You Are Harder on Yourself Than G-d Is | Karen Hochhauser

Hashem gives us tons of space to fail, [music] and we are as individuals and also as a community, we are much much harder on ourselves. When you open the Torah to its very first pages, and [music] you will not find a clean start. We have a sin in the garden, one brother fighting with another, a whole world that has to literally begin [music] again. The very beginning of everything is a series of human stumbles. This week I'm sitting with Karen Hochhauser for the Torah perspective on the thing most of us spend our lives trying [music] to avoid. Failure. Karen Hochhauser is the co-director of the Miriam Glaubach Center. She is a Yoetzet Halacha and an educator [music] who spent 17 years at Tiferet, a thriving seminary in Ramat Beit Shemesh, both as a teacher [music] and an administrator. During that time, she developed expertise in mentoring young adults, designing programming, and cultivating [music] educational communities. She holds a BA in English literature and an MA in Jewish education from Yeshiva University. Today we talk about some Torah ideas that can transform the way we look at failure. [music] Before we get started with today's episode, do me a quick favor. Check and make sure you are following Human and Holy, you are subscribed [music] wherever you listen. If you're already subscribed, leave us a rating. Leave us a review. Small lift from you, but really supports [music] us, and I'll pay it forward to you by continuing to go deeper every single week and cultivating conversations that can [music] support you in your human and holy life. Let's get to today's episode. Welcome to Human and Holy. I'm so excited to have you here. >> [laughter] >> We're going to have a good time together. So excited to be here. Yeah. You have such an amazing energy, so much depth, wisdom, and I'm very excited to get to sit down and talk and explore with you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who you are as a person? My name is Karen Hochhauser, and I live in Israel, in Beit Shemesh, Israel, baruch Hashem, with my husband and five children. And I am an educator. If I had to put one word to who I am, what I do, I'm a person who loves I love spreading the wisdom and beauty of Torah to other people. And also helping people understand that the messages of Torah are accessible to them. >> Ooh. You're a perfect guest. You're a dream guest. >> [laughter] >> Like that introduction to yourself that you don't even know how much like everyone who's listening is like, "Yeah, let's go." Today we're going to be talking about the human experiences of failure and Torah's perspective on how we respond to failure, how we approach failure, how we can rise from failure, and also how we can like learn how to fail better, too. And I want to start just by asking. I think failure is something that most of us like try to kind of spend our lives avoiding. I don't think anyone sets off thinking, "Oh, I want to fail." How can we begin to even just reframe how we look at failure? Why do you see Why are you so passionate about the ideas of failure? Why are you like, "We need to talk about failure more and how we can grow from it"? Like what is it about failure that lights you up? So, I'll be honest and start by saying that I hate failure, meaning [clears throat] myself as a person. In fact, it in in my house like my husband always joke around that for me failure is um it's like a four-letter word almost. You You know what I'm saying? Like for the feeling for myself that I would start something and fail it is so uncomfortable for me that's it's exactly why I knew that I had to explore that topic and also sometimes run into things that might cause me to fail because I think that whenever we have something that's so like that's exactly something that we know we need to work on. Meaning if something's easy for a person if if hachnasat orchim if welcoming guests into your home is easy for you, so you should do it, but it doesn't mean it's a place where you need to grapple to grow as a person because you're blessed. It comes It comes naturally. So, for me, failing is something that's so uncomfortable and so difficult that I really became very interested in that topic and the topic of um Have you ever heard of the phrase, you know, "failing up"? Meaning there's some failure that's just crash and burn failure and and just like leaves behind wreckage, but there's failure, the idea of failing up is when we can grow and learn from our failures to be, you know, to be better and um every great person has failed because that is the way that you, you know, that you learn. And those experiences of discomfort are exactly what help a person figure out how we can develop ourselves and grow. And I think that Hashem puts into the Hashem could have designed the world in a way that just humans could, you know, breeze through it and and have success and it would be easy. But right from I mean, all you have to do is open up the beginning of Safer Breishit and right in the very beginning chapters you see failure. You see Adam HaRishon and and how the whole system of Gan Eden and then right that story is followed by Cain and Hevel. And then, you know, a little bit later you have Noah. The the whole beginning of the Torah is essentially a series of failures, not HaKadosh Baruchu's failures. Hashem is perfect. But humanity as it's trying to get its bearings and get get going, a series of failures that are there and recorded forever for us to be able to learn from. What do you think? I love how you detailed just off the bat we open up the Torah and we have all these like serious human errors that change the trajectory of existence and obviously there's a lot of Torah that explains that all of that had to happen, that it wasn't it wasn't a failure that actually had a negative it had a a a negative implication, but that it's leading us to an even better place. So, that's where you really see the trajectory of like failure leading to greater success. But can you tell us what what those those examples of being in the Garden of Eden, Cain and Hevel, Noah, and the world being destroyed in a flood, what those biblical examples can teach us about our own experiences of making mistakes. So, that's a really interesting question cuz I'm not sure there's there's one answer to that cuz each story is a whole, you know, endless world in and of itself. But I wonder if I would try to draw together like a common thread between them, what you see in all of those stories, well, let's put aside Noach and the flood for a second. But I think that people try to figure out how to best be human and be themselves in this world where God placed us. And so when you if you're if you're Adam Harishon and all of a sudden, again, we you know, Chazal our rabbis teach us that the the snake in the garden was the external manifestation of the yetzer hara, of the evil inclination, right? And it was only after that that that became something internal to who we were, to who we are. Um so here, all of a sudden, for the literal first time in history, man is confronted with evil. And and then what what does he do with that? Does he listen? Does he not listen? And you actually really see, even when you see that Adam hides in the garden from Hashem cuz he understands that something has gone, you know, that really something has gone wrong. Hashem doesn't destroy the world after that. There's a a punishment, but there's also a sense of we can move forward. Right? There's um there's a forgiveness. And the same thing with Cain and Abel. What a tragic story, one brother killing another brother. But again, there's a punishment and then there's a moving forward. And then even with Noach, the human there where where Hakadosh Baruch Hu said this humanity cannot exist this way anymore. But instead of just wiping the slate clean, I'm going to preserve it. We're going to start again, and then we're going to move forward. And and then Hashem makes this breach where he says this covenant where he says I recognize and understand that the I mean Hashem understands everything. I'm just putting sort of human terms to it. The idea that humanity will always fail and will always falter and fall. And that's how the world's going to be. So I find that on the one hand, maybe you could look at that and it would be depressing almost like, "Oh gosh, humans, we're so imperfect." But on the other hand, wow, humans, we're so imperfect. We have so much space to grow and to change. And that's part of when the Malachei HaSharet, when the angels come to God and they say to him, "Why are you giving Bnei Yisrael the Torah? We like look at them. They're they're a mess. We want the Torah." And Hashem says to Moshe Rabbenu, "I want you to explain." And Moshe says, "Because your angels, you're you're perfect. You don't need to grow. Am Yisrael needs to grow. They need to change and they need instructions for how to do that, and that's the Torah." So you feel that part of the lesson is just failure is inevitable, but we can move forward after failure. Right. And halakhically we know that's true because of the concept of teshuvah. Meaning if you let's say a person opens up Hilchot Teshuvah of the Rambam, in those 10 perakim, and many people have a custom to learn them during the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, right? During the 10 days of repentance, a chapter every day. But even if you don't, you open up the Rambam and that that's I mean that's what you see. Or you even before the Rambam, you we see that, of course. But the idea of this this is part of being human. Failure is inevitable, but look, Hashem himself gives us a system of how to be better. And that's why one of the most important steps in the chuva process is being able to say what we've done wrong, which is very hard. And it's a two-sided thing, because let's say we're talking about a failure, an interpersonal failure. Like let's say I've greatly offended you. So, one of the things that I have discussed so many times with my own students is the idea of who's whose job is harder? Cuz on the one hand, it might be very hard if you've ever You You seem like so nice. I can't imagine you ever having wronged anyone. >> [laughter] >> But, I'm not so nice. So, in my life, I've really had to like swallow hard and go to people and and really say, "This is what I did." And and I am sorry, and that is excruciating. But, it's also very hard to be on the other side of that and to be able to grant forgiveness. And because we have to And we know Hashem says multiple times in Tanakh, "I'd much rather Am Yisrael like fail to fail fail in my direction." You know, it's easy for God to forgive. But, interpersonally, it's so difficult and it can be so complicated to be on both sides of that. But, that's actually why it's so beautiful and valuable, because it's it's a growth moment. It's a growth growth moment for the one who's asking for forgiveness. It's a growth moment for the one who's forgiving as well. So, I I love how you're highlighting that closely tied to having a more forward-thinking perspective on failure is having a positive relationship to forgiveness, to asking for forgiveness, to receiving forgiveness. If we can become A more willing to ask for forgiveness when we wrong someone and also more willing to receive forgiveness, we can also become a little bit softer about our own failures and our fear around failure. Exactly, because who are who Like, if you ask I I work with a lot of young women and um If a young woman And this is definitely true for young men as well, and maybe older women and maybe older men, too. Um Um It applies to everyone. It really everyone, right? When when someone is looking at themselves in the mirror, Mhm. it it imagine this doing this exercise, looking at yourself in the mirror and saying, you know, Karen, today you really like you you really hurt you really hurt us. Like, you I don't know, you spent too much time just sitting on the couch like a bump on a log or you weren't nice to someone or you forgot to call your parents. Whatever the issue is. Being able to look in your own eyes and say, it is true. I did the wrong thing, but I also forgive myself. Not because I forgive myself because of like, you know, the whole culture of like embrace it and you know, things like that. Um but more I forgive myself because in doing that, that means tomorrow I'm going to be able to hit the ground running and work harder. That's that's really really important. I used to do um when I used to do interviews for um seminary acceptances at the the school where I was working to fair it in Ramat Beit Shemesh, one of the interview questions that I would I would ask I did not come up with this question was, you know, I'd say tell me about something a mitzvah that you find is um you know, difficult to connect to and also or or like about a failure about a challenge. I would literally ask about that in the interview. And by far my least favorite answer, by far, that someone would give on the interview is whatever it is whatever the failure was, they'd say, but I don't regret it because that made me who I am today. Mhm. Because I I think that that hashkafically is is really that's not how Judaism looks at failure. A person might say, it was wrong. I appreciate it because it's part of what it made me, you know, it made me who I am today. But not like, oh, but it doesn't matter because it made me who I am. Do you get what I'm saying, the difference? >> I get it about it. Yeah, and or this feeling of like it's all that everything I've done wrong is okay because now that oil turned me into the person I am today. Now again, I was interviewing very young people and I think that actually hidden underneath those flippant answers something very, very deep. Right. But, um I think that also that's part of why I ask the question cuz it gives a great space to open up the conversation of hold on, it's okay to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I did something wrong today. Not be afraid of that. So, I I I appreciate the nuance of what you're mentioning here which is advocating for having a healthy relationship to our past failures, but not because we think our actions are meaningless or we're flippant about the ways we've hurt other people or disconnected ourselves from God, but because we recognize with seriousness and with depth that yes, that shaped me and yes, that was how it was supposed to be and yes, I made mistakes, but I can move forward despite that. And I'm curious about that because I want to ask about how most of us experience failure is with a lot of shame, is with a lot of heaviness. And so, either there can be And this is really bringing me by the way to like the question in chapter one of the Alter Rebbe's Tanya which speaks about how a person shouldn't see themselves as being a rasha, as being an evil person or someone like totally disconnected from their souls because either they'll become just completely desensitized to that and they'll be like, okay, whatever, I'm a terrible person and it's fine. Or they will become so depressed and down about how disconnected they are from their souls. And you really see that when you're like accurately assessing your negative self or the parts of yourself that you're not proud of or the ways you've acted that like really were not in alignment with who you are as a spiritual being, it can very often either lead us to being like, ah, whatever, it doesn't matter, like made me who I am, but like peace, you know. Or I'm like it we can be so down about it. So, how do you how do you determine like what another way is of like accurately seeing them, holding in them with the necessary seriousness, and not becoming either too flippant about it or too down about it either. Yeah, that I think that's a great question. I think if a person if you open up the Sifrei Musar, you know, those and and included in that are all different types of works that are dedicated to helping people really work on each bit of their internal character. Um the authors of many of those works speak about how you they don't use this terminology, this more modern terminology, but you have to have a healthy self-esteem in order to work on yourself as a person. Exactly what you're saying. Because if if I walk through the world and I say Hakadosh Baruch Hu, Hashem put me in the world, which means that God doesn't make any mistakes. So, if I'm here in this place in this time, it means I'm supposed to be here. And now, that means I have internal and intrinsic value. Like, let's say, um to what on Rosh Hashanah, when we have the three sections of Musaf, Malkhuyot, Zikhronot, and Shofarot. One of the most incredible things about the concept of Zikhronot is that Hashem remembers everything that we do. So, I think that when you're little, when you're a little kid and you're learning that, you're like, you know, wow, Hashem's capacity is endless. He remembers everything that I do. But the deeper part of that is wow, God himself remembers everything that I do, which means that the things I do are very important. So, when I walk into the world and I say what I do here has value, has importance, has an impact, has significance, so that's already a different starting off point, because then I'm not and I I so love what you're talking about, the idea of like a uh you know, the connection with our, you know, with our neshama, with our soul? Because our if you think about the soul, think about what it must be like. I think about this a lot for our soul to be in the body. Meaning, the way that we function as people is it Hashem takes this body. It's a very 100% physical. And essentially cramps a soul, 100% spiritual, into the body. And there's even a mushel that's given that when a person comes into this world, it's like Hashem brings a ladder. It's from the Kotsker Rebbe. Hashem brings a ladder, and like the soul, so to speak, walks down the ladder and enters the world. And the minute its feet touch touch the ground, God removes the ladder. And essentially the soul spends most of its time on Earth like calling up, bring that ladder back. Cuz the soul doesn't really want to be here. The soul in a certain way is trapped in the body. But look at this beautiful symbiotic relationship that God creates. We must have the The soul can't function in this world without the physical body. And the physical body without the soul is nothing. And so, when I can stop, to get back to your question, and and think about that, that that's by design, and that's beautiful, and that's important. So, I actually can be very much in my body and very much in my soul at the same time. And then I can say, well, the whole thing is just day after day of working to get better and stronger. Rav Soloveitchik, at the beginning of Kol Dodi Dofek, which is the book version of a speech that he gave in 1956, he develops a this concept where he talks about um fate and destiny. And he explains and he he redefines sort of what those two words mean. So, he talks about an existence of fate. Fate is when a person is almost serves as an object. Things happen to them. And he he That's where he really discusses and fleshes out the idea of suffering. Mhm. Um again, he was basically speaking to a a room full of Holocaust survivors or people who um lost family members in the in the Holocaust. And he talks about how let's say in the you know, a person could be you maybe a more modern word we'd use is is victim. Meaning when something is happening to you, when you're experiencing pain. And before you can do anything with that pain, you first just you feel it. You just have to feel the pain. And when you're in that space, it's actually very hard to move forward. Like the example, the way that I like to think about it um is did you ever see it's like the worst type of hurt that like if you have like a a little kid, like a baby or a 1-year-old or 2-year-old, you know if they really get hurt and they open their mouth and no sound comes out because it's so painful, they like can't even get the cry out. You know what I'm talking about, right? Okay. That is the image that comes to mind in my head when I think about that first stage. And Viktor Frankl says when a person's in that space, you you're not moving forward. You're just in that pain. Mhm. But then afterwards, then he says a person might get stuck and they might start asking all kinds of questions like why did this happen to me and why did what does God want from me? Things like that. And and he talks about how then a person needs to shift to to an experience of a of destiny. Destiny means I have I have my fate, that's what's given to me. But my destiny is what I do in that space. Right? He brings the the very famous idea of you know, a uh person who's thinking about their fate might be saying lama, why? But a person of destiny says lema, for what? What am I going to do with this? And one of the examples is is let's say if a person was in a concentration camp, so that's their fate, right? They're that's an inescapable inescapable. But if they chose to give maybe a part of their ration of bread to someone who needed it more or kind word to someone who needed to hear it, that now becomes a person of destiny and it doesn't matter what the background is. And Rabbi Soloveitchik says that is our mission and responsibility in this world is to become to to transform actually from people of faith to people of destiny. That's our job. And we all have things that are handed to us whether it's who your siblings are, whether it's a financial hardship. There are things we can't control, but within that our job's to take a deep breath after again after the hardship and the crying and the emotions, those emotions are very important. You actually can't move to the next stage if you ignore them. And then to say, "Now I want to become a a person of destiny. What am I going to do within this space?" That's great. So, would you put failure in the category of fate? So, that's a great question. I I think that failure can be that's going to be dependent on the person. Right? I I think that a person might I It's really a complicated question because there's so many types of failure. Like a a person can fail so spectacularly um and sometimes it has nothing to do with them and sometimes has everything to do with them. Right? Like a person can I once was giving a shear in England and it was at a big conference and I reme- I was coming from um I was going to London and I was coming from Manchester and I got in this train. And it was a very ratty train and there was a very big soccer match going on the train. And all of a sudden I realized like it was a 2-hour train ride and all of a sudden I realized like my stop had come and gone. And I went to the conductor and I was like, "Wait, hold on. I have to get off the train. And I said, I didn't hear an announcement. Like I was so nervous. And he And the conductor said to me, Oh, yeah, we don't announce every stop. And I was like, wait, but hold on. How's a person supposed to know? Yeah. And he's like, you're just supposed to know. I'm like, Okay. And then I started crying. I start I I was so also ironically, um, I was going to give a sheer about about failure, right? So, I I like I was literally and I'm not such a crier, but I'm like crying on the train. This conductor was so nice. He helped me so much. Um But basically, I sat in my seat on the train and I said, okay, Karen, you have a choice here. You can cry your way till you give this sheer and put on a show. Or actually, you can recognize that the fact that you're going to be colossally late to this thing that was a million moving parts and me being late was like it was really not great. Um, and say, oh, look, Hashem gave you a real living example of failing and moving forward. Now, that I would call a failure that really wasn't my fault. >> Right. But it happens anyway. Yeah. That's actually easier. That's faith. Right. Failure that's my fault, >> Mhm. right. That's much harder. And you maybe you could say sort of it Right, maybe uh uh my action caused the failure. But that again, that goes back to the teshuvah of the Rambam. I have everything within me to be able to pick myself up and move forward from the failure. But again, I'm making it sound here, I just want to say as like a disclaimer, we're sitting here like talking about this like as if it's all like, oh, yeah, and it's so beautiful and whatever and it's not so hard. I think this is excruciatingly hard and I think that we need to have a lot of patience. Sometimes repair from a failure like this, it could take months. It could take years. And it could be a very uphill climb the whole time. So, no one should think that it's just an easy breezy thing. And what one thing I'll I'll also say is that no one should think that um something I try to remind myself about a lot, especially if you're like a proud person, you don't have to do it by yourself. Mhm. You don't have Like we're in this world as social creatures and beings. And and we can find other people to lean on and rely on. Right. Yeah. To to support us. >> exactly to support us in that help us in that journey. It's very interesting to hear you differentiate between the the mis- the failures that we experience, like missing the stop because it wasn't announced, versus failures that we can more clearly point back to our own role in it. Because there are schools of thought, like the Bais Yaakov, like Rav Tzadok, who actually take the position that even our failures that we are completely responsible for and have to clean up from and have to take total accountability for, were destined for us by God. And that when we look back at those mistakes that we've made, to recognize that like our souls needed to make those mistakes, not in a light, flippant way, but to recognize that it was a choice that needed to happen even with all its terrible repercussions. What's your perspective on that line of thinking? Yeah, it's a really interesting question. Look, I think that part of what's interesting in the world of of Jewish philosophical thought, that that's why sounds so dorky, but it's like fun with philosophy. Do you know what I'm saying? That that's part of why philosophy is such an interesting thing. Because when when we look at the great and and great is an understatement, um giants of Torah philosophical thought, and we can see all the different points of view, I think there's what to learn from all of them. I sort of like to sit in the in the space in Those are the two sort of very wide extremes and there's tons in the middle. I like that middle space. I think it's it's incredibly comforting to think that the challenge I'm going through you know, maybe is something that Hashem put in the world's for my own growth. >> [snorts] >> But also the idea that I'm responsible for my choices. I think where sometimes that can get complicated for people is that when we start talking about um like huge devastating loss or hardship. The Holocaust is a good example of that. Um and then you have people ask all sorts of questions. How could you say God was there? How could you say God was not there? Um and and there that's pages and pages and pages and pages have been written about that and to try and again, we don't get to know. But there there's so much written about that and I think it's so interesting to explore and to see what we can take with that in our own, you know, for our own lives. I like how you highlighted that regardless of your position on if the failure was inevitable or if it was 100% totally your within the locus of your decision-making the responsibility is still on you to respond to it. And I think you see that regardless of what line of thought you take the responsibility for me to then respond to the failure, to choose to make something meaningful or growth-oriented of the failure is still on me and and that's irregardless of whether or not it was inevitable. Right. So that's big. Right? Because that's that's growth. And again, you know, as we sort of move forward through our lives, I think even our perspective on that on that changes. Like, um I remember when when my older kids were young, and let's say um a grandparent would give want to give them like a lollipop or whatever, right? So, this is classic young young parents would be like, "What are you doing?" Like, with my oldest, I remember thinking, "Oh, she should only be in school in a class of oldest kids because like all the youngest kids just like ruin them. They know all about candy." And they you know, whatever. And so, it's so funny, right? Meanwhile, could you imagine a class I'm an oldest, so I know that oldest have very certain strong personality types. Could you imagine a class of only oldest kids? Disaster. Um but I you know, I remember thinking that. And now, my oldest is um 23, right? And and like when I see a little kid, I'm like, "Oh, I get it so much now." Because after you've gone through the years of let's say parenting teenagers and watching your kids grapple with you know, things that are hard or even if not your kids, your friends' kids, that all of a sudden you understand how a grandparent becomes a grandparent. It's like, "Okay, just like you're young, have something sweet, enjoy it. It's beautiful. It's not going to kill you. And I want to bring you some joy because I know if I'm, you know, 60, I know what's ahead of you. Even if you don't know what's ahead of you." I'm going to start crying. It's such like an emotional thing. Like, I know what's ahead of you. I just want to bring you some sweetness. But the truth is, the world needs both those perspectives. We need the parent who's going to be like, "Why are you giving the lollipop, you know, Saba and Safta?" Because that that is exactly the stage that parent's supposed to be at, and they're safeguarding the like the details of the health of their children. But we also need the perspective of people who have been through it and can have just again, the more nuanced there's the big stuff, and there's the small stuff, and let's try to keep perspective and have everything in its place. >> Mhm. Yeah. I like that you said that, and I think that if both can kind of remain open to the other, then that's when you really find the coexistence of the two. Yeah, better Shalom Bayit. >> Yeah, exactly. >> [laughter] >> And also just less fights, less family fights. >> Exactly. I'm curious to know because I think that very often, so there's the inevitable experiences of challenge and hardship that we have, and I want to get to that in a second. And then there's also the mistakes that we make and how we respond to them. But I want to talk about when we're living a life that is so rigid, or we're always trying to do the right thing so intensely that we never even get the opportunity to make mistakes or to experience failure. And I think that because we're so value-driven as as Jews and we have clear halachic guidelines and because we have the Torah for guidance, sometimes a lot of us can end up in a life where we're working very hard to avoid mistakes and playing it safe. Mhm. So we never really experience failure. Now, obviously there's like missing your stop and things like that, but just deeper fail like risk-taking does could could be minimized when you're just trying to do the right thing. Right. How can we open ourselves up to actually make mistakes? To live, to be courageous. What a >> What a great question. That's such a great question. Um Okay, maybe I'll say two things. Okay. The first thing is is that I think that there's the Torah's outlook on failure, and again, you you said I could it's like maybe a little bit not perfectly PC what I'm going to say, so everyone listening should forgive me. And there's humanity's outlook on failure, and the Torah's way more forgiving than humanity. I think that part of the challenge in our society is this expectation of perfection that is unattainable and is not real. And I'll give you again if I was trying to hit the bull's-eye, I think the place where I personally see this manifested the most is in shidduchim. Uh again, I work a lot with young people, my students, my husband's students, and I I talk to a lot of people who are dating. I speak to a lot of mothers. I I in in the world of shidduchim I'll use the shidduch resume. Again. But I personally, if I could make something disappear disappear from the world, I would love to make the shidduch resume disappear. Now, I know everyone's everyone's already throwing tomatoes at their you know, at their phones if they're listening to this, and I'm not saying that there's I understand it streamlines the process, but I think that inherently when you take a three-dimensional person and you make them a one-dimensional piece of paper, what that does is you lose the richness of the person, and it also creates um like a list and a standard that the minute there's any type of imperfection, wow, do you see it? Okay? So, all of a sudden, you might have a whole person, like I'm a whole person. And so now you and you're a whole person. And each one of us has our things that are that are great about us, and each one of us has our things that are not, right? And but if you're talking to me and I'm talking to you as whole people, it it softens everything. The minute we have that piece of paper, and again, I I understand why it's expedient. But it it really does something. And so then what what do people think? They say, "I have no room for failure. I have to look perfect. I have to sound perfect. I have to have the right like terminology. I maybe have to come from the right type of family or the right um I have to have maybe money or what's going to happen to me if I don't have money. And all of these things take away from sort of what the goal is in the dating which is helping two souls find each other in this world so that they could create a byit namah b'Yisrael that they could build a a a a a a home, a Jewish home that's going to usher in the next generation. So, I think that when we talk about sort of how do we help ourselves almost like give ourselves, you know, like grace to fail. I think that we first really have to take a a step back and say Hashem gives us tons of space to fail and we are as individuals and also as a community, we are much much harder on ourselves. Um I think that when we talk about issues of mental health or or even physical health, right? And there's been tremendous progress in our communities on this. Tremendous. But I thoroughly remember when the these were things no one spoke about, no one talked about. It was it was considered to shameful. Um cuz there was just there's just not a lot of space for people to be human. But then, once as soon as you're But then later on, what I think is actually so interesting and I'm very it gives me a lot of hope is that when you meet people later in life, like let's say you'll you'll open up a one of the from magazines and you'll read a story about someone who really had a failure or a difficulty or challenge, whatever. I know they're they're in their 40s or whatever. And everyone reads that and they're like, "Wow, that's amazing. It's such It's so much to learn from." I don't know like if something I doubt and hope for all of us is that we can we can do that with our young people as well. And and you know, because also young people young people mess up a lot. And that's important because that's how they learn how to be experienced, right? Here we're in California and there are those self-driving cars. Right? And you can I've never gone in one of those cars, but um I don't want to say never cuz maybe one day I will. >> You might not have a choice eventually. >> know it's scary. But But the thing is is that if I can go into that self-driving car, it's really curated for me, right? It's like my air-conditioning temperature, my music, I don't have to talk to anyone. If I take that to a philosophical level, I think it's a tragedy because I need to be able to like I I I need to get into a car like I I don't like the temperature in the car and I need to be able to grapple with that. And young people, how they how they turn into experienced older people is through that challenge. I used to say to my students all the time like they you know they'd say, you know, when you're in in in seminary you're so it's a very vulnerable time and they they'd be like, "Wow. Like how did How do you know that, Miss Sagalow?" They're like, "You know, you're so I'm like, I'm not wise. I've I've just I don't know. I I've just lived more of life than you have. I've made a million mistakes. I've made worse mistakes than you could even imagine. And And I learned from them and that's you know, that that's how that happens. So I think that the first thing we need to do is we need to recognize and learn from the fact that Hashem is much more forgiving of us than we are. And the second thing is is that I think that when we when we think about halakha if we're thinking about halakha appropriately we see that in halakha, wow, there's a lot of room. Meaning even the concept of of like khumra, stringency, and kula, leniency those are there for a reason. If I feel like I can be up to more of a challenge, I can be more strict on something. If I feel and I don't mean I personally like obviously I'm saying this with a person speaks to their rabbi and they you know they you you know, you're you're not you don't have to go through making these decisions alone. But let's say you have someone who's um God forbid but they're in the hospital, right? And and the they're not feeling well. So, Halacha has a lot of room for that, like how they're supposed to function. That's different than when you have a young, healthy person who can just go about their their day-to-day. Or if a person is just having a difficult time with stuff. There's just a lot of room in Halacha. And what our job as Jews is to always stay in the box of Halacha. We can't leave that box. But the box there's there's real space there, and that space is there for when we need it. That's why we have to be honest with ourselves. >> Mhm. Like let's say a person is um they were sick and they were up all night. And then they didn't wake up the next morning and daven Shacharis. That's different than the person who's just like, "Oh, it's hard to wake up in the morning and daven Shacharis." Mhm. And Halacha treats those two cases differently. In the first in the first case, so there's the Halacha of what to do with Tashlumin. If a person um misses Shacharis, let's say, by accident, then they can make it up with a second Mincha. But if a person's just like, "Ugh, whatever. I won't set an alarm, and I know that every day I wake up at 1:00 p.m., but I won't set an alarm, but I missed like mistakenly missed Shacharis." Something different. I mean, you have to be responsible. So. Mhm. I love love the way you answered that. I literally got chills when you said, "We do that for older people." And like if we can do that for young people, we often look at the story, the trajectory of someone's life, the way that they fix their failures, the way that they grew from them, and we gain inspiration from it. But a lot of young people feel either terrified or riddled with shame about their own failures, and it can like keep us in a real straitjacket. So, imagine if we had that understanding of how we look at other people, young people, to know that they're going to make mistakes, that they will make mistakes, to just be lighter about our response. Not even lighter. I think as you said, be as forgiving as Hashem is. Cuz if you're surrounded by people who are forgiving of you for your mistakes as a young person, I think that you learn how to see your own mistakes. And I could definitely point to educators who who just had the sort that ease around mistakes or rebellions or and they were the educators in the system that allowed a lot of people to flourish. Because people felt that like softness, that ease, that lightness that like you're young and you're going to figure it out and your questions are not so scary and your mistakes are not like going to ruin you and that allows a young person to relax and say, "Okay, like I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to be able to resolve this." Like that's beautiful. So I love that point and then I love what you said too about halakha that we often think like, "I'm going to make so many mistakes, but can I also get guidance so that I know what is my framework and where which direction should going harder right now or going softer right now?" And can someone help guide me in that direction so I don't have to be making mistakes all the time, right? When it comes to that. I I saw I like First of all, I love your use of the word terrified cuz I think that's the exact right word. But even more, that phrase, "I need to figure it out." I think that a gift we really could give our young people and and full disclosure, I work on this every day as a mother Okay. is giving our kids space to mess up. Giving our kids space to figure things out by themselves. Like I remember once speaking to a group of mothers who were going to send their kids to um to Israel for the year. And one of the moms asked something about, you know, how to have a successful year and I said, "This is how I mean how their kids could have And I said, "Here's the best advice I could give you. Your daughter's going to be sitting in Cafe Rimon and she's going to send you a text, 'Ma, I don't know what to eat for dinner. And then she's going to send you the pictures of the menu. And I want to tell you that around the table, all the mothers who had older daughters who'd already been to Israel for the year, they started cracking up because probably 100% of them had had that happen to them. And I said, right, you're like, that's crazy, right? It's not crazy. And I said, if you want your kids to have a successful year in Israel, don't say, get the pizza because you know pizza's a slam dunk you'll like it. Instead, write to your daughter, darling, you are capable of figuring this out on your own because that's a little So, what's the worst that's going to happen to her? She's not going to like her dinner. Okay? By the way, if I go out to a restaurant and I get something I don't like, that really makes me annoyed. I'm like, ugh, I have this opportunity, I'm in a restaurant, now I don't like this. Okay. But it's a small discomfort. But if we don't let our kids have those small failures, then how are they going to grapple with That's why everything turns into like I don't want to say I'm being over simplistic. But that's how for some people, many things turn into an anxiety or or a trauma because when you never can grapple and fail at the small things, when if if And if By the way, what does that do to your self-esteem? When mom writes back, you're capable of figuring out what to get for dinner or figuring out the washing machine or figuring out the bus or navigating the fight with your roommate, then mom sends or dad sends their child a message, I believe in you and I believe in your ability to do things for yourself. If mom and dad just jump in and try to solve the problem, it sends the message, you're right, you're really not capable of picking your own dinner. So, now I'm going to solve it for you. Now, that doesn't mean as parents, our job is to be sounding boards for our kids. They're to give advice, you know, we want our kids to come to us for things, but there's a difference between being a sounding board and and like running in to solve every problem and and make them always feel comfortable. It's It's good for our kids to feel uncomfortable because we want them the whole goal is that Mir Hashem, like God willing, they're going to grow up and leave us and live their own lives. We don't want them to be dependent. We want them to be independent. >> Mhm. And you're teaching them how to tolerate distress. Right. Cuz if you can't tolerate distress, like life is full of distress. Yeah. Yeah. And and anytime you also want to accomplish or experience anything there's first some distress to get there as well. So that's why we like distress is a positive. Right. And by the way, we learn that from the youngest age. Anyone who's ever watched a baby go from like being a an immobile baby to learning how to crawl and sort of falling to learning how to walk and falling at our youngest ages and physiological stages, we see and that's what's so incredible about kids. Like they just get back up and keep going. They just get back up and keep going. They're hardwired to do that. We're hardwired to do that as human beings. We actually get in our own ways, you know, so a lot of the times with that. Okay, so I want to end with that. The There's the distress that we experience, the the failures that we have the failures that we've experienced, the mistakes that we've made. And then there's the distress that God puts us into. And a lot of life is a choosing distress and meaning choosing effort, choosing uncomfortable situations, choosing to navigate mistakes in a constructive way. But then some of it is also enduring distress that Hashem puts us into. There's you mentioned like when someone experiences catastrophe in their life or places that God puts us into that's extremely uncomfortable. What would you say about responding to those moments that weren't of our own creation clearly? Like totally circumstances from Hashem. Okay, I think I'll end with um an idea from the Piaseczno Rebbe who was the Rebbe of the uh the Warsaw Ghetto during the Holocaust and he the Warsaw Ghetto was a very flourishing society even you know during the Holocaust and they had tons of documents. They had records of daily life and how things functioned and what was going what the Nazis were doing with them and included in those documents were also drashot were sermons from the Rebbe that ultimately were compiled into into a book called Torah May Shnot HaZman or more colloquially the Esh Kodesh. So if you look it's not one idea but it's more a sort of the philosophical underpinnings of the work. Um Each year in the Ghetto the the the Rebbe was in the Ghetto for for 3 years basically. And he actually had the opportunity to be smuggled out and he chose very actively to stay with his Hasidim because they knew he knew that they would need him and he ultimately was murdered by the Nazis. Um if you look at his all of his his drashot all of his sermons from let's say year one in the Ghetto. An underlying theme is teshuvah is repentance is like strengthening ourselves and we have to we have to work harder. We have to do more for Hashem so that he takes this you know this very difficult time away from us or maybe this is a punishment and we have to make ourselves better. That's the whole first year. And I'll fast each year has its own flavor but um if you go to the last year there's a completely different tone and that's basically the tone of Hashem is with us in our suffering. And he quotes the the famous Rashi of Moshe when Moshe goes to the to the sneh to the burning bush, and his first encounter with God. And why why does God appear in this like small brambly bush versus something more majestic and magnificent? And the answer is I'm with the Jewish people as they're suffering in Mitzrayim. And the Rebbe talks about in in so many places we're here, we're crying, God is right next to us crying. God is right with us, and he talks about how the mindset of a person about their suffering it when a person just thinks they're in the suffering by themselves, that's destructive. But if you look at your suffering and you say Hashem is right with me in it, it's constructive. And if God if I really understand that when I'm going through something hard, if I can almost have that imagery of Hashem right next to me, again, in pain, mourning, crying I can use that to build myself into something stronger. But on the other hand, we can adjust that framework, and we can say Hashem's with us in all this, and here we are in the era of the Geulah, of the redemption, and we're literally watching it. We you know, with our own two eyes. Wow, it doesn't mean it's not painful. The Geulah is likened to labor pains. So if you speak to any woman who's been blessed to give birth to a child, she will say the pain is real. It is a real pain. It's purposeful. Because it gets you to that beautiful baby that comes at the end. So the pain of Geulah and the pain of failure and the pain of challenge, that's all real. But if I can recognize and understand that Hashem is not abandoning me in my pain, but is with me. Like one of the things about what's so incredible about these writings of the Piazetzna Rebbe who suffered not only just like broad hardship watching what's going, but a real personal personal suffering, hardship, um you know, his children were killed and his wife like terrible things. He never said, "I don't believe in God." He never said, "God has abandoned me." He said, "I see God is with us. He is crying with us." And so when we can recognize that we're in the world right now and we're in this time of again, whether you want to say it's the beginning of the gola, the middle of the gola, wherever we are, but it is very clear and apparent that something majestic is happening and Hashem is bringing the world to a certain place. Well, we're so blessed to be living in a time I I'm even more blessed because I live in Israel. So I have a real front row seat to this. But we see it happening and when we can see that Hashem is with us, we can say it's difficult, but I don't feel alone and abandoned. I feel supported and inspired and we can use that to go forward. Hashem is with me in this. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. I think that's beautiful and it's beautiful to highlight I think very often when we are in those moments of darkness, what we feel is that we are alone. And even just to know that we are not alone, even if it doesn't change the hardship, it's a different experience to not be alone in it. Right. Right and again Hashem sends many many uh types of shlichim to us, many types of messengers. Um some of those messengers are in the form of a doctor or a therapist. Some of those messengers are in the form of friend. Like not everyone has to fill the same role. And and again I'll say to anyone listening if I I really mean it and I'll put my information in the show notes. Well, you will. Um if I could ever be helpful to anyone on their journey, they should reach out. It's my pleasure. Wow, that's so generous and I want to encourage anyone to take you up on it. Before we spoke, I was like, "Do you mean it? Do you really mean it?" I was like, "No, yeah, I really mean it." I'm like, "Okay, let's say that you really mean it that if someone wants to reach out for guidance, for support, for Torah, that they that you really are open and available for that connection." >> 100%. That's beautiful. Thank you for saying that. And let's end This is a question I like to end every conversation with. Is if you're sitting across from one person and you could give one message from your soul to theirs, what would you say? Wow. I think I'd say that I really believe that Hashem believes in you. So, you need to believe in yourself. But part of believing in yourself means dedicating yourself to work very very hard to become everything that Hashem knew you could be when he put your neshama in this world. That's good. >> [laughter] >> Wow. That's powerful. I I really believe that. And I I think that again, one of the challenges is when we say Hashem believes in me, but we're but we forget that ingredient of the hard work that goes along with it, then we get disappointed cuz we're like, "Where's the magic?" The magic's not magic. The magic's hard work. Thank you. Thank you. This is such fun. This is such fun. This was such a delight. I'd loved having this conversation with you. Thank you. Same. Thank you. It's really an honor and you should just be blessed to continue doing all this incredible work that you do, reaching so many people with such like you with your insights and your questions and your thoughtful responses and again, like all the different um interesting people [music] that you come across in your work and getting to expose everyone to them. It's amazing. >> [music] >> Thank you so much for listening to for conversation. I hope you loved it and if you did, don't forget to leave us a five-star rating or review. It's a small lift [music] for you, but really supports Human & Holy in growing the show. New episodes are coming out right now every Sunday morning. You can find us on Instagram [music] at humanandholy.com/sponsor if you'd like to give in any amount or contribute to our work and help us bring it into the world every single week. We love hearing from you, so email us at [email protected]. Thank you [music] so much for being here. I don't take a moment of your time and attention for granted, and I'm so grateful to get to have these conversations with you. >> [music] >> Wishing you a wonderful day.