Transcript
Yeah, okay, good morning, Boker Tov. Sorry for the delay. Unfortunately, dealing with some challenges, we should all have only simchas and good things. I want to thank our Amuna series sponsors for the year, Dr. Zavi and Bella Morgan, in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut and in memory of Bella’s mother, Dr. Ellen Schanzer. Very, very grateful for that ongoing and consistent sponsorship; it means the world to us. I also want to thank, it was supposed to be for the Ten Minutes of Meaning which, unfortunately, we weren’t able to have this morning, so also want to dedicate the Amuna Shiur for the yahrzeit of שמחה גרשום בן יצחק, beloved father of Stasht Jacobs, his neshama should have an aliyah, and very grateful to them for that too. And sorry we weren't able to do it on Mesilas Yesharim, we'll apply it to our living with, our living with Amuna. Okay, we continue our study of Tiv Ha'emuna. We have been learning Rav Gamliel Rabinovich, his approach and his attitude towards how we can try to repair and fix in our generation. It’s great to see some faces who normally listen online and comment online. It’s great to see you in person. And I'm going to make an appeal: after the shiur, there's Tehillim, there always is, and the people for whom we say the Tehillim, they should have a complete speedy refuah sheleimah, we should hear good news. After the Tehillim, if you see a new face, say hello, welcome, make a point to stay and have some coffee, get to know, ask how they’re doing. This is an opportunity not only to learn about Hashem, but to imitate Hashem. You could talk about Hashem, which is Amuna, or you could be like Hashem, which is to be kind and loving and sensitive and caring and interested in other people. We're all Tzelem Elokim, we're all children of Hashem, and to show an interest and a care and a concern of other people is to show a curiosity about Hashem, the God in others, the Tzelem Elokim of others. So it’s wonderful to be together, it's wonderful to welcome new faces, wonderful to welcome in person, usually online faces or names. So please, welcome and warm, nobody run out. It's an opportunity to say Tehillim, it's an opportunity to get to know one another. And while we're making announcements, also tonight, the Nishei of BRS is hosting an event which is how to check properly for insects, halachic considerations in Kashrus, how to inspect properly, and come and have some good salad and fruit and vegetables, all properly checked as part of this fun. What time is this program? 8:00. Have some salad, leave room for delicious salad. It's not a men's club event, it's a Nishei event. I'm saying, have some salad, 8:00 tonight. And also a reminder that coming up soon is the dedication, rededication of our renovated Mikvah. You have to register online to attend, it's going to be an amazing event, celebrate the brand new, magnificent, five-star, state-of-the-art, spa-like Mikvah which has been redone. So please join us for that as well. Tiv Ha'emuna, we're on page ayin, page 70. He'emanti ki adaber. We last left off and we were emphasizing the notion that you can only really live with and practice Amuna when you talk about Hashem. If you study about Hashem, if you study about God, God is theoretical and academic and abstract. God is somebody that you analyze and evaluate and you bring evidence and proofs for His existence, but you never actually practice talking to Him. Do you talk to Him? Do you surrender to Him? Do you submit to Him? Do you appeal to Him? Do you protest Him? Do you thank Him? Is there gratitude? Not enough to talk about God, we have to talk to God. And it’s not enough, I would say the opposite is also true: it's not enough to talk to God, which many do and do well, but you have to talk about God. Some people do a great job of talking to God. When do we talk to God? All the time. Only every morning, afternoon, and evening, Shacharis, Mincha, and Maariv. Only every time that we eat something or drink something, only every time that we leave the restroom. We talk to God all throughout our day, מאה ברכות בכל יום, we talk to God. So some do a great job talking about God, they never talk to God. Some do a great job talking to God a hundred times a day, but they never talk about God. They never talk about Hashem in their home, at dinner, bedtime, on vacation, when traveling, to talk everything to credit Him, the Ribono shel Olam. Do we thank Hashem? Let’s ask Hashem. We don’t know what to do, let’s pray on it. Let's hope that Hashem will give us clarity in every moment that a person is stuck, in every moment that a person is grateful, in every moment of a person's moment of desperation, in every moment of reflection, to not only talk to Hashem, but to talk about Hashem. He'emanti: how and when will we grow in our Amuna? Ki adaber, when we speak about, when we invoke, when we involve His name, when we involve His name. האמונה תלוי לפי הדיבור, Amuna depends on speaking about Hashem. וכמו שבעניינים גשמיים רואים במציאות שבאותם תעמולה על מוצר מסוים אף על פי שבעצם המוצר כלל וכלל אינו מעלה אדרבה הוא מאוס אולם כיוון שעשו תעמולה על זה כאילו שזה עיקר החיים וכל העולם שווה בשביל זה שהפעולה ועסק הפעולה משפיע גם על האנשים הנחשבים כשפויים בדעתם and so on. He emphasizes this notion. We have to see, we have to talk about it. Hashem. In other words, an incident that happened to two days ago, there was a football game, Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals, and we're not going to comment now on the barbaric sport of football and whether human beings should actually be playing it given what we know to be all the medical data of the results of it. My mother was ahead of this one. When I was a kid, she didn't want me playing. I had one friend who was very big and very strong and the rule was I was only allowed to play if he was on my team, not the other team. That was the rule. That was the rule. So any case, but we're not commenting on football in general. Many have a lot of fun, many have made a great career. We're not commenting on football in general. But this player, Damar Hamlin, 24-year-old was tackled and went into cardiac arrest and had to be revived CPR twice on the field and is still in a hospital fighting for his life. Why am I sharing that? He should have a refuah sheleimah. Why am I sharing that? Because there was an amazing image, an amazing scene, maybe you saw a picture or the video of it. And it occurred to me the striking contrast between a couple years ago when players in that same very sport, many were choosing to go to one knee during the national anthem in protest to America and it was a big controversy and it was a source of enormous division. Some kneeled on one knee, others stood up, others sat down and if you looked at an image or a video of the field during that controversial time, what you saw was great divisiveness, great machlokes, great division of people doing different things, taking different postures, sowing seeds of division. In contrast, as not only the teammate for some, the Buffalo Bills, but the opposing player for the Cincinnati Bengals, as he was on the field being worked on, all of the players, all of the players, all were on one knee praying. And it occurs to me how, I don't know, I don't know the answer to this, and I don't presume to know and I don't mean to stereotype and God forbid I'm not suggesting or implying anything in asking this. I have no idea if you would have polled those players before the game how many would say they believe in God. If you polled the players before the game how many would say they believe in prayer? If you polled the players before the game how many would say they pray regularly? And yet in a moment of crisis and catastrophe, instinctively, intuitively, where do we all go? We all collapse to one knee, that's not our religion, I'm not endorsing that, but we all collapse in surrender and submission and in prayer to Hashem, to God. There's nothing we can do. The medics are here, the experts are here, they're working on him, medical personnel are administering CPR not once but twice. We, the players, there's nothing we can do. What's left that we can do? All that's left is prayer. What a, and millions and millions and millions, maybe billions of people around the world saw it and we should speak about it. Heemanti ki adaber, that in that moment even if the latest poll, the Pew polls in America show that America's at an all-time low of belief in God, in that moment on national TV, every player, every coach, everyone in the stadium and probably everyone who was watching, all surrendered to their knee in prayer to the Melech Malchei Hamelachim, to Ribbono Shel Olam, to the King of kings. There's nothing more we can do. We're all spectators watching. But there is something we can all always do and that is pray and that is pray. And to me the contrast of the machlokes and the division and the different posture versus the universal posture that they all took of falling to a knee in prayer should be a lasting iconic image. It should be etched in our minds and our memories and it shouldn't take a collapse on a field. It took, sadly, it took a little while to conclude this, but they concluded ultimately they suspended the game, which of course there are things much more important than football. Football is after all a game. It's a game. A game. Life is much more important than a game. Prayer is more important than a game than a game. So it took them probably too long but they concluded to suspend the rest of that game. And what a message. What a message. But that image of prayer, Heemanti ki adaber, so there has to be an image of an image of prayer. I wish in other games when someone's injured and the medics rush on the field they treat and then the person stands up and is able to walk away, everyone should also collapse to a knee, surrender in prayer of gratitude. Instead, the game goes on. we should also remember how to pray with a sense of gratitude. I don't remember if I told the story here but the story is written up of Rav Lichtenstein zatsal who had a family member in crisis and they all gathered at the hospital and they were saying Tehillim and davening and the surgeon came out and reported the surgery had gone well, everything's going to be okay, they're going to survive, everything's good. And everyone from the family now was exchanging hugs and joy and smiles and gratitude and Rav Lichtenstein still sat there with his Tehillim open and he was still davening. So the family said like, Abba, Zeide, Saba, I don't know what they called him, Rosh Yeshiva, Rebbe, didn't you hear the surgery went well? Everything's good. It's okay. He said I said Tehillim out of desperation and with passion when I was worried everything. I shouldn't continue the Tehillim with an equal level of enthusiasm and passion and gratitude when everything is good? I did say it in the emuna shiur because I remember I got a message from someone afterwards. So I said it several months ago. But whatever we channel into the Tehillim, whatever we channel into the submission, surrender, the prayer in times of crisis, we should also when everything goes well, when we hear good news, when there is a positive result. But the bottom line is that Hashem has to enter the vocabulary, the vernacular. We have to talk more about him. We have to bring him into the casual conversations. Yosef, I told you last week, Yosef Hatzaddik, שם שמים שגור בפיו, he was always talking about Hashem. Always talking about Hashem. Oh, me? Dream interpreter? No, that's God. He just uses me. And Paroh doesn't say get lost, you religious fanatic. He says oh, God? Cool. Tell me more about your God. And then he tells someone this guy, he was amazing, he interpreted the dreams, but you know why? Because God helps him interpret the dreams. Mamash, Paroh's a baal teshuvah, he's at Chabad, Aish HaTorah, he's putting on tefillin, all because Yosef casually... He didn't sit Paroh down and say I'd like to go through the Bible codes with you. I'd like to examine six pieces of evidence of God's existence. You don't transform people by proselytizing and coercing. You know how you do it? When you casually mention God. When you talk about, when you casually mention God. Hemanti ki adaber. We have to talk about Hashem. כי אדם צריך תמיד לבדוק ולחפש את עצמו היכן הוא אוחז באמונה. Person has to always be doing a gut check and evaluating and asking ourselves, where am I holding in my emuna? Where am I holding in my emuna? וכשאינו מתבונן על מחשבותיו ומעשיו יוכל בקל ליפול למינות ואפיקורסות Rachmana litzlan. And if a person is not constantly analyzing, evaluating, trying to have a sense of self-awareness of where am I at, where am I holding, how am I in my relationship with Hashem, we can easily fall to a place of minus and apikorsus, of heresy and of denial, of being a kofer. Now you'll say what? Me? What are you talking about? I daven Shacharis, I learn the Daf Yomi, I gave tzedakah, I volunteered for the chesed, I go to the emuna shiur. Me? A kofer, a min? Me? A heretic, a non-believer? What are you talking about? Who are you kidding? I do everything right. There's a check mark next to every box, in every box. What do you mean? What do you mean me? So that's what he said earlier. That's what we mentioned a few times ago. Said yeah, there are people going through all the motions, doing everything right, and then someone says where's your paycheck from? And they say my paycheck's from Boca Raton Synagogue. You're an apikorus. You're a heretic. You're a heretic. Oh, you recovered? You told me you weren't feeling well. Yeah, it was amazing. I took zinc and I took vitamin C and I took what are the other concoction everybody tells you you have to take? Echinacea, thank you very much, Mom. Echinacea. Yeah, everybody's mom. Echinacea, and I drank chicken soup and... You're an apikorus. You got better because Hashem helped you get better. No, it's true, you took initiative, you made effort, all those things might be great tools and vitamins and all the things that you did, you know, you drink incredibly so that you can get rid of the illness through whatever the latest advice is on how to overcome whatever it is that's going around. But that's his point. You could live all the right ways, go through all the right motions, externally, superficially, look like the most observant practicing Jew. But what is your instinct when someone says where does your paycheck come from? What is your instinct when someone says oh, I know you had the flu or the virus or some combination of it all. You're better, that's great. What's your... do you say yes, thank God. I talked to Hashem throughout the whole thing and finally he helped me turn the corner. Hashem, I'm feeling better. He had me use vitamin C and echinacea and whatever else, but Hashem's the one who helped me become better. So you can do all the right things and still be an apikorus. You can do all the right things and still be an apikorus. ולפי זה אפשר לפרש דברי הגמרא שאין בן דוד בא עד שיתהפך כל המלכות למינות דהכוונה היא להנהגתינו שיכול להתהפך למינות. He says this is what it means that Dovid HaMelech is only going to come when heresy enters this world, which we're seeing. Again, other than this football game, the statistics and the data about how few believe in God, credit God, attribute to God, talk to God, pray to God, submit to God, surrender to God, we're seeing this. It just means hopefully we're closer and closer to Mashiach. ולמשל אילו היו מאמינים בפשיטות שבשעה שאנחנו מתפללים אנו עומדים לפני מלך מלכי המלכים הקדוש ברוך הוא והוא שומע תפילת כל פה. If we would really believe simply that while we're davening we're standing in an audience in front of the King of Kings, Kadosh Barukh Hu answers and hears every word we're saying. אזי בודאי שתפילתינו היתה נראה אחרת לגמרי. When we walk in to daven do we take a few deep breaths? Do we restore our neshama with a neshima? Do we realize where we are and before whom we stand? Do we understand the audience we have with the King of Kings? Hashem sent this fly, some gilgul to someone, something. So do we understand before whom we stand? Are all of our words measured? Are we careful? Are we thoughtful? Are we practicing every word we're saying? וכן כשאנו מברכים הרי אנו מודים להקדוש ברוך הוא על הפרי שיוצא בזה שנתן לנו. When we make a beracha, oh the fly goes moving in my coffee. Okay, maybe he's reminding us, let's make a beracha together. So he's about to say a beracha. We spent months on berachos, me'ah berachos. Baruch, blessed, all the shefa beracha, the source of all blessing, the flow of all blessing, Baruch. It should take you 20 minutes just to say the word Baruch. All the shefa beracha, all the blessing in my life, my health. I had to run out of an earlier, I missed the earlier shiur and I ran out in the middle of davening this morning because unfortunately someone didn't wake up this morning. Not a member of the shul, not directly connected to the shul, but needed to be identified and it's tragic. To get in touch with his ex-wife, his children, it's tragic. So if I'm flustered and we ran late, and it's because there's a tragedy still unfolding right now. I share that because whatever you have to face today, whatever you have to confront, whatever's on your, whatever today, maybe there's a difficult conversation you have to have, maybe there's a bill you're not sure how you're going to pay, maybe there's a doctor's appointment you're really not interested in going to, maybe I don't know what's on your agenda for today, but I know that you woke up this morning. We're sitting here right now and right now there's breath in our lungs and there's a heart beating in our chest and there is a today. There is a today. And as long as there is a today, the Melech Malchei HaMelachim, the King of Kings, we just finished Chanukah, the source of miracles. We don't know what today will bring. What we thought would be a difficult meeting turned into an incredible opportunity. What we thought was going to be bad, or even that hardship or the challenge, whatever we went through, we became stronger, we became bigger, we became better, something came out of it. Maybe we found a resilience and a tenacity we didn't know we'd have, we overcame, we become who we're meant to be. We don't know. So Baruch, I woke up this morning. Modeh ani. Rabba emunasecha. Hashem, Your faith in me is great. Modeh ani. When is the last time you actually thought about the words Modeh ani? When's the last time you remembered to say the words Modeh ani? Modeh ani, not ani modeh, not I, I don't wake up with a sense of I, I wake up with a sense of modeh, of gratitude, an attitude of gratitude. I woke up this morning. The rest of the day, I've told you about an extraordinary person in our community who has several children with significant challenges, huge issues, who says to me, any day that she goes to bed she has the same head count in her home as the way she woke up is a good day. And I asked her, how do you do it? How do you overcome it? Multiple children with multiple significant, ongoing, chronic, will never be solved issues. How do you do it? She says, what do you mean how do I do it? Any day that I go to sleep that I have the same head count as the way I woke up, that's a good day. I said, that's unbelievable. What an attitude. What an attitude. You woke up today. It doesn't mean there aren't hard things that have to be navigated, there aren't challenges that have to be overcome, that we don't have to dig deep and find strength to get through what we need to do. Not minimizing, not minimizing. We need strength. But Baruch Atah, Hashem, You're the source of all shefa beracha. Atah, I get to call You "You". I'm on a direct first-person You, You. You're not some abstract idea I read about in a book. You're not somebody I talked about at a conference, a convention. You, You're someone I, You're right here in front of me, someone I have a relationship with, Hashem. But You're not just some god who's the creator, the source of all, Hashem Elokeinu, You're my God, Melech Ha'olam, You're the King of the whole universe, everything in it, shehakol that everything, shehakol, everything, nihiyeh bidvaro, it all came to be because You said it. And just like You said it and it came to be, You could say anything, anything can come to be in my life. And shehakol, shehakol, I'm not, why don't I just say like I say mezonos and etz and adama and hagafen and lechem, why shehakol, this catch-all? So my daughter Liora said it at her bas mitzvah in her dvar Torah and I think about it all the time since, her beautiful dvar Torah. Shehakol is not just about the specific food. Shehakol means the atmosphere, the environment. You know, again she gave the mashal and we've said it here before. I'm just, you keep showing up, I'm keep repeating, it's just the way it goes. Until it gets through, until it seeps in, until it seeps in. Why is it, why is it that the same, I don't know what food you want to come up as a mashal, the same Snapple, a Diet Coke, that when you buy in the supermarket is 50 cents, once upon a time was 50 cents, it's a dollar, it's a dollar, and then you go to the restaurant, you'd like a Diet Coke, and all of a sudden it's $7.22. They said, yeah, you're not just buying the Diet Coke, you're buying the ambiance, the ambiance. So when we say a shehakol, I'm not just saying shehakol on the coffee. First of all, I'm thanking the farmer, and I'm thanking the one who harvested the coffee bean, I'm thanking the one who packaged it and shipped it, the one who grinded, ground, did whatever properly to the coffee bean, and the one who made the. and the people at Dunkin', the world runs on Dunkin', I'm thanking them all. So Shehakol, everything that went into, it's gonna be cold by the time I make this Beracha, but everything that went into everything that went into this cup of coffee, Shehakol. And the ambiance. I'm in a room packed with people who want to grow with their Emuna. And we woke up this morning. What a miracle. And there's air conditioning blowing, not heat. And there's like endless, if we actually just stop and pause, it should take four and a half hours to say a Shehakol on a cup of coffee because I'm thinking about the ambiance and the atmosphere and all the people and all the things that went into it and what had to go right for me to be able to drink it and digest it, for it to have its impact on me, for the emotional connection I have with coffee and what it means to me. And if you forgot about that emotional connection, what it means to you, if today's Shehakol on your cup of coffee this morning was done absentmindedly, mindlessly, then you didn't properly fast yesterday. Because if you fasted yesterday, by today you meant what you knew what a cup of coffee was. If you missed out on your cup of coffee yesterday by 4:00 in the afternoon, the migraine headache, your head spinning, you're dizzy, I don't care it's the shortest fast of the year, if you didn't get that cup of coffee to start your day yesterday morning, you're still paying the price today. You still haven't come back yet from it. Still haven't recovered. So today's cup of coffee, ooh, this isn't the first one. Today's cup of coffee, ooh, wah. ברוך אתה ה' אלוהינו מלך העולם שהכל נהיה בדברו. Amen. We're here, we're alive. What a day. Whatever it is we have to face today, we started it. Please God, we'll have the same head count in our house at the end of it. And that alone, whatever came in between it, we got, we can figure it out. We'll figure it out. If we have the same head count today at the end of the day that we do when we start, then then we can get through whatever's in the middle of it. We'll get through it. Ilu hayinu ma'aminim. So if we really believed, you'd come to daven, you'd open your siddur, you'd say I'm in front of the King of Kings. Do you know who I'm talking to? Do you know the audience I have? Do you know the access I have to the most powerful? Do you know who I'm with? Today everybody loves to, it's like the new, the new hobby, is to post pictures with famous people. Somehow your worth and value go up because in an airport you ran into and you bothered and you mutchered and you got a picture and you put it on your status and you put it on your thing. Hopefully it's in the Jewish world. I have mixed feelings about it even in the Jewish world, but in the Jewish world too, better beautiful that you mutchered and you took a picture with a rabbi or Jewish music star, at least better it be that that's who we're excited to meet or be with or have a picture with or make the wallpaper on our phone instead of our children and our grandchildren, it's this famous person I met, that's who I'm so excited to be with. Whatever, okay, there's worse things in the world. But we think our stock goes up because I ran into and I have a picture with, right? So every adam gadol that dies, the internet lights up with everyone posting their picture with that adam gadol. Okay, it's a beautiful thing that's who you associate with, that's a beautiful thing, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Hashem. I'm not knocking that, that's great. You could put a picture every day, any time of day you want of you and Hashem. Look, look who's my best friend. You know who my best friend is? Only the Creator of the universe, the King of Kings, the Master of everything. He's my best friend. By the way, it happens to be that when you're best friends, you don't put the picture up because it doesn't look cool. When you put the picture up, you're like, I got a picture, I posed for it, look who I was with. You know when you're actually good friends, you play it cool. I don't need a picture, we're actually tight. So we don't put the picture up with Hashem because he's our best friend. We're tight. I can, what do you mean? I have his number, it's on speed dial, it's on my favorites. I can call him whenever I want, he always picks up. Ah, he's meeting with, he's talking to someone else. He can meet and talk to everyone at the same time. That's my best friend. He's the source, the King, whatever's going on, whatever I need help with, whatever I'm overcoming, I have access, I talk to the King of Kings. If we really, you can measure, I've always felt that my emuna, this is the metric, the measure, the thermometer. You want to know how your emuna is? How's your davening? It's a very simple measure. How's your davening? If it's rushed, if you forget, if you don't care, if you're mindlessly plowing through it, if you're reciting it while you're walking around the house and getting other things done, you're not really plugged in. But if you really take a few moments and you really think about before whom I stand, what I owe him, what I'm grateful for, what I'm angry, what I want to share with him in protest, what I want to object to, if you really think about, he's the source of everything, he's the creator of everything, me, I'm a lowly, insignificant, future worm food. I'm nothing. I'm nothing. And I turn to him and I need him and I rely on him and I want him. I take a few moments and I actually Chasidim Rishonim the Gemara tells us in Berachos that the early pious righteous ones, they would take a few breaths, they would spend an hour. It says חסידים הראשונים היו שוהים שעה אחת. They would spend an hour meditating before they would actually start talking to God. That's how long it takes. By the way, they didn't have technology. They didn't have media and social media and it still took an hour. I don't know what they had to clear their mind of. They just milked the cow in the barn. Hadn't seen another human on a farm yet all day, there were no billboards, there were no messages, there were no texts, no WhatsApp, there was no streaming, there was no, it still took them an hour. Should take us how many hours to clear our mind, to pave way, to let him through, to connect with him? What do we do? Yeah, I gotta daven, just give me a couple minutes. I open the siddur while I'm still finishing talking to you, then I'm in thing, I'm sign language. Jews are all excellent at sign language while they daven, while they bentsch, we could have entire conversations. While we're waiting to have Hamotzi, we could tell over entire story. We're unbelievable at sign language. That's davening? That's Emunah? That's who you're talking to? You ever talking to someone on the phone and you could tell they're preoccupied with something else? They say, "What was that again?" Or you ask a question, there was dead silence. You could tell they're multitasking and they're bad at it. Not good at it. If they're good at it, respect. But if they're bad at it, they're multitasking and they're bad at it and all of a sudden you realize, "You know what? Why don't you call me later when you have a few minutes?" You don't get angry, you don't start a fight, you just say, "You sound busy. Why don't you call me later when you have a few minutes?" You know that Hashem's on the other end saying to us every now and then, too often, "You look a little busy. Why don't you call me when you actually have a few minutes to talk to me? I really, I want nothing more than to talk to you." Right? People in the room who are parents, all those who want to be parents should be blessed to be parents, healthy parents, healthy children. So is there any greater joy in the world than talking to your children? You want, you know what's even better? When your children call you. You know what's even better? When they call you and it turns out they didn't need anything. They just called you. Often, not my children, my neighbor's children, often you wait and you're talking and you're waiting for the ask. What's the ask? Need to book tickets, your debit card ran out of money, what's the ask? What do you need? Someone's got to go over your paper for school, what do you need? So you get towards the end and you say, "What do you need?" They say, "Nothing. I just missed you. We just haven't spoken in a while." Ah, is there anything better in the world? I was in the middle of something the other day and I got a FaceTime, one of my children, and it was my grandson. He said, "Zeida! I slept without my passy last night." I said, "Everything else could wait in the world. Everything else." I was supposed to give a shiur. "I'll be there in a minute. Everything else in the world could wait." He didn't need anything from me, just wanted to tell his Zeida he slept without his passy. I give you all a brachah. This, there's nothing better in the, mamash, is the greatest high in the world. The greatest. The greatest. We should all be zoche to know that high. Your child calls you. But what happens when your child calls you or you call them and they're doing seventeen other things and they're distracted and they're answering email and they're looking at the thing and you could tell they're not really with you? You say, "I'll tell you what. I love talking to you. There's nothing better in the entire world, nothing sweeter, nothing greater, nothing higher. But you know what? Why don't you call me back when you could focus?" Hakadosh Baruch Hu is up there, He says, "You, my children, I love you. I want to hear from you. I don't care if I'm hearing from you 'cause you want to yell at me. That's still hearing from you. You could call me and yell at me. I just want to hear from you. But you know what I don't want? That you ostensibly called me and now you're doing ten other things. You're not really here with me. You're not with me. You're somewhere else while you think you're with me. You're absent presence. You're really somewhere else. You're not really here with me." So the measure, the metric, the barometer I use for myself to sort of do that check-in is how's the davening? Is it a chore, is it tedious, is it a burden? Do you hate it? Do you not want to do it? Or can you not wait till the next one? Oh, Shacharis is over, I can't wait until Mincha, can't wait until Ma'ariv. Ma'ariv, oh, I have to wait all the way until Shacharis. I love it. I love getting lost in those words. I love disconnecting from the world and feeling in His presence. I love submitting and surrendering to Him. I love thanking Him. I love going through the Amidah and reflecting these nineteen brachos of these nineteen universal needs of the Jewish people, of all people, and I love recalibrating my compass, my priorities, remembering what's important. I love davening. What an exercise in connection and humility. Love Tefillah. That's the measure. If you really believe in Hashem, you're not multitasking. I don't know that anyone's ever been in, again, forget which president, the mashal of the Oval Office, and been like, "I'm just, just one second, I'm just scrolling through Instagram, TikTok. I just want to see if I missed anything, Mr. President. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Nobody's ever doing that. You're there. You're there. Outside the situation room of the White House is a box, you have to deposit and leave your phone. You cannot bring it into the situation room. When I took a tour I asked, "The president?" The president! Nobody brings the phone in the situation room. Davening's our situation room. That's your situation room. Whatever your situation in life, you need something or you're grateful for something. Whatever is our situation, when we daven, we're taking three steps into our situation room and we leave our phone outside of it. Leave the phone outside of it and be fully present and mindful. And that's how we know how we're doing. We make a brachah. Did you mumble the brachah? Do you forget if you even made the brachah? Did you remember to make the brachah afterwards also, not only before, once you're full? That's how we know how we're doing. You know, people, they know how they're doing health-wise. The pants close, they don't close so well. Scale, I lost a lot of weight, I gained a lot of weight. So we're measuring our weight, we're measuring other aspects of ourselves. We measuring our emunah. Are we living with a regular evaluation and knowledge, are we measuring our emunah? How we doing? Do we ask each other that? We ask how you doing, what's new? Do we ask each other how's your soul, how's your neshama, how's your emunah? I'm not suggesting you meet a stranger at the kiddush. Nice to meet you, gut shabbos, I'm so-and-so, how's your emunah? It's not the opening question. But if they're people you really care and love and you're catching up and you're getting coffee and you confide and you're friends or family in a way that's deeply meaningful, it's a great question. How's your emunah? How's your connection with Hashem? How you doing? How's your health? How you feeling? How's your mental health? How are you getting through whatever's going on and how's your emunah? How's your emunah? How you doing? וכמו כן כשאחד סובר שמזונותיו באו מאת המנהל או מחמיו וכיוצא בזה משאר עילות וסיבות ואין ברור אצלו שהבורא יתברך הוא היחיד הזן ומפרנס ומכלכל אותו הרי זה בגדר אפיקורסות ועבודה זרה. You walk around they say where do you get your paycheck from? Oh, Boker Tov Synagogue. You're an apikores! You're a heretic! You're a denier! What do you mean I'm a denier? How dare you, I דאווען שחרית מנחה מעריב, I give tzedaka, I learn daf yomi. What do you mean I'm an apikores? You're an apikores! You don't live such a life that you instinctively answer where's your paycheck from, Hashem? You're an apikores, you're a risk, you're an oveid avoda zara. You know what you're worshipping? Your boss, your employer, your board of directors, your clients, your customers, your stock price. You're worshipping avoda zara is attributing success, attributing something, influence, to something other than Hashem. וכן אם אדם שרוי בעצבות ואינו מרוצה ממצבו ואינו שמח בחלקו הרי זה בגדר כפירה כמו שמבואר באריכות בספר התניא. The Tanya, the Alter Rebbe, Iggeret Yud Aleph writes that another metric or measure of your emunah is your mood. Is your mood? Your disposition. One thing is how's your davening? That's a great question to ask people you love. Children, your spouse, your siblings, people you love, your closest friends. How's your davening flowing? How's it going? You connecting? What's working, what's not, when's the last time it did work, why did it work, why is it not working now? These are meaningful great conversations. Not just what recipe did you make, what are you serving this Shabbos? Also great conversations. Did you inspect the vegetables for bugs? Also great conversations. How's your emunah? How's your davening? Is it flowing? How are you getting through? Do you feel Hashem in your life? What's working, why now, what? Imagine he'emanti ki adaber. Imagine friendships and neighbors and a community where the conversations were about Hashem, feeling Hashem, talking about Hashem, asking for Hashem's help in whatever we're getting through. Imagine. Let's not imagine, let's make it a reality. But another measure is not only if our davening is flowing smoothly, but how is our disposition? Are we cheerful? Are we happy? Are we sameach b'chelko? Do we realize I'm not anxious, I'm not worried, I'm not angry, I'm not resentful, I'm not bitter, I'm not arrogant, I'm not envious? Why? Because I have Hashem in my life. So whatever I have is what I'm meant to have and whatever I'm meant to be going through. I'll give you a little preview. Tonight behind the Bima the conversation, I just recorded it yesterday. You know behind the Bima's always live. We're live streaming the conversation we had yesterday. But the part with Rabbi Brody and I that's that's live. But the interview with Veronica Bocelli, the wife of Andrea Bocelli, the great maestro. So I ask her in the conversation, your husband, if he had a chance, you know he's blind, he was born with a eye disease but he was hit by a soccer ball twelve years old that made him go blind. So if he had the choice to trade in his voice, I said this to you last week after hearing him sing. So I got to ask. I got to ask. You have to listen tonight to hear the answer. Okay, I'll tell you a little bit the answer. Only because you keep asking, you won't leave me alone. She said Andrea's attitude is that God gave him the whole package. He gave him this magnificent voice and he also took away his eyesight. So that's the package he's meant to have. And he wouldn't trade one for the other because if this is the package he was given, this is what he's meant to live with. So he wouldn't trade. He wouldn't trade not because one's worth more than the other, not because the fame, the fortune, the voice is worth more than being able to see. It's not that one's worth more. He wouldn't trade because he's a man of great faith and he prays, we talk all about that, Israel, the Holocaust, the Jewish people. It's a conversation worth listening to, really really powerful. But she said his attitude, his feeling is, he would have said it himself but I don't speak Italian and he doesn't speak English. His attitude is this is the whole package he was given. You don't get to tell God I'd like to pick... from the menu. This is what you gave me in my life, I'd like to keep this, this, and this, if you don't mind taking back this, that, and the other. We don't get to do that. We each have a pekel. We each have a package. It all comes together. And each of us our pekel if we knew the other person's pekel if we lived with their life, we would choose our own again. We would choose our own again. If we knew what the other was going through, what they had to endure, what they were facing, we would take our own back. Each of us have our own. It's a whole package. We don't get the luxury. Our life is not a playlist. You know, the world changed as soon as music went to playlists. When we were kids, you had tapes, records, that's as far back as I go. 8-tracks before my time. But records, I still remember records. Tapes, I grew up on tapes, cassettes. And you know, if you had a certain artist, a musician you liked, you bought the tape, you had to listen to the whole tape. There was only two songs on the tape worth listening to, one on each side. But you had to listen to the whole thing to get to the two songs that were really good. And you lived with the mediocre and the bad unless you had, you know, the double tape and you made a mix or you had to time exactly pressing play, record, and play. Should I tell a story? I'll tell a story. I get in trouble if I tell the story. At one point Yocheved and I when we were dating broke up and we got back together. One of the great expressions of affection that she made to show she was serious about this relationship, I was going on a trip to Israel and she made me a mixtape. You know how many hours it took with a double tape. Anyone know what I'm talking about? You had to press play, record, play, and then stop it and then flip the tape and get it to the right spot and make the... Nobody remembers the effort it took to make a mixtape? Anyway, and then Apple came out and they said mixtape, play, record, records, listening to a whole album, no, you just get to choose a playlist. You only have to listen to the things you like and you want. The world changed and I think for the worse because now we live in a life, in a world of on-demand. You only listen to what you want to listen when you want. I have multiple playlists. My good mood, my happy mood, my sad mood, my Chanukah mood, my erev Shabbos mood, my fast, my slow mood, my... we have lists. Yocheved's got the best. You want to get on her Apple Jewish music list, many people listen all over to her link. It's a great list, great playlist, on-demand. We forgot how to endure the mediocre and the bad and it was worth it to get to the best and the good. We forgot because now we want everything on demand. So we tell our spouse, I'd like... how can I control the playlist? I only want you to say the things I want to hear. I want to skip. How do I forward the parts, the things I don't want to hear you say? How can I... where's the playlist for my spouse, for my parent, for my child, for my boss, for my friend? How can I do on-demand with them? I only want to hear you say these things to me. I'd like to skip the things I don't want to hear from you. It's totally entered, our, penetrated our psyche, the whole notion of on-demand and a playlist. So in life we don't have that luxury. We don't get to say to Hashem, I'll do this, that, and the other on-demand, that's my playlist, you take the rest back. It's a whole package. You get a beautiful voice but you go blind, it's a whole package. And you take one, you gotta take it all, it all comes together. Our package, the blessings and the challenges in our life, it all comes together. It all comes together. So says Rabban Gamliel. Says Rabban Gamliel, do we have the ability sameach b'chelko? Do I look at the whole package of my life and say I'm happy with my lot? It's all from him. So I'm not bitter or resentful, I'm not angry or envious of anyone else because it's all from him. So sameach b'chelko, I'm positive and I'm happy and I'm cheerful. And don't say, well it's easy, if you're Andrea Bocelli, it's easy to be happy even though you're blind, you have all the money and the fame. Okay, true, he's all that. But I know a lot of people who have nothing and next to nothing who choose to be happy. I know people whose health is failing and who have no money to pay the bills and who have nothing but... I know people who have a lot of problems and they choose happiness nonetheless. It is in our ability. We can... don't wait for the emotion of happiness because happiness is not an emotion. Happiness is not an adjective, it's a verb. It's a choice that we make. Do we choose? Are we sameach b'chelko? When Hashem is in your life, you will be happy. And if you're unhappy, you have to ask yourself, is Hashem in my life? Do I really believe what's happening is for a reason, there's meaning, order, and purpose to the universe? Do I submit and surrender to him? Do I recognize that this is my package, my pekel, what I was meant to go through? Do I have the ability to be happy nonetheless? הרי זה בגדר כפירה. We'll just finish with this last sentence. U'lema'aseh, top of page ayin-aleph. U'lema'aseh, כשאדם חי בחיי שגרה על פי ראות עיניו הסומך על כל מיני אמצעים כגון הרופאים. So if you live with what you see, so you only trust there's doctors, there's lawyers, there's judges, there's employers, there's paychecks, there's companies, there's organizations, there's institutions, there's customers, there's clients, all I ever talk about, all I ever believe in, all I ever trust is what I can see with my eyes. הרי זה גובל באפיקורסות. You're a practicing apikorus. You're a super... You're a super religious apikurus. You're an observant Torah observant apikurus. We know people like that. How many people you know like that who are shtark frum and money hungry, greedy, all they talk about is materialism and ostentatiousness and keeping up and competing? That's a super שטארק תורה פרום אפיקורוס. Apikurus! If you knock out and you eliminate Hashem from your vocabulary, your vernacular, your conversations, instinctively, intuitively you don't answer it's from Hashem, you're not satisfied with what you have. צריך להשקיע כחות באמונה להאמין שהקדוש ברוך הוא נמצא בכל מצב וזמן. We have to put our effort and our energy, we have to work out that emuna muscle, we have to get the emuna lasik surgery, we have to use every emuna metaphor I can come up with. וגם בעת הסתרה הוא נמצא ורק בו צריך לבטוח ולהישען. Even in the moment of darkness, even on a tough, tough morning, He's there, He's present, even in that car, even in that moment. והוא נותן לנו כח לעשות חיל. He gives us strength to endure to go from chayil el chayil. So chevra friends, we woke up today Modeh Ani. Be grateful if we have the same head count tonight we had this morning. How grateful we should be shehakol nihiya bidvaro. Everything is from Him. This world, the whole package, hakol, it all comes. Shehakol nihiya bidvaro, with His word it all came to be. The good, the bad, the ugly, the pleasurable, the painful, it's all from Him, it's all one package. We take it all, it's what we're meant to have. And when we do, we could be besimcha, we can choose happiness, and we'll find our davening is on fire, we're talking to Him. So please stay for a few minutes for the davening to be on fire with Tehillim, and please stay beyond that. There's new faces here. I'm not going to embarrass anyone and say raise your hand right now if it's the first time you've been here in a long time, but raise your hand if it's the first time you've been here in a long time. And everyone go up, say hello, be welcoming, form new friendships. That's what it means also to be living with emuna. Till next time, stay happy, stay healthy, stay holy. Tonight, tonight check vegetables and then watch Behind the Bima and then be grateful and thankful to Hashem. Yes.
