang out with him you end up getting cool stuff and by the way every single time you watch me and my Studio you are benefiting from those two qualities of Kim K because those two vintage cidic albums on the wall over there where do you think I got that I got the from Kim who probably found it at some estate sale or some weird offbeat vinyl store somewhere or whatever okay at any rate and I'm sure he's hearing all of this right now and enjoying um so Kim brought me this picture of buddy hacket why did hyim bring me a picture of buddy hacket so um because hyim knows that my father told me a joke that he heard from Buddy Hackett now he did not hear it live in person there are some famous comedians that my father actually saw and maybe at some point I'll reveal to you some of that but this part particular buddy hacka joke my father saw on The Tonight Show with a fellow named Johnny Carson and actually Googled it years ago and I found the clip of it of Buddy hacket on The Tonight Show telling this joke but here's the joke this is the joke that I told uh Kim that my father told me and yeah it's maybe a little bit not 100% the most rinic joke but this is our uh we're hanging out here we're just being just being ourselves okay I made a br earlier okay so K are you with us by the way or did I embarrass you by speaking to uh honestly you with us still yeah yeah yeah cuz you text me autographed yes it is autographed okay I'm still with us okay so here's here's the story The Joke the Buddy hacker joke joke a city a a city fella goes hunting goes duck hunting in the country and he shoots a duck and the duck falls down and um it falls behind the fence so the city fellow gets up and walks over to the fence and climbs over the fence to go get the the duck that he just shot and as he climbs over the fence he hears somebody saying where do you think you're going and he looks up and he sees a farmer and the farmer says to him you're on my land he says well I'm just coming over here for a second to grab this duck that I shot he says but the the duck fell on my land so that means I get to keep the duck he says well but I shot the duck and the the the the farmer says yeah but the duck landed on my side of the fence he says but the city guy says but I but I shot the duck so so the farmer says to the city guy well you know in these parts how we settle a dispute like this now we settle dispute like this and these parts are are custom is um we take turns kicking each other where it counts as hard as we possibly can and the last man left standing gets to uh keep the duck so the the city fellow doesn't want to back down he says okay if that's how things are settled around here then uh by all means okay let's do it so the farmer says okay brace yourself get ready City guy says okay I'm ready go ahead the farmer gets a running start you know backs up a few Paces gets a running comes running up and like you know like a NFL punter just Kicks full force where it counts and the city guy absorbs this massive kick and uh he falls on the ground and he's coughing and he's sputtering and his eyes are watering and he's rolling around and he's groaning and uh for a few minutes till F finally gathers strength and he pulls himself up and he stands up on his feet and the city guy says to the farmer he says okay now it's my turn now you get ready farmer looks at the city guy and says Nah you could keep the duck that's the joke so Kim then also included with the Buddy hacket autographed picture look what he gave me the duck the duck so why do I tell that story and my father told me a lot of jokes and a lot of stories without not necessarily an editorial or commentary he didn't exactly explain the depth behind it he just kind of told it to me so a lot of times I'm not sure if I attributed meaning to his jokes or if I successfully deduced the implied meaning or the meaning meaning that he had in mind uh but the way that I often use this story I shouldn't say often it doesn't come up that often but the the way that I have context within which I've told this story is sometimes there will be a setting where there generally men I think this is a uniquely genderized issue of men at least in this society and they will get together and sometimes we'll have something called a faan I mentioned a faan earlier faban is a yish word for a gathering so a bunch of guys will get together and unfortunately quite often it it's pretty formulaic and there's not a real genuine Spirit of bonding it's I'm not saying this is all always the way that it is I'm just saying all too often it's sort of uh superficial and once in a while somebody will want to get real and share in a in an authentic way but what will what will happen very often is is that the group will sense that they have a sucker meaning to say that there's one fow who's ready to be vulnerable and they will sort of imply in an unspoken way that they're ready to match his vulnerability if he'll only go first but then in reality that's not what happens what happens is the one guy gets vulnerable everybody else sits there and hears his private shame and then and they don't reciprocate they just get to find out gossip about this guy and then continue talking about cars and sports and other superficial things and this one guy just bared his soul or a little bit of his soul and you know he's the only sucker who did it so I'll sometimes tell the Buddy hacket joke and say it's like the farmer telling the city fella you go first and we'll go back and forth we'll trade off but in the end after the city guy gets kicked then the farmer tells him you know what I'm finished with the game you know that that that's all I need I don't need to take my turn you you could keep the duck in other words you win you get to be the vulnerable one and the rest of us will continue in our complacency so that's the context within which I I've shared that story I'm sure that's how I shared it with Kim and that's why he brought me the Buddy hacket autograph picture and the rber ducky okay before we get to our first caller I want to do two things first of all I want to say that I think my cell phone is going to run out of battery so I'm going to plug it in but here's the deal I have to plug we don't have such a professional setup here when we have the swards house by the way we have an entire uh basement which will just be dedicated to video production and we're going to have a real professional setup oh jfyi if you would like to make an endof thee donation please please do so at soulwords dorg donate we are trying to finish off construction on the house God willing I would like to get it open for a soft launch by February so but we need money to finish off and to pay the contractors so soulwords dorgon again soulwords dorgon if it's a really big amount of money like $100,000 or something and you don't want to pay credit card processing you could wire it to me um if you're the kind of guy who can donate $100,000 in one shot I'm sure you can get my phone number okay but for everyone else soulwords dorg donate okay so we don't have such a professional setup I have to plug in my phone I'm actually gonna be plugging it in from a wire that's hanging from the ceiling I hope it's not going to swing in front of your face hold on one second okay all right that worked okay all right okay that worked okay and now the second thing the second thing that I want to do this is very daring I hope this is going to work I pray this is going to work let's see okay yeah it worked all right so I can't do everything at once um yeah hold on uh we'd like to extend special thanks to mendal Simon and 9 by9 tech for powering this call-in show and making it possible for us to connect with our amazing audience 9 by9 Tech offers a One-Stop service for all your communication needs along with personalized Tech Solutions catered specifically towards your business visit 9x9 tech.com today that's 9x9 Tech I'm going to spell out the X I think I'm going to spell the tech te e c e te 9x9 tech.com thank you Mandall and the team for your incredible support okay that was um for me that was a small victory I was I don't have help over here in the studio so I was playing around with that little card for a long time how was that was good you are you impressed that I pulled that off yes no okay we've got calls thank you you thr okay we've got calls we've got calls uh um no yes topic okay well doesn't matter the topic because he's gonna come on and tell us the topic okay so this is not Kim con correct or maybe it is who knows okay Kim welcome to the show thank you Rabbi great to be here okay you don't sound like H cone okay okay fine so you're a different's a common name okay what would you like to talk about uh great question first of all thanks for having me on I appreciate it I appreciate everything you do thank you um yeah uh so my question relates to something I've heard you speak about in the past uh with regards to the 12 steps of recovery um and my question is um you've mentioned that um as a person reaches their fourth step or if a person does a thorough and honest fourth step inventory and sorry to any of the listeners who are not familiar with the work um I appreciate you bearing with me in my question um but um a person if a person does a thorough and honest for step it will likely bring them closer um to the religion of their father um and my question is is someone who was raised in a traditionally Orthodox and from household um I've definitely deviated a little bit or maybe a lot of bit um from the Traditions that I was raised with and a result of that is being filled with a lot of Shame and guilt MH and um wondering if or rather what you would suggest as a method of coping with that shame and guilt between steps one and four um so that when I reach step four and do that thorough and honest inventory and God willing you know develop a closer relationship with the religion of my father what would you suggest in the interim okay so as you said there's a lot of inside baseball over here there are terms that not everyone's going to be familiar with but I think that's fine because a lot of the stuff is self-explanatory and I will try to fill in a little bit a little bit of it for those who are unfamiliar um there are two two things here that I'm hearing from you I love this question uh I love it because it's relevant meaning you're actually asking for yourself it's not just theoretical and uh it's also uh it's a very common question it's very common I'm sure you know that it's common but there are many other people who have the same question so I know that this will benefit many people who are listening first of all I want to clarify you mentioned that I said or you've heard me say that after your fourth step there should be some maybe call it re normalization of religious observance okay I want to just clarify now maybe you meant this and you just didn't say it as explicitly as I would have liked you to have said it or maybe you didn't even catch it when I said it because I didn't say it as explicitly as I would have liked to have said it and that is the following what have I said and I and I do stand by this and I and I admit that I've said this many many times and I and I still stand by saying it someone who is raised religious let's back up a second the 12-step model it is essential and inherent to the 12-step model that one needs a relationship with a higher power because the 12 steps are non sectarian they do not dictate who that higher power is or what theology one is to believe in they stay out of your religion they just tell you you need to have higher power okay but when someone was raised with a belief in God when someone was raised religious very often when they come into the rooms of recovery they come in already with a lot of baggage surrounding the idea of God to the extent that I think just my humble little opinion here someone who comes from an atheistic background will find it much easier to find a higher power than someone who comes from a traumatic religious upbringing the the person who comes from an atheistic background you might think that that constitutes a pretty formidable challenge but it's not because by the time someone comes into the rooms of recovery they're pretty humble uh they're they're they're ready to entertain some new ideas and and I haven't found that it is a real insurmountable obstacle however in contrast somebody who comes from a religious background that is fraught with a lot of trauma it can be quite difficult to find that relationship with their higher power and that is why I often say and still stand by saying that if you come from a religious background and you are finding it difficult to forget about return to that religion but even entertain any notion of a higher power because of the associations that the whole God concept has for you then it is absolutely essential that when you do your fourth step which is an inventory but a a large part of the inventory is the resentments list that you make sure that you include God and religion and religious leaders and everything else that has any uh negative association for you you put that in your resentment list and you work through it just like every other resentment that you are going to work through in that in that uh in that inventory so just to clarify I'm not sure if that's what you meant or um if it wasn't as clear as it could have been but what I said about the power of the fourth step particularly with people who are coming from a background of religious trauma is please by all means include all of the religious trauma whether it's God himself or the Torah or or M raenu or anything anything if you have a resentment if you feel a resentment do not be so Pious and holy to be afraid to put it on your resentment list because I promise you you're not doing any favors to yourself or to the god of Israel by shying away from putting it on your resentment list I promise you if you put it on your resentment list I mean if it's genuine if don't put it on your resentment list just to be a tough guy but you know to try to be edgy but if you really have a resentment put it on your resentment list work through it in the way that the fourth step works with the columns and I'm not going to get into that here because that's really inside baseball but by all means work through it and by the time you finish working through that resentment you will find that a large degree of the resistance the internal resistance which was really self- protection it was you protecting yourself from toxicity and from abuse a lot of that will have been removed and you will have the freedom to re-engage with God in a way that is safe so I just want to clarify did you understand that that was the context within which I had mentioned the fourth step not entirely but now that you you've reminded me I'm reminded thank you okay great um since you mentioned the fourth step like just do the fourth step and you're going to have this massive shift uh which I'm saying is not exactly true what I was saying is if you have religious trauma please please please include that in your resentments but since you mentioned a step that has this sort of uh Epiphany tied into it then I would say the ninth step is like that for many many people it's not a coincidence that that's where in the big book it talks about the promises the ninth step promises will'll be amazed if we're painstaking about this phase where development will be amaz before we're halfway through right so that when the ninth step is the amends when you actually and it's terrifying it's terrifying the AMS are terrifying when you actually go and you confront people and you try to start repairing relationships that can have an amazingly healing effect where all of a sudden all the obstacles are just removed and the light just starts shining in so if there's a step that has that kind of massive shift associated with with it I would say it's nine but regarding uh step four yeah if you have religious trauma use the fourth step to work through it the fourth step is your tool for working through it okay now the other point that you raised was how do you deal with religious shame and guilt while you're still not as observant as it sounds like you yourself may even wish you were okay so let's talk about that so first of all um how do we know that there's a problem with religious shame and guilt maybe it's not problematic maybe it's good maybe it'll help you I'm I'm asking this in Earnest why am I asking it in Earnest because there are many people if not a majority of people who actually believe well I shouldn't say majority of people a majority of religious people who actually believe that religious shame and religious guilt will actually make people more more moral okay so I really have no time or patience or energy for proving my point so I'm going to make my point in a very sloppy lazy way in which case you have no I mean you're never bound you're You're Never Bound By any agreement to um believe anything I say but especially here I'm not going to prove this to anybody so if you want to just completely reject it by all means completely reject it but I'm just going to tell you what I believe and that is um religious shame and guilt does not make people more moral it is demonstrably the greatest factor in people acting out in morally repugnant ways that they themselves are appalled with and it initiates a guilt cycle which actually you see the Tanya map behind me so in chapter 26 of Tanya the Alba actually describes this pretty vividly he says sometimes the Yahara comes to you in a cloak of piy and ask it asks you to feel guilt about your moral failings but it's only doing so to make you feel pain emotional pain which then you'll try to numb through Indulgence and then you'll have something to really feel guilty about and then of course you'll try to numb the emotional pain with even greater Indulgence in even even lower uh forms of acting out because of course you're in Greater pain and you have an even lower opinion of yourself and it becomes this vicious cycle so chapter 26 of Tanya says pretty clearly how dangerous guilt religious guilt can be and what is his Solution by the way in chapter 26 of Tanya he says set a time set an appointment set an appointment which uh you could call that your 10th step inventory after you do your fourth step people have different opinions whether you do that once in a lifetime or or not but certainly a 10th step is a spot check inventory and uh to do it on a daily basis especially at your bedtime schma is a is a good time to do it so yeah chapter 26 of Tanya says make an inventory daily inventory have an appointment have a certain time and a place that is marked off for cleaning up your deficiencies but the rest of your day don't think about it because it's not Pious it's not cute it's not productive you're not helping anyone this is not what God wants this is just you can call it your disease you can call it the atah but it's a a negative Force coming to you in a cloak of piety trying to undermine your recovery SL Tashua process so my advice to you would be don't touch it don't look at it ignore it like you would a voice that tells you that the solution right now is to pick up just like a voice would come to you right now and say I know it'll make you feel better pick up your drug of choice and now hopefully at this point of sobriety you'd be able to say oh that voice is not helpful it's not going to do listening to that voice is not going to do anything I'm going to be happy I listen to and the same thing with religious guilt completely ignore it it's not coming from a healthy place it's not keep doing your step work speed up by the way in Aran they used to pound out the steps in a day okay so really find a sponsor who will do the step work with you quickly get through that fourth step and you know what I I sense in your voice and in your words that you're yearning to return to yish kite and you will and you'll see how your recovery and your tsha process this not only dovetail But ultimately you'll see how it's one thing um does that help you what I just said yes tremendously thank you okay amazing thank you for uh your vulnerability you can keep the duck by the way you heard that joke so I would just want to make a commentary so um in a 12-step meeting everybody shares and and there's nobody who ends up being the sucker and sometimes in our religious life we don't find that level of honesty and vulnerability and we lament that so what I would like to encourage you to do is bring the honesty and the vulnerability of the rooms to your faith community you're going to say but I'm not such a strong member of my faith community I know not yet but you will will be you will be in time and one of the things you can do is bring the lessons of recovery to your faith community and remember that the original version of the 12th step actually said to carry this message to others not to other alcoholics Bill W originally wanted to bring the message of the spiritual awakening to everybody not just to alcoholics but then they told him you know manage your expectations let's let's focus you know just pick a niche and bring the message to alcoholics but originally the 12th step was to bring uh to to bring the message of recovery which is really just the message of Spiritual Awakening to everybody so you should have a lot of success in that okay thank you very much yeah my pleasure all right I have a lot more to say about that but we have another caller waiting I think we have uh lee is waiting so you should all can you pull up our next caller Lee hello hi there uh first thank you for taking my call yeah um and thank you for the good work you do this is my first time calling in um to a show um uh and some of your short videos you put on have given me great comfort um and I just wanted to call in just to discuss the situation that I'm dealing with at the moment that's very heavy yeah with me um um do you want me to go through it yeah I mean yeah quickly yeah tell us the gist of the situation the gist of it is I've got a family member who lives with me who's um in deep depression um and who's drinking very heavily and who's rejecting all support and who's in a very dark place and I'm trying to figure out a way of of reaching them on some of your clips about addiction and and alcohol being the solution and the problem being something deeper about the self and the ego really resonated with me um but he's in a very dark place and I'm trying to bring the family in and I was just I was just going to seek some guidance on on how to approach you know somebody that's like a rock somebody that's shut themselves in in a way just to kind of yeah any it's a very difficult place to be absolutely okay I'm going to mute you for a second because your connection's not so great and I don't want want people to hear the crackling and popping and everything hold on okay so I just muted it um but let me speak to that and if you're still with us you could stay on the line uh and I might bring up your uh volume in a minute but let me just speak to this so first of all thank you for your vulnerability I I'm just amazed Always by the The Bravery and the vulnerability of the callers on this show we have such high quality callers you can hear the people who are calling in these are intelligent thoughtful people people it takes a lot to to share like this in this type of environment so let's let's speak about this first of all standard disclaimers apply I'm not an addiction counselor I'm not a therapist I'm not a clinician of any type I do not have any type of credentials or degree I'm a rabbi okay I'm just a Rabbi happen to be a rabbi who has hung around addiction uh and I know a little bit about it but really really really I'm not an expert I'm not an expert I'm not an expert I'm not an expert I'm not an expert do not rely on anything I say okay I'm putting it out there just as food for thought but really don't don't relying me this is just food for thought one of the most frustrating situations in the world is loving someone who is in the throws of addiction because it is so hard if not impossible to reach them it's almost like until the addiction is ready to loosen its grip this person is just not going to be able to hear you and we try everything we try bargaining and we try threats and we try more love and we try more toughness and we try uh calling in the experts and we call in the law and we try throwing money at it then we try everything everything and I'm not saying that nothing works but what I will say is I'm not sure anything works until this Magic Window opens up and I don't think we have a button that we can push that makes that magic window open up I think there's a moment and it's not once in a lifetime I think there are many times that it happens where the addict hits bottom and they are reasonable for a moment sometimes for a very fleeting moment but when that window's not open it's almost like there's nothing you can say or do so here's what I often tell people who call me with a similar call as yours and I've probably had this experience hundreds of times where someone will call up it's interesting by the way you say that your your uh loved one I'm not sure if you mentioned the relationship it doesn't matter uh is is in is is drinking so I I don't know this is purely anecdotal this is just my personal experience but in the hundreds of phone calls that I've had about specifically about alcohol about drinking I would say 95% were from friends and family like it's almost like maybe a few times somebody called me up and said I'm drinking too much I'm worried about it yeah interesting I've had a lot of people call me up and say they were sex addicts that I get a lot that it's almost like 5050 the addict or the addict spouse regarding uh sex addiction but with alcohol alcohol is like 95% if not more friends and family calling me with the problem and and maybe 5% of the time if not less the person self-identifying as the alcoholic so what does that tell me again this is purely anecdotal but it tells me that there's a lot of self-deception and it reinforces what I was saying before that that window of honesty and willingness and openness is usually closed it's usually closed so then what do I tell people who call me with with this type of call well you know one thing I could do I want to be careful how I say this um I want to be careful how I say it and yet I know that no matter how I say this people who want to take it the wrong way are going to take it the wrong way so I'm just going to say it without filter and I hope that I'm not socially punished for being too blunt and honest if I wanted to well if I had no conscience and no Scruples and I wanted to cash in on people's desperation what I would do is tell people give me $10,000 $220,000 I me could name a price it wouldn't matter you know people mortgage their houses for this stuff I could say give me $50,000 and I'll come down and I'll talk to your loved one um now why don't I do that because like I just said I don't believe that at least I don't think I can say anything to someone who's not ready I don't think I can say anything to someone who's not ready so but but people are so desperate they're going to pay anything on that hope on that lottery ticket on that lottery ticket that maybe the the alcoholic will will will hear them um so let me tell you what you can do without spending 10 $10,000 you can do this for free um any self-respecting Oldtimer in AA will pay a 12 step call and they'll come down and they will not try to get the alcoholic to stop drinking they will just talk about their own drinking and they'll leave and if the alcoholic wants to pursue that as a solution they will and if they still need to continue suffering before they're ready to pursue the solution then that's what's going to happen but probably the most effective um if you want to pursue this course of action the most effective conversation that you could facilitate would be to get an oldtime in AA to come down and I'm telling you right now they're not going to force this person to go into treatment they're not going to schlep them even to an a AA meeting they're just going to come down and talk about their own story and allow your loved one to identify or not identify to relate or not relate with what they just heard all right but then let's say they don't relate to it let's say they just decide well that's not me you don't understand my story is different which is the typical answer you know you don't understand my story is different so now what are you going to do now what are you going to do when I've had this conversation and as I said I've had this conversation hundreds of times what I will often say to friends and family of an alcoholic is answer please the following question I'm assuming that your life is on hold right now because you are dealing with absolute Insanity so the following question please answer honestly if there were a way for you to regain your sanity regardless of whether or not your loved one gets well would you be interested in hearing how that might be done that's the question that I ask if you would you be interested in regaining your sanity regardless of whether or not your loved one gets well now I'm going to ask people out in YouTube land I let's say I've had this conversation 300 times I'm just making up a number but it's probably around that number what percentage of the time do people say yes I'm interested in that tell me how to regain my sanity okay you want to guess all right so I'll tell you less than 10% less than 10% and I'm pointing this out because codependency is an addiction as well in fact in some ways codependency is a more Insidious addiction than addiction itself because the person whose addiction is to drugs and or alcohol it's pretty obvious what they're doing is killing themselves the person who's addicted to saving the addict which we call codependency it's so Insidious because it looks like you're doing something Noble and you can't stop you feel you have a moral obligation to continue with the insanity so less than 10% I would guess anecdotally tell me they're even interested in this concept of regaining their own sanity most will tell me no I'm not interested in that not interested no no and if I'll push the issue and be like well why wouldn't you want to regain your sanity I mean the person may or may not get well if I push the issue and times when I've pushed the issue the answer is usually something to the effect of like I don't have a right to be sane while my loved one is suffering or it wouldn't feel right it wouldn't feel appropriate to be sane to have Serenity to have my life back while my loved one is still suffering so it's kind of amazing what a grip the addiction has not just on the identified patient but on the entire family and and just like I said the addict isn't ready to stop until they're ready to stop the codependent is not ready to stop until they're ready to stop and what does it mean the codependent is ready to stop well just like the addict is ready to stop when you're sick of when you're sick and tired of being sick and tired then you stop so when the codependent says I can't do this anymore I've reached the end of my rope I can't do this anymore I still love this person I'm still going to do what I can to be compassionate toward this person but I need to get my life back that's called being sick and tired of being sick and tired then recovery can happen for the codependent and that's what I want to suggest to you I want to suggest to you this is counterintuitive and I know that you may not be able to accept this this is not what you want to hear but what I want to suggest to you is the following the higher priority right now is not your loved ones s sobriety but your sobriety your sobriety you're going to say to me my sobriety I'm not the one drinking no but you're emotionally drunk if you are in this orbit of the insanity of addiction then you are also drunk you are drunk on the illusion of Godlike power that we think that we can exercise over our loved one and there are programs such as alanon which is for the friends and family of the alcoholic just like alcoholic synonymous is for the alcoholic so then there's alanon for their friends and family and they follow the exact same 12 steps and they pursue the exact same spiritual solution and what I have found is that when the friends and the family of the alcoholic pursue their own recovery in a parallel program such as alanon and they become sane and they get their life back then it may not make the alcoholic get sober but nothing can make the alcoholic get sober what it does do is it removes a lot of the insanity that you didn't realize was feedback Insanity you know there's that core of insanity and then there's the feedback of insanity bouncing off of itself the Ricochet effect so to speak and when the people in the orbit of the alcoholic become sober emotionally sober through a program such as alanon then at least a lot of that Ricochet effect is going to be minimized and there's not the extra uh debris field so to speak of The Echoes of insane Behavior you sort of just contain the insanity to one place and you're not playing off it anymore you're not exacerbating it you're not amplifying it through your own unhealthy reactions so my suggestion to you would be that you and everyone in the family should go to a program like alanon and have a spiritual awakening and it may or may not help your loved one get sober it definitely will not make it harder for them to get sober if anything it will increase the likelihood of they're getting sober but at the very least it will make the home less of a crazy place right now the home is being held hostage the whole home is under a dark cloud so if you pursue your recovery in a program such as alanon then the home becomes a healthier place and it increases the likelihood or the availability of something positive happening for your loved one although it's certainly not a guaranteed outcome because again we do not control people okay I don't know if you're still with me I'm just going to turn up the volume and see if you're still with me over here but uh lee you still with me yes yes okay does anything I'm saying thank you for hanging in there with me does anything I'm saying resonate with you as possibly being true or applicable uh a lot of it is true particularly the feedback bit um and um I have not thought about the codependency a bit like that I hope my call isn't too bad hopefully the quality is better no it's fine it's it's static that's why I muted it before it's fine but I just want to check in with you that you understood my message and what I'm suggesting to you is the the the wisest course of action in my estimation right now at this point you get you get what I'm saying no no absolutely I get what you're saying and both points I made the not that which is you know get the Oldtimer from AA to come in which is useful and get a program for the family for myself um and my wider family to have our own yeah yes you got it you heard me loud and clear okay so God willing it should be healing in your family and your loved one should uh should find healing but you know at the end of the day we're not in control we can only do what we can do and God is in control okay that was really I really thank you for that call that was perfect thank Youk uff thank you thank you that was really important stuff okay fine we have Ruby on the line I'm just going to keep going from call to call because we have a queue here we have people waiting so let's get Ruby up on the line you should all tell me when he I'm here hey there how you doing uh doing well long time listener first one caller thanks for taking me we've been on the air long enough I guess now where we get to where people get to say that this is our sixth show by the way right so okay anyways what's up okay so yeah so I've um in recent times I've started to go through like my own healing Journey working with therapists trying to heal some Old Wounds and one of the things that I'm learning about is the value of like accepting the full spectrum of human emotion and there's kind of like these Unwritten rules that we all abide by that sadness and anger are undesirable when someone's sad we want to cheer them up when someone's angry you know it's a tantrum we got to Cal them down and especially with kids and then what I'm learning is that like when a child is in an environment like this um with patterns on a constant on a constant basis you know this can create trauma where they're like repressing their emotions and now as an adult I'm kind of like re learning a lot of this about how to um how to accept the value of anger and the value of grief um and like listen to what these emotions are telling me and not run away from them and the problem that I'm having is like I'm having trouble reconciling this with Concepts that I've learned in Judaism where it sounds like Judaism has strong opinions um that some emotions are are very undesirable like anger CA is called like serving idols and obus like really problematic and you know my son comes home and he has a lot of Pride because something sad happens and he didn't cry and I'm like the sounds really bad because like for me you know uh when when a child is sad or he's grieving or angry like I I don't want to change any like I'm not looking to fix it I'm looking to like be there with him and we were like reading the section in the in the the Weiss Edition it's like a t book for kids there's like a little blurb it's called keep it in and I'm quoting it says come and tell us it's best not not to speak when you're angry as doing so will make you feel even angrier and I'm just that I haven't had that experience at all in my life every time I've been very emotionally vulnerable especially in my relationship with my wife it's always been positive even if these are very difficult things and like allowing space for us to be angry to be sad um and using that as a tool in a therapeutic fense so like heal Old Wounds so I have a couple of my own theories about how to reconcile this but I wanted to ask about it um uh from someone like who has who has kind of feed in both worlds but also you know has like expertise and authority and like ala like how do I reconcile these what seems to be a contradiction of like of like emotional repression versus emotional validation especially when I see or sorry emotional expression especially when I see so much positivity for myself yeah okay um I'm gonna rephrase your question not because I don't think you expressed yourself eloquently but because it was a little bit I'm not sure everyone listening well I don't know and this this the the the crowd that we attract maybe everyone followed it but I I I'm I'm thinking maybe some people weren't following exactly because uh you know it there's some prerequisite knowledge there so let me just dumb it down a few notches and say it in a very simple way you're asking like this you have found personally so you know you're reporting your personal experience which you can't deny that learning how to express your feelings has been an important part of achieving emotional health and yet it seems to you that there are many messages within Torah that encourage what we would call emotional repression stifling your feeling stuffing it and you're trying to a you're trying to reconcile that and B um as a father it sounds like maybe there's a little bit of a question here as far as parenting how to how to teach this uh especially when there's this seemingly irreconcilable contradiction so do you agree with I mean am I adequately rephrasing paraphrasing your your question yeah yeah that's totally fa okay fine so so interesting I I want to just take except with one thing that you said which is that you said to me that I have a foot in both worlds I want to make something clear and I said it before but I'm going to say it again I am not trained in any modality of therapy um not only am I not trained in it I've never even read really I mean I shouldn't say never read my father me rest in peace was a psychologist and as a kid I was exposed to a lot of his ideas and I was exposed at a young age to some some therapeutic approaches certainly not an exhaustive type of not a systemized nor exhaustive uh exposure to therapeutic approaches so I and I I I have not read a psychology book in probably 20 years so I just want to make very very clear I may say I probably will say a lot of ignorant things as far as being up toate on certainly modern modalities of therapy which of which I'm certainly ignorant of because I just haven't kept up with it and not only I'm not an expert now I was never an expert so I just want to make sure that this disclaimer comes across really really really loud and clear um for whatever it's worth I think it's just for for the sake of um honesty that I want to convey that um so I I I guess where I'm coming from is I'm not really trying to reconcile torah's approach with a modern therapeutic approach a because I don't have that problem I'm not it's not like I'm immersed in that world where we like I feel that tension and I want to make that reconciliation happen but B um I'm not equipped to do so I'm really not equipped and I know people think that I'm like trying to play humble and pretend to be ignorant I'm not pretending to be ignorant I really really really really really am ignorant um so everything I'm saying really is coming from one world it's coming from the world of Torah but specifically and this is my bias and this is my strength it's coming from and even more narrowly okay so my understanding of emotional health and the inner workings of the psyche are pretty consistently and entirely based onab teachings I just wanted to clarify that okay so having said all that my disclaimer is probably be longer than my answer itself there's a say for ha y the re compiled a book called ha y I didn't have I didn't uh put this on my desk because I was going to quote it I actually it's one of the few spotm that I always have on my desk so there's a entry from hay Y which is almost from my birthday T fans you know when my birthday is who knows I'm going to give kanuka Gil to anyone who knows my birthday who who's not related to me no relatives anyone knows my birthday I'll give you kanuka guilt if you know my birthday anyone write it in the chat Hebrew birthday Hebrew birthday anyone know it in 10 seconds you have 10 seconds to answer it what's my Hebrew birthday 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 zero okay K alen the 25st day of the month of s that's my birthday at any rate okay so this is the hay from kof he s the 25th day of seven okay where is it aha okay so here we go I mentioned kanuka gelt by the way before I forget I have Kaneka gelt here I'm not going to give this to any this is more of a prop um well I am going to give it to people I'm going to give it to my kids I'm not going to give it to you but I'm I want to talk about kanuka G before we finish tonight that's why I have this money here um okay let me read from all right so it says [Music] here a worry in a man's heart you should quash it that's how I'll translate it and that's actually a verse or part of a verse from Mishay from um Proverbs King Solomon's Proverbs uh Proverbs 12:25 all right and our sages say this is actually aamar Yuma 75a and it's a sages of the talm differ and their exegesis of this word you know that's how the Bible works works right Hebrew is written without vowels and there are alternate ways of reading the consonants and the different ways of reading the consonants reveal different truths different truths and they [Music] are these and these are the words of the Living God it's all true it's all true there are different perspectives of Truth the infinite wisdom of God is compressed in a finite text called the Bible one of the ways that we access the infinity within the finite is through rinic exegesis the process of unpacking multiple alternate layers of meaning contained in a single word okay so it's Aus in the Y and I think it's I believe is the way that it's phrased okay so two explanations remove it from your mind or what we call means avert your mind from it and the other says speak it out to others that's from the word which means conversation by the way there are different words for speech am is one word debor is another word is another word and they all have different connotations I saw this in the p in R hutner I said that all my knowledge of the human Psych is from so a little bit I dabbled in other sources the says that Amir is for conveying information debor is for conveying a command instructions uniquely is conversation it's speaking for the sake of bonding that's uh interesting that the kazal say that an extra degree of was given to women and before you get all offended by the sexist statement this is in line with another statement that our sages make about women having been AA having an extra degree of beina beina means elaborative thought or extrapolative thought so the ability to take one idea and to follow it through with a various associations in a stream of Consciousness that's a function of Bina which is also a prerequisite for a flowing s conversation at any rate so you have this this phrase and you have two different interpretations one is avert your mind from it stop thinking about it don't think about it the other is the exact opposite speak it out to others have a conversation talk therapy and theat [Music] explained when the says to others it means to others who are nominally others they have another body than your body however they're totally United with you they're not real they're not real others because they feel your issue they feel your issue in other words okay there's a lot to unpack here so first of all you have two seemingly antithetical approaches and Alim like I said before they're both legitimate Torah approaches so contradiction is part of Torah my ancestor the magala Muk said that m m Moses M's is an acronym me sh sh Hill the disputes of the schools of sh in Hill in other words diversion or Divergent opinions I don't like the word opinion by the way Divergent stances within Torah are not a bug they are a feature I'll repeat that Divergent stances within Torah are not a bug they are a feature so context context context you have to know what you're talking about in order to understand what aspect of the truth is most practic i al applicable the truth cannot be one-dimensional the truth is EMS Al if me S that's the first letter and the last letter perfectly centered with the middle letter in the middle in other words truth is all inclusive truth is the whole picture if it's a fragment if it was edited into a manipulative sound bite it's already not the truth it's already edited reality TV and sound bites for the media and the 24hour our news cycle if it's emis it's the whole story from the very beginning to the very end and everything in between so truth is always going to be nuanced truth is always going to be paradoxical it's always going to include contradiction and that is not a deficiency of truth that is what that is the Hallmark of Truth the question is however when you get Newtonian about it and you can't have two place two things in one place and you can't have one thing in two places meaning to say Hal means how we're going to go how we're going to walk with this thing how we're going to apply it in not Quantum reality but in Newtonian reality we can't light one more light of the manura every night and light one less light every night right that's also sh and hell now Shai is not wrong there's a beautiful truth to the idea of light lighting one less light every single night but we can't do both at the same time I guess you could have two separate Manas but that's you could have we have to have one manura and you have to pick one way so we picked the way of hillo even though the way of shamai is also true so here's the deal there is a time and a place for the first explanation of avert your mind from it as we are becoming more and more aware a lot of good that the Advent of modern therapeutic approaches brought to the world are also offset by inherent not good and that's the way thatas that spiritually neutral things are a so there is a positive side and there's a negative side the positive side is like what you're talking about getting it off your chest processing it and moving on however there's another side of it which is ruminating and getting immersed in it and getting stuck on it and focusing too much on your problems and for that we need to be told avert your mind from it stop ruminating stop ruminating you're making yourself crazy especially you know they are different personality types but if you're like me and you're an introspective deep thinker and it's like almost like your default setting is brooding right so uh it can be very dangerous to be encouraged to become super super attentive and aware of your feelings I'm saying it can be it can become a a preoccupation which is not healing it is not cathartic it's actually getting you more and more mired in it so there are definitely contexts where we need that very practical tool of being told stop thinking about your problems please go get busy with something productive productive you know you're not going to think your way out of this but if you go do something productive ideally for someone else do some service do an active service or at the very least take a walk around the block drink some water do something you know what maybe you'll feel better you're not going to talk your way through this but you can start being a productive person and maybe just getting some blood pumping in your body and you'll find your problem has passed okay and that's a very important tool to have on the other hand on the other hand you know about the the guy calls up a sh receptionist answers he says is this the receptionist yes okay I'm looking for a one-armed Rabbi she says what he says I'm looking for a one-armed Rabbi she says why are you looking for a one-armed Rabbi he says because the rabbi have now every time I ask him a question he answers me and then a second later he says but on the other hand so I'm looking for a one-arm RAB okay but on the other hand talk it out sometimes you do need to talk it out sometimes you do need to talk it out and averting your mind from it is not going to help because there's something there and if you don't process it and you don't acknowledge it and you ignore it it's like when you have God forbid the a sar on your body body sometimes just keep living and it'll go away but sometimes no if you don't bring it to a doctor it's going to get worse if you have a toothache and you don't go to a dentist it's going to get worse I have a couple tooth teeth that got pulled because of that where I ignored it until it stopped hurting that's the worst thing if you ignore it till it stops hurting that means now now now they have to do a root canal or they have to yank the whole thing um you got to speak it out with others but the then explains what does it mean to speak it out with others it's very important here this is what he says it's not just about talking it's about being received with full empathy cuz technically you could go stand in the corner and say your problem and you've spoken it out you've gotten it out but theed says to others means people who are nominally others they're only others in as much as they don't have the same body as you but emotionally they're completely bonded to you they are not only sympathetic to you they are empathetic they feel like it say sharish in they feel feel your issue there's a famous story that AB told this story many times that that AB mahash the fourth kabad theed son one time two of his sons were playing theab and the RAR so the reab was his future successor he was the younger of the two brothers and the RAR manarin was the older and they were playing some kids play cops and robbers these were RAB shinder they were playing RAB and so the older brother of course tells the younger brother you be the I'll be the so the younger brother comes into to a private audience and he says uh RAB I need a tikon I need a spiritual rectification okay what did you do wrong he says I ate nuts on chabas pure little kid that was the worst sin he could think of right well you're you're thinking what is even eating nuts on chabas well in the AL it says because of the shells that it's like sorting on shabas which is one of the 39 forms of Labor and anyway so he says I ate I ate nuts and shamas so the older brother pretending to be the debba says okay your tick one is whenever you Davin you should look in a sther you should pray you should When you pray you should look in the words of the prayer book Don't Pray by heart by by memorization so the younger brother say you're not a re so the older brother says what do you say what do you mean I'm not a Reb he says because a re before he answers has to sigh you didn't sigh so you're not a re speaking it out to others doesn't just mean speaking it means having the experience of being received fully received with empathy so you have to be very careful who you share with sometimes when we assume that our healing requires speech we end up speaking to the wrong people in the wrong places and we become further victimized we get hurt I mean I started off this whole evening telling you the Buddy hacka joke about the duck about the unilateral vulnerability which is often then a source of Shame and isolation so if you share with the wrong person or in the wrong setting not only is it not healing it can be it can exacerbate the problem sharing is productive in as much as it is the activity that facilitates the experience of being received with empathy I'm going to repeat that verbally sharing your problems with another person is only healing in as much as it is the activity which facilitates the experience of being received with full empathy so it's actually the be being received with full empathy that is healing and now I'm going to make myself sound like a liar because I told you I know nothing about the world of psychology and therapy I'm going to say one thing but please believe me when I'm when I tell you I'm a dilatant and I can quote almost from any discipline but my knowledge is like super super like shallow so just I'm going to I'm going to quote Carl Rogers and you're going to think well this guy must know psychology I I I I I can quote philosophers too it doesn't mean that I studied any of them okay I have one line okay but this this line is very important Carl Rogers who was uh an American psychologist considered one of the the fathers of modern uh Psychotherapy so he actually made a very astounding observation which is that the modality of therapy is almost irrelevant or perhaps entirely irrelevant what is most important is the patient doctor relationship so and he had a term for this which was unconditional positive regard so he said that when the patient experiences the doctor's unconditional positive regard that is more of a determinant factor of healing than the therapeutic approach approach that's that's used so this is very much corroborated by or it corroborates I should better say what we know from this from that the healing is the experience of being received empathetically now I will add something to this which is perhaps my own personal uh interpretation and that is you said that you've had the experience of talking through your problem s and experiencing relief and it doesn't sound like you were talking about sharing it with another person it was more just like processing it yourself I will say this and this is perhaps wrong because it's I don't have a source for this but it's my intuition that tells me this if you've experienced empathy being received empath empathetically by another person such as people who are raised by emotionally intelligent parents I'm going to repeat that three times people who are raised by emotionally intelligent parents people who were raised by emotionally intelligent parents have a basis for knowing what being received empathetically feels like because of that basis they are able to self-administer empathy in other words you know the previous caller was talking about uh shame and guilt that he feels during his recovery process so some people have an internal parental voice that is shaming and condemning other people have an internal parental voice that is empathetic when you can receive yourself with empathy that can also be very healing and that may be the experience that you're describing when you're saying sometimes just talking it out even without another person but just even as internal dialogue can be healing if you've had again just my theory I may be wrong if you've had the experience of being received with with full empathy by another person then when needed you can administer that to yourself and it can be extremely healing okay that's um that's my answer to that um did I mute you I think I muted you like I muted everybody else I'm going to just pull you back up um but yeah so you with me still yes yes I'm here okay so you said you had your own theories did uh did I uh overlap with any of your own theories uh yeah one of the conclusions I'm walking away with is that um is that when it's when when when it says you know in quotations because I don't have the actual verse but like when it says that we should like avoid anger depression or some of these emotions perhaps the way that I can interpret that is by expressing it and dealing with it you know in the second form of if the second form is able to um mitigate those feelings then that's a valid for that's a valid method of dealing with those negative feelings okay yeah yeah I would agree with that okay and I'm sure there are many other explanations as well but this is just to get us to this chapter of an ongoing uh story so you know it's an ongoing story it's an ongoing journey of healing and Discovery but uh okay I think we've got enough to get closure at least for tonight's faan I'm calling it a faan I'm choosing to call it a faan um yeah so that was great that was an awesome question okay um great so I'm going to talk about the money now uh you I don't know if we have any other callers let me know if we have any other callers you can let me know in the Google Doc if we have other callers waiting but I would like to talk about no more callers in Q happy Kan okay fine so let me just just clear all the calls um and let me talk about um let me talk about money so I got a bunch of $2 bills over here why cuz I wasn't at the racetrack today you want to know something I've never been to a racetrack but I heard I don't even know if this is true so maybe somebody could tell me in the comments but I heard that like the only place where they still use $2 bills is at the racetrack why did I hear that CU I remember one time not one time a few times somebody saying oh you have $2 billon coming from the racetrack is there any validity to that at anyway I got a bunch of $2 bills who's on the $2 bill who's on $2 bill write it in the comments who's on the $2 bill who's on the $2 bill nobody Thomas Jefferson let's see if I'm right yeah Thomas Jefferson who was the third President Jefferson was the third president right right yes Louisiana Purchase 1803 yeah is that true I think so from montelo not Montel upstate I know all the Jews think I'm talking about monell and the cill talking about Virginia okay um what's on the back of the two bill I think it's the signing of the Declaration of Independence which makes sense because Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence let me see Declaration of Independence 1776 yes that's what's on the back of the Declaration of Independence the back of $2 bill my neighbor who just wrote my neighbor Thomas Jefferson someone named sippy you know that's interesting that someone named sippy is Neighbors with Thomas Jefferson why do you say you are neighbors with Thomas Jefferson do you live in a cemetery CU as far as I know where's Thomas Jefferson buried I'm assuming he's buried like on his plot in Montell maybe you'll fill that in in the chat um okay so why do I have these $2 bills I have these $2 bill because of kanuka there is a custom Jewish custom to give children money on Kaneka and I want to talk to you about why we have accustom to give gifts of money which we call gelt G is just yish for money and I know all the American Jews think that Kaneka gelt means those nauseating chocolate coins that are wrapped in tinfoil and by the way jfyi please remove the tin foil because if you have fillings yeah I'm sorry for the cringe and you bite on so much as a speck of that foil it will send shock waves of pain straight up to the tip of your cranium I don't know does a cranium have a tip it's round but it'll make you hurt it'll make you it'll make you ask for anesthesia okay at any rate no gelt does not mean chocolate wrapped in foil gelt is Yiddish for money so why do we have a Tippy says I live in Charlottesville so he's my neighbor tomb of Thomas Jefferson montelo Charlottesville Virginia ah ah okay someone's asking are the comments not that live you mean is there a delay uh yes there is a delay there's probably about a 10-second delay in case I swear no it's not in case I swear but there is a 10-second delay between the YouTube feed and real life I also put a setting on that you can only comment like once every three minutes because people don't know how to behave themselves and they spam the chat and I don't like them spamming the chat cuz it makes My Mind Race when I see texts popping up and popping up and by the way the people who spam the chat usually are people who are typing in all emojis you know the type I'm talking about and I don't really even feel like such people came here with a genuine interest in the conversations we're having anywh who so Hanukah Gil let's talk about it why do we give money on Kaneka so I'm going to share with you an explanation from theba which I think is beautiful um I mentioned the rambam earlier remember I said that I finished my three chapters of rambam before I came on so we're in matona right now the laws of gift giving and claiming ownerless items in the book of Kenyan the book of Acquisitions but in the book of Zim in the in the laws H the laws of so the ram gives us a little history little history and tells us about the hellenists they were helist they weren't real Greeks they weren't ethnically yonim they were really syrians uh oh what happened here okay my uh thing of my jig just died you is texting me my yamaka is too far back because of the yeah yeah now I can see my yaka okay thanks you how long ago was that okay okay great ah meny Herz just R me it's monello is it monello is it really monello I don't know we're not in Italy I don't think it's monello okay you guys got me so off topic now now I'm looking at my whatsapps okay so in the ram the the ram talks about the a little bit of the history about the yonim who were not actually ethnically Greeks they were syrians they were helist they were cultural Greeks so um oh my goodness one of the things that says over there is p to they stretched forth their hand upon the wealth of Israel what does that mean if it means they stole say gvu why does it say pushu they stretched forth their hand upon the possessions of the Jewish people so the Deb explains like this actually the wording is precise it doesn't mean they stole or confiscated Jewish wealth they stretched forth their hand upon the Jewish wealth actually means the following you know the oil why there wasn't enough oil when they came back in the temple to light the manura except for that one little jug because the helist deliberately defiled the oil they touched the jars of the oil to impart ritual impurity upon it they could have stolen it they could have smashed it they could have taken it away they didn't they left it there they just touched it and said haha because that was a statement they wanted to make which was there's nothing wrong with ritually impure oil you made it up it's a bunch of Hocus Pocus there's nothing wrong with ritually impure oil doesn't exist it's a madeup concept and we said no it's a real Concept in other words they resented the idea of a applying spiritual parameters to physical objects we believed that you could have physical oil it could be great a virgin olive oil physically it's pure but spiritually it's not and we believe that a physical object can have a spir not only can have but does have a spiritual quality to it and that spiritual quality can be holy or Unholy in everything in between and that our goal is to take physical objects and to sanctify them and make them holy now from the helist worldview there's the holy which is the spirit spiritual and then there's the physical and the physical and the spiritual are two different worlds from our point of view no no no no it's one world means Oneness the physical and the spiritual are one thing so you could have oil which is physically just perfectly fine as far as pure clean fuel but spiritually it doesn't have the ritual quality that it needs to have so that's why they purposely touch the oil to make it impure so the rebba says like this they touched the Jewish wealth that means in their attempt to henize us what they did is they didn't steal from us they didn't confiscate our wealth they just wanted to culturally touch it they wanted to give it a little greek touch and they wanted to say hey Jews keep your wealth but please stop trying to sanctify it and use it for Mitzvah just use it for physical things which the Greeks were very into you know like physical health and working out just for its own sake uh Aesthetics and beauty and all that stuff architecture and we say no physical things have to be used for a spiritual purpose and we were ready we were ready to go to war to fight for that belief so that explains why we give the money because money is the the most physical thing in the world you know money For the Love of Money people will rob from their brother that what it says somebody Google it OJs For the Love of Money meny Herz Google uh the OJs For the Love of Money and type in the lyrics There's Nothing More Physical than money and yet what do we do we take money and we use it for Spirit ual ends first first thing is you give the kid money and he has to figure out how much is a tenth how much is a is a fifth you know depending on whether you give a tenth to charity or you do even more and you give a fifth so he has to do a little uh tadaka math then he has to figure out where to give the um give where to where to give the charity which cause to you give Soul words.org donate Soul words.org donate um then with the 90 or 80% that he keeps what is he going to spend it on is he going to buy candy is he going to buy books that's why hey Tavis is right after hanuka so the kids can spend their Hanukah guilt on swm that was a reference for labit no one else is going to get that joke um so what happens is when we give children money it becomes a whole teachable moment you give a kid a toy and he breaks the toy he throws out the toy and you're done you give a kid money you give him an opport opportunity or her an opportunity to express some decision making and agency and moral choice to elevate that money and use it for something thoughtful and mindful and ultimately for something spiritual and that is the whole lesson of khaka and khaka is related to the word which means training inauguration or education so the way we are the way we educate our children and conica is by giving them physical money and saying we're going to sanctify this we're going to learn how to use material resources for Spiritual goals how you like that okay and now we're going to officially end like we did last week but what we'll do is uh like last week we're going to have the musical portion of the show now last week I played um the the uh at I can't like I said I can't play the music this week because uh um I can't listen to music this year because of AIS because of mourning um by the way you notice the Manara I want to talk about that a little bit for a second uh there's this guy man Ben Shimona told me to put up he's going to be mad why do you have to mention my name well he's the one who told me to put up in the Manar uh in fact he told me certainly you are going to put up the manura and I said Why That's not the spot where you like the manura this is not the spot where I like my manura nobody would like in this spot he said because it's a public manur lighting I said how is it public we don't have a minion here he said it's a live stream you're going to have more than 10 people so I just want everyone to know I did not make a braa this is not my Manara my Manara is upstairs it's in a public not in a public but it's in a main area of the house according to our custom on the left side of the doorway opposite the Maza which is on the right side of the doorway this is a prop but it's not a prop it's educational and uh I even made the right amount of candles for the for the evening but that's not my actual minara okay so we're going to do a little bit of music um yeah I had this whole whole thing prepared what was I going to do um what did I have prepared okay so at any rate I I told you that my father oh did I tell you this no I didn't tell you this I told my kids this I told my kids that my father in the end he had some cognitive decline and he wasn't always 100% able to express himself the way he wanted to although you should check out on my YouTube channel uh this video that I just posted which was recorded a couple of years ago with my father and I having a great conversation where he is 100% completely sharp and on top of his game and it's really awesome to watch him and you get a glimpse of his full personality there um but in the last days my mother he was in a hospice for a little while for a few weeks but my mother told me I wasn't there when this happened um but that even at the very end he was able to sing AES KY on Friday night which is something we sing before kidish on Friday night and uh ases Kyle is actually from the very end of Proverbs King Solomon's Proverbs and there's a tune it's not a acidic tune um it's more modern tune but this is what he was singing and since it's Thursday night I'll just sing it for you and that way you could sing it tomorrow night in honor of my father at your at your father at your shabas table okay fine so here we go hey for [Music] for for B [Music] a little higher than my range I'm sorry I apologize [Music] okay there you go that's what we got for you tonight thank you for joining us for this special Kaneka program remember give your kids Kaneka G oh and if you have kids and you haven't yet taken my parenting course my parenting course you got to take my six week online parenting course I only give it once or twice a year it takes a lot out of me to give it because it's live it's not pre-recorded it's live and I have to give it twice every week because I do the men's and women's groups separately why cuz I'm oldfashioned that way and I think it's better when the men and the women are separate and it's live and it's interactive so I like to keep it separate please sign up for the parenting course that's at souls. org parenting again if you are a parent over 2,000 parents have taken this course and they have found it life-changing it's not a joke it really is incredible and it's not because of me it's because the content is all based on Torah and citus which is the most powerful thing in the world so if you haven't taken the parenting course please do your kids a favor greatest Hanukah gift you can get your kids take the parenting course soulwords dogp parenting again soulwords dorg parenting and you want to give me money please I need to finish off the construction of the soulwords house God willing will'll get it open for events in a month soulwords dogd donate soulwords dorg donate and um yeah so take the parenting course give so words some money give your kids some money that's probably the most important thing give your kids some money on kanuka there's a a concept of giving extra Kan give a little bit of Kan every night but give extra on the fourth or fifth night jfyi okay um which will be well tomorrow night will be the third night M shabas will be the fourth night uh Sunday night Sunday night give give a nice extra trunk of change okay um thank you we'll uh we'll see you later