Transcript
Good morning, welcome back to our weekly Living with Emuna, our support group, our friendship group, whatever you want to say without a stigma to remind ourselves that we are living with Emuna, that we're not trying to make our way through this world on our own, trying to figure it out by ourselves, but there's a God and He loves us and He created us and He has expectations for us and He's watching over us. I want to thank our generous sponsors of the series, the Living with Emuna series for the year, Doctors Zvi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut and in memory of Bella's mother Dr. Ellen Shanser. Thank you so much for your generosity and for your sponsorship. This morning as well, this particular class is sponsored by the Wax family in commemoration of the Yahrtzeit of Cantor Lazer Wax and of Simcha Wax on 12 Teves. Cantor Wax of course was a dear beloved member of our community, a dear friend, an amazing role model. We miss him, we miss his voice, his literal voice and his figurative voice in our community. It's also sponsored by our dear friend Yvette Kalblum in memory of her stepfather with whom she was so close, Solomon Schlosser, שי בן אפרים משה who passed away this week. She and her family are in mourning. We wish them comfort and consolation through the wonderful memories they have of this special man. Okay, we are continuing our study of Dveikus in the Sefer B'Yadecha of רב איצ'ה מאיר מורגנשטרן, the Sefer on Dveikus, how we can cling to, how we can stick to, how we can connect to God. That's the essence of life. He says all of Torah and Mitzvos are all a platform for how to live a mindful life with God, of God, with God, to know that He's in our lives, to turn to Him, to lean on Him, to depend on Him, to rely on Him, to think of Him in those moments. And so Rav Itche Meir has described to us first of all why we need Dveikus, that that's the essence of all, that's why we have Torah and Mitzvos, it's why we're doing what we're doing. All of those are to advance and promote the awareness of and the connection to Hashem, no matter what's happening, good or bad, but to stay calm because it's what's meant to be. Relax, that's what's meant to be. I was talking to someone last week who because of Corona regulations got stuck in New York away from his family and I said clearly that's what Hashem, clearly that's where Hashem wants you to be. Now your job is to figure out why. So you could sit there and cry and moan and be resentful and angry of why can't I get back and why can't I be with my family or you can stop and say it's pretty frustrating, pretty disappointing, but my job now is to stop and ask why am I meant to be here? Why does Hashem want me here? That's Dveikus. When you cling to God you know that He's behind everything. He's orchestrating and organizing and choreographing, curating everything in your life and now the mission is to figure out why, when we see His hand, to try to understand what does it mean for us, what's meant for us, what can we learn from it, how can we grow from it. So he's been describing, Rav Itche Meir, the different ways, the path to how to acquire this life of Dveikus. And the first thing was Emuna. If you don't have an awareness of, if you don't really believe and you're not cognizant that Hashem is in our life, then you're not going to cling to Him. You don't cling to a figment of your imagination. You don't cling to something that isn't real. You cling to something that you know to be true. And how do you achieve Emuna, how does one live with Emuna? Study, think, learn, and then we spent some time talking about attaching ourselves, finding that person who has deep faith and attaching yourself to them, being with them, spending time with them because Emuna, living that awareness, that energy is contagious. It's contagious. So find that person and be connected and be aware and be with them because that is, because that is contagious. That was all the first path which is Emuna. And then we moved over to the second, which we started last week, Hisbonenus, עמוד א' של דבקות. Hisbonenus, do we make time, do we take, carve time to think? How are you going to have a relationship if you don't make time? Every relationship in life, parents, children, spouse, friends, even the people you work with if you want to be efficient and productive, every relationship demands time. And if you don't allocate the time, if you don't have Hisbonenus, space to think and to reflect and to plan, to interpret, to observe, then you're never going to be awake, you're never going to be aware. We have so much noise coming in all the time. There's literal music or a speaker playing in our head, we're reading a book, we're running, we're going, we're doing from the moment we wake up till the moment we fall asleep. Some people wake up with something playing and some people can't fall asleep unless they've left something on. That's how badly they crave and need the noise. But the noise is clogging, the noise creates static. We need Hisbonenus, you need time, you need time. When I spent a summer at Kellogg Management School, one of the professors who spoke to us, really one of the visiting professors, was the CEO of Baxter, a company that had tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of employees. And the CEO told us, he did it through a whole exercise, but he asked us, what do you think is the most important part of my day? What do you think is the most important thing that I do? So everybody guessed of course as the CEO, the responsibilities, what he would be in charge of. So he told us, and I was shocked, he said the most important part of my day is what is on my calendar that I leave my office, I leave my phone behind, my secretary knows I cannot be disturbed, and I either go for a walk, if it's cold I sit in my... I have allocated dedicated time to think. Dedicated time to think. Does anyone have on their schedule, Outlook, Google, whatever keeps your schedule, do you have on your schedule time to think? To us that would be like torture time. You might as well put in root canal or colonoscopy. Because being alone and by ourselves and shutting down the noise and being forced to have nothing but our own thoughts, sitting there and thinking is a form of torture. So you might as well put in something much more torturous than thinking. But imagine if you had in your schedule every day just think. Just think. That is what you're doing. You're just there to think. And he said that's where the breakthroughs and the creativity and the vision and the imagination. So when it comes to our relationship with Hashem, we need to allocate time to think. To think about him and to look for him and to reflect upon what he means to us and where we can find him and then to cling to him. So again these are all the methods, these are all the strategies, these are all the necessary ingredients to living a life of deveikus, if ultimately we're going to cling to him and feel connected to him then you need to have emuna, you need to know he's there, you're not going to cling to something which is make believe. So number one is emuna and number two is hisbonenus and that's what we're up to. Shulchan Aruch writes this in Siman Aleph, כשישתונן האדם שהמלך הגדול מלך מלכי המלכים השם יתברך אשר מלא כל הארץ כבודו when a person is contemplative, when you think that God is the king of kings who fills the entire world, עומד עליו ורואה במעשיו he stands over us and he sees everything. There's an eye watching and an ear listening. It's not just being recorded by Google, it's being recorded by the Almighty. מיד יגיע אליו היראה so immediately you will recoil with a sense of awe. Wow! Wow! That's Hashem! All of this! All of this! Ever gone and we have this luxury in Florida that others don't have, you can just drive east till you can't go anymore and you are over the ocean. And just look at the ocean. And look at the waves and in the immortal words where the ocean meets the sky and you realize you just keep looking as far as the eye can see is water, is ocean, is waves, is a beautiful sky, is clouds. He's in charge, he's in control, he's the creator of all of this. Of everything. Every grain of sand, every speck of dust, every human being, all of us. He's intimately aware of everything going on in our lives. And he's not just aware of it as if he's just recording it or observing it. He's intimately involved in orchestrating all that's happening. And he does it, he does it for our best. He does it for us. He does it with our interest in mind. That's what life is about. But you gotta make time to think. Gotta make beach time or going for a walk time or the three minutes of meditation time or however you want to put it in your calendar, it's not going to happen. That relationship, it won't be nourished, it won't grow unless we make the time. כי עיקר הדרך לזכות לדביקות הוא על ידי התמדת המחשבה בהשם יתברך because the core way to merit deveikus, to cling to God, again let's just talk about what are the benefits of achieving deveikus? Why are we fixated on trying to do it? What's the purpose? The benefit is calm, happiness, fulfillment, physically you're going to do better, emotionally, spiritually. So how do you get to that place of deveikus where you have the confidence and you have the comfort of knowing God's always got your back? That he's always in the room, that he's always part of the plan. How do you get there? על ידי התמדת המחשבה by being diligent in our thought patterns, in allocating that time, veyagiya behisbonenus be'elokuso and to contemplate about Hashem, who is he and what makes he tick, to learn, to be curious, to fall in love with God and to feel his presence, to feel his presence in our lives. He writes here in the footnote, Rav Itche Meir, he says, יש נפשם נקייה יותר ומיד מתעורר לבם להרגיש there are some people who feel it more naturally. They are the Josephs of our lives. Baruch Hashem, im yirtzeh Hashem, chasdei Hashem, there's a young woman in our community unfortunately just got off from shiva. You're around her, she's a ball of emuna energy. She just talks about Hashem and Hashem and my Tehillim and my davening and my connection, even as she lost her beloved father. Hashem and Hashem and I love Hashem and I lean on Hashem and I feel Hashem and Hashem is my best friend, I can never do it without Hashem. And for her it comes naturally, for her it comes easily, not to suggest she didn't have to work on emuna and davening, but first of all again it's contagious when you hang around such people, a. But there are others for whom it doesn't come so naturally. ויש צריכים לעמול יותר. There are some who by nature are cynics, are sarcastic, some are doubters and skeptics. Some it's much more harder. What do you mean that was Hashem in the red light? What do you mean that was Hashem in the gust of wind? What do you mean that was Hashem in the iguana that fell out of the tree? It's going to be 40 degrees in Florida this Friday. What do you mean it was the iguana that fell? What do you mean it's Hashem in the waves of the ocean or what do you mean it's Hashem in my in my flight taking off? What do you mean? That's science, it's nature. So for some it takes a lot more effort to overcome that instinct towards cynicism or skepticism or even only scientific thinking, which Judaism embraces of course, Torah embraces, doesn't reject. וגם אותו אדם יש ימים שמתעורר ומשיג הכל יותר ויש צריך להתאמץ and Rav Itche Meir says it's not only that different people are different, it's not just that some naturally see and feel Hashem and others will struggle. It's that all of us depends on the day. There are days we wake up and it's all Hashem day. I see him everywhere and I feel his presence and I'm in love with him, can't get enough of him, want to spend more time with him, I want to daven and talk to him, I want to look at the world and hear him talking to me. And there are other days you're like, Hashem who? What? Hashem? Siddur's just not flowing. The Tehillim's just not opening. The mitzvahs are just happening by rote. You look around and you don't see him anywhere because why would he do this to me and why would these things be happening and why would I have to struggle through this? So it's not binary, it's not all or nothing. You don't either live entirely with emuna or you're an atheist, a doubter who has no faith. And it's not that all people are equal, it's not that all days or hours in our life are equal. Every moment is different. But we have to work on it. It takes this effort. You gotta invest time, energy, place the time to thought, diligence in what we’re thinking about, and we gotta build that emuna muscle, build that emuna muscle. V’tzorech l’zeh. I’ll give you a story about emuna muscle. I always tell everybody to send me in their stories so I can share them to mechazek ourselves, to mechazek one another about seeing Hashem in our lives, about feeling his presence. So one of our wonderful listeners, one of the members of our chabura growing in emuna shared with me a great emuna story. That she’s a teacher, she was in a panic. She didn't know how she was going to get her evaluations done at school and had work with her students on a certain online platform because we’re living in crazy times and our teachers are heroes, they've had to adapt to whole new systems overnight and learn technology which may not be their specialty. They're really extraordinary, major shout out to our teachers. So she said she panicked and she knew she needed some help, she was never going to get done by the end of the school's term and of course her job relied on it, her job was on the line, it was critical. She came to school and so much had to get done. Had to get online, do the virtual, had to get the evaluations, had to get everything done. She was somewhat panicked, but then she took a deep breath and she thought about Hashem. And when she got to school it turned out the internet was down and didn't get fixed the entire day. And her conclusion was it's not a coincidence. I was able to do my assessments, I felt it was only thanks to Hashem's guiding hand. She felt his presence in her life. So there are examples. You could be like, oh, internet was down, what a coincidence. On the very day that I needed the internet to be down, it was down. What chance, how random, what a coincidence. Or you could be overflowing, you could be elevated by, wow, I panicked, I turned to Hashem on my way to work, I didn't know how it was all going to happen. I told him, God, I'm clinging to you like glue, devek, dveykus, I'm sticking with you. And lo and behold he found a way. Sometimes the way is we get more work done than we thought we could. Sometimes the way is that the internet goes down. Who knows? Who knows? The amazing thing is she sent me this email because she saw Hashem's hand in her life, which means that the next day she'll see it again and she'll see it more. But it only happens if our antenna is extended, it only happens if we're looking. וצריך לזה התמדה גדולה להתמיד בהתבוננות גדולה במציאות השם יתברך. And this requires tremendous diligence. It requires real hasmada. It doesn't happen if we're not looking. It doesn't happen if we're not trying. It doesn't happen if we're casual in our relationship with Hashem. You know, again, I'll come back to the metaphor of all the other relationships in our life. There are gestures that husbands and wives or parents and children make to each other all the time. But do we notice? Do we see them? Are we grateful for them? In a good marriage, in a healthy relationship, you have to make the effort. So let's say one party always takes out the garbage, but the other surprised and said I'll take it out. Does the other one come home and say, I noticed you took out the garbage, thank you, I appreciate it. My antenna's extended. I see the small gesture, the little things that you did. You either didn't do the thing that I hate that happens or you did the thing that you know I deeply care about. Hashem is doing those things for us all the time. So the internet's down. So do you think it's random coincidence that you move on? Do you just curse out Comcast again? Or do you say the internet's down, it's exactly what I needed, the internet is down, Hashem I love you, you came through and I needed you, and I needed you. Ikar haderech, so that's the ikar haderech, hisbonenus, setting aside time, investing ourselves to think about these things. וצריך לזה התמדה גדולה להתמיד בהתבוננות גדולה במציאות השם יתברך, ahavaso v'yiraso, וממילא יוכל להגיע לדבקות ולחוש השם יתברך עמו ומקיים בזה. And with this we will fulfill. So spend time. Put in your Outlook, put in your Google, put in whatever you're doing. I don't care if you're in the garden, you're on vacation, I don't care if you're home, I don't care if you're at work, wherever you are, whenever, you can put in the calendar three minutes. I'm talking three minutes a day. Out of a 24-hour day, you can't find three minutes? What's 24 times 60? You can't find three minutes? One minute? Start with one minute. Put in your schedule one minute. When you brush your teeth, you’re going to think about God. When you do whatever activity, you’re going to think about God. Unplug, disconnect and determine that you're going to place your thoughts about God. Hmm, where was he in my life? What has worked out? What did I ask for that I got? What do I still need and that I want to protest him about? I want to think about him. I want to talk to him. I want to confide in him. I want to listen and hear and feel him talking to me. Dveykus, clinging, sticking, connecting to Hashem, feeling Him in your life? But let's say you're married and you never ever talk to your spouse. You have children, you have a friend, you have a neighbor, you never ever talk to them and you wonder, "I don't know why I have no relationship. I don't know why I don't feel close. I don't know why I don't feel their presence in my life." You never talk to them, you never spend time with them, you never make yourself vulnerable to them, you never listen actively to their talking to you. Of course you have no relationship. So why should it be different with God? People tell me all the time, you know, "I don't feel Hashem's presence in my life. I don't know if He's there. I don't really connect with Him." Have you nourished or nurtured that relationship at all? Of course you don't. To you, God is a complete stranger. So I also don't have relationship with the guy or the girl over there on the other side of the airport or the train station or public supermarket. I never met him, never spent time with him, never invested in him, never confided, never vulnerable, I never went on the journey to discover, to learn about who they are or to let them learn about me. Of course there's no relationship. So why should it be different with Hashem? You have to talk to Him, confide in Him, spend time with Him, and think about Him. Because if you don't, of course there won't be a relationship. Don't be surprised later when there's no relationship. So when you live that way with dveykus, then you feel Him all the time. Umkayam and one completes וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך. Viyadata hayom, we're all capable of knowing about God today, vihasheivosa el livavecha to place it in our hearts, כי השם הוא האלקים אין עוד. כי השם הוא האלקים אין עוד. That is our mission, that is our mandate, that is our message. That's what we're trying to get to. That's what we're trying to achieve. That's where we're trying to arrive at. Viyadata hayom to every day know, vihasheivosa to put it in our hearts. Why does the pasuk` have to say this? This is in Aleinu, it's part of our davening. וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך. What do you mean viyadata hayom? First of all, it shouldn't be viyadata knowledge, it should be believe today. Believe today. Take the leap of faith today, believe today, feel today. What do you mean viyadata, you can know today? Vihasheivosa and place it where? Where should emuna happen? Where should dveykus happen? I would have thought, you know where they happen? It should happen, I'm sorry, it should happen in my heart. I feel God's presence in my heart. I have faith in God in my heart. In my head rather, confused this morning. I would have thought where should it happen? In my head, in my brain. That's where I'm going to contemplate God's existence. That's where I'm going to explore evidence for God's existence. Where should it happen? If you would have asked me, I would have thought it should happen in my head. And yet the pasuk tells us where does it happen? Viyadata hayom vihasheivosa where? Livavecha. Put it in your heart. Why in your heart? Because you know the farthest distance between any two things in the world is the distance between our head and our heart. You can know intellectually and academically a million things. Talk to you until you're blue in the face about evidence for God's existence. Saint Thomas Aquinas, the first cause argument, there's a million arguments, a million pieces of evidence of God's existence. I could read Permission to Believe, Permission to Receive, I could tell you a million arguments intellectually for God's existence. But if it's going to remain in your head, the farthest distance from any other object from your heart, it never trickles down. It never comes down, it never penetrates, it never transforms you, then it will remain upstairs. Aristotle when challenged that he was this great authority on morality, but at times didn't live a moral life, said, "I'm Aristotle from the neck up." That was his answer. Aristotle from the neck up. In my head, I write books, I philosophize, I teach, I'm Aristotle from the neck up. But the neck down, where the world of temptation, the world of action, the world of distraction, there I'm only Aristotle from the neck up. So do we only have emuna from the neck up? That's really the question. Do you have emuna only from the neck up? Emuna from the neck up means I went to the Discovery seminar and I read the books about the Bible codes and I've read Permission to Believe, Permission to Receive and I've read every book on the planet, listened to every lecture with all the evidence that there is a God, that Hashem is here. From the neck up, I could tell you everything. Check, I daven three times a day, I learn the Daf Yomi, I give my tzedaka, check, I subscribe to Goldberg's emuna WhatsApp group and 400 other emuna WhatsApp groups and I have every book ever written on emuna, from the neck up. Emuna king, I'm the queen. But what about from the neck down? What about when the rubber meets the road? What about in your life? Do you panic? Do you get angry? Do you get envious? Do you get frustrated? Do you feel anxiety and overwhelmed? Do you have emuna that trickles down from the head, trickles down all the way to the heart? And now my heart is calm, cool, even-keeled. It's all from Hashem. I'm meant to be stuck, not me, the person I was talking to, I'm meant to be stuck in New York. That's where I'm meant to be. I'm leaning in, now I just gotta figure out why. I'm meant to miss my flight, I'm meant to go through this struggle, I'm meant to have this hard time, I'm meant to forget to press record on my shiur last night. from WhatsApp groups, does it trickle down to the heart? v'hashvosa el levovecha. And what is meant to trickle down to the heart? What needs to get there from the head? That כי ה' הוא האלקים, that Hashem is God, ein od. Ein od. Back in the beginning of the Emunah shiur, and we're up to I don't remember how many hundreds we've done, back towards the start, we focus and we learned a lot about ein od milvado. The pasuk, ein od milvado. The song, you know, one of my daughters just wrote me a beautiful card and she included her memories with me and one of the memories she said, you know, she has the little, she could get nervous and anxious in challenging times. So she had this major problem that she loved roller coasters but she hated roller coasters. It's a real problem. If you love when the roller coaster ride is over, but you hate before it starts, you got a real dilemma because you look at the roller coaster when you're with your family in the park and you want to go on every one when it's over. But what about, but what about at the beginning when you're online? So we were online and I taught her the song ein od milvado and like a bunch of weirdos, she and I stood online, I forget which amusement park it was and what insane roller coaster she was dragging me on, and as we stood online we were singing ein od milvado, ein od milvado, ein od milvado, Hashem hu ha'Elokim. Mordechai Ben David, I believe, look it up, I'll share it with the group, ein od milvado. So she wrote me in her card years later, she said Abba, I'll never forget how you taught me that when I'm nervous or situations where I'm anxious, just sing ein od milvado. ein od milvado, there's no one but Him. He's got a plan. ein od milvado. You're being slipped into the MRI machine, ein od milvado. They're drawing the blood from your arm, ein od milvado. Forgot to press record, ein od milvado. You missed your flight, ein od milvado. ein od milvado. That's our mission, that's our mandate, that's why we're here, that's what it's all about. vyadata hayom, to know today. It's not enough that I once knew ten years ago, and it's not that in two years I'll know. vyadata hayom, today I know and I'm living and I'm practicing. וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך and I'm putting it in my heart. And what am I putting it in my heart? והשבות אל לבבך כי ה' הוא האלקים, ein od. ein od. efes zulato, there's nothing but Him. ein od, ein od milvado, there is nothing but Him. And if there's nothing but Him and we are all just a piece of Him and it's all just part of His plan for this world, then it's all meant to be. It's all meant to be. So you could panic over failing to press record, you could panic over getting stuck somewhere, or you could just lean in and say that's the way it was meant to be. Now why? Do I need to re-record? Should I just leave it, it wasn't meant to be recorded? Now why? Now what's next? What do I learn from it? ein od. ובכל פעם שאדם זוכה לצאת קצת מהמבט של טבע ולהשיג יותר מציאות הרוחנית של ה' יתברך הוא אזי שורה עליו עוד יותר אור ה' יתברך. Listen to these words of Rav Itche Meir. He says every time that you merit, every time that a person merits לצאת קצת מהמבט של טבע. Every time you merit to leave a little bit from the look, the outlook of teva. Every time you can get out of the perspective of teva. What's teva? teva's the natural order. Now do Jews believe, does the Torah believe in nature? Sure. We have laws of nature, we have biology, chemistry, physics. Of course we believe in nature. We study nature, we manipulate nature, we master nature. Hashem gave us nature, absolutely, of course we believe in nature. But there's a philosophy and an outlook of nature, and the philosophy of the outlook of nature says it's all part of the natural world. Everything is just nature. There is nothing but nature. And that's the philosophy and attitude that we're meant to be rising above, that we're meant to be transcending. It's not just a philosophy and approach and an attitude that it's all, it's natural. No, that wasn't God. That was natural. That was meant to be that way. That just happens. It's part of the natural order. We need to rise above that. That's what Hashem said to Avram, get out of the house and get out of that philosophy. Get out of looking through the horoscopes. Get out of that approach which is an approach of teva. Nature, natural, everything's just natural. ולהשיג יותר מציאות הרוחנית. So nothing's nature. Nothing's nature. The snowfall, that white powder, I happen to have gone to a wedding, I'm coming back today and outside this room, there is white stuff everywhere. I didn't recognize it at first, even though I grew up with it because I haven't seen it in so long. It's something apparently called snow. So when the snow falls, let's say, and it delayed your plan, it changed your plans, it compromised your plans, that's nature. It's part of the ecological cycle, the natural cycle, you know, it's just if it's cold and... water evaporates and condenses and then it gathers and then it falls and it's just the way it happens. It's nature. Or do you say no, it's not nature. Snow, this is Hashem giving us a hug, falling from shamayim, so it was meant to be, it's by design, it's a plan for whatever reason. So there's two attitudes or approaches, two philosophies to life. There's teva, there's nature, it's all natural, and there's the mabat haruchani, the metzius haruchnis, there's the spiritual glasses. Do you put those spiritual glasses where you look around at the world and all you see is Hashem. I see Hashem in everything. I see Hashem in the car, in the airplane, the traffic light, I see Hashem in the people, I see Hashem in the things I remember, I see Hashem in the things I forget. I just see him in technology, I see him in the bottle of water I'm drinking, I just see Hashem everywhere. I see Hashem. It's not, water's not natural. What do you mean water's the most natural thing it is. Most of the earth is covered in nature. Most of mankind is made up of, covered in water. Most of man is made of water. Water is the most natural thing in the, no, water is Hashem. This clear H2O, this liquid which sustains and causes us to survive, it's a, this is Hashem, Hakol nihiya bidvaro, wow. It's Hashem. Nothing's nature, it's Hashem. So the more degree, the more that we can do that אזי שורה עליו עוד יותר אור ה' יתברך, the light of God will shine down. We bear the countenance that light of God. We illuminate the world when we live that way. That was Yosef Hatzadik, it's the parshios we're reading right now. The brothers come down to Egypt and Yosef doesn't take revenge, and Yosef doesn't take a moment to give them the greatest mussar shmuess of all time, and Yosef doesn't blast them into the heavens. You know what he says? Boys, relax. Brothers, take a deep breath. Don't worry, I'm not going to get even, I'm not angry. You think this was you? This wasn't you. Now, he could have held them accountable. People are accountable. Someone damages your car, steals your money, of course you're entitled to a beis din and this choshen mishpat and you're entitled to hold them accountable. But Yosef says, you know, you think I'm in Egypt because you sold me to Egypt? That's pretty arrogant of you. I'm in Egypt because God wanted me to be in Egypt. And yes, your very wicked and evil choice to sell me here says a lot about you and you've got to atone for that. But I'm in Egypt because that was Hashem's plan. So don't worry, I'm not going to take revenge and I'm not going to hurt you because al te'atzevu, don't get angry, don't get upset, don't get depressed. It's all Hashem's plan. Hashem wanted me in Egypt and he wanted me to rise to the level of viceroy, and he wanted me to be in charge of the economy, and he wanted us to bring our family down here and ultimately to be enslaved here but to be able to emerge and come out a nation from here. And that was all Hashem's plan. He orchestrated, he organized, that was all from above. What do you think that was you? You think that was you? Don't be so arrogant, don't be so pompous. It's not you. It's not you. So Yosef Hatzadik, he lives life, he sees and he interprets everything that's happening. Unfalsely accused and I lived in prison, so that wasn't pleasant to go through, I'm sure, twelve years, twelve years of an unjust sentence, twelve years of languishing in prison. But you know what he tells the brothers? The twenty-two years were wonderful. It was all part of Hashem's plan. I understand the last ten years were part of Hashem's plan. The ten years of of being in charge of the economy of Egypt, the ten years of being the vice president, the viceroy. I can understand why he thinks those are pretty pleasant. But the twelve years in prison those were also good? So Yosef says yeah, you know why? Because when I look back I realize that those twelve years in prison they made me a kinder person. I knew what it meant to be hungry. I knew what it meant to be down. I knew what it meant to be need to be vulnerable and to need other people. I knew what it meant. And when I came out, it positioned me to better treat and take care and to care about other people. And therefore those ten years, those twelve years of prison were also part of the plan of my ten years of when I rose towards towards greater towards greater greatness. So do we look at our lives and even the hard parts of our lives and realize they contributed to make us who we are? They made us who we are. They cracked open our heart and they enabled us to feel, they enabled us to break through, they enabled us to grow, they enabled us to become who we are and the best version of who we're meant to be. יעשה נברא מרגיש את בוראו, the one who is created feels our creator, bechol libo, with all of our heart, with all of our heart. וחש בקרבו את נעם אור ה' וזיו כבודו, and one feels with every fiber of their being the pleasantness, the beauty, the brightness of the light of Hashem, the glory of his splendor. שכל תענוגי העולם הזה הם כאפס לעומתו, that any pleasure you have in this world and there are pleasures, none greater than the cup of coffee in the morning, you know I'm in love with that cup of coffee. There are great pleasures of this world. There are physical pleasures and emotional pleasures. There are pleasures that we experience, but they all pale in comparison, they're negligible and nothing compared to the pleasure of connecting and feeling Hashem. To know he loves us, he's in control, there's a plan, to know that we see him everywhere, to feel we are in his embrace, to know that we are have his love. וצריך להתייגע בהתבוננות ובהתרגשות, yagata umatzasa sa'amin, and he ends this section of the Viduy and he says if you put in the... time, three minutes a day, one minute a day, put it in your schedule, one minute a day of Hisbonenus. If you put in the time and you make the effort, extend that antenna, look for him, feel him, talk to him, confide in him, be vulnerable, listen to him talking to you, he says Yagata umatzasa ta'amin. If you search, I promise you you will find, promise you, the most hardened cynic or skeptic, but if you talk to God and you let him in your life and you don't panic. I forgot to press record, it's part of his plan. I'm meant to get stuck here, it's part of his plan. Whatever one is going through, I'll just, I'm the roller coaster, I'm going to have a great time, it's part of his plan, or nobody told me you have to go on it, but whatever it is, Ein od milvado. Ein od, Veyadata hayom, don't just know it like Aristotle, don't just have Emunah from the neck up. Veyadata hayom vehashvosa, and where do you have to put it? Levavecha. Put it in your heart, crack open that heart, let your heart feel כי השם הוא האלקים אין עוד, that Hashem is God, Ein od, there is no one and there is nothing but him. Wishing everyone an Emunah filled day, stay happy, stay healthy, stay holy. Tonight nine p.m. we're going behind the Bimah with the great Meir Kay. Meir Kay does YouTube videos, positivity, love, faith, it's mind-boggling. He has three hundred and fifty million, you heard that correctly, three hundred and fifty million views on his YouTube videos. Go check them out, and if you want to see Emunah and you want to talk about positivity and a great energy, tonight at nine p.m. looking forward. Until then, have a fantastic and phenomenal day everybody.
