Transcript
Good morning and boker tov and welcome back. It is another monumental morning as we resume Living with Emuna in person after way way way too long of a break and I learned yesterday from the parsha shiur that it is categorical different to be learning with people in person to see facial expressions, reactions, the energy, the electricity in the room of learning Torah together versus staring only at a camera. If you're listening online we love you too but find a way to be here. We have granola bars to make it worth your while. There you go and that laugh is evidence I'm not alone in this room. There is no laugh track so it is great to be back together again. Thank you. Make sure to tell a friend for next week. The Women's Living with Emuna Shiur is one of the highlights of the week for me because living with emuna we all need a reminder and we all need to be uplifted and we all need to be recalibrated back to what we really already know which is that we didn't come to exist something from nothing. We weren't born out of nowhere. There's a creator, there's a God, He's by our side, He has expectations of us and we live with emuna our life is so much better physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally. We are much healthier, we have much more of a balance, much more of an equilibrium and so we have to get together once a week really every day and every morning and every evening to remind ourselves to live with that emuna but minimally we get together in this frequency. I want to thank our generous Emuna Series sponsors for the year Dr. Avi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut who just had a grandson born this morning. Mazel tov Tzipora and Yael who had a baby boy this morning. She should have a lot of nachas and his neshama should have an aliya and in memory of Bella's amazing mother Dr. Ellen Schanz of Elizabeth New Jersey who lived a life of great emuna herself. So a lot of gratitude to the Morgans for sponsoring. This morning's shiur is also sponsored by Yvette Kaublum in honor of the Chevra Kadisha volunteers. Thank you to the Kaublums and our amazing chevra. By Mrs. Sylvia Brody in memory of her mother Yette Katz. Thank you so much. Her neshama should have an aliya. Gil and Aaron Solomon in honor of their children Tehila Rachel and Akiva and a refuah shleima for אברם מאיר בן חיה רחל having a procedure right now. We should hear only besuros tovos good news. He should have a complete refuah shleima. One housekeeping note before we dive back into living with emuna and that is as much as we're trying to build momentum Baruch Hashem I have to go to a wedding next week in New York so I will not be here Wednesday morning. So next Wednesday we're off. So we're starting again a little teaser, a little appetizer, whet your appetite and then I'm away next Wednesday and then after that please God bli ayin hara smooth sailing through the winter Wednesday morning. There's also coffee available in the back freshly brewed Dunkin' Donuts in addition to what you find at your seat. Okay and with that we begin. So what you have in front of you is a new section we've been learning. For those who are new to the Living with Emuna Shiur Wednesday mornings we get together and our goal is to study something which is thought-provoking, which moves us, which jogs us, which makes us remember where we come from to whom we report and to be able to live a life of emuna. To not have to fear and to not have to feel with anxiety that we're going through life on our own worried about what will be and what we're in control of and what we should regret and how guilty we should feel but rather to recognize that everything that happens in our life is by design. Nothing is chance or random. Everything is coordinated, everything is curated from above. It is all from Hashem. And when we live that life with emuna then as we talked about the results are unbelievable. So in the Living with Emuna Shiur I always tell people to share their emuna stories with me so I can share them in emuna shiurim and the backup that we haven't had shiur in a little while means I have some stories to share. So today I'm only going to share one and this is a wonderful email I don't have permission to mention the person's name explicitly so I won't but she writes on one of the emuna podcast was mentioned if anyone has emuna moment we should share it. So I had one two days ago and it might seem like a small one maybe it is but the long run it's huge. Last Motzaei Shabbos I had an international flight departing at 9:30 PM. Shabbos came out at around 7:15. Right after Havdalah my father took me to JFK which is pretty close to where my family lives. I took that I knew that I had a flight at 9:30 it was a bit risky. When I went to check in the lines were long and moving slowly but I had still had a good 40 minutes till boarding which for most people would be like grounds for a heart attack but this courageous young lady was like 40 minutes plenty of time. Fine. Besides for that I noticed more Jews coming in the line after me so I sure that I wasn't the only one taking risky that night. I checked in suitcases headed to security it was 8:25 and the flight was boarding at 8:30. I honestly felt calm. The security line was pretty long but מה שהשם רוצה יהיה. There was a couple behind me started counting how many people were line in front of them calculating which line was the fastest they seemed a bit antsy I started talking to them. They weren't on the 9:30 they were on the 10:00 PM flight. Assuming that they were totally fine they laughed and said they just like to be early. When they found out my flight started boarding five minutes ago they asked how I was so calm and here we get to the punchline. I naturally answered stressing out won't help the situation and if I'm meant to be on that flight I'll be on that flight. Long story short security took a while once I got out of security I was reminded of how far the gates were but Baruch Hashem I got on the flight. Thinking about it, I really was calm and felt really cool. I kept thinking if Hashem wants me to be on the flight I'll be on the flight and if not I'm not meant to be on this particular flight. It may not seem like a big deal, maybe it's not but thinking back to the situation while listening to your shiur made me smile, letting go and showing Hashem that we know he is the one running the show is a gift. Emuna is a gift. Don't know where I would be without it right now. And the airport story is the smallest of all of them. Keeping calm without even realizing it. We're so lucky to have our father taking care of us even if the times aren't clear but we know it's up to him. Only Hashem. So it's an example we all have these small examples in our life, but she made the flight. So she could have either made the flight and lost years of her life of worry and anxiety and sweating and high blood pressure and angst, and if she was with someone, maybe a spouse, they would have been in a fight, not talking the entire flight, blaming who why they left late and they have to get more on time next time. Instead she was calm because living with Emuna does that to you. So it's a challenge, it's a challenge to remember to live with Emuna. That's the problem. That's what we meet regularly and need to meet more regularly. So what we have in front of you is a new excerpt. We had been learning רב איצ'ה מאיר ביום דרכך. We're going to pivot and we are now learning a little bit from a new sefer that came out. It's called Ha'aras and are the teachings of Rav Shlomo Wolbe. Rav Shlomo Wolbe zatzal was a great mashgiach of Yerushalayim. Shlomo Wolbe was a great tzadik. Shlomo Wolbe has an extraordinary life story, a journey towards observant Judaism himself and we've learned many many of his teachings together including the one we shared on Simchas Torah. We talked about his essay on savlanus on patience which we got like one paragraph in and need to continue it. I'm trying to be patient with it. So this is a new sefer that came out from one of his talmidim, one of his students, and it is some of his teachings on a collection of topics and there's several essays on his teachings on Emuna and I thought this would be a wonderful thing for us to dive into for us to dive into together. So page pei gimmel, that it is. It's Rav Shlomo Wolbe, the great mashgiach, Rav Shlomo Wolbe. And he begins the following: בימים אלו קיבלתי מכתב ממחנך בדרום הארץ. He says, I got a letter from an educator, a teacher in Israel, in the south of Israel, ששאל מה לעשות עם הילדים בחדר כאשר המלמד יוצא לרגע באמצע התפילה. I'll translate everything, so don't worry if you don't understand the Hebrew. And he wondered and he said, what do we do? What happens in our schools, in our Jewish day schools, in our chedarim, in whatever the nature of that school is? The teacher steps out for a minute. The teacher steps out. When I went to high school I had a rebbe, there was a payphone next to the classroom and the rebbe, you know when you're on a rebbe salary, you know, you gotta supplement your salary. So he used to trade stock. So in the middle of class he would once in a while go out. In those days you couldn't check what the stock price was. There was no such thing as a smartphone, a dumb phone, a flip phone. So he had a payphone. He would get calls and make calls because he was trading stocks while teaching. Eventually they moved his shiur room away from the payphone was the way that we were able to get his attention. He was a wonderful, a wonderful gemara rebbe. In any case, a rebbe needs to supplement. So the rebbe steps out. Maybe the rebbe is trading stocks, maybe there's an emergency. The rebbe leaves the students still davening. But what happens? כאשר המלמד יוצא לרגע באמצע התפילה, when the rebbe steps out, when the morah steps out, מפסיקים מתפילתם ומתעסקים בכל מיני דברים. Kids are kids. What do they do? So the siddur doesn't speak to them. What are these words? They don't know how to translate them, they don't know what it means, they don't know what's going on. So the teacher steps out. The cat's away, the mice'll play. Teacher steps out, trades a stock, and the kids close the siddur and they start playing around. So the teacher wants to know from Rav Wolbe the great mashgiach what can I do, what should we do? How can we inspire students, how do we inspire these children to stay connected not only when the parent, not only when the teacher's watching, but even when they step away? הסיבה לכך היא משום שאינם מחונכים כלל לאמונה. Says Rav Wolbe and we've tried to bang home this message over and over. I'm trying to bang it home to myself and my family and all of us. The challenge and the struggle that we all have in davening. And I say we all is we all. On Simchas Torah we had an ask the rabbi short one between Mincha and Maariv, little live behind the bima with Rabbi Moskowitz, Rabbi Brody and myself. And that was one of the questions. What area in avodas Hashem do you struggle, each of our rabbis? And all of us essentially answered like everyone else we know, davening. It's hard. It's hard. It's long. It's repetitive and redundant. We're speaking in a language which is not our first language and parts that are very poetic Hebrew and not necessarily accessible or relatable. I teach siddur snippets. I can't tell you how often I'm embarrassed in the Hallelujahs after Ashrei. I'm like what does this sentence mean? Didn't I give like two weeks of siddur snippets on it? And I don't remember what it means a year, a couple years later? I try to go back and take a look. Davening is really, really hard. So what's the answer? What's the antidote? How do we fix it? What's the repair for our students and for ourselves so that davening is not a chore and davening is not a burden and davening is not something we're counting the pages until we're done but davening is something we love? It's a conversation. It's a rendezvous. It's an opportunity to have coffee with the Almighty, to be in conversation. The answer is emunah. You see, a challenge in davening, says Rav Wolbe, is the symptom, not the disease. The disease and the core problem is a lack or a failure in emunah. In faith. If we really knew that God existed, if we really believed and we submitted and surrendered to him, if we're grateful, if we saw him throughout our day and throughout our lives, then we would want to talk to him all the time. When there's someone you love, you want to spend time, you want to talk to them, you want to be in conversation. We know the core of any healthy relationship is communication, is communication, whether you're preparing the chassan and kallah for marriage or marriage counseling later in life, often at the very core of the breakdown or the challenge, the friction in marriage, in friendship, parents and children, colleagues, is a failure to communicate. There's not dedicating time to be together, not dedicating time to confide, to be good listeners, to have conversations, to exchange, to connect. So davening is our conversation. Davening is when I have confidence and trust and confide, when I make myself vulnerable, when I talk to Hashem. Davening is the recognition. I try to every morning in my daven, I think what is coming up during that day and how will I need his help. Hashem, we're doing the emunah shiur, first time back in person. Let's hope the coffee makes it. Let's hope the technology works. Let's hope anybody shows up. Let's hope everything goes smoothly. I have a big meeting this afternoon, Hashem, I really hope it goes well, put the right words in my mouth, let the outcome be one which works well for all of us. If you're in conversation, then davening is not something that you resist and it's not something you resent and it's not something that you want to be over. It's something that you look forward to. You count down to. You're excited about. So that's true for ourselves all the more so for our children. If a child has trouble talking to God, it's because maybe they have no relationship with God. Maybe they don't believe there is a God. Maybe nobody's taken the time to talk to them. How do we know there's a Hashem and where and when and how do we feel him in our life and in what ways does he speak to us and why is there value and benefit in reporting to him? What does it mean? What does it mean? עלינו לדעת שבתפילה מדברים אל בורא כל העולמים. Davening is not just rambling some script. We're not just getting through it so we can put a checkmark. We read the script. Close the book, close the script, we finished the script, we'll open it again tomorrow. And then our script gets worn out and we're so proud, my script is all worn out because I keep saying the script. It's not a script that we recite or repeat, it's a conversation that we're having. And the davening is the template for the conversation, but we have to fill in between the lines. If you don't make davening personal, you haven't davened. You haven't davened. We're not supposed to make tfila keva, kva. Chazal tell us you can't make your daven permanent or established. It's got to fluctuate and be fluid. It's got to be introduced with new things every day. Are any of us the same person, the same day? Every single day of our life that we wake up, we're a new person. We wake up on a different side of the bed, we got a different amount of sleep the night before, we wake up to a new day with new challenges and new issues, but also new opportunities and new blessings and invitations. No two days are the same in our lives. Go even further. No two davenings are the same. Have you ever been the same person by the time you got to mincha at the end of the day that you were at shacharis that morning? Did any day go the way you thought it would go? Sometimes the day goes better than you thought it would go. I read late last night that someone in Boca Raton won the lottery twice this week. In Boca Raton. Won two one million dollar lottery tickets in Boca this week. And if you're in this room right now, please make yourself known and make a nice donation to the Boca Raton synagogue. So right? And I'm like, why don't I go to... and by the way, what was the location? A gas station on Camino Real. If you're in this room right now, make yourself known. So when that person woke up that morning and davened, their day at the end of their... their davening at the end of the day is a very different davening than the beginning of the day. But God forbid a loved one is rushed to the hospital, is rushed into a procedure, you got news that wasn't so good, you got back a diagnosis that means it'll be a long road and please God a healthy one and a full recovery. The davening at the end of that day is very different than the davening that morning. Not only are no two days the same, no two moments within the day are the same. And they're conversations that need to happen. So a davening which looks exactly the same, we deposit the same shmoneh esrei to Hashem. Imagine you're eighty years old and you're saying the same shmoneh esrei. Same shmoneh esrei. How do I know that? Because I've been here for twenty-three years and there's people in the shul who their shmoneh esrei is the exact same amount of time from when I got here twenty-three years ago and today. Every single day three times a day. How do I know that? Most of you don't daven with a minyan regularly, but days like today, Rosh Chodesh. Every shul has its cast of characters and one of the characters, I wrote an article that I did not print about this, who I missed during Corona, when the shul was shut down. It was all the characters of a shul that during Corona I really missed. And this was one of them. There's that guy who wants everyone to remember Ya'aleh Veyavo, Al Hanissim. So while the rest of us are up to Magen Avraham, they yell out Ya'aleh Veyavo, Al HaNissim. You know, they fly through Shemoneh Esrei, so they're doing a great service to the rest of the community, taking one for the team, they're yelling out and letting everyone to know. So like you're up to Ga'al Yisrael and they're screaming משיב הרוח ומוריד הגשם. So there's that guy. There's I don't know if that woman exists in the women's section, but there's that guy in every single in every single men's section. So that guy has been davening the same length Shemoneh Esrei from his Bar Mitzvah till his 99th birthday. There's nothing new or introduced, there's nothing fluid about it. It's not a reflection of his life or what's going on or what he needs. There's nothing different. It is the same Shemoneh Esrei. You can time it. You can time it. It's you know, one minute 72 one minute 42 seconds, whatever it is. So our Shemoneh Esrei should fluctuate. There are days that I'm connected, I'm plugged in, there's a long Amidah, I'm lost in it, the words are moving me, I'm meditating, I'm reflecting, there's a phrase that catches me and I marinate in it for a little bit. There are days that every Bracha I have something to talk to God about. In Atah Chonen, I'm working on a shiur, Hashem, give me some good source material. Refaeinu, there's people I'm... Barech Aleinu, the stocks could use them having a little market's been down lately. Every Bracha. Every Bracha. And there are other days that you're not connected, just not working. It's just a slow Wi-Fi day with God. You're just not plugged in. So it's different every single day. And a davening which looks exactly the same every day, every week, every month, every year of your life is probably means you've never davened yet. So the davening, the siddur is the template. I've given the mashal a million times, this is a million and one. It's like the Hallmark or American Greetings, Henschel's listening from Israel. Henschel, hope you're doing fantastic in Israel. So we'll go with American Greetings. It's the American Greetings card that you give on Mother's Day or a birthday or an anniversary. Imagine you go buy the card and you hand the card and there's nothing in it. The recipient of that card is going to probably throw it back at you. You say, what do you mean? I made it to CVS, I made it to Publix, I got you a card. Say, yeah, the card's nice, you didn't write anything in it. You didn't double underline any of the special words in it. You didn't figure out where there was space with an arrow and now go to the back and now go to the front and now go upside down and now go... You just handed a blank card. So Ribbono Shel Olam says, you said the words of the siddur, you just handed me a blank card. On the other hand, you take out a napkin and you write, dear, I love you and my life would be empty without you and you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and you hand it over, say, this is a really nice sentiment, it really moves me, where's the card? Where's the card? So Ribbono Shel Olam wants us every day to hand him a card called our davening and to fill in between the lines to write our personal and personalized message to him. And when we don't, we've given him a static, fixed tefillah. Kva, keva, as opposed to one which is fluid, as opposed to one which reflects the changing life that we have. So this is Rav Wolbe's point. אין זה דבר קל לחנכם לזה. This is not easy to teach children. To teach a child, your davening the day of your soccer game is not the same as the davening as the day of your test, is not the day same as the davening when your grandfather went into surgery, is not the same as the davening when you have a new niece who's born, is not the same as the davening that it's the last day of school and you're so grateful. How do we teach our children? It's difficult. לצערינו גם אנו איננו יודעים שמהותה של תפילה שמדבר ממש אל בורא עולם. He's invisible. You can't smell him, you can't feel him, you can't touch him. So it's very hard to connect with him. How? How? You know, we used to talk on the phone, so we were talking to something invisible, but there was a voice on the other end. But now even that's not good enough, we FaceTime with everyone or we WhatsApp video with everyone, we are literally seeing the people that we're talking to, they could be 6,000 miles away. We're living in an enormously incredibly blessed time, and Monday for six hours we were all reminded of that when we reached for some of that technology and it wasn't available. We were all silenced and distanced even more. So Hashem, who you can't FaceTime with, can't WhatsApp video with, doesn't answer back, there's no voice, so there's not even heavy breathing on the other end, so it's really, really difficult. It's really challenging. It's really, really hard. So where does it come from? It comes with emunah. In other words, if you never talk to Hashem when you're not davening, then you're never going to be able to talk to him when you are davening. If you never ever talk to Hashem outside of davening, then you're going to struggle to connect talking to him when you are in davening. It's just not going to happen. What do I mean talking to him outside of davening? Talking to him when you're driving to the airport and when you're online in security, you don't lose your calm, you keep cool, and you daven. Davening to Hashem before a test, davening to Hashem before a big business deal, davening to Hashem when you put the potato kugel in the oven. Davening to Hashem that the challah rise and that it all work out perfectly and that it not overcook and undercook and it all come out exactly right. Davening to Hashem that the calendar not look the way it did for Succos for a very long time, on again off again Yom Tov, stopping, cooking up drashos, cooking up challos, cooking up knels, whatever you're davening. Davening to him, so the majority of our davening should be outside of davening, the majority of our talking to Hashem should be outside of davening. Why did Hashem tell us we have to daven? To make sure we do it. To make sure that we actually do it. Because often life gets in the way. כמדומני שצריכים אנו להיות קיימים מעצמנו, היינו אנחנו חיים עם מלכות שמים. So I love the way Rav Wolbe, this classic Rav Wolbe pivots away from the emphasis on the children. Don't blame the children, don't criticize the children, don't shame the children. These children whose Rebbe or their Morah steps out to trade their stocks, this—it's amazing that that happened and that wasn't shut down when I think about it. But anyway, this—these children whose teacher steps out and they start talking to one another, the children aren't to blame, the children aren't at fault, are we any different? Are we any different? The typical shul, nobody has to step out and we start talking in the middle of davening. Nobody takes a time out, the authority's not outside the room and we talk in the middle of davening. So we're going to blame our children that they talk when the Rebbe steps out of the room? So let's stop talking about the children, let's start talking about ourselves and the answer for ourselves is Emunah. A challenge to connect in davening is not about davening. Of course it's about davening. Study the siddur, learn the siddur, sign up for Siddur Snippets or some other sefer or learning opportunity to understand the words, to invest in learning the siddur like a sefer. Of course it's about davening, but it's not about davening. It's not about davening. If you don't have emunah, if you don't have faith, if you don't believe, if you don't connect, if you don't attach, if you don't submit, if you don't surrender, if you don't feel His presence throughout your entire day and throughout your entire life, how in the world are you going to talk to Him? Of course you're not going to be able to talk to Him. האם אמונתנו כל כך ברורה וחיה? Is our emunah, is our faith so clear? Is it so vibrant, is it so alive, is it so dynamic, is it so electric? דבר זה מתבטא בתפילה בברכות בקיום המצוות ולימוד התורה. So where it reveals itself that there's a virus, the virus is most pronounced in our davening and in the brachos. Our davening is most pronounced when we don't feel like doing the mitzvah or in our failure to learn Torah. האם מזדמן לנו מדי פעם להתפלל שמונה עשרה שלם בכוונה בכל הברכות לא יוצא מן הכלל? How connect and how plugged in, how high speed is our Wi-Fi connection to Hashem? What do our children or grandchildren or neighbor's children see in us in shul? At home? When we're making a bracha before or after eating food? Is it calm and is it patient and is there the neshama value of a bracha? Are we using it as a point of connection, as a bid to connect to God, as a moment of recognition, as a moment of gratitude, as an exercise in humility? It's a millisecond, a fraction of a second. What do they see in us? And then are we surprised that they don't make brachos? You see parents snap at their children: You didn't make a bracha! Make a bracha! Don't know where you, you didn't bentch! How come you never bentch? While the parent is clearing the table while they're bentching, hand-signaling or actually talking in the middle of their bentching, not bentching from a bentcher and bentching in a record time. But then the kid, we don't understand why they skip bentching, why they don't understand that bentching is a bracha and an opportunity and a chance. We're on gimmel, paragraph three. Dovid Hamelech, alav hashalom, King David, תיקן מאה ברכות בכל יום. We had a meah brachos party, if you remember, maybe we'll have another one, a meah brachos party. Dovid Hamelech established that we have to say a hundred brachos a day. A hundred brachos a day. A hundred brachos a day. So there are nineteen brachos in Shemoneh Esrei times three is a really good head start. Ashkenazi digestive system, you're well on your way to a hundred brachos a day. Asher Yatzar. And the various other brachos. You live in Florida in the summer, you get in a couple lightning, a couple thunder, you add it all up you're going to get to your hundred brachos a day. Hundred brachos a day. But you have to be conscientious and conscious. And the young man who sent me the meah brachos cards, we're still working on a shidduch, we're going to get him married, we're going to celebrate. Those of you who've been with us since then when we learned meah brachos, and he sent cards with paperclips to count the hundred brachos a day, I don't know yet if someone has an app for that. The meah brachos app counter. Hundred brachos a day. Why? Why did Dovid Hamelech say make a hundred brachos a day? A burden? To slow us down? To make us religious and farfrumpt and move the community to the right? Why did Dovid Hamelech establish making a hundred brachos a day? Why? Because Dovid Hamelech said we're living in an increasingly chaotic world, you're increasingly preoccupied and distracted, and a hundred times a day we've got to pause and just remember that there's someone above. Hundred times a day. I think the last time I told this, like a best of emunah shiur here, because after a long break I'm reviewing a lot of things we said before. I apologize if you've heard it before, but it bears repeating for me at least, I don't know if for you. So, you know, a great therapist who I admire made a great point that it used to be that people, a husband, a wife, said goodbye in the morning and then they spoke again at the end of the day and didn't necessarily connect much in between. You were at work, it wasn't appropriate to have long personal phone calls at work, there wasn't the ability to have long phone calls at work, so they said goodbye in the morning and you caught up at night when you got home and there was no way to converse on the drive because there was no such thing as a cell phone and so... But today, today we're living in a world of temptation and desire, today there are opportunities and invitations to act out and to be unfaithful. It's a very, very challenging world and whatever exists in the greater world exists in the Torah community, the Orthodox community, and I promise you every single segment of it. I can promise you, conversation with my colleagues, there are enormous challenges in this area. So it's not enough to say hello, goodbye in the morning and hello again when you come home for dinner. A hundred times a day you have to text your spouse, check in, a conversation, it's a reminder when you're sitting at work or you're in that work meeting or the colleague asks you to go out for a drink or coffee or a lunch, when there are those opportunities and invitations and challenges of technology in general and real life people in particular, it's good to have an anchor and remember that you are married and accountable and have responsibility and obligation. A hundred times a day. The therapist didn't say a hundred times a day, but meaning those texts and those check-ins and those short conversation and those bid for connection, they're not a luxury in today's day and age, they are a healthy necessity for protecting and preserving marriage. Now you'll say, really? Does a marriage need that? If you don't check in a hundred times a day, if you don't check in ten times a day, if all you do is say goodbye in the morning and hello at night, everyone's going to run around and be unfaithful? Of course not. However, that relationship, investing in that relationship, nourishing that relationship often through the day will be very healthy to build up that relationship so it's fortified and protected from the challenges that it will face. And I apply the same thing to Emunah. The distractions that we live with, if you lived, if you were Tevye and you lived in the barn and all day you're talking to God while you're flipping the bale of hay and milking the cows, okay, so the check-ins with Hashem, how much do you need? But today we're running around and we are so distracted by the world in which we're living and the fast pace of life that a hundred times a day you gotta stop and say, oh that's right, there's a Creator. Oh that's right, I'm accountable to Him. Oh that's right, He's by my side. Oh that's right, He has expectations of me. Oh that's right, I'm so grateful to Him. That's right. And how long are those check-ins? This could be a suicide mission, but a lot shorter than the check-in with your spouse. The check-in with God, that Bracha is a millisecond, is a fraction of a second. I love talking to you, I'm just joking. Is a fraction of a second. The check-in with the spouse is a lot longer than a Shehakol is my point. The Shehakol, the Borei Nefashos, or the Al Hamichya, or the Asher Yatzar is a fraction of a second. Those check-ins are very, are very, very short, are very short. So Dovid Hamelech said a hundred times a day stop and talk to God because then you're going to remember while you're in the middle of that business deal, while you're in the middle of that workout, while you're in the middle of that shopping trip, while you're in the middle of that parent-teacher conference, while you're in the middle of the whatever you're doing. Imagine you're at parent-teacher conference and you take a sip of your water, but you take the millisecond and you say just one second, you make a Bracha. Now in the middle of your parent-teacher conference you just remembered that there's another parent in the room with you. His name is Hashem. He's the third partner in the creation of every person. And now you've just transformed your entire parent-teacher conference because Hashem is part of that conversation, He's part of that meeting as well. And what jogged you, what triggered you, what provoked you to do that? Because you made a Shehakol that took a millisecond. אם אנו מצליחים לכוון במשך יומנו בכל מאה ברכות מי יודע אילו מדרגות היינו זוכים להשיג. Could you begin to imagine if one day, if for one day we concentrated fully, if for one day we allowed ourselves to be transformed, if for one day we were mindful of those hundred Brachos, we would be categorically different people at the end of that day. We'd just be totally and absolutely and categorically different people at the end of that day. ייתכן שאנו משיגים עד מעלת רוח הקודש, says Rav Wolbe, something astounding. If actually we could reach a level of mindfulness for one day, for one day, for a hundred Brachos to be present when we said them, we might become a prophet. You might merit divine inspiration. You might be in conversation with God. You'd break through such a ceiling. אך מה זורקים אנו ברכות מהפה, but what do we do? We dispose of, we dismiss, we we just deposit a Bracha. We mumble the Shehakol, we mumble the Borei Mezonos, we mumble the Asher Yatzar. We mumble the Asher Yatzar. Asher Yatzar in particular we say while we're walking out of the bathroom and already checking the text on the phone and already moving on to the next thing, and as has been said, Asher Yatzar is not Tefillas Haderech. Asher Yatzar should not be said while you're walking or moving. If you walk away with no other commitment from today, it's a pledge and a promise for thirty days to stand still when saying Asher Yatzar. I'm still trying to do it. A friend of mine challenged me to it a couple years ago and I'm still trying to do it every time. You start taking those three steps, you start looking at your phone, you say no, no, no, just going to stand still. Asher Yatzar. That all the plumbing and all the pipes and everything's working, that my body, which is one of the most sophisticated factories that was ever designed and created, is absorbing the nutrients it needs and getting rid of the rest, and it's all working right, that's worth a millisecond. That's worth a moment in time. At least one benefit of the mask was you could say Asher Yatzar for as long as you want and you don't have to figure out, you know, how to how to pull that off without looking like a total weirdo. So Asher Yatzar, it's worth it, it's worth it. A hundred brachas a day, but we we deposit it, we throw it away, we get rid of it. וסיבת העניין כעין אנו חיים עם התחושה שכל דבר ודבר בעולם שייך לבורא עולם. And why do we do that? Why do we do that? The person, I don't know why I'm saying woman, maybe the article said woman, but the person who won the two million dollars, the two one million dollar lottery tickets in Boca Raton, two minutes from here, this week, I'll find them. Because trust me the Chabad rabbis in town are looking for them, so I'll find them. So, you know that person, they won the lottery. I promise you they paused that day and maybe every day for a little while to say, "Wow, thank you, I won the lottery." You think someone had to go up to them and say as they deposit the two million dollar check, "Don't forget to be grateful"? Nobody had to remind them be grateful. Nobody had to tell them dwell on thank you for a moment. They understood it. They understood it. You know somebody survives an operation, a doctor saves their life. I would hope, I would hope, Alana, I don't know, tell me if it happens or it doesn't, I would hope a doctor, a surgeon saves someone's life, they are eternally and forever grateful. They should send a gift every year on the anniversary of their life being saved. Saved their life. If you were in a terrible car accident on the side of the road and somebody pulled you from the wreckage, did CPR, brought you back to life, would you not do anything in the world for them? So what about the one who gave us life? If that's what you do for the person who saved your life, what about the one who gives us life and sustains our life and saves our life every moment of every day? Is he not worth a thank you? Why do we need to be propelled and why do we need to be encouraged and why do we need to be reminded, why do we need to be reminded? אין אנו חיים עם התחושה. We're not living with that reality, with that feeling שכל דבר ודבר בעולם שייך לבורא. It all belongs to God. I'm not entitled to it. It doesn't belong to me. It's not coming. It is a gift from above, it's on loan and it could be taken back any time. אין זה אלא שאמונתנו היא אמונה אנשים מלומדה. The problem is that we are creatures of habit. So we're saying the same brachas in the same way that we've always been saying them. Or we're omitting the same brachas that we've never said. And we're saying them at the same pace that we always did. And we need to break out of those habits. We need to unshackle ourselves. We need to set ourselves free by creating new habits and positive habits. Being a creature of habit is not necessarily a bad thing. It's only a bad thing if you have bad habits. If you have the habit of exercising and eating right and getting enough sleep, if you have the habit of standing still when you say Asher Yatzar, then it's a blessing that we're creatures of habits. Habits are not bad, it's just a matter of having having the right ones. So can't we train ourselves to have the habit to stand still for Asher Yatzar? Have the habit to be mindful and focused for one moment for a shehakol, for a shehakol? You know what the gift of one bracha, the gift of one opportunity to say thank you? Believe it or not we are already over time for today. Time flies when you're in person and have granola bars and you're making up for things. So I'll end by telling you a story. I'll end by telling you a story, another story, and we'll get back to this again. No shiur next week, we resume in two weeks and please God smooth sailing from there. If you want to stay alerted of when we have shiur and if we're going to miss it, first of all it'll be in the weekly, it'll be the website has a calendar, our new website has an amazing calendar that you can click on any class and it gives you an option to add it to your calendar, Outlook, Google, whatever calendar system you use. So whatever classes or programs or anything going on at Boca Raton Synagogue that you want to make sure not to miss and add to your own personal calendar from the shul website now you can add it. So that'll be the best way to be alerted. So we'll pick up with Rav Wolbe next time. In Yerushalayim over a hundred years ago there was an old widow that Reb Yehoshua Leib Diskin used to visit. She was very sick and among her sick, the breakdown of her body, she couldn't control her bodily functions. And she had a colostomy bag, she was attached to all kinds of catheter bags, all kinds of things because her digestive system was no longer working. She was unable to say brachas on food because in those days if a person was connected to those things, the odor that was present was such that precluded making a bracha in the presence of what was that bag was filled with. So despite her difficulties she would ask Reb Diskin to daven for her. Reb Yehoshua Leib Diskin, a great tzadik of Yerushalayim over a hundred years ago. And she would say, "Daven for me." So he would say, he once asked her, "Tell me something. Why do you have such a burning desire to continue living? You can't even say brachas. So your your life is so compromised. You're asking for longevity to stay in this state, why?" So listen to what this older woman, this old widow who was all alone in this world what she said to him why she wanted to continue to live. She said, "Rebbe, once a day a nurse comes to clean me up." And before the machines start working again, I quickly take a glass of water and I make a bracha shehakol niyah bidvaro that everything that came into existence is from God as used it from His word. And she said for that one bracha is why I want to continue living. The once a day that the bag's being cleaned and being replaced, and therefore I quickly can grab a cup of water and make a bracha, for that one bracha I could say every day I want to be able to continue to live for many more years to come. So we can make a hundred brachos a day. We can make a million brachos a day. To be mindful, to be present, to take that opportunity, that bid for connection, to attach ourselves to Him and to be mindful what a gift it is to be here. What a gift it is. How many of us know this last two years haven't taught us anything, how much we can't take for granted, what a gift it is to be here, what a gift it is to be able to breathe freely and easily, what a gift it is to be able to smell. Anyone who had Corona, bli ayin hara, kein ayina hara, I think I'm the only one in my immediate family who's not had it. Who else didn't have it? You had it recently, baruch Hashem, was healthy but lost smell and taste. If you lost your smell and have recovered it, how could you ever make a borei minei besamim again the same way? By the way, that's not just a havdalah bracha. You know, we have certain things that we think are only, like people think you're only supposed to dip bread in salt on Shabbos. That's an all week long thing. You only mark the challah before the hamotzi on Shabbos. That's a whole week long thing. You know, borei minei besamim is not just a havdalah thing. If you smell a beautiful fragrance, the Sefardim used to have it here before Corona. They had a plate that had several different types of spices because there are different brachos. Borei atzei besamim, borei minei besamim, isbei besamim, there are all kinds of different brachos depending on what the where the fragrance is coming from, you make a different bracha and they had it in this room because the people when they came to daven every day would make the different brachos and take in the beautiful fragrance. If you lost that sense of smell, if you lost the sense of taste, how do you ever make a shehakol and mezonos, a hamotzi, a borei pri ha'etz again? If you could taste the sweetness of an apple, an orange, of a mango again, when there was a period in time where you tasted nothing, the bracha should be different than it ever was, than it ever was. So these brachos are opportunities to express our gratitude, to remind ourselves what we should not take for granted and to be connected to Him so that when we get stuck online in security and the flight boarded five minutes ago, like the wonderful author of our letter, we don't have to lose our cool either. Thank you to our generous sponsors, there's more coffee in the back, feel free take your granola bar with you. If you're listening and watching online, make your way in here, we'd love to have everybody in person. Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, and stay holy.
