Transcript
Good morning Boker Tov Boker Tov, welcome back to Living with Emunah. Good morning, good morning, welcome. Wonderful to always see everyone's faces online, offline. That are offline, if you could be here in person, and online, that are online, then not at all. But it's great to be together and to work collectively on our Living with Emunah, to mechazek, to strengthen one another, and to remind ourselves of what should be the most obvious, and the most straightforward, and the most simple, which is to know that Hashem is here. I've shared with you before, we've learned before the insight of Rav Elchanan Wasserman, who wonders how could it be that a child turns Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah, a boy turns twelve or thirteen, they're obligated in all of Mitzvahs and among them to believe in Hashem? How could it be? How could it be? Rav Elchanan actually writes, he says Aristotle, the great philosopher, debated, he deliberated, he doubted, he wondered, adults struggle a whole lifetime of trying to figure it out, and this little pitzala, this little pisher, this little kid turns twelve or thirteen, you're obligated in Mitzvos including knowing that there is a Hashem. How could it be? So Rav Elchanan says, because you understand it all wrong. You think—I'm gonna get to the sponsor, but this just struck me, so I had to unload it. He says, you think that Emunah or Bitachon is something you have to learn, that you have to gain, that you have to add, that we're born, the default is we don't know, we don't believe, we're a blank slate, and now we have to take that leap of faith. And how could a child twelve or thirteen take the leap when adults struggle? How could it be? Legitimate question. He says, because you got the assumption all wrong. You're mistaken. It's not that we're born and the default is we don't know, jury's out. We're born, from the moment we're born it's obvious that there's a Creator. We're born and a little child knows I have a mommy and I have a daddy, I have a mommy and an Abba, an Ima and an Abba. And just like I have parents and they have parents and they have parents, so it goes all the way back and there's a Father in Heaven. And a child looks around this world and says, all these things I have that work and that function and who I am, so clearly, clearly there's a Creator. So what happens, says Rav Elchanan? What happens? Where'd that go? If that's the default and that's what's obvious, that's what's simple, that's how we are pre-programmed, then what happened? And the answer is, life gets in the way. And layers of doubt and cynicism get in the way. And the older we get, the more hardened we get, the more cynical we get, the more doubtful we feel, because people disappoint us, the world disappoints us, and life disappoints us. And people who were supposed to be role models and embody a life of Emunah are hypocritical and duplicitous and disappoint us, and so it undoes and unravels and dissolves the sense of Emunah that we innately and intuitively have to start. So Rav Elchanan concludes and he says, he says, you know what the job of parents is? He says the jobs of parents is don't mess it up. Your kid is going to be born with Emunah. Whether you talk about it or not, your kid's gonna feel there's a Hashem. No kid is ever, when you say Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is everywhere, wear a yarmulke, wear tzitzis, your upsherin, little girl, a little boy, whatever young age you start to talk about and engage and thank, and on putting them to bed you say Shema, they've never said, well how do you know He's there and I don't really believe He's there and I have some questions and concerns and doubts. They never say that. They say, of course, yeah, of course He's there. Yeah, of course, thank you Hashem. Hashem, please make my mommy or my daddy, my Sabba or Savta, my Bubbe or Zeide better. They never question, they never doubt. So where does that doubt come from? Our Shabbos tables. Where does that doubt come from? It comes from our dinner table. It comes from our reaction to things, it comes from their seeing us. Says Rav Elchanan, don't mess it up. So when they come twelve or thirteen, they don't have to learn or take a leap, you simply have to, by twelve or thirteen, you have to have not messed it up. By twelve or thirteen, don't erase and don't introduce doubt. Anyway, why'd I say all that even before we begin? Because I said we get together to remind ourselves what is so obvious, every Wednesday morning. Most Wednesday mornings we try, on Wednesday mornings, to live with Emunah. Why do we need it? I just, I've said this also countless times, I say the same thing every week. I don't know how you're here, why you're here. I know why I'm here, 'cause I still need to hear it. And that's the free coffee. That's why I'm here too. That's why I'm here too, the coffee. But I know why I'm here, which is often, not sometimes, often, the more obvious something is, the more important it is, the more easily we forget it and we need to be reminded of it. And so we need to at least once a week, once a day, once an hour, once a minute, remember there's a Hashem and He created this world and He loves us and He's good to us and He's kind to us and sometimes we feel that and sometimes we feel far from Him, but everything happens for a purpose, for a reason. There is order and meaning to the universe. And when we lean on Him and rely on Him and talk to Him and feel His presence, then our life is so much sweeter and so much better. And when we erase him and when our ego gets in the way, the program EGO stands for edging God out. When we edge God out with our ego, and then we're filled with arrogance and hubris and honor, we're filled with with envy and jealousy, and we give into anger. Today's Daf Yomi talks about how we sabotage our own lives when we indulge anger. Person flies off the handle with rage, you give into anger, you ruin your life. You destroy business opportunities and relationships. We destroy family relationships. We live, we destroy our own physical health. Anger is absolutely one of the most pernicious, horrible, evil, wicked, sabotaging, destructive forces in the world. But when you live with Hashem, you have nothing to get angry about because it's just the way it's meant to be. That's what was supposed to happen. That's how it's supposed to turn out. That's what's right for us. So we always feel better when we live with emunah, and yet we forget to live with emunah. Anyway, all of that was just to say good morning. Good morning. Emunah series is generously sponsored by Dr. Zvi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut and in memory of Bella's mother, Dr. Ellen Shanzar. We remain very grateful to the Morgans for their generosity. This shiur is also sponsored this morning by our dear friend Hencha Gansburg. Hencha's doing phenomenally well, living in Yerushalayim Ir HaKodesh. She's so kind, she continues to listen. I don't know if she's watching live or listening later, but we love you, we miss you, Hencha. And she sponsored this morning in memory of her husband Zvi Hersh Gansburg, whose yahrzeit is the 23rd of Cheshvan, and we are so, so grateful for that. I want to remind everyone to join the emunah WhatsApp group if you're not yet part of it, to get the shiur schedule, know when we're on or off, to be able to find the link, how to listen live or later, for bonus material, extra ideas about emunah. Join the emunah WhatsApp group. You can join it at rabbiefromgoldberg.org/whatsapp, rabbiefromgoldberg.org/whatsapp to join that and all the WhatsApp groups. So Hencha sent me an email, we've been going back and forth about something, but she writes in the email, and I say this not only because she sponsored the shiur, it is worth repeating in its own merit. So you don't have to pay for me to quote you. I'll quote you for free if what you have to say is worth repeating. So she says in the email, she says, I had written back to her, I hope you're well, Baruch Hashem, I'm thriving. I love Beit Tovei HaIr. I'm so grateful to Yocheved for suggesting it to me. With the technology today, I'm able to listen to the classes, emunah strength, blah blah blah. I want to share an insight I had. You speak about talking to Hashem, which I do every day. Many people have trouble doing this because they don't see Hashem. He's invisible. He doesn't react, respond. You can't see him, hear him, feel him, touch him, smell him. So many people struggle talking, is anyone listening? Talking, is it going anywhere? I'm talking, nobody's answering. But these same people, says Hencha, use their cell phones and say Siri. How many of your phones just went off? And Siri responds. They use Alexa and Alexa responds. And they say Hashem and Hashem also responds. He's there all the time, just like Siri, just like Alexa. When you visit Israel, contact me on my cell 058— I'm just kidding. I won't give out her cell, although I'm sure she'd love to see all of you and all of us. So Hencha's 100 percent right. We live in a generation and we live at a time more than any other that we can appreciate and we can understand talking to someone and something you can't see, and it hears and it's listening and it reacts and it responds, and sometimes it doesn't talk back, but yet it answers our request. Sometimes the answer is no, but sometimes the answer is yes, and we benefit from it. So we, more than any other, could learn to talk even when you can't see or feel or touch or smell the other side, because we know that with confidence that there is someone who is listening. Okay, back to our limmud. We've been learning about Rav Itche Meir by Im Derechecha. We're still learning from Pesach and Shavuot about Yemei Katnut and Gadlut. We're almost done with this and then we'll move on to something more cheerful. We'll move on to another text of emunah and we'll continue to grow together. Maybe one or two more weeks on this. But he's been discussing how do we connect with Hashem in Yemei Katnut? In Gadlut, it's easy. When you feel, page Kuf Samech Hei, 165, when you feel connected and on fire, when you feel his presence with clarity and confidence, it's so easy. Can't wait for the next davening. Shacharit is over, I can't wait for Mincha. Can't wait for the next kumzits, farbrengen, or oneg. Can't wait for the next shiur. Can't wait for the next chesed opportunity. Can't wait to tell someone how much you know and trust and believe and talk about Hashem. You can't wait. You can't wait on the one hand. And on the other hand we have Yemei Katnut. Eh, I don't really feel like it. I don't feel like opening the siddur and davening. I don't really feel like talking to him because I don't feel his presence. Where is he? He hasn't answered my tefillot or he put me in this difficult place and I feel like he's abandoned me. didn't just live in our community, he designed and built our community. But at the end of his book, at his hakamas matzeiva which we had recently, one of his sons read from the end of his book, his memoir, his autobiography, where he explains six or seven or eight reasons why he still believes in Hashem. After losing all of his family and suffering through countless camps and going through the Holocaust and surviving and losing everything and everyone he knew, why does he still believe in Hashem? And I have to, it's like that's the next text of emunah we should study together. Someone we knew, it's someone we watched and we learned from, it's someone who lived in our generation, in our time. And when we have those yemei katnus, is there a greater yemei katnus than the Holocaust? The skeletons who stumbled out of the Holocaust: malnourished, beaten, often blinded or injured, the skeletons of people who went through trauma we can't ever imagine. I sometimes think, you know, as a rav I deal with and interact with all kinds of challenges and struggles that people have and they pain me and all of us greatly, we daven for those who have them. One illness, the loss of one loved one, one child in distress, this is the trauma we have organizations, we write books, we hold conferences, we do research. One illness, the trauma or the struggle or the, God forbid, the loss of one child, one, one day that you're hungry. You ever travel and there's no kosher food and the airport you couldn't find anything and eppes your stomach growled a little bit? Okay, you ate 17 candy bars, you did just fine, you found a way. How many bags of blue chips you could eat? But you didn't have a proper meal and your stomach growled a little bit and you're traumatized for life because there was one day you couldn't eat, overeat, the way we normally do. And you think about a Holocaust survivor and it's basically all the trauma of the whole generation, the whole community, everyone in it, one survivor went through. They didn't lose one person in their family, they lost their parents, their children, their siblings, their first spouse, they lost their community, their rebbe, their yeshiva, their chavrusas. They went hungry, they ate nothing, they were skeletons, they were malnourished. I don't need to belabor this because we all know and have been exposed to, and many here very closely. And those who lived with emunah afterwards, they experienced that yemei katnus, they experienced that, that period of distance and despair, they experienced every hardship. And I don't say that to make us feel guilty, because we shouldn't. God forbid, God forbid, one person goes through one challenge today, they're entitled to go through what they're going through. We don't compare and we don't compete and we don't contrast, and we certainly shouldn't feel guilty because our hardships are hard on us. Everything is relative. I didn't share that so that now people, not only do I have to feel bad about what I'm going through, I have to feel bad about the fact that I feel bad about what I'm going through because at least it's not the Holocaust. That's not why I said what I said. That's not a healthy reaction or emotion, that's not how we're meant to feel. We should feel bad about whatever challenges that we have and we have to work through. That's not why I share it, I share it only because we can ride their coat-tails. We can grab on to them, the famous story of the Bluzhever Rebbe jumping across the canyon, the cliff. I held onto, what did you, I held onto you. You know that story, it's a great story. I held onto, we can hold onto them, those who are still here and we don't have that much longer to in-person, live, hold onto them and grab from them and grab onto them everything that we can. But they lived what we're learning, these yemei katnus. Was there ever a period in all of history where people were more entitled to feel where are You, and why are You doing this, and how could You do this, and why am I alone, and why aren't You answering my tfilos? How could it be? And yet, and many, many after wavered. Rav Ari Leibowitz was here this past Shabbos, fantastic, phenomenal, my dear chaver, he's younger than I am, I feel terrible about myself every time he comes for Shabbos when I think about what he accomplishes in a day and the shiurim he gives and the sefarim he's written and the difference that he makes. But we bring him nonetheless, because Jews like to feel bad about themselves. So he, he spoke, he spoke on Friday night about a shaala that he had gotten. We're going to get into this, I promise we're going to learn, we're going to get there, you know the routine by now. So he spoke about a shaala that he received from a person who had a baby and there was a question of whom to name after, and either his grandfather, wife's grandfather came up, and they were going to name after him, a Holocaust survivor who was shomer torah u'mitzvos. But he saw a video, an interview with this grandfather, with this Holocaust survivor, must have been his wife's grandfather, where he expressed some opinions that were questionable in hashkafa, that might have violated ikarei emunah. and Kapos and Nazis and SS guards and the kind of torture that they did, and I couldn't love God if I believed that he is the one who carried out the Holocaust. So to express that doubt, is not everything from Hashem? Good and bad, pleasurable and painful? We understand and we can never possibly comprehend, but doesn't somehow it all come from him? And if he doesn't directly carry it out, is it not the result of his withdrawing and hiding his face and allowing the world to work in that way? So this young man wanted to know, should I still name this baby after such a grandfather who even though he was a survivor and even though he was observant his whole life and even though he arrived at that belief because he wanted to still love Hashem and he couldn't love Hashem if he believed Hashem was the one who did it, but maybe that's not compatible with our ikarei emuna, so maybe I shouldn't name him after an apikoros. That was the shaila he received and that's the shiur that he gave on Friday night going through that question, and I'll just fast forward to the answer, to the conclusion was of course you could and should still name after him. Who says that's a violation of ikarei emuna? There are even in fact opinions, we once gave a Shabbos Shuva Drasha, there's a famous Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh and others. There are, and we studied it in our emuna shiur. Maybe it's time to revisit it, we're so many years into it, so many new people here who weren't here at the beginning with and maybe it's just worth reviewing it because we've forgotten. But we saw many opinions about how emuna works. Is Hashem involved in everything? Does Hashem, the Rambam, the Rambam shitta for example is, the more you believe in him, the more involved he is in your life. And the less you involve him, the less you believe in him, the less you invite him, the more he withdraws and says, okay good, you're on your own, hope it works out well. So there is this notion that it's not necessarily every single little detail that does happen is from him, that is one opinion, maybe even the most prevalent opinion, not necessarily so, but it is not the only opinion. So certainly a man who came to a different conclusion, not as an excuse to abandon Hashem, but as his crutch what he needed in order to stay close to Hashem, then he certainly could and should name. And even if it wasn't the perfect belief should you still name and so on and so forth. But you know, after the yemei katnus to still live a life of shemiras mitzvos, to want to love Hashem, so therefore to arrive at conclusions that will allow and enable you to. There were people who walked away and people who doubted and we could never ever sit in judgment of them, we can't imagine what they went through, but we can learn from those who still believed and kept close because we go through our own yemei katnus. We go through our own dark days, difficult days, and can we dig deep to find him in our life nonetheless? So that's what we've been learning about and what we've been studying about, how to do it. One way is tefilla. Reb Itzche Meir says, sort of paradoxically in a very funny way, that one way to do it is talk to him, ask him, say I don't believe in you so I'm asking you for help in believing in you. I don't believe in you so I'm asking you for help to believe in you. Because you know אחרי הפעולות נמשכים הלבבות. After our actions follow our heart. Dress for the job that you want, not the one that you have. You know, if live like you believe and you're going to start believing. You've got to start talking to him, talking about it and feeling his presence in your life. I had a conversation the other day with someone, a long conversation, a wonderful person who I love who is struggling with this question of ayin hara and maybe I don't give Hashem enough credit for the good things I have in my life, so every time someone compliments me do I have to say thank you but it's really not me, it's him, Baruch Hashem? If I don't say that and I take credit as if I accept the compliment, is it an affront to Hashem and therefore a lack of faith in Hashem and therefore he's not going to give me the good things that he's giving me? There are people who think in this way and have these thoughts, and sometimes they're very healthy and sometimes they can be unhealthy. But this is the yemei katnus. So we're on page kuf samech hei, 165, the right-hand column, tachalis ha-katnus, the bold paragraph, להגיע לאמונה הפנימית להכיר שאין כלום חוץ מהשם יתברך. The goal of sometimes when we feel far away is to yearn and want and long to be close again. So in that place of distance you could either have despair or you could have a desperate longing to reunite. And we ended last week, I mentioned that this which is true in our relationship with Hashem is really true in all of our relationships in life. There are friendships that are so broken but yet the friends so miss and long for one another that from that brokenness they can repair and recover and become closer than ever. There are couples where there are challenges and division and divide and disloyalty but if they recover and repair they can come closer together than ever and we... Who may have felt further and distant than Hashem can repair and recover and become closer than ever. We end. Last week I told you about the bat and gravity. The bat sleeps upside down, so the bat lets go because the bat can't get lift and gravity takes the bat down and the momentum created by falling when the bat falls it builds momentum that creates the lift so the bat can fly. And sometimes when we fall, we can fall in our own personal life and conduct and choices we make. We can in our character, we can fall in our relationship with loved ones, we can fall in our career, we can fall with Hashem. And either the fall can can compound and the fall can go further and you could fall farther or the fall can create the momentum that becomes the lift that lets you fly, that lets you soar. When I read that article about bats, it changed the whole perspective on life. Don't look to fall. I'm not saying like a bat you should sleep upside down and let go. Don't look to fall so that you could have momentum. Don't create the fall so that you can fly. But if you find yourself falling, become determined to take flight. Use it to take flight, use it to get lift, use it to soar higher and higher than you ever have before. כך שאף אמנם שהקטנות נראה כדבר שמרחיק מהשם יתברך, Katnus seems and appears like something that sends us further away from Hashem Yisborach, umastiro oso, it's something that that puts an obstacle between us and him. האמת היא שאם האדם עובד כנכון, but the truth is that a person does the hard work, a person is committed to soar to fly, נכנס חזק לעבודת האמונה, and enters works hard on this Avodas ha'Emunah, feels this sense of gratitude and faith in Hashem. אזי הקטנות מרוממת אותו. So the feeling of distance, that fall, that gravity, it actually meromemes, it lifts him. Rav Itzchok Meir didn't read the article about bats. He doesn't need to to come to the same conclusion. Only lowly pathetic people like me need the metaphor in order to picture what Rav Itzchok Meir understood all along, which is katnus meromemes, which is the same idea, katnus when you're falling meromemes, it can lift you. Use the momentum from the fall in order to fly. How do you use the momentum from falling to fly? Because when you fall, if you feel bad about yourself, and you feel bad about the choices you've made, and you feel bad about the results and the consequences you're living with, and you say I could do better, I will do better, I deserve better, I'm capable of better, I want better, I want a better life and a different life and a capable life. We had an unbelievable program last night. Tremendous program. The courage of the Forman family, whose daughter Alana was a addict struggled with the illness of addiction and went to rehab and for the very first time she sat on a panel with her parents and her brother to share her experience of addiction and recovery. And the parents shared their experience with her addiction and recovery and her brother shared his experience growing up as a sibling with absentee parents who were focused on their sister with addiction recovery, and you could watch it online and it'll be an incredibly valuable hour you will spend to be inspired, to learn, to be educated, to listen to their experience. But she spoke about, she spoke about her failure in rehab, how many times it took before she finally and how she was unable to continue in college or was kicked out of her program, but today is in an Ivy League graduate school, Master's studying about addiction and how recovering has changed her life for the better. But she said, you know when you start when you start recovery in the 12-step program they talk about, what do they talk about, you could live a better life than you ever dreamed of, I forgot exactly what she described as the a life beyond your wildest dreams. And she said when she heard that over and over again, the mantra, a life beyond your wildest dreams if you live with sobriety, cheesy and corny and what does it even mean? And she said that when she when she had a car and a roof, she was like wow this is a life beyond my wildest dreams. My parents are talking to me, I have a car, and I'm sober. And then she now found herself in Ivy grad and she described all the things she's living with that wow each of these things now is beyond my wildest dreams. And her parents said at the end of the panel, also something that wasn't really prompted by a question, they volunteered it and they said as painful as the episode was, the period of their life was, as painful as it still is to worry about will you ever get a phone call, as painful as it was, their family is closer than they've ever been, they've grown, they've learned about themselves more than they ever knew, and they're so much better for it. So again would they welcome it, would they invite everyone to experience it, no, but they used that fall to build momentum to fly. She did in her life and they as a family did in their life, and that's what we can do with yemei katnus. Hakatnus meromemes. Katnus. So Hashem, I you know what, if we wake up and sober up to the fact that I'm living a life without you. I don't know where you are, I'm not giving you credit, I'm not turning to you. I'm not surrendering to you, I'm not relying on you, I'm not being supported by you, I'm just living my life, I'm consumed with myself, I'm letting my ego get in the way and I'm edging you out and I don't like that life. I want a life beyond my wildest dreams with you. With you. Where I wake up confident in the day because I know you're by my side. I want a life beyond my wildest dreams where I don't have to be jealous or envious of what anyone else has because whatever I have is what I'm meant to have because it comes from you. I want a life beyond my wildest dreams that I know that you created me not randomly but you have a mission and a purpose and I make a difference in this world. I want a life beyond my wildest dreams because you're in it and we're close and I feel your presence every day. That's what can happen b'Yimei Katnus. It doesn't happen b'Yimei Gadlus. When we're just coasting through life and we make it to shul and we do our davenning and we sing our songs and we have our Shabbos, then we don't feel that longing and that yearning, we don't dream about the life beyond our wildest dreams, we don't use the momentum of falling to fly because we're already coasting, we don't need to soar, we don't go higher and higher. But that's what Katnus can create if only we allow it to. Now there are addicts who spiral down and who never actually turn it around in recovery. That Katnus they just keep spiraling downward and downward. And by the way there are people who soar and they fall again and like the bat every night sleeps the same way and lets go and uses the momentum again over and over again to fly again and again we can and we should. We're not perfect and we'll have ups and downs and we'll be a rollercoaster ride which is just evidence that we're alive, we're not flatlining because we're going up and down, our life is going up and down. But Katnus doesn't have to be a bad thing. We started this because again the conversation was okay live with emunah that's all fine and well that's all great when you feel him when you're connected with him but how do you live with it when he seems absentee? Ki adam zocheh, come back to me in a second. אם אדם זוכה לדעת השם יתברך עצמו נמצא כאן ומסתתר ומבין שאין לי בלעדו כלום ובזה זועק ומתפלל על זה אזי בזה זוכה לגלות הקשר עם השם יתברך בצורה עמוקה מאוד. If a person knows that Hashem is there, he's hidden but you can find him and you cry out and you call out to him and you say enough, enough. They talked last night, the Formans, despite the intervention, despite the efforts they made to help their daughter, she rebuffed and she rejected and she didn't want any of them and she found herself standing in a subway platform and she decided to herself, she said she shared last night, even though I'm telling you all this it's still worth watching because it's barely scratching the surface of what she shared, those who were there last night will tell you, but she said to herself I can't live like this anymore always high and chasing the next high and being addicted so either I'm going to get help or I'm going to jump off this platform I can't live like this anymore. And she said that while she felt that feeling she texted her parents I'm a drug addict and I need help. And her next phone call to them was from the tarmac going to Florida going to rehab because we live in the capital of rehab in the country maybe the world. It was amazing. That's what she decided, that's what she arrived at, and that's what Rebbe Itche Meir is saying we could all arrive at spiritually. I'm so sick and tired of living like this I can't live this way anymore I don't want to live this way anymore I want to live a life beyond my wildest dreams with you Hashem I'm making the phone call, send the text to him. I don't know what to put in as the phone number but send him a text and say to him I'm done and I'm sick and I'm tired of living like this I want to live beyond my wildest dreams with you I want to feel you and talk to you and love you and confide in you and surrender to you what do I need to do I'm ready I'm ready and he'll write back go to the emunah shiur. זוכה לגלות הקשר עם השם יתברך בצורה עמוקה מאוד. We can live that life beyond that we have to take the step. We have to take the first step. He can do as many interventions, by the way he does interventions in our life every day. Our life is filled with his waving at us. Hi I'm here. Hey. Hi. You know the little coincidence you know the thing that worked out that shouldn't have you know the thing that should have worked out but didn't they're all his waving. Hi hey trying to get your attention I'm here intervention running an intervention you're spiraling you're slipping you're falling trying to run an intervention I'm trying to get you to turn around but just like with the addict we are addicted to our ego or our lives or we're addicted to our distance from him and the intervention doesn't work until until we're ready until we're open until we're ready to make that decision and take that leap and take that step and enter into a life of in-treatment out-treatment whatever spiritually we need whatever we need in order to turn around to feel him and we can have that life we can have a life that is beyond our wildest dreams yes. I just wanted to say that the spiraling or falling in order to soar is the term rock bottom. Right absolutely the rock bottom. And when you hit the rock bottom you could crash and burn or you hit the rock bottom it could be a trampoline that you bounce. And when you bounce, the higher you jump from, the greater the distance of the fall onto a trampoline, the bigger the bounce that you'll experience afterwards, if what you land on enables you to bounce. If what you land on crushes you, then you won't bounce from it. וממנו יעלה בעזרת השם יתברך לגדלות הבאה ויקבל אור גדול יותר. So from that rock bottom and from that trampoline, you can have a bounce which allows you to experience and achieve a gadlus beyond your wildest dreams, שבנוי היסודות האמונה עמוקים יותר עמוקים יותר, which are so deep, which are so deep. Now you almost feel bad if you're in gadlus. It's not as good as katnus. But don't. Our lives are filled with that gadlus and katnus. You feel close and connected and it's wonderful, I fell away and I'm distant, how do I use that to build momentum to then fly and soar again? I'm flying and I'm soaring, but now I just started to coast and descend, how do I find the... that's our life, the yin and the yang, that forward and back, panim v'achor, katnus and gadlus, that is our life of doing that. But it's all a different paradigm, it's a different perspective on it. It's how we can use it in order to soar. זו נקודת העבודה של קטנות וזה הקניין שלה קניין אמונה פנימית שאין כלום חוץ מהשם יתברך. That's what we acquire, that's inside ourselves, that's the knowledge we can arrive at and the life we can live with to know that He's there beyond anything else. Beyond anything else. לזכות לדביקות פנימית בהשם יתברך דביקות שאינה תלויה בהרגשה אלא מתוך ידיעה ברורה שהשם יתברך תמיד נמצא. We can achieve an attachment to Him, dveikus. Meshech Chochma, Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk: what's dveikus? Devek. What's devek? Glue. You know what dveikus is? Glue yourself to God. Glue yourself to Him. And He glues Himself to us. He's got our back. Devek. Devek is at no point of life should you be separated from Him. Oh God, I'm going on vacation, I'll see you when I get back. Oh God, I talk to you in shul, but now I'm going for the things that I enjoy doing, I'll see you again later. Oh God, I guess this is up to me, I have to navigate it and overcome it and I have to succeed in it, or oh God, I guess this is my fault that happened. You never separate yourself from God. Dveikus is devek. Dveikus is devek is gluing yourself to a דביקות שאינה תלויה בהרגשה. So why do you have that dveikus? Why are we glued to Hashem? Why is He part of every experience and every conversation and every moment of our life? Why? Because, not because of a feeling. If I'm only connected and glued to Hashem when it feels good, when I go to the happy minyan on Friday night, when I experience this amazing coincidence of emunah, then when I don't feel it, I'm no longer going to be glued to Him. But that's not real dveikus, that's not authentic and genuine, that's not real. What's the real dveikus is not tluya b'hargasha, doesn't depend on a feeling, mitoch yedia berura. It comes from a very clear understanding שהשם יתברך תמיד נמצא. I know He's always found, I know He's always there, I know He's always glued to me, He's stuck on me, stuck with me, we're stuck together. I know we're always partnered in together and therefore when I feel it, it's wonderful, but even when I don't, it's still there. Are you married even when you don't feel love and romance? It's great when you're madly in love and romantic and energy and incredible and electric and fantastic, then the hargasha with the dveikus, the marriage is amplified by the feeling of love. But even when you're in a fight or there's some... none of you, none of us... when one is tension, one is conflict, one is a fight, when there's a struggle, there's distance, you don't have the hargasha, you don't have the feeling in that moment, but are you still having dveikus, are you still married? Are you still basar echad? Absolutely. And the same is true with Hashem. It is a status, is an identity, it's part of what defines us, our connection with Him, His presence in our lives, that is not dependent on any hargasha that we have, that we have. We lost last night, I'm sorry to tell you at this time or in this way, but Caroline Jaroslaw passed away last night. She's going to be buried in Israel, we'll share the funeral information as soon as we have it. And I don't tell you that to bring you down or to communicate that sadness, but she was such a person, I think she deserves, and it makes me sad that we won't be able to... we'll have a memorial at some point, but the family is going to get her to Eretz Yisrael where she'll be buried Har Hamenuchos next to her wonderful husband, Rabbi Jaroslaw of blessed memory. But Caroline was such a person who lived with this dveikus behira. She was such a lebedik, such a spiritual person, she was such a soulful person. She like lived... we occupied the same globe, the same planet, but she was living in another world. She felt Hashem, she saw Hashem, she meditated with Hashem, she did yoga with Hashem, she practiced all kinds of practices with Hashem, she sang with Hashem, she was what a soulful, spiritual person. When you were talking about Hashem, you were talking about Him. When she was talking about Hashem, she was experiencing Hashem. She was talking about her best friend. She was talking about somebody who was standing right in front of her. She was really... She was very extraordinary in this way. And she didn't always live that life. I don't know if you know, *Rabbi* Jarashow was a reconstructionist *rabbi*, a practicing reconstructionist *rabbi* who had an epiphany and awakening that nah, there's something more. And they became *baalei teshuva*. They became Orthodox, *Shomrei Torah u'Mitzvos*. I first met them, I was in New York, I was living in Boca in the *Kollel* but I was in New York in the summer and I was believe it or not before *Rabbi* Brody there was outreach being done here, I was outreach *rabbi* in the *Kollel*, the original *Kollel* here. And I went to go meet at NJOP, *Rabbi* Jarashow was working at NJOP for *Rabbi* Buchwald, he had given up his career as a reconstructionist *rabbi* who had a congregation. Like an *Avraham Avinu* who looked in the mirror at an advanced age and said, nah, this isn't truth. There's something more true. And I'll give up everything I have to start again at the lowest rung on the ladder because something is more true. Like wow. To know people like that wow. That's what he did. And I met him he was working at NJOP trying to bring other people to that truth and they retired and they were living down here and they lived no longer professionally but just in practice who they were *Rabbi* Jarashow *zichrono livracha* and Carolyn Jarashow, that's who she was. The last time I used to go to the *mikvah* every *erev Shabbos*. The last time I saw *Rabbi* Jarashow before he had a massive stroke that unfortunately left him very compromised was at the *mikvah* and the last conversation we had where he could speak clearly was, we need to promote *mikvah* more for men. They don't appreciate how spiritual and important this is for men. And then that next week he had a stroke and he was severely compromised and she was dedicated the way she took care of him. Wow. But what *Rav Itche Meir* is describing, what we're learning and what we're living is how she lived. It's who she was. She was a guest at your *Shabbos* table she shared her *divrei Torah* and her light and her energy, very into energy, positive energy and spiritual energy and *Hashem* energy and that's who she was and her loss is great and painful and we wish her beautiful family tremendous *nechama* and strength in this difficult time that they should find comfort in our community. And again I share it, this isn't the context to share bad news like that, we'll send the email out as soon as we have more information about the *levaya* and the *kevura*. But I share it because these profiles in *emuna* are what help us grow. Are what help us grow profiles in *emuna*. When you feel down, when you feel out, when you don't feel connected, read a profile in *emuna*. Speak to somebody who is a profile in *emuna*, if you can. Find them, latch onto them, talk to them. Energy is contagious. *Emuna* is contagious. *Emuna* is contagious. If Corona's contagious, *emuna*'s a billion times more contagious. And don't wear a mask and don't distance, but attach yourself to the people who are profiles of *emuna*. Attach yourself because it's contagious. And if you can't find someone and live and talk and connect with them, then read about and watch about because that's an amazing way to be inspired and grow in our *emuna*. So נשמה שתהיה לה עליה. We'll pick up one more week of maybe a little more than one more week of this *katnus* but turning this around and growing and growing from it. Pick up with *im yirtzeh Hashem* next week. Until then stay happy, stay healthy, stay holy. Please stay behind. We're going to continue to say *Tehillim*. חיה אסתר טילא בת אריאל ציפורה tonight. *Yocheved* joins me, special co-host behind the *bimah*. Allison Josephs of Jew in the City, *Makor*, *Tikun* and the third branch. Tonight at 9:00 PM. Till next time.
