Transcript
Good morning, Boker Tov to everyone. Welcome back to Living with Emuna series, generously sponsored by Dr. Zavi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut, and as well sponsored in memory of Bella's mother, Dr. Ellen Chanzer, whose yahrtzeit is the 10th of Adar. So it is coming up and we're deeply grateful to the Morgans for their sponsorship, for their generosity, for their friendship, and Dr. Ellen Chanzer's neshama should have an aliya. Very special woman, as her yahrtzeit is approaching. Today's shiur is also sponsored by Sarah Margolis in memory of her husband, Israel Margolis, whose yahrtzeit is the 11th of Adar. We all remember Israel Margolis, very special man, came to learn, loved learning, was very involved in our community, leader and pillar in our community, so his neshama should have an aliya as well and Sarah should have only strength and comfort. Also by the Shrier family לנשמת גיטל מינדל בת אברהם, Maxine Sullivan, whose yahrtzeit is the 14th of Adar Aleph, and a refuah shleima for דוד בער בן אידל and אסתר תהילה בת אריאל ציפורה. Also big thank you, this just came in, sponsored by Sal and Leslie Abady for a complete and speedy refuah shleima for אסתר תהילה בת אריאל ציפורה and we continue to daven for כרמיאל שי בן רייזא as well. Okay, Living with Emuna series. I get a lot of emails, I get a lot of feedback, Baruch Hashem, from all over for the shiurim that we give and that we share, so grateful for the honor and privilege of being able to try to communicate some of Hashem's messages to the world. But this week I got an email and it was one sentence followed by a long lengthy PhD dissertation email. The one sentence said, the one sentence said, "In your last Emuna shiur, your wife made a brilliant comment. Could you forward this email to her?" So I'm very happy to be her mailman and deliver it to her. And it was a beautiful email, maybe we'll share parts of it at one point. But we get back to the topic that we are studying, Mishenichnas Adar, we are in the month of Adar. But no matter what month in the year that you're listening to this, if you're live with us in person or live with us online or you're listening later, no matter what month we have to be besimcha. Simcha is a critical component to life. Simcha is life. Simcha, joy, happiness, satisfaction, feeling complete and whole, recognizing that we're not alone, but rather everything that happens is for a reason, there is meaning, there is purpose, there is order to the universe. And we spoke last week, it doesn't mean that we can't sometimes be sad. There are moments of grief, there are moments of loss, there are moments of pain, of course. It doesn't mean that there aren't real and justified reasons to feel sad, to be down. Even if there's not a particular reason, there are people who struggle with feelings of sadness. Sadness is a very real feeling, is a very real feeling. However, even within the sadness, we can find joy. What does that mean? It means that there's nothing as whole as a broken heart. It means that even when you're feeling down and even when you're feeling sad and even when you're struggling, to remind ourselves, to remember, to be intentional and mindful that I'm not alone. I'm not bearing this, I'm not going through this, I'm not struggling with this alone. There is a God, there is a Ribbono Shel Olam, and He's in charge and He's in control and I submit and I surrender to Him, and no matter what it takes to get to this other side of this or what it will look like when I get there, it's for a reason and it's for a purpose and He will be with me and He will be by my side, so I'm capable of being besimcha even within the sadness. Even within the sadness, I'm capable of being besimcha. In fact, I saw a beautiful quote, I mentioned it yesterday in the parsha shiur as well, from the great Karliner, Rav Aharon Karliner, the author of Beis Aharon. Rav Aharon Karliner says, Ha'atzvus eina cheit, Ha'atzvus eina cheit, אבל אף חטא לא יכול לעשות את מה שעושה העצבות. Atzvus, sadness, is not a sin. But even a sin can't be as destructive to you as sadness. Atzvus, sadness, is not a sin. But even a sin is not as destructive or sabotaging as sadness. It means that when a person is down and out, when you're low, when a person is hopeless and helpless, when a person feels I give up, then the foundation is so weak you can't build anything on it. Cheit, mistakes, we make. The root of the word cheit is a mistake. We make mistakes. We translate a cheit as a sin. Sin is a Christian word and we don't use those words. But cheit more accurately translates as a mistake. We make mistakes. Penny's been hearing me say that for 20-something years. A cheit is a mistake. It's a mistake. We have opportunities and invitations to draw close to Hashem, and when we don't take advantage of them, when we violate them, when we neglect them or disobedient of them, it's a terrible mistake. It's a terrible mistake. Yocheved says, you know, I'm already settled for the night, would you mind taking the garbage out to the curb? It's garbage day tomorrow and I say, I'd really rather not, I don't feel like it. It's a sin. But it's a mistake. It's a mistake. Lightning's not going to strike and there's not necessarily some external consequence. She's not going to say, well then you're on your own for the night. for dinner tomorrow night. She might, but she wouldn't say that. She wouldn't say that. But you know what's going to happen is the relationship's going to feel tense, it's going to be fractured. I've added distance, I put a gap, I put daylight between us because she articulated something and I said no. So Hashem's the same way. The difference is, when Hashem articulates it, it is entirely and exclusively for us. He gets no benefit, he has no interest, no part of it is for him. It is entirely and exclusively for us that he says it to begin with. And when we say no, when we do a chait, when we violate his word, his will, when we're disobedient to his halacha, we made a mistake. We made a critical mistake. We had an opportunity to draw close, we had an opportunity to express our interest, our love, our affection, and we failed. It's a chait. So says Rebbe Aharon Karliner that atzvus eina chait. Sadness is not a chait. Study the Taryag Mitzvos, go through 613 and you will not find sadness listed among them. Open the Shulchan Aruch and you will not find a halacha, you're not allowed to be sad. There's no halacha. It doesn't appear in the Taryag Mitzvos, not in the 613, it doesn't appear in the Shulchan Aruch. It's not a chait. But says Rebbe Aharon Karliner, but it can do more damage to you than a chait can do. A chait, the mistake, you can bounce back from. The garbage I neglected on Monday, but Thursday, there's always Thursday. Teshuva gemura. And the next Monday, and the next Thursday. There's always teshuva gemura. By the way, Yocheved doesn't even ask me, she just does it. So I don't want to give her a bad name. She does it and everything else in our lives. But it's a chait. A chait I can make up. There's an opportunity for teshuva. But atzvus, sadness, sadness means that in the core, something is broken. And if the foundation is weak, you can't build upon it. And so sadness is just a categorically bad and challenging quality. And we're not in judgment of people who are struggling with being sad. And there's a clinical sadness that needs help and support that we're not talking about. We're not talking about. I say it every week, but there's a clinical sadness that needs help, support, therapy, medical intervention, medicine. We're not talking about that. We're not talking about. We're talking about just the general melancholy and sadness. So before we get back to Rav Itche Meyer, Rav Yitzchak Meyer, before we get back to Beyanderecha, I was looking at this wonderful sefer that gets published once a month called Vavayei HaAmudim. Rav Yitzchak Zilberstein in Eretz Yisrael, he's a rav, a posek in Bnei Brak, the posek in Maayanei HaYeshua Hospital, he was a son-in-law of Rav Elyashiv, a brother-in-law of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, a huge talmid chacham in his own right. A very cheerful person. Every time I've seen video or or seen anything capturing him, there's a smile and a radiance and he's cheerful, Rav Zilberstein. He's a prolific, prolific writer. The amount of seforim that come out from him, I don't know how he does it. It's extraordinary. So once a month he puts out a Vavayei HaAmudim, comes in a PDF over email if you make a donation to the yeshiva, the kollel, the hospital, the million things that he is responsible to raise money for. And he produced, once a month he puts out a sefer. The questions in it are always fantastic. They're great questions. There are no questions. He asks questions like if you need to do a COVID test on Shabbos, are you allowed to? Now that we have take-home COVID tests, when would you be allowed to do a COVID test? What's the melacha involved? Maybe it's tzoveia. It's coloring. You're not allowed to color on Shabbos, tzoveia, because the COVID test is the big Q-tip, the liquid, and you're looking to see if you create a line. So is creating that line like writing? Are you coloring, are you writing? You know, that's that's one example. But he has always, he always has great questions. He always has great questions. He has a great question. If a person, this has nothing to do with living with emunah, but they're great questions and I don't know when else I'm going to share them. He has, I don't know if you know anyone like this, it's possible in my home there are people like this, who talk in their sleep. People who talk in their sleep. If somebody says lashon hara in their sleep, do they need mechila? Somebody has a roommate, you're in college you have a roommate, you're in yeshiva, you're in seminary, there's a roommate. You hear some mumbling in the middle of the night, you listen up, and they're telling you some good, juicy lashon hara. Their subconscious talking in their sleep is sharing. So do you need mechila, do you need forgiveness for lashon hara that you shared in your sleep? Last month's Vavayei HaAmudim he had a great question. I just told this to triplet bar mitzvah boys. He had a great question. There were these twins, one of them was learning in a yeshiva in Bnei Brak, one was learning in a yeshiva in Yerushalayim. But they overlap with a lot of friends. They get invited to a lot of weddings, they're that age. For the Yerushalayim twin to make it to Bnei Brak for a wedding is a big schlep, expensive, would take a night off of learning. For the Bnei Brak twin to make it to Yerushalayim, big schlep, expensive, take a night off of learning. They wanted to know what's the halacha that they were identical twins, so we'll just go wish mazel tov and not be mevatel Torah, not not cancel the Torah learning, not have the expense and the time, and every every wedding in Bnei Brak, you're me. Every wedding in Yerushalayim... I'm you. What would be the halacha? Great, great questions like that. They're all, they're all great questions. Oh, what is the answer? I gotta keep you coming back. I'm not giving you the answer. Anyway, the introduction to this month's Vav Amudim he says the following. The introduction. I'm gonna summarize it because it's several pages long, but it struck me it's exactly what we're talking about in our Living with Emunah shiur and then we'll get back into B'Yom Darechecha, the month of Adar, we'll get back into our lives. Lifnei matayim shana, 200 years ago and even much less than that, in order to have water in your house, you had to go out to a well and you had to go draw water. If you wanted to go to the bathroom, you had to go dig a hole and you had to go use some leaves or a rock and take care of what you had to take care of in the middle of the night, in the cold, in the snow, with whatever was happening, a biting wind. That was what was necessary. When you needed to do laundry, you had to shlep it down to the river, you had to shlep it down to some source of water, the well, and you scrubbed and you washed and you and you had to go. And you had to go. If you wanted some light in your home and it was day, it was already after daylight, in the winter months where the sun set early, you had to light candles and hope that you didn't burn down your entire house. If you were freezing cold and you wanted some warmth, you had to shlep log, you had to chop down a tree and shlep logs and you had to build a furnace and so on, then your house would be filled with smoke and smell and so on. If it was the summer months and your house was hot and you wanted to have fresh milk or cheese or you wanted to keep something, then you had to figure out with a block of ice. We're not talking about ancient history, he points out. Everything I just described to you, which imagine what your day would look like if you had to be occupied with each of those activities, each of those descriptions was not several thousands of years ago, we're talking less than 200 years ago, that's what life was like. So if you spoke to somebody 200 years ago, you were in the year 1800, probably living in Poland or Hungary or Russia, somewhere in Eastern Europe, Sefardi in the Sefardic countries or lands, near Morocco or wherever, Yemen. 200 years ago, you were able to go back in time, you got your flux capacitor and you go back in time 200 years and you go find a Jew in that country at that time and you say, I know you can't picture it right now when you're going to the well, down to the river to wash the clothing, you're having to have a bath once a month, you're having to dig a hole when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I know it's hard for you to picture, but just 200 years from now there's going to be these things called pipes. They're going to run through walls. You know why this is meaningful to me, I shared with you last week. So there're going to be pipes, they run through walls and there's a little place where they come out and there's two knobs. You want hot water, you want cold water. You have both options right in the convenience. And there's not one bathroom for a family of 10 to share. Homes have multiple bathrooms and kitchens and two sinks, milchigs and fleishigs. And and a toilet is going to be a device that when you have to go to the bathroom, even in the middle of the night, you just when you're done you pull a lever and it's clean and it smells fresh and you don't have to go anywhere and you don't have to get dressed, you don't have to change. And when you want to cook, there's going to be a button. There's going to be something in the wall that you just put the raw food in, you push a button and then you take the cooked food out and you eat it and you serve it and you're ready to go. And when you have something that could spoil, there's another box, you open the door and you put it in and it keeps it absolutely cool or cold or if you want to keep it for a long time, you can even freeze it and keep it for a long time. And when you need to get from one place to the other, if you have family spread out, you can get into another box, it's got wheels and you push another little pedal on the floor and it takes you there, it takes you there at speeds 50, 60, 70 miles an hour. Or another box, it's got wings and it flies through the air and it could take you halfway around the world in less than half a day. And if a person gets sick, I was thinking about this the other day when I was having the second half of my root canal. I was just picturing, I hate the Novocaine and I always beg the dentist, I I can't stand the feeling of not feeling half of your mouth and how long it takes to wear off and so on. I always say, you know, make it light. And then he says, trust me, you don't want me to make it light and we we have the same we have the same negotiation each time. But as I was laying there and I my dentist, it was the greatest compliment, it was an oral surgeon, he he had to keep nudging me to open my mouth wider because I kept falling asleep. I said to him afterwards, has there ever been a greater compliment than in the middle of your root canal on me I kept falling asleep? Let me give you a testimonial of something, you know. Anyway, but I sat there thinking, I don't know how long ago was it that if you had a tooth that had an infection, ooh, you know, you had a swig of something sharp and then they pulled it. There was no Novocaine, there was no laughing gas, there was no, they just pulled it. So today, you know, the surgeries and the shots and the medicine and everything that we have that is available to us. And We don't all live in one room in one house. Our homes have multiple bedrooms and people have multiple houses. And there's no shortage of food. You go to a place called... you don't just have a farm where you're the incredible farmer Ilana this past Shabbos who's observing Shmita in Israel and what it's like. Hashem make it rain, but not too little, but also not too much, and also at the right time, and also never hail, and maybe we'll have a right crop and maybe we won't have the right crop and maybe everyone will have too much crop which will make our crop worthless. And we just go to a supermarket and endless shelves and endless choices and endless selection and so on. So what would the second person say? Again, 200 years ago, 1800, you're telling another Jew, fast forward 200 years there's going to be pipes in our walls and toilets in our bathrooms and multiple rooms, we're going to have washing machines and ovens and refrigerators and freezers. It's going to be incredible. What would that other person say? And Mashiach is there, right? You're describing Mashiach. Boxes flying through the air, boxes that drive on the street, Tesla, self-driving. What do you mean? It's raining and you're at the Simcha so on your phone you could have your car come around and pull up to you, which is what you can do today. So the other person's going to say, it's Yemos HaMashiach, right? Mashiach is here, no? So the second one's going to say no, it's just ordinary times and believe me we still desperately need Mashiach. So what's the second person going to say? He's going to say, אתה מדבר ימות המשיח לא השיב זה יהיה עוד לפני ימות המשיח. No, it's more before yemos hamashiach עוד הרבה יותר ממה שאמרתי לך יהיה אז. So yoma lo hasheni אני מבין שהאנשים האלו יהיו האנשים המאושרים עלי תבל הם פשוט ילכו וירקדו. So I imagine that those who live in that time with indoor plumbing and toilets and refrigerators with airplanes and cars, they're probably just going to dance all day long. They're going to smile and laugh and they're just going to be the happiest people on earth. They're going to understand that for thousands of years the effort, the toil, the pain, the suffering, the loss of life. Do you know how many pregnancies never made it full term? Do you know how many women died at childbirth? Do you know how many children never made it to their fifth birthday? So you live in a time where those statistics and the life expectancy and the convenience and the comforts, so that person in 1800 says, so what will it be like? Everyone's just happy all the time? Everyone's just joyful? Everyone's filled with gratitude? Everyone's dancing in the street? So no, no, that's not what it's going to be like. לא דווקא אז יהיה חסר להם. Actually, they're going to be more depressed and more sad, more anxiety, more antidepressants, more mental illness. אנחנו כיום הרבה יותר מאושרים ושמחים מכם כאשר יהיו הרבה מאוד אנשים יסבלו מראש מחסוס שמחה מחפש דרכים איך לשמוח את עצמם ילכו לרופאים כדי לקבל תרופה. More people will be going to recovery centers from their addictions from numbing themselves from their unhappiness. More people will be prescribed medicines to try to climb out of depression and unhappiness. אני לא מבין איך זה יכול להיות יהיה לכם כל כך טוב איך לא ישמחו. So the person in 1800 will say, I don't understand, your life is so good, so comfortable, so convenient, so filled with blessing, how is it that everyone won't be happy? Ha-teshuva hi the answer is שמחה היא דבר פנימי יכול להיות לך כל טוב. The answer is that simcha joy and sadness are not external, they're not about possessions, materials, experiences, things. They're not about that which is external to us. Im lo misbonenim רואים רק מה שחסר. If you're not contemplative, if you're not thoughtful, if you're mindful, then any generation with any comfort and any convenience, all you'll ever see and all you'll ever think about is what's missing. And then lo smeichim. If your happiness is based on what's not there. If I had, if I won the lottery I'd be happy, if I had that Tesla I'd be happy, if I had her husband I'd be happy, if I had those children I'd be happy. So a lot of people by the way who think that way. The Shabbos meals, Yom Tov meals and in shul they sit in a committee and they say, oh he they don't know by the way the horror that sometimes the people are. I as a rabbi know more, I also don't know. Sometimes people look like if only I was married to them, then I'd be happy. Look how respectful, look how they treat, look how kind, look how generous, look how humble, look how good. You don't know that they're a terrible dictator despot in their own home. That's what they show to the public. But sometimes there are people who genuinely are like that. So people will think, well if I was married to them, I'd be a better me and I'd be happy and I'd have a skip in my step. If only I had what I'm missing, I'd be happy. If happiness is defined by what you don't have, you could live in the most blessed generation of all of history and walk around miserable. But if your happiness is based on what you do have, you could be living through the Great Depression and be. You could be a prisoner in a concentration camp, in the hospital, in the the Holocaust. You could have almost nothing in your life and you could be happy. אם תסתכלו בתנחומא בפרשת בראשית and all it takes is a little bit of thoughtfulness, a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of contemplativeness. All it takes is a little bit of concentration is to take inventory and to stop and say: Do I want to focus on what's missing, or am I willing to focus on what's there? What do I have? Now, I know that I'm oversimplifying, because if what's missing is your spouse or a parent or chalila a child, that's not like what's missing is I don't have the latest version of the iPhone. I understand that what's missing is a source of acute, overbearing, overwhelming pain. And nobody's judging, and no one is trying to bring guilt or shame to feeling sad when someone was taken from you that's irreplaceable, that is a source of great pain. But yet, I'll give you the chizuk and encouragement to say that even within that, you can choose to, while honoring that pain and leaning into it, also recognize what's there, who's there, and feel that pleasure. אפשר להיות עני מרוד ולהיות שמח ואפשר להיות אדם עשיר ביותר ותהיה בעצבות. You could be the wealthiest person on earth and be sad, and you could be the poorest person in the world and choose to be happy. I had a meeting this week with someone, and unfortunately, there are many people like this, so you know, you have no idea who I'm talking about. There are people who have no mazal. This was actually today's daf yomi, very end of Moed Katan, that banai, mazonai, there are three things in life that are a function of mazal, no matter how hard you work. There are people with mazal and there are people with no mazal. There are people that are not necessarily smarter than anyone else, they don't necessarily work harder than anyone else, everything they touch turns to gold, everything they have is perfect. And there are people that work tirelessly and they're creative and they're brilliant and they try and try and try, and everything they touch turns to lead. They can't make success out of anything. So somebody who we're regularly helping and supporting and we love, and it was a conversation again about paying the mortgage and the bills and putting food on the table, and what's the next plan, and how can it come together. Not someone lazy, not not willing to work, not someone entitled or wants a handout. They work harder than anyone I know, just Hashem is still we're waiting to remove that impediment, whatever's blocking their success. And at the end of the conversation, I emotionally really told them how much I love them and feel for them, and I'm so sorry we're still having these conversations, and it must be so hard. And all of a sudden his face transformed and he had a smile on his face and he said: It is really hard, but on the important things I'm the wealthiest man alive. I have the most special children. I have a beautiful family. I was blown, blown, blown away. The world doesn't know it, his name is not in lights and it won't be on a on a plaque and it won't be on the side of a building—please God it will be one day, but right now it's not—and he won't necessarily be honored or get the biggest aliya. And yet this person, that greatness, that righteousness, that heroism, that mindfulness, it's unbelievable. And it was such a powerful lesson and inspiration to me, to be in his presence, to choose to live life that way. Other people I meet with who have everything, by the way, they have the spouse, the children, the money, their health, but something is not perfect in life, miserable and angry and resentful and bitter and farbissener and hypercritical. It's a choice. It's a choice. He goes on and on. He has many more pages about this this conversation between the two people in the year 1800, right? It's a great perspective, this hypothetical conversation in the year in the year 1800 between these two people. It's a choice. There's a lot of pain. There's a lot of pain. Sheryl Sandberg, who we had on Behind the Bima and spoke about this, her book Option B was about that. She was stuck and perseverating in her pain when her husband tragically dropped dead out of nowhere, out of nowhere. She discovered him in the gym next to the treadmill at at a hotel when they were away together. And she just couldn't move on and couldn't move past, and she was stuck, understandably, she was stuck. And Adam Grant, who is a great author, writer, and expert, he said to her that: Look, Option A, they were at a parent they were at some kids' event of the school and she just kept crying, just said how badly she wanted her husband to be there, and he looked at her and he said: Option A is no longer available. That's Option A, and it's no longer available. Time to move on to Option B. And that's the name of her book, and she talks about that resiliency. How do you mourn and grieve and love and never forget, and at the same time, how do you how do you pivot to whatever Option B is? And I understand that to mean, it's a fantastic book, it should be required reading for members of the clergy and anyone on a chesed committee. or bikkur cholim committee, should be required reading in my opinion, Option B. And she doesn't bring this down, though she does reference a couple of Torah sources. But that's what simcha is, it's the choice to think about Option B. It's the willingness and the ability when Option A's been taken away, to not get stuck and feel sad, but to search for Option B and find happiness. And that doesn't dishonor whoever was Option A. They want you to have that happiness. Anyway, I read that and as we had a leak in our pipe that is now requiring redoing four rooms in the house, Baruch Hashem, it's from Hashem. It's amazing. It's amazing. Get to redo four rooms. It's amazing, says the person who has no part of the project. It's amazing. But it's from Hashem, so by definition it's amazing. But that hypothetical conversation is super powerful, that's what simcha's all about. Okay, page kuf nun. We're on page kuf nun in the handouts. Vayamoder Achecha, רב יצחק מאיר מורגנשטרן, known affectionately as Rav Itche Meir. אצל עבדי השם הגורם העיקר לעצבות הוא כאשר הם רואים ונדמה להם שנכשלו בעבירה. When it comes to avdei Hashem, when it comes to those who are loyally serving Hashem, if we want to try to dissect and analyze, if we want to get to the root and the core of where does sadness come from? Where does sadness come from? So again, at the risk, and we don't want to oversimplify, we don't want to oversimplify, there are a lot of forms of sadness. There's sadness of grief, there's sadness of underachieving, sadness of insecurity, there's sadness of failure, there's a whole range. No shortage of sources or motivations of sadness, but here we're focusing on one. And when it comes to an eved Hashem, a source of sadness often is shenichshlu ba’aveira. When we stumble, when we fall, when we fail, when we feel like a failure, when we have the guilt and the shame of failure, we feel sad, we feel sad. או לא הצליחו בעבודת השם כמו שרצו, or when we set goals in serving Hashem and we don't achieve them, we fall short, we come short. So I'm going to learn all of Tanakh, went to an amazing siyum of Tanakh by a group of women in our shul who completed the whole Tanakh this past Shabbos, went to a beautiful kiddush. Nach, well the tav of Tanakh they finish every year, it's Chumash Parsha, gotta come back to shul. That's part of the motivation. Nach, if you want the tav of Tanakh, you gotta come hear the parsha. So you gotta come back to shul. Nach Yomi, Tanakh Yomi, Tanakh Yomi, I'm calling it Tanakh Yomi. So you set a goal, going to lose a certain amount of weight, you're going to stop speaking lashon hara, you're going to finish certain amount of learning, you're going to not get angry so many days in a row, you're going to cut down on screen time, whatever the goal is, and then we come up short, then we fail, then we break our streak, then we don't achieve what we thought we would, what we thought we would. So this is not just the insight of Rav Itche Meir, and I meant to bring, I'll bring for next week bli neder, but there's a lot of scientific research, a lot of data, that this is again studied. It's not just a religious perspective, but a psychological perspective. We see all the time that people who feel like failures, people who feel insecure, people who come up short, they are riddled and racked by guilt and shame and by sadness. People feel sad. People feel sad. When people watch inappropriate images and act out as a result of it, atheists and agnostics, it's not a religious reaction to it, but there is a feeling of guilt and shame that comes. ככיון שהם יודעים ומכירים בחשיבות העבודה, when a person claims, I know, I understand this is important, I care about this. A person has communicated, they've articulated this is a value of mine. So כישלון בעבירה חוסר הצלחה שובר אותם מאוד, it is heartbreaking. A person feels broken. A person feels broken. ונברז בעזרת השם יתברך. You know the Miami Marathon was on Sunday. I know that, not because I ran it. I know that because several people who I know and love ran it and completed it. But they described, if you recall the weather on Sunday, if you're watching not in Florida right now, do not expect you to take out your little violin and play it for us, but the weather on Sunday was very hot. If you recall, unusually hot for a February, and there was no cloud cover and the pavement was permeating heat and it was in the 80s and a bit humid and it was a very hard marathon for the people who ran it and I read the story about one person, a marathon is 26.2 miles, at the 26.1 mile she passed out. She didn't make it. Can you imagine you...? You don't get a participation trophy. You didn't make it to the finish line. I don't even want to imagine. So you feel broken. I trained, I worked, I told the world about my goal, I spent all that money on Nike outfits to practice and train, paid a trainer, downloaded every app, had to get the Apple Watch, did it all and didn't make it. Tenth of a mile short, fail. A person shover oso me'od, it breaks you. But the same is not, the same is true religiously and spiritually. The same is true in the emotional and relational goals that we set. ונפרט בעזרת השם יתברך העניין לכמה חלקים כדי שיוכל אם ירצה השם. So let's break this down l'havino heytev, to understand it well, כי היצר הרע משתדל מאוד. The yeitzer hara, the voice of self-sabotage, the negative instinct in us, it's working overtime. It's always working להפיל את עובדי השם יתברך לעצבות מהדברים האלה. You see, you know how the yeitzer hara works? Yeitzer hara is very pernicious, very evil, very wicked. Yeitzer hara is very scheming. Yeitzer hara knows I don't have to talk to you about whatever it is that I don't want you to be doing. I don't have to talk to you about whatever goal that you set that I don't want you to achieve. All I have to do is make you sad. All I have to do is bring you down in the dumps. You ever have this? You set certain exercise goals, certain amount of times during the week, certain length of time, and then your calendar dings, you're supposed to be doing that exercise and you're like, I don't feel like it. I'm not energized, I have no energy. I feel down and out. I'm unhappy. I'm exhausted emotionally, mentally, spiritually. So when you're sad, you don't have the strength to do anything. This was supposed to be the week I start saying Tehillim. I start concentrating in Shemoneh Esrei. I stop yelling at my kids. I have more patience that my husband still hasn't taken out the garbage. This was supposed to be the week. When you're sad and you're down, it's very hard to find drive and to find motivation. So the yeitzer hara knows, the yeitzer hara knows. When I use the term yeitzer hara, I want you to understand that I'm not five years old. I'm not describing a little angel on your shoulder who's talking in your ear. I'm talking about the human psyche. When Chazal, when our brilliant Rabbis thousands of years ago talked about the two voices in our head, the yeitzer hara and the yeitzer hatov, it's not a little guy in red with a pitchfork and chains and the guy all in white robes and a halo and they're on our shoulder and they're talking. I got it. I got it and I promise you they get it. So if that image seems immature and unsophisticated and therefore the words yeitzer hara and yeitzer hatov take you back to kindergarten and say, ah, what do I need this for, grow up? We are grown up. We're not talking about little people, little voices. We're talking about the voices in our own head. They're called the human psyche. They're called the human condition. They're called human psychology. We all have those voices. We're all in those conversations. We're all in those conversations regularly. In fact, do I have it here? No, I have to find it. I save articles that I want to read later. Most often the later never comes. But someone had just sent me an article. See if I find this very quickly. Yes. This was an article someone just sent me, GQ Magazine. It's just the text of the article. How to overcome the negative voice in your head. This is not in the Beis Yitzchak. This is not in Mishpacha. להבדיל אלף אלפי הבדלות. A magazine, I don't think it quotes Torah often. And the title of the article is how to overcome the negative voice in your head. I'm going to guess it doesn't talk about the yeitzer hara and the yeitzer hatov, but that's exactly what it's talking about. We all talk about it. So there's the yeitzer hara, there's a voice in our own heads that is working overtime, that is trying to get us to be sad and down because it knows that if we have no energy and we have no strength, if we have no hope and we have no faith, if we have no belief and we have no tenacity and resilience, mission accomplished. Job is done. I don't have to fight you now on davening and chessed and learning and middos. I just take out one thing and the whole thing crumbles. Everything crumbles. So overcoming that sadness, overcoming that melancholy, finding a joy for life and a happiness even within the grief or the pain is the antidote to the yeitzer hara. That's how we begin to have a fighting chance. That's how we can set goals and pursue them and achieve them. That's how we can be the best version of ourselves. I cannot believe what time it is, but I'm out of time. And so we have to stop here. But im yirtzeh Hashem. Next Wednesday night. Oh, you're right, we're here. We pick it up next week, tonight we go Behind the Bima with Rabbi Eli Mansour. Until next time, stay happy, stay healthy, and stay holy.
