Transcript
Good morning, Boker Tov. Welcome back to our Living with Emuna series, our weekly shiur/support group, to remind ourselves what really matters, what's really important, what's really true, namely that there's a Hashem in this world, and that He's in our lives, and that He loves us. I saw a quote yesterday from Rav Moshe Weinberger, who said, isn't it the most amazing thing in the world that the same one who judges us is also madly in love with us? That it's our Father? Turns out we're coming before the judge this weekend. It's Rosh Hashana, Aseres Yimei Teshuva, Yom Kippur. Imagine you're summoned to court, God forbid, some violation. You need to appear before a judge. You're shaking, you're trembling, you're worried, you're prepared. And when you walk into the courtroom and look up, who is it on the bench? None other than your father. Now, obviously in a human court, that would never go. He'd have to recuse himself. There's an inherent bias. And yet, in our case, we come before the judge, and we should have that mentality, we should have that imagery, we should be trying to grow in that way. But we look up, and who is it standing on the bench? It's none other than Avinu Shebashamayim, Atate in Himmel. It's none other than our Father in heaven. It's none other than Hashem. And so what an amazing feeling. That's what we get together to reinforce and to remind and to grow. I want to thank our amazing friends, Avi and Bella Morgen, who sponsored the Emuna series this year in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut, צבי בן ראובן נתן, and as well as in memory of Bella's mother, Dr. Ellen Schanzer. Thank you so much for that generosity and the sponsorship. Today's particular shiur is also sponsored by Heidi Fuchs in commemoration of the yahrzeit for her beloved father, Al Amzel. Heidi Fuchs, when I grew up, she lived around the corner from me. I babysat for her children. That was my childhood spending money. And more significantly, today's shiur is in memory of her father, Al Amzel. Al was a very special man and a very special part of my childhood. He was a real icon and fixture of our shul, of Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, New Jersey. Growing up, not only did Al make the greatest potato kugel, he had the biggest heart and he loved children and he showed us a great affection and he built us up, and we sorely miss him. Our learning should be l'ilui nishmaso, dedicated in his memory. So thank you, Heidi and Alan Fuchs, for that sponsorship as well. Okay, we pick up where we left off last week. We've been learning a short piece, and we should finish it this week, by the author of the Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh. We learned from him previously, Rav Itamar Schwartz, who has been taking us through a magnificent... this has been for me transformational understanding of something we say every year. Every year in Selichos we recite... we ask Hashem that don't cast me away. Al tashlicheini milfanecha. Don't cast me away. Don't throw me away. Al tashlicheini. Don't get rid of me. Don't give up on me. Don't move on from me. Why? And רוח קדשך אל תקח ממני. Don't take away from me the Ruach Hakodesh that I have. To which Schwartz was bothered, the Bilvavi was bothered, the Ruach Hakodesh that I have? Are we so arrogant... we just finished Mesillas Yesharim, we talked about the quality of arrogance. Are we so arrogant to presume that we have Ruach Hakodesh? That we have some divine inspiration? That we have some sense of divine wisdom? So we established last time that perhaps what it's talking about is not Ruach Hakodesh in the formal sense, in the culmination of Mesillas Yesharim, that if a person perfects their character, if a person becomes most complete or whole, that we're capable of achieving a life of Ruach Hakodesh. That's not what it means. What does it mean then, Ruach Hakodesh? So the Bilvavi said the following, if you remember. What makes us uniquely human? What elevates or distinguishes us from animals? Bechira. The ability to choose. Animals have an impulse. Animals have an instinct. Animals have an appetite, and they follow it. They're hungry, they eat. They don't determine, do I own that? Do I not own that? Will it make me fat? How will it make me look in these pants, in this dress? They don't have such self-awareness. They don't have discernment. They don't have free will. They have an appetite, an urge, an instinct, an intuition, and they pursue it. Human beings have the capacity to have self-awareness, to step outside ourselves, to look at our lives and to say, is this a good choice or a bad choice? What will the consequences, what will the implications, what will the results be of the choice I'm about to make? The thing I'm about to say, the thing I'm about to do, the choice I'm about to make, what will be the next ro'eh es hanolad? What's going to come out of it? What happens as a result? That capacity to choose, the koach habechira, the ability to be discerning, the Vilna Gaon says, that's what Ruach. Hakadosh Baruch Hu breathed life into us, ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים. We were simply molded out of clay, out of earth, out of soil. We were a golem. We were a wax figure in Madame Tussauds. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu chose to take a deep breath in His own lungs, kivyakol, He breathes into us, it expanded our lungs, He put a piece of Himself in us, and we became alive. Dynamic, alive, vibrant. We became alive, animated. We became alive, the ability to choose. The ability to choose. Yes, I'm drawn to eat that, but I don't have to. Yes, I... Yes, I want to say that, but I won't. Yes, I want to go there, but it's not good for me. Yes, I want to look at that, but it's wrong. We have the ability, unlike an animal who follows its instinct or impulse, to pause and to ask ourselves what will come out of this and to make choices. The ruach, the tzelem elokim, the piece of God that He inserted within us, the חלק אלוק ממעל ממש that each of us is a שטיק ריבונו של עולם, we're each a piece of Hashem. How does Hashem manifest Himself through us? Certainly through our unique qualities and attributes and skills and talents and blessings. But most of all, He exhibits or manifests Himself through us in our ability to have bechira to choose, to choose. That's what Rosh Hashanah, Aseret Yemei Teshuva, Yom Kippur, that's what this time of year is all about. Look in the mirror and evaluate the choices that you're making. Forget the past. It's not about being judged for the past year. אין דנין לאדם אלא לפי מעשיו של אותה שעה. Right now, when we walk in on Rosh Hashanah, Hashem's going to look at us right now and say, based on right now, what choices are you making? How are you self-defining? Who are you and where are you going and what is your destiny, what is your identity, and what are your priorities and what are your values and what are your ideals? What are the choices you're making because I gave you the power to choose? Don't forfeit, don't concede, don't pretend, don't point a finger. I would be different if only. No, don't blame your spouse, your children, your rebbe, your teacher, your DNA, your genetics, your neighbor. Don't blame everyone around you. Look in that mirror and say, I have a ruach, I have a tzelem elokim, You breathed life into me, You gave me the power to choose. Now that doesn't mean we don't need help. Sometimes or often we need help when we choose and we're allowed to turn to others for help, but we still have to show that, we still have to exhibit that when we ask for that help. There's a great story of a boy walking with his father through the forest and they come across a log and the log is incredibly heavy. And the boy turns to his father and he says, do you think I can move the log, can I lift the log? And the father says, if you use all your strength, I think you can. So the boy tries to move the log and it won't move, it's so heavy, it's so embedded, he can't. He turns to his father, he said, I thought you said I could move it. He said, I told you, if you use all your strength, I think you can. So the boy bends down again and he tries to move it, he tries to lift it, and it won't move, it won't budge, he's not strong enough. Says to his father, I thought you told me if I use all my strength I can. His father said, yes, if you use all your strength you can. He tries a third time and it doesn't move. He turns to his father incredulous and he says, I thought you said I could move it. And his father said, I told you, if you use all your strength you could, but you didn't use all your strength, you didn't ask me for help. Using our strength is asking others for help. It's not a sign of weakness to need help, it's a sign of strength to be able to ask others for help. But we have to take the extreme ownership, exhibit the responsibility, make the choice to ask for help. So when I say that we have the choice and we can forge our destiny, I'm not suggesting that we can't ever ask for help or use help, there's something to be ashamed or guilty about about help. The stronger you are, the more help that you ask for. It's not weakness, it's strength, but we have to be the ones to do it. So v'ruach kodshecha, so far I'm just reviewing what we said last week. V'ruach kodshecha, said Rav Schortz the Bilvavi, what does it mean ורוח קדשך אל תקח ממני? Don't remove my bechira, my power of choice. Point number one. Point number two he said was, at the root, at the core of all mistakes. If you've learned with me for any amount of time you know that I hate the translation of chet as sin. Sin is a Christian Catholic word, it's not a Jewish word, I don't even know what the word sin means. Sin, iniquity, I have no idea what those things are. I know what a chet is, it's a mistake. It's a mistake, I shouldn't have said that, I shouldn't have eaten without the bracha, I shouldn't have slept in and not davened, it's a mistake. I made a mistake. I made a mistake. A chet in marriage, I made a mistake, I didn't listen, I wasn't sensitive, I was cruel what I said, I wasn't helpful. It's a mistake, it's a mistake, a chet is a mistake. Again, it's a missed opportunity, chet in Tanach, you shoot an arrow, you miss, v'hichti, it's a miss. A chet is a miss. So every time we perform a chet, every time we make a mistake, at the core of the mistake we've made, the reason we make that mistake is we allow ourselves or worse we choose to be absent or free of God in that moment. In other words, if I felt God's presence, His hand was resting on my shoulder, felt He's in the room, felt He has an awareness or supervision of what I'm doing, I could never make that mistake. I would never make the mistake. What enables me or empowers me to make that mistake is that I allowed myself or even worse I chose in that moment to say God stay outside. God go to another room. I want to watch this, or I want to say this, or I want to eat this, or I want to go there, or I want to behave in this way, so but it's uncomfortable and it's incongruous and it's inconsistent to do it with You here. So do me a favor, step outside. Now we don't consciously have that thought pattern, we don't consciously express that or articulate that, but in our subconscious that's what we're doing. We're saying God, You're back at shul. God, You're in the beis medrash, You're in the midrashah, You're inside my siddur, You're in my tallis bag, You're next to my candle stick. So the foundation of the prerequisite to the mistake that we make spiritually, and not only spiritually, is our subconscious ability to divide or distinguish or segregate or retreat from an awareness or feeling of presence that Hashem is right there. We forget. That's what it means when Chazal say that a person who performs a cheit, if you make such a mistake, נכנס בו רוח שטות. You became a fool. For a moment you've become a moron, an idiot. You've closed your eyes. You've closed your eyes. I'll make a comparison which could be painful, I don't mean to for some, unfortunately it is, but, you know, the person who on the business trip, God forbid flirts with someone of the opposite gender and God forbid, God forbid makes a mistake, a deeply painful and damaging and hurtful mistake, sometimes irreparable. So what enabled them to make that mistake? What enabled them to go to that room of the associate that only led to problems? In that moment their warped, manipulated, distorted way of thinking was, 'I'm not really married on this trip. I'm not really, I don't have the status of being married in this hotel, in this place, at this time.' In other words, if a person sat and said, 'I stood under the chuppah and I made vows and I took a promise and I have children and I made a pledge, and either I need to get out of that marriage and move on or I need to honor the marriage and repair it, but doing this to violate, not only violates the other person but it violates my own integrity.' If a person actually sat and had that whole thought pattern, they could never do what they were going to do. Ella mah, what happens? They don't have that thought pattern, instead they feel and they say, 'Well, maybe the marriage doesn't apply in this bubble called this business trip or whatever I've gone or with whoever I am.' So that's the נכנס בו רוח שטות. Such thinking is moronic. Such thinking is idiotic. Such thinking is foolish and stupid, if you'll excuse me. Any otherwise really intelligent and brilliant and bright people suspend their normal logical, rational thinking to allow a ruach shtus, such moronic thinking to enter into them, leading to self-destructive conclusions that sabotage their whole lives. Their whole lives are thrown away as a result. We are in a marriage, we are in a loving relationship, we are in a romantic encounter with Hashem. And when we allow that cheit, that ruach shtus, we are making that same choice, consciously or subconsciously, articulated or implicitly. We too are saying, 'You know what? I'm not married to God in this moment, because then I couldn't do what I really wanted to do. I can't really follow through on what I want to do right now.' So what do we do instead? We say, 'God, you're in shul, you're in my siddur, you're next to my mitzvah, but where I am right now, with what I want to do right now, you're not really here.' So what is he building up to? What is the main point? Where does emunah come into teshuvah? This transformed my way of thinking this Elul. Never thought about it in this way. Not only never understood this pasuk, not only never understood this tefillah of al tashlichenu, don't cast me away, don't give up on me, ruach kodshicha, don't take my ruach hakodesh. I never thought I had ruach hakodesh. So this pasuk was applying to the person next to me. I was saying it because it's in the Machzor but it applies to the person next to me. רוח קדשך אל תקח ממני. Don't take my ruach. I never thought I had ruach hakodesh. But now know this applies to me. And how does it apply to every one of us? Because as we reflect and think about the mistakes we've made, we need to own up to the fact that the foundation, the prerequisite, the core central to every mistake we made, before even that mistake that we made was allowing ourselves to forget there's God. Allowing ourselves to be distance for God. Pretending for a moment that we weren't married to God. Forgetting for a moment that we're accountable to God. In other words, a breach and failure of emunah, a breakdown of a feeling that he's by my side, he's in the room, his hand is on my shoulder is what enabled me to say or eat or do or go or think that thing that was the mistake. But even before the mistake was the bigger mistake of forgetting to be connected to Hashem. So that break, that breach of the connection with Hashem is the core central to what led to that problem to begin with. I forgot. So רוח קדשך אל תקח ממני. That ruach, that you're inside me, that you're forever with me, that your presence is always felt with me, the mindfulness of you which is ruach kodshicha, ruach the spirit of kodshicha, of your holiness, of your sanctity, of your presence in my life, the ruach kodshicha, the ruach. We've got ruach, yes we do, we've got ruach, how about you? To live my life with a ruach. I've got a ruach. You ever see people who are on fire with emunah? They've got a ruach. They don't usually walk around like this, 'I love Hashem, there's Hashem, Hashem is in my life, Hashem.' They're not usually like miserable, farbissener, their head down, their mumbling. A person who feels their life with emunah, they're like, 'Ah, I love Hashem, he's everywhere, isn't Hashem amazing?' They have a ruach. They have a spirit, there's a joy, there's a zest. There's an enthusiasm, there's a zeal, there's a ruach! So we are meant to have that ruach. The ruach, the ruach in me, the spirit, the joy, the enthusiasm, the energy of kadshacha, of your holiness, of your sanctity, of your presence, the ruach, the mindfulness that you're here, that you're with me, that you're everywhere, al tikach mimeni, don't give up on me. Yes, I stand before you today. And yes, we're taking an inventory of every way I went wrong. And yes, at the core of each time I went wrong was because I forgot I was married to you. ברוח קדשך אל תקח ממני, that ruach, that spirit, that joy, that enthusiasm, that energy of kadshacha that you're always with me, al tikach, don't take it. Don't take it away. Don't give up on me. Don't abandon me. Don't walk out, don't walk away from me. Okay, back to this text, and I'm happy to share it with anybody afterwards. It's very short. But I'm going to read it to you and translate to you. עיקר הבקשה מלבד מה שמבקשים על המעשה הוא על הסיבה שהביאה את האדם לידי חטא. So when we stand before Hashem for the Aseres Yimei Teshuva, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and if you're listening to this in a February, March, April, it applies anytime all year round whenever we want to repair that relationship. We come and we say two things. Number one, al hama'aseh. I'm really sorry Hashem, I did X, Y, Z. The ma'aseh, the act. I'm sorry I spoke lashon hara. I'm sorry I slept in and didn't daven. I'm sorry I failed to make a bracha when I ate. I'm sorry I didn't keep Shabbos the way I could. I'm sorry I didn't give away tzedakah generously as you asked me to. I'm sorry for the ma'aseh, I made a mistake. I'm sorry. But not only am I sorry for the ma'aseh, the action, hasiba, the reason, the cause, the driver that led me to the cheit. ומה שהביאו לידי חטא זה מה שעמד בנקודת הניסיון לבד בלי צירוף לריבונו של עולם ולכן נפל בחטא. And do you know where I went wrong? You know what led to this ma'aseh, to the act? Do you know what led to it? Was that I allowed myself to be without you. I stood and I confronted it alone. I looked in the cabinet, the cupboard, the shelf in the supermarket, and when I was fighting to eat healthy, I didn't invoke you and say Hashem, give me the strength. When I had that juicy lashon hara on the tip of my tongue, the edge of my lips, I didn't say Hashem, help me. I know you don't want me to say it. Help me. I looked at the challenges and I confronted the nisyonos, the tests of life, and I thought I can do it alone. I tried to do it alone. I acted arrogantly as if I am alone, and I forgot to invoke you and draw from you. I forgot to welcome you and invite you. So not only am I asking forgiveness, mechila, for the ma'aseh. There's the particular act of where I went wrong, but also there's the siba, the driver, the reason. The reason ultimately I violated that act, that indiscretion and I was wrong, is because I allowed myself to forget about you. You weren't there in my—in that moment. Again, if you come back to my metaphor, maybe it's not exact, I just thought about it now. So in other words, yes, says the husband, could be the wife, I allowed myself to flirt at the bar inappropriately on the business trip. But you know why I spoke inappropriately and flirted? Because I didn't picture you, I forgot I'm in love with you. I didn't have your picture as the home screen on my phone, I didn't carry your picture in my wallet, I wasn't texting you once an hour to check in and see how you're doing. What drove, what enabled, what allowed that mistake of the act for which I need forgiveness, is the fact that I forgot about you. I forgot about you. It's a totally different way of thinking. אם אדם יבקש מחילה על עבירות של שנה שעברה אבל הוא משתונן להמשיך להתמודד בניסיונות עם אותה צורה שהתמודד בניסיונות הקודמים שם הוא נפל הרי שחסר בכל עיקר בקשת המחילה. Says Rav Schwartz, says the Bilvavi. So if you stand before Hashem and you say, forgive me for this, forgive me for that, forgive me for the other thing, but you never included forgive me for forgetting about you. Forgive me for the fact that at times in my relationship I went at it alone, I forgot to invoke you, draw from you, talk to you, listen to you, spend time with you, remember you. Then you've never really asked for forgiveness. You've never really asked for forgiveness. If you come back and you say, yes I flirted with her, it was a mistake, I'm so sorry for the mistake. But you don't say, you know what I'm really sorry for? I'm sorry that we're not more connected and there isn't more romance and I didn't make a gesture and I didn't check in and I didn't respond to your bid for connection and that I'm not thinking about you all the time and that our marriage is not part of my very core identity. Then what was the—what was really the—what was the sincerity of the I'm sorry about the particular act of being flirtatious? Haderech tzricha lehishtanot. We've got to change radically in our way. למצוא דרך אחרת שמכוחה יתמודד בניסיונות מכאן ולהבא. So to walk out of a meaningful Rosh Hashana and Aseres Yimei Teshuva, a Yom Kippur, is not just to promise and pledge not to repeat the act, but it's to work on improving what enabled or allowed that act to begin with. In other words, if you come out of Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and you're not stronger in your emuna bitachon and deveikus then you did not have Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. If you just clapped all the Al Cheit and you turned the pages of the Machzor and you sang depending on what minhag you're going to you sang the מי יחיה ומי ימות bechol minei mitos or Hayom Hayom Hayom but you never actually paused and said Hashem I need to evaluate my relationship with you. If your whole attitude to this time of the year is let me think about where I went wrong, let me apologize, let me wipe the slate clean and I'll try again, but nowhere in that conversation did you say and how am I doing with you? Hashem do I talk to you? Do I spend time with you? Do I feel your presence in my life? Am I calm and confident that you've got it all covered? Do I let go and let God? If all you do is clap the Al Cheit and all you do is focus on the litany list of what you went wrong but you never stop and say underneath it all where am I? Where am I? One of my favorites therapists to listen to is a woman named Esther Perel, traditional Jew not observant, she's from Austria, survivor I think she may be a child of, her parents were survivors. She's become very very popular, famous, she's a prominent therapist and she has an amazing podcast called Where Should We Begin where she lets you listen in to her therapy sessions on couples who've had a breach in the relationship. And I find as an amateur counselor, I always refer to an expert, I never deal with it alone, but who spends a lot of time trying to help couples, it's very very helpful to me, it's an amazing podcast. She has a famous Ted Talk with millions and millions and millions of hits where she talks about how to recover from infidelity, how to recover from infidelity. And it's worth watching, it's a few minutes long, and what she says is every act of infidelity reveals a brokenness to the relationship that could be repaired. And you could either bounce back and having having that window into what needs to be repaired, repair it and come back stronger than ever or it can spiral and compound and disintegrate and represent the end. And if you listen to her podcast she uses that same attitude in her counseling and she of course never concludes everyone should go out and have an affair so they could learn about their marriage and improve it, chas v'shalom, God forbid, of course she doesn't endorse that, nor do we or halacha. However her point is when there's a breach or a brokenness, a violation, you could either focus just on the act of the violation, ask for forgiveness, make up for it, beg, atone. Excuse me, dry throat not corona, or you could address, it's like if you cough today you have to run out of a room, apologize to the world. When I'm in shul and I have to sneeze I run out into my office. It's a different world we're living in today. Anyway, talk about the ayin hara. So of course you shouldn't experiment in order to learn from it, but if God forbid it happens, the attitude or approach, the response you could have to it is to learn and grow or to allow it to dissolve, to disintegrate quickly. And the same that's exactly what the Bilvavi is saying, it's exactly the same theory and thesis. In every violation of Hashem, and that's exactly what a cheit is, it's exactly what Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur we come to say. Hashem I violated, I made mistakes, I ignored your will, I was not obedient, I wasn't compliant, I hurt you, I hurt myself. So do I just focus on the list or is the act of infidelity to God a window into what's wrong in my relationship? Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur do I come back, again anytime of the year, do I ever sit back and say I'm not just going to focus on the ABC, I'm not going to go through the Al Cheit, the Ashamnu Bagadnus and say what exact I'm going to first begin or I'm going to complement that by asking myself what is the state of my relationship? What's the state of my relationship with God? Is it better this year than it was last year or is it worse? Do I feel closer? Do I feel more far, more distant? What is the state of my relationship to him? Because if I don't address that, if I don't mitmoded, if I'm not addressing, evaluating, measuring, if I'm not asking myself what is the state of my relationship? Do I feel his love and do I love him back? Do we spend time? Do I talk to him? Do I hear him talking to me? Do I feel his presence? Do I let go and let God? If I don't stop and ask what's the state of my relationship then I haven't really done teshuva even if I've asked forgiveness for the particular things. So again coming back to our metaphor, so if the injured party says thank you for saying you're sorry you flirted with someone else, but can we talk about our marriage? What allowed that to happen? Obviously you don't feel so in love, so connected, so close. What enabled you to forget that I'm here or forget me or allowed you to hurt me in that way. You say, look, I said I'm sorry, I don't want to talk about those things. What does that have to do with anything? I said I'm sorry for the act of flirting, I won't flirt again, I flirted, it was mistake, I regret it, I apologize, I won't do it again, why do we have to talk about that? So that injured party is going to be what? Why do we have to talk about that? That's everything. If we don't talk about that, what's the value of your sorry? Your sorry for the particular act, you're more likely sorry because you were caught in the act, or caught having done the act. If you're really sorry, then you're willing to stop and say, let's talk about the relationship. How can we repair, how can we improve, how can we grow even closer than ever? שמדבר מהרוח קדשך אל תקח ממנו מדובר על כוח מוחשי בפועל שאדם יכול וצריך להרגישו בשעה שעומד בנסיונות. So in that moment when you're tempted, we have to feel, I'm not alone. Person is tempted to flirt you have to say, wait a second, I'm madly in love, I'm not going to hurt the other person, I'm not going to throw that away. ככל שאדם ירגיש את מציאות השם יתברך עמו ובתוכו בשעת נסיון הוא ירגיש שהרוח שנמצאת בקרבו לא יכולה לעמוד בנסיון והוא שואל ומבקש מהשם רוח קדשך שתוספת תוקף שיוכל לעמוד בנסיון. So in a moment of nisayon, Hashem I want to sleep in, I want to not say the bracha, I want to cheat on my taxes, I want to gossip about somebody else, but I, I want to feel your presence. If you're here I can't do that. If I know you're in the room I find the strength and I know I'm accountable. כפי ערך ההכרה והבקשה כך יצליח לעמוד בנסיון. To the degree and directly related and proportional to our awareness and our closeness to Hashem will be our strength and ability to withstand the temptation and not to in fact violate, violate His will. ככל שעומד לבד כך סכנתו קרובה בפועל ממש. And the more we go through life and we're alone, the more we go through life alone, thinking we got it, we can handle it, the more vulnerable, the more fragile, the more likely we are to fall. אבל ככל שיצרף את עצמו בדרכי חייו בכלל ובשעת הנסיון בפרט הוא יכול לעמוד בעצם הנסיון. So if I'm looking back and saying, you know what? I was tempted, I was tempted and I failed. I made a mistake, I gave in to the temptation, I failed, I failed. So part of overcoming the next time I'll be tempted is to say I don't want to be alone again. The reason I failed in my temptation is I was alone, you weren't with me. I forgot about that relationship. I took off my wedding ring to you and I went out it alone and I thought I'd be okay. So you know what Hashem, I'm putting it back on. I'm never without you. I always will have an awareness of you. The antidote, the answer, the strength, the power to do better in the future is to work on that relationship, the mindfulness, the presence of Hashem. שבא לבקש מהקדוש ברוך הוא selicha u'mechila צריך שיהיה לאדם דרך איך מכאן ואילך יוכל לעמוד שלא ישוב לכסלו עוד. You know part of teshuvah is not just about, okay I was caught, okay I'm appearing before the judge, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. To know whether it's a sincere I'm sorry is to say, what's your plan? What's your plan? Okay, I appreciate you're saying you're sorry. I appreciate it, I believe you, it's sincere. I believe you have regrets and remorse, I believe you feel bad, I believe you when you say you're sorry. Good. What's your plan for it to not happen again? What's your plan? Plan? I don't know, I haven't thought about it. I don't have a plan. Well then what's the value of your sorry? Because you're going to end up doing it again. If you don't have a plan to make sure it doesn't happen again, then you're not really sorry. הדברים הללו אינם בגדר של התעוררות עוד בגדר של derech chayim. אם זו התעוררות השופר יפסיק להימשך מה שישקוט ויגמר ראש השנה. This is not just hitorerut. This is not like a mussar schmooze, oh I want to get you psyched for Rosh Hashanah, so listen to this. This is life. This is all about life. This is relationship insight. It's relationship 101. It's relationship in marriage, it's relationship in the human realm, and it's our relationship with Hashem. This is relationship's 101, 101. Do you say you're sorry? What's your plan in the future? When you made a mistake it reveals a flaw in the relationship that needs to be repaired, that needs to be upgraded, that needs to be updated, that needs to be improved. אבל אם הופכים זאת לדרך חיים בפועל ממש. If you turn this into a way of life, if you focus on Hashem, not about mistakes and apologies, but you turn it into evaluating a relationship and improving it. שאדם מצרף את הקדוש ברוך הוא עמו אצלו לכל חלקי החיים בכלל ולנסיונות בפרט באופן חושי ממש. Hashem is opposite me. He's next to me. He's part of every area of life. And particularly when I'm in a challenging situation, particularly in the moments I'm being tested, that's when I most feel His presence, that's when I most lean on him, that's when I most remember I'm in a romantic relationship with him. הרי שיש לו את התוקף שמכוחו הוא יכול לעמוד בנסיון. Then you have everything. Then you have the tools, then you have the power, then you have the strength to overcome anything. And so as we go into this new year, this was the last shiur of the year, the last shiur of the year. The good news is the first shiur of the new year is next week. As we go into the new year, as we finish the last shiur of this year, to draw that strength, we have it inside us, to reflect on our relationship. ashamnu bagadnu אשמנו בגדנו חטא חטא we're about to enter the period we've started saying selichos. Don't just use this time of year as a list, but think about that relationship. And the next time that you feel challenged and tested, don't go out alone. You don't have to be at it alone. The more that you have, the easier it is to overcome. I once called Dr. Pelkovitz, mentor of mine, mentor of everybody, with a particularly challenging question, really challenging psychological question, and I didn't know what to do. The scenario, the circumstance was overwhelming. So he listened to me and he paused and then he said to me the following. He said studies show that when you're standing at the base of a mountain of an incline that you need to walk up, the degree of difficulty of the incline is directly proportional to whether you're alone or with other people. When you're all alone, it looks much steeper and it looks much harder and you have much less confidence you can climb it. But you're with others, it looks more shallow, it looks easier, and you believe you can get to the top. So he so he said to me Dr. Pelkovitz, he tells me that study and then he says, I don't have an answer for you, I don't have what to tell you, but I'm standing at the base of the mountain with you. That's what he said to me. It was a beautiful imagery. It didn't really help me with the question I had, but it was a beautiful imagery that you're not out it alone. And I love that imagery. That's what the Ribbono Shel Olam is saying. You're going through life, you're going through Corona pandemic, you're going through loneliness, you're being tested in whichever and whatever way, you're not at the base of the mountain alone. Hashem says I'm right next to you. You still have to climb the mountain, you still have to make it to the top, you still have an incline and it's steep, but it's going to look less steep and you're going to have more strength and vigor to climb it because I'm right next to you. So let's invite Hashem to be right next to us so that we can climb to the top of every mountain that we need to, im yirtzeh Hashem, get to the top. Should have a kesiva v'chasima tova, gut gebentscht johr, all of Hashem's blessings, and join us tonight, the last Behind the Bima of the year. Rabbi Yissey Kamenecki, Rabbi Yisrael Kamenecki, the menahel of DRS will be our special guest. It's going to be amazing. We're also going to premiere a new video tonight, exclusive showing on Behind the Bima 9:00 tonight. Until then, stay happy, stay healthy, and stay holy.
