Transcript
Good morning Boker Tov, it should be a good morning, we should hear Besoros Tovos, Yeshuos Venachamas for Am Yisrael, for Klal Yisrael. I want to thank our incredibly generous sponsors for the Emuna shiur, the series Dr. Avi and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr. Bernie Galbut and in memory of Bella's mother Dr. Ellen Shantz. This morning is also sponsored by Joyce and David Mueller commemorating the sixth yahrtzeit of Joyce's father Robert Siegel, the 18th yahrtzeit of her mother Frieda Siegel, הנשמה שתהא לו עליה. Also dedicated anonymously as a mazel tov to Meira and Daniel Elyasayev on the birth and bris of Yehuda Alexander, שתהיה לו הרבה נחת from him, and in honor of Miriam Greenberg's birthday by her podcast Chavrusa, happy birthday, many more in good health and happiness, it should be her best year yet. Also we are learning as a Refuah Shlema, still desperately storming Shamayim for the young girl from our community Chaya Yael Shoshana bas Chana Freida, שתהיה לה רפואה שלמה, a speedy and a complete and a miraculous Refuah Shlema and to all those who need they should have a complete and speedy recovery. Two more quick announcements then we've got some very powerful emails, some beautiful Torah to learn, some Emuna to practice and we are on our way for the day. The two more announcements are the following: the Emuna insulated cups, the cups that say, what do they say? Caffeinated with Kavana, Shehakol Niyeh Bidvaro. We have sleeves of disposable cups if you'd like to sponsor, if you'd like to buy a sleeve, if you'd like to wake up and start your day every day by remembering that Hashem runs the world and you want to caffeinate with Kavana, you can see Lee and get a hold of them. And lastly, lastly, as I said before, raise your hand if you're a BRS member. Wonderful. If you are a Boca Raton Synagogue member you are more than doing your part to ensure that we can spread and send Torah around the world. If you're not, but you're watching, you read, you listen, you enjoy, you're here, you're having coffee, please, please, please do your part. We run our annual BRS online global campaign for enabling those to express gratitude, say thank you, and to partner, to invest in helping us spread and share Torah as far and wide as possible. We want as many people in the world living with Emuna as we can. We have a lot of ideas how to do it but we need your help, we need your partnership. So please take a moment, brsonline.org/global, brsonline.org/global. You can take the QR code on here, you can go to that website. Jeffrey is here, if you raise your hand right now, he's more than happy to come over to where you are sitting and to help you right now with your credit card. For 180 dollars you enter an amazing raffle. The winner of the raffle will win two domestic flights to Boca Raton from anywhere in the country and be here for Shabbos, April 6th with us, and on April 7th have VIP tickets to the Ishay Ribo concert at BRS and meet Ishay Ribo. That is an incredible bargain, what a deal, only 180 dollars. For 360 you get three tickets, for 500 you get five tickets and so on. Do your part, join the movement, join the Emuna movement. If you're not a member, please do your part and join the movement. Again Jeffrey is here, don't make him just stand in the front staring at you. Raise your hand if you're not yet in the global community, he'll come over, he'll help you out. We got a few emails and then we got some Torah texts, and there are source sheets over here if you'd like to follow inside. First, a very heavy, a very, a very powerful email. Hi Rabbi Goldberg, an Emuna email you may not want to share, it's very dark, but I want to write it anyway. I have permission to share this. We've all heard stories about how someone missed a plane that ended up crashing or didn't get the job they wanted that turned out to be the company which everyone was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11, but my story of Emuna has no such happy ending and I guess the biggest lesson in Emuna comes when things don't work out. Almost 51 years ago, כ"ז אדר שני, my father-in-law and mother-in-law set out to walk to shul together on a Shabbos morning. Not long after they left the house, my mother-in-law had to go back to the house for some important reason and the departure for shul was delayed but by no more than five minutes. On the way to shul, as they were walking on a sidewalk up a hill, a car ran a red light and smashed into another car. The second car ricocheted onto the sidewalk and struck my father-in-law, killing him. Just milliseconds before he was struck, he managed to push his wife away. She lived, despite every bone on the right side of her body having been broken. She often thought that if she hadn't had to go back to the house, they would have been five minutes further up the hill, far away from that car crash. But she was a woman of almost surreal Emuna. She never once questioned Hashem, never once questioned why she was widowed at the age of 45, never once questioned all the medical issues she had for the rest of her life, many of which stemmed from the injury she sustained that day, never once questioned some years later why she had to bury her only son. Instead, she constantly focused on what she did have: a family adored and respected her, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom had continued to walk to shul, to be shomrei mitzvos, to be good people. She was a role model to our whole family. Her first name was Esther. The child named after her, Estie Moskowitz, inherited her strength and her deep emuna. She also never questioned, like her namesake she accepted Hashem's will and had deep and pure, almost surreal emuna. These are examples of emuna tested and tested again of two people who passed this test with flying colors. It's difficult to follow the example of these two exceptional people; it is a work in progress. I told you very powerful, very difficult, the author of this email is herself an incredible example of emuna and beloved and wonderful and inspiring and amazing. We're grateful to her for writing it and giving us permission to share it. And again, the emuna emails of people for whom it doesn't end the way we want, doesn't all happen happily ever after, but nevertheless lean into that emuna and understand it's very, very, very powerful and deeply, deeply appreciated by us. I'll share one other email and then we'll get into the text again. This one a little bit lighter. Dear Rabbi Goldberg, excited to share my first emuna email. I think I have the format down; please modify if I don't follow your regular edits. Thank you so much for hosting me two weeks ago blah blah blah blah blah. It meant so much to me, he writes, blah blah blah blah blah. So far so good. In early January I was invited by the Rebbetzin to a singles event in Boca Raton. From December through March I'm historically in busy season so my immediate reaction was that I'm going I'm not going to attend. The week leading up to the Shabbaton the Rebbetzin followed up again and I decided I would press my luck on a standby ticket. The night before the flight, I scoured all Delta's flights from LaGuardia and JFK to Fort Lauderdale or West Palm. It's President's weekend, and it didn't look promising. I decided to take my chances and booked the 7:00 AM from LaGuardia to Fort Lauderdale Friday morning. For those not familiar with a buddy pass ticket, it's a perk airlines offer to employees' friends and family at a discounted rate. The only catch is you have to show up to the gate to see if there's a seat on the plane. The range of my experiences span from sitting first class to Israel to getting kicked off the plane 10 minutes before takeoff because a full revenue passenger showed up hashtag walk of shame. I was fully aware that there were no guarantees with this ticket. After getting to bed around 1:30 AM Thursday night, set my alarm for 4:45 AM, I was at the airport an hour later. At 6:00 AM there were seven seats remaining and I was number eight. Security lines were long and the clock was ticking. 6:20 AM two seats remaining and I'm number three on standby. I was at gate 81, LaGuardia to Fort Lauderdale, and gate 82 was flying to West Palm at the exact same time. As I was running back and forth between the gates to see which would be a better option, I was thinking about the previous shiur you had given how gedolim are calm in any state. What we talk about שויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד, ishtavus, equanimity, calmness, just go with the flow, life's an adventure, see where Hashem is taking us next, just go with it. It was hard to relate, but I smiled at the notion that it wasn't really in my control. As I ran back to my original gate to check on the flight, I was met by an extremely abrasive ticketing agent who was not in a helpful mood to say the least. At 6:49 AM baruch Hashem they called my name. They asked anyone on the standby list to walk up to the plane but not to board as they would assign seats. Someone else working at the airline asked us if we had seats yet. Another standby passenger looked at the phone and saw they were assigned a seat, so I proceeded to do the same. The same aggressive ticketing agent called my name and announced 1C, which I knew was first class. At the exact same moment I looked at my phone and blurted out "No, 29A," which was clearly coach, and I clearly just bit my tongue. Immediately I realized my mistake and so did the agent. The man looked at me with a sinister grin, pointed at me and repeated the words I had just spoken: "29A." Needless to say, the situation was upsetting. I had the ominous feeling that I was experiencing onshore antisemitism not in Europe in LaGuardia, here in New York, and there was nothing I could do about it. Perhaps I was just extra sensitive after October 7th, not to be misconstrued that my troubles at traveling for leisure in any way are comparable to the situation. As I made my way to the seat, I said, "Hashem, I don't see the good in this right now, but obviously you do." In other words, the agent was about to award him first class when he looked up and saw who it was, he changed him and put him in the back, 29A, coach. I thanked Hashem for getting a seat on the plane at all, but the palpable frustration overshadowed part of the excitement. Due to the heat of the moment, I realized I forgot to look at the ticketing agent's name to report the incident. I'm not above being a Karen when the situation calls for it. The expression "resentment is like drinking poison hoping it will hurt someone else" popped in my head so I asked Hashem to take revenge not for me, but for His kavod. About 20 minutes after takeoff, I got up to use the restroom, nothing worse than a window seat on a plane. The person sitting next to me wearing a kippa fell asleep, and the aisle seat was empty at the time. I climbed over the armrest. I climbed over the armrest to get out and back in. The passenger assigned the aisle seat was also returning to their seat and said, "Wow, it's a good thing we're all Jews in this row that you can get away with that." I smiled as I did not expect that response. He didn't look Jewish based on his attire. We struck up a conversation and he asked me if I was about to put on tefillin as he saw me taking it out of my knapsack. I mustered up the courage and asked him if he wanted to put on tefillin. And to my surprise, he smiled and said, "Sure." I can't begin to tell you what that felt like. I watched this man put on tefillin, place an airline napkin on his head to make a beracha, wrap his tefillin and daven for his father-in-law's 70th birthday party in Florida to go well. It was the sweetest revenge. While that ticketing agent thought he was punishing me, Hashem clearly orchestrated this. And the answer to my tefillah was revealed shortly thereafter. For so many reasons I love taking these standby tickets. One, the price. Two, that there is always a good story to follow. And three, I always walk away feeling like Hashem is giving me a nod. So many aspects of our lives are on standby. Health, financial security, shidduchim, the war in Israel, so many tefillot feel like they are stuck just waiting at the gate. For me this was a classic archetype tefillah or frustration. The time I said to Hashem wouldn't you rather me have the first class seat and daven benachas? Now I have to go put in my tefillin out over the overhead compartment, climb over people out of my seat, sit in a place for Shemoneh Esrei. I would do such a good job if you gave me this job, this promotion, this shidduch, this lot in life. 29A in my humble opinion turned out to be a much better seat than 1C. It was a good reminder and a great way to go into Erev Shabbos. To close, I will commingle my compliments to you with your other half, which will hopefully force you to have to read it out loud. Thank you for the years of emunah ammunition through the divrei Torah life lessons. May the shiurim continue, blah blah blah. The warmth, hospitality, intricate level of detail that went into that Shabbos and single Shabbaton was undeniable and the impression that it left was indelible. With much gratitude, anonymous. Okay, I'll tell you one more. Not an email, but we experienced, Yocheved and I, at a wedding in New York on Sunday. A dear friend of ours and of the Emunah Shiur, our dear friend Ben, we'll call him Ben haTzaddik, insisted on picking us up and taking us around. We had to go through Brooklyn, which meant I had to bring my passport and get a visa to go through to go through Brooklyn. And we stopped, we wanted to go see a special visit, and parking is not always easy in Brooklyn. If you haven't been to Brooklyn. Some say, I did not make this up and I don't say it, but some say that BRS stands for the Brooklyn Recovery Society. Not mine, don't blame me, save the angry email, I'm just repeating what the people from Brooklyn say. But anyway, parking is very, very hard to find in Brooklyn. But I want to tell you why Ben is Ben haTzaddik, why I love Ben. Because when spots opened up for us just when we needed them, which was amazing on a very tight timeline, on a very tight timeline, that's not when Ben said it was a micro-emunah moment, Hashem is amazing. It's when we were about to pull out each time and somebody saw that and got so excited that they were going to find a spot, that Ben said, "Isn't it amazing to give someone their emunah moment?" That person circling or looking or waiting or desperate to find a parking spot. And that's what makes Ben amazing. It was such a radical paradigm shift from waiting for our emunah moments to getting excited to give someone else their emunah moment. Like, I have to leave right now, not doing it for them, but from their perspective this empty spot is going to be their Hashem revealing Himself to them. Isn't it amazing to get to take part in, to be a part of someone else's emunah moment? That's what makes Ben fantastic, that and he actually has a sweatshirt with my face on it, which is ridiculous. My wife is trying to confiscate it from him. So in any case, I'm going to save for next time an incredible article that came across my desk. I'll just read the title to you for next week. "I'm sorry to have to announce that my cancer situation has developed not necessarily to my advantage." This is an article by a young person, a way too young person, but who is focused on the good and finding God even in their challenge. I'll save it for you next week. What you have in front of you, Ma'amar Vav, Ma'amar Vav. And again, please speak to Jeffrey during the shiur, after the shiur, we welcome and invite and need your support. We have a fifty-thousand-dollar matching. We're at a hundred thousand, our goal is two hundred thousand. Some generous, very, very, very, very generous small group of donors put together fifty thousand and said we'll give it if it's matching. So the last fifty thousand that matches it brings us right to our finish line. So if you've given you want to give a little more, if you haven't given yet, and again. For non-members. If you're a member, you do your part. If you're watching, you're listening, if you read, if you enjoy our panels, our podcasts, our programs, please do your part, brsonline.org/global and be in the raffle and speak to Jeffrey. This is from Sichos Mussar, Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz. These are the Sichos that he gave in the Mir Beis Medrash during the Yom Kippur War. And this is Ma'amar Vav, this is actually the last Ma'amar of those Sichos, of those, of those talks that he gave during the Yom Kippur War. Ksiv, it begins with a Pasuk in Shir HaShirim. Hashmieini es koleich. There are copies if anybody wants. Hashmieini es koleich. The Pasuk in Shir HaShirim, Shlomo HaMelech, the Song of Songs, Shir HaShirim is Kodesh HaKodashim. Rabbi Akiva tells us the Mishna in Yadayim that all of the songs are holy, all the works of Tanach are holy, but Shir HaShirim is the Holy of Holies. Why is Shir HaShirim the Holy of Holies? Why is it the holiest book of Tanach, the highest book of Tanach? The whole thing is an allegory, it's a metaphor, and there's a big debate, do we even translate or read it? ArtScroll was controversial to some when ArtScroll, if you look in your, if you look in your Machzor, your Pesach Machzor, if you look in an ArtScroll Tanach you will see, they do not literally, they do not translate Shir HaShirim literally. Why? Because Chazal told us that it was never meant to be understood literally. The literal translation, which if you know Hebrew well you can't help but have at your fingertips. I always think to myself, even young children in Israel open a Tanach and read Shir HaShirim and they understand exactly the sort of graphic, physical descriptions that are being offered, you can't avoid the literal translation if you speak Hebrew fluently, but ArtScroll translates it metaphorically because that is the only way it was meant to be interpreted. Some thought that this, a classic ArtScroll move, it's wrong, you can't leave pshuto shel mikra. But Rav Soloveitchik entirely agreed. He didn't agree with ArtScroll, his opinion preceded ArtScroll, but the Rav entirely agreed that it's only meant to be understood metaphorically, allegorically, and indeed to translate it literally is to distort the actual meaning of Shir HaShirim. So even though it reads like a love story and it reads as this beautiful courtship and this longing and this waiting and this mismatch, it's not until deep into Shir HaShirim that the dode and the raya finally find each other, finally find each other. We call it the ultimate love story, and you'd think that it begins with this romantic love at first sight, smooth sailing, set the wedding date, everything's amazing, standing under the chuppah, happily ever after. It's not. The dode and the raya, it is these two individuals who fall in love and yet they're mismatched, they're mistimed, they can't get their act together. He comes knocking on the door desperate for her attention and she can't get out of bed. She comes out dancing in the fields and he's only peering between the cracks of the fence—it's not the time, the time is not right. They're constantly missing each other and it's only, it's only later. And if we understand this metaphorically, Shir HaShirim is really telling us that emunah's not linear, and emunah's not easy, and emunah's not perfect, but emunah is a series of ups and downs, of, of finding our moment. And it's not a simple faith, but it takes work and it takes effort. So why is it the Holy of Holies, the ultimate metaphor? That our relationship with Hashem is likened to two people in love, romance and electricity and the love between a man and a woman. The answer is we have many metaphors for our relationship with Hashem in Tanach, in the Torah. On the one hand God is our father, we are His children. God is also our master and we are His servants. God is a king and we are His subjects. And there's also the metaphor of the husband and wife, the man and the woman who are in love. Of all those metaphors—and in fact, it's not that we have a world that has husbands and wives and parents and children and kings and subjects and masters and slaves, so then we say, oh, that's so interesting, we have all those relationships, let's apply them to God. It's the opposite. הסתכל באורייתא וברא עלמא, the Zohar says, God looked into the Torah and then created the world. So He said I want, I want them to relate to Me, but I'm, I'm omnipotent, I'm infinite, I'm perfect, I'm eternal, how will they relate to Me? They're finite, they're fallible. So I know, I have to create a world that has relationships that can then serve as a metaphor. So the whole reason that there is a world that has a notion of parents and children, which God could have conceived a world that operated differently, but the whole reason that there is a world that is designed and built on the notion that there are parents and children is so that as parents we can relate to God's love for us, as children we can relate to what it means to be a child of God. So each of the relationships and metaphors are there to there to serve us to be able to connect to him in those different ways. So which is the ideal? Which is the ideal? When we are at our best, when we are at our highest level, which is the ideal? To relate to God as a master and subject and a master and servant, a king and subject, a parent and child, a husband and wife. That's what the Mishna means Shir HaShirim is Kodesh HaKodashim. The highest level, it is that love, it is that yearning, it is that longing, it is that attraction, it is that romance, that's what it means. The Rambam writes the Rambam writes that that's what Ahavas Hashem is, שתהיה אהבה טובה גדולה לידע את השם, that there is an insatiable lust and desire and thirst to know God, to know God. We can't know God physically, we know God intellectually, emotionally, we know him through his diary, the Torah, we know him through his world, the Swiss Alps, biology, chemistry, physics, but we use that same word knowledge to describe the ultimate connection with a person. In Torah, in biblical Hebrew, there is no word for for intimacy. The intimate connection of a husband and wife is called knowledge. אדם ידע את חוה אשתו is to know the other person, to know them biblically because what it means that relationship and that physical intimate connection is supposed to be singular and exclusive and shared only with that one person in such a way that one is exposing themselves quite literally and gaining a familiarity and a connection and an intimate connection with the other that is exclusively shared between them. And that's what that's what intimacy means. Intimacy is exclusive, singular, not shared, not available, not accessible to the world but something. That's why we're living in a world that I don't want to digress but there's such a struggle for intimate connection today. Failures of marriages and this failures of other relationships because when there's no paroches, we're reading now about the Mishkan, the Mishkan was designed with the utensils and blocking, covering the Kodesh HaKodashim, the Holy of Holies was a paroches, was a curtain. Rav Soloveitchik writes that the paroches we have to have a Holy of Holies of our life which is not revealed and accessible, that we don't post on social media, that we don't stream on our phone while sitting in carpool in front of our steering wheel. We don't have to share every thought, every emotion, every experience. If we share everything with the world then nothing is held back, nothing is private, nothing is personal, nothing is exclusive. That means intimacy intimacy is not just physical, intimacy is emotional. If I tell my girlfriends everything I tell you, if I share with my buddies everything I say to you then you're just my roommate, you just we just have a business relationship. It has to be there are things I tell you, I confide in you, I make myself vulnerable to you that I wouldn't and I don't tell anyone else in the world. So physical intimacy, emotional intimacy they go together and they're all about intimacy, they're about having a paroches, they're about having a curtain that protects our Kodesh and our Kodesh HaKodashim. That there's that which we share with the whole world. The Azara there's that which the Ezras Nashim and the Ezras Yisrael and Ezras Kohanim, there are the parts of our lives that we share with the whole world. So post if you want whatever dessert you had, who cares, post if you want whatever occasion you're marking but experiences, thoughts, emotions that are personal, that are private, the more exclusive we share the more meaningful they are, the more intimate the yield, the relationship will be with the person that we shared it with too. And when a person walks around undressed in any state physically connected to anyone, sharing every emotion naked emotionally to the whole world then then they can't have an intimate connection with anyone. That's the result. And the more that we have a paroches there's a curtain, there's that which I share, there's that which I hold back physically, emotionally, spiritually then the more the emotion the intimate connections that we can have including with Hashem. So Shir HaShirim is Kodesh HaKodashim. Our connection to Hashem, the intimate, the knowledge, the Rambam's description of love of Hashem is that a person will feel a תאוה גדולה לידע את השם, שתהיה אהבה טובה גדולה an insatiable thirst and appetite, a lust, a desire, a drive, a taiva to know Hashem. Not to know him intimately physically, to know him intimately through knowledge. Hashem says here's my diary called the Torah, that's your access to know me intimately. And the more that we also let God in as if he needs our help he knows everything anyway but the more that we let him in so we say to Hashem we talk to Hashem not just in the siddur, outside the siddur as I always say you can't talk to Hashem You won't talk to God well in shul if you never talk to him outside of shul. So the more that outside of shul or not from the siddur, we're talking to Hashem and we're telling him our dreams and our fears and disappointments and our failures and our hopes and aspirations and we're intimately investing in him in ways maybe we don't with anyone else because he knows anyway and asking him for help in struggles that maybe nobody else on the whole planet knows, then we're left with a really intimate connection with Hashem. That's da'as. That's knowledge. That's Shir HaShirim. That's Shir HaShirim. All that was just the parentheses שיר השירים ב יד. Okay. So the pasuk in Shir HaShirim says Hashmi'ini et kolech, hear your voice. מורי ורבותי ספרא לומד מזה דהצרה היא הממוצע שעל ידה יתפללו להשם. It's a quote from Rav Yeruchem. The tzara, a tzara, a crisis, a struggle, a challenging time is the medium, it's the driver that pushes us to daven to Hashem. שהקדוש ברוך הוא מתאוה ומצפה לתפילתם. Hashem, kavyachol, God is perfect and infinite, he has no needs, but he chooses to depict himself to us through anthropomorphic terms, meaning in ways we can relate and identify. God doesn't have an outstretched arm, God doesn't get angry, he doesn't have nostrils that flare, he doesn't have emotions, he's infinite and omnipotent, he's God. But yet he chooses to describe himself in these ways because that is what we relate to. So God mit'aveh, he desires u-metzapeh and he longs and looks forward to our tfillos. Meaning as parents, let's go to the other metaphor, not husband and wife, as parents. Is there nothing better than when your child's name comes up on the caller ID? It may depend on their age and stage of life. It could have to do with your wallet or their debit card or what's not left on it. But particularly an adult child, a married child, a child in life who is not calling necessarily because at that moment they need something: sign me out of school, give me your credit card, buy me this thing on Amazon. Not that non-married children don't also only call for that reason, or not that married children don't also call for those reasons. But when you see your child, it's the greatest thing in the world when your child reaches out, when your child calls you, when your child is ready to tell you and unburden themselves and invest in the relationship by telling you in sort of an intimate way: this is a struggle, here's something I'm working on, here's something I'm going through, and can you help me? Mommy, Abba, I'm telling you, I'm turning to you, I'm telling not a lot of people שהכרה שרק לו לבדו יכול להושיע ואין זולתו מי שיכול להושיע and Hashem feels the same way. He's mit'aveh u-metzapeh. He loves, he longs for, he waits for our davening. When we turn to him and say Shemoneh Esrei, that's nice. But let me also tell you what's really going on. Let me tell you where I need your help. Let me tell you what I'm frustrated, what I'm angry, what I'm grateful for. Let me tell you what I'm struggling with. I can't tell anyone else in the world, nobody else understands me but you made me, you created me, you designed me, and can I tell you what I'm struggling with? With shame where I fail and come up short, and with hope how I hope to change, and with yearning why I need your help. Can I tell you? Hashem, can I tell you and lean into you during a crisis that there's no one and nothing else in the world that can save me but you and I need you? I need you. והוא מה שהקשו חז"ל, says what our rabbis in Shemot Rabbah say. למה עשה להם הקדוש ברוך הוא כך שהיו מוקפים מג' רוחות הים סוגר והשונא רודף והחיות מן המדבר. The Jewish people were enclosed on three sides. Three sides, the walls were caving in, namely the Egyptians were in pursuit, the sea blocked them in front, the animals, the wild animals were all over the desert. There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to turn. הרי אין הצרה התכלית. The tzara, the crisis, the situation is not the goal. The goal of the situation is that God wakes us up. He jars us, he startles us, he moves us. Think about how October 7th was and is an enormous disruption to our lives. It was a disruptor. The question is what do we do with it? COVID was a disruptor, and we made all kinds of promises. And as soon as COVID was over, we went right back. Weddings are the way they were. And the people who for the first time in their lives had to make Pesach at home and never did before said: this was the nicest Pesach yet. I'm going to do this forever, until next Pesach. And so many other examples of what the time in our homes and with our families, this was amazing and I'm going to. Keep it up until we didn't. There are disruptions. Disruptions come into our lives, and they break up the momentum that was carrying us forward. And the question is what do we do with that disruption? During the disruption, we davened from the depths of our being. During the disruption, it's obvious that we need Him. But then the disruption ends, and where are we then? Are we still turning to Him, surrendering to Him, submitting to Him, leaning on Him, focused on Him, or do we forget Him? Do we forget those promises and do we move on? Why does he send these disruptions? To wake us up and to be mindful and thoughtful and analytical in evaluating our lives and what we want to adjust or change or pivot and adopt into our lives? That's the reason. ותרצו שהקדוש ברוך הוא מתאוה לתפלתן ומבקש לשמוע את קולם. So Jewish people left and they're out of Egypt. 210 years of slavery, subjugation, suffering. 210 years of oppression and persecution. Hashem makes 10 plagues, gets them out, and he wants to hear from them. He wants them to say something, so he has to wake them up and say, hey, hello, that was me, I'm here, I did it because I want to take you to the mountain and I want to give you my diary and I want to take this relationship to the next level because I'm going to lift that mountain over your heads, it's going to be a chuppah. Hi, I want to get engaged and I want to get married. But before we can get married, we need to work a little bit on our communication. I would love to hear from you, I want you to confide in me, I want you to trust me, I want you to let me in, I want you to expose yourself to me. Talk to me. But how is he going to get them to do that? With a big fat disruption. And you know what that disruption is? Being closed in on three sides, the walls of three sides closing in. And how did they respond? יונתי בחגוי הסלע השמיעיני את קולך. That's the posuk in Shir HaShirim. The dove in the crack of the rock, hashmieini et koleich. Hashem says, let me hear your voice. You're barely holding on, you're in the cleft of the rock, you feel like you're going to fall and plummet, hashmieini et koleich. Let me hear your voice. Let me hear. וזה אנו צריכים לדעת במצבינו הנורא. And this is what Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz told to the beis medrash of the Mir during the Yom Kippur War, and he said, this is what we need to know in this crisis. ואז תהיה תפלתנו באופן אחר לגמרי. We can't mail in our davening. Don't just unload a bunch of words, don't just recite a liturgy in a template. Realize you're talking to the Almighty. You're begging, you're beseeching, you're pleading. He is the one, he is the only one. He does it through his holy messengers. Our IDF soldiers are his holy, holy, holy heroic messengers. That's who he's doing it through. That's who he's doing it through. But it's him and only him. Only him. We were Yocheved and I were in our satellite BRS West for Shabbos, which is housed in the Katz Yeshiva High School, and in the lobby in the entrance of the beautiful school, the posters of the hostages are hanging. Baruch Hashem, the ones who are home, they're removed and it says returned. Tragically, ones we've learned lost their lives. But you know I haven't seen those posters and those faces in a while, I just haven't come across them. And it disrupted me. It startled me. I stopped while walking by them on Shabbos, and I just looked at some of their faces. And I thought to myself, it's five months. They're underground. They're tortured, they're assaulted, they're abused, they're denied medicine, deprived food, who knows the conditions they're living in? How have we really looked into the face, the Bibas baby? We're talking children and elderly. And if we really look at those pictures and we contemplate and think about what is still happening every minute, every hour, every day, we can't let fatigue set in. Davening can't become rote or stale. Tehillim can't become someone else's problem to recite. It has to disrupt us every time. There has to be an outrage, and the outrage channeled into turning to the only one who can bring them home. Now again, the Shin Bet and the Mossad and the soldiers and the security forces and the leadership who have the courage to say go do it, of course Hashem will orchestrate it through heroes, gibborim, whom we are so indebted to. But all the plans and all of the attempts and all the training. can't and won't work, the opportunity won't present itself unless He says so. So we must, with an enormous sense of outrage channeled into pleading with Hashem not bring them home, but let them go, let us rescue them, let them out Hashmi'eini et kolech, Hashmi'eini et kolech. A tragedy and a crisis, the bedside of a sick child can cause someone to say 'where are you and I don't believe in you and I'm out of here' or to lean in and say 'I got some issues with you, we're going to have to talk later, but right now, in addition to the doctors and the experts, you are the one who can, I need you. We need you, there is no one else.' The reason or part of the reason or what we can get out of the reason is the connection with Hashem to lean in through that tefillah. To ask ourselves and to ask Hashem in every crisis and situation essentially what he's saying is not only get me out of this, but what can I get out of this? Not only get me out of this, but what can I get out of this? And every crisis what we can get out of it is a more intimate relationship with Hashem. והוא מה שכך חז"ל our rabbis said the same thing מפני מה היו האמהות עקרות? Why were our matriarchs barren? They struggled to conceive והלא כל הנשים ילדו ברווח ותרצו משום שהקדוש ברוך הוא מתאווה לתפילתן. These are the most righteous women if anyone deserved to be rewarded with conceiving easily with fertility it should have been these women. And if anyone who would be worthy mothers who would transmit to the next generation and raise the greatest children, it would be these women. So they are the greatest candidates for conceiving easily and yet they all struggled to conceive. And our rabbis wonder why? And they conclude it's not a punishment for these women. It's because Hakadosh Baruch Hu says their tefillot, their heartfelt, heartfelt, authentic, genuine, real, radical tefillot are what he's waiting for, what this world needs and what will inspire and motivate and what will elicit it will be the pain of infertility. He's mit'aveh li-tfilatan. So when in a crisis if all we say is get me out of this, then we're missing the point of the crisis. It's not only, also, but not only get me out of this, it's what can I get out of this? How can I lean in and come closer to you? How can I surrender and submit to you? How can I recognize you're in charge, you're in control? This is you. What's the way out? These hostages, how are they coming home? על פי דרך הטבע we've been waiting five months for the Entebbe rescue to wake up to that news. We got a miracle, there was nothing short of a miracle if you read the account of the hostages that were rescued, those way too few, it was miraculous, courageous and miraculous. But we're waiting five months every day, every hour, every minute we're waiting. And one can't help but come to the conclusion that there is only, only you Hashem. אין לנו על מי להישען אלא על אבינו שבשמיים there's no one to lean on but you. So we're going to get closer to the wall to lean on it. Because when we try to lean on the wall and we're standing in the middle of the room we fall flat on our face and if we want to lean on Hashem we have to be close to him and near him because if you try to lean on him but you're not standing near him, you fall flat on your face. We have to fight, we have to advocate, we have to donate, we have to supply, we have to vote, we have to write letters, we have to do all of those things. But all of those things are only mediums that Hashem says you do your part, which one will work he'll decide, but he's the one who will green light, he will green light it. The same way the Shin Bet and the Mossad and the IDF and the border patrol all came to the Prime Minister and said we think we have a plan to go in and rescue those hostages, but if he says too risky, we're not doing it, it doesn't happen, lehavdil, we are doing all of our hishtadlus but Hashem is the one who has to green light it. Whether it will work or not, whether it will yield the results or not, whether it will be effective or not, it's all up to Hashem. So the most important part of our repertoire, the most important part of our toolbox of all the things that we are doing out of outrage because we look into the faces of these hostages and it cannot be and it cannot continue, is tefillah. It has to be to lean on Hashem, to turn to him, to talk to him more authentically than ever before. I don't just mean add davenen to your day, I also mean that, of course, but I'm talking about outside the siddur. I'm talking about between the lines of the Shemoneh Esrei. I mean from the bottom of your heart to picture the faces of the hostages, to think about our soldiers, our boys. You know, a friend of mine, a good friend of mine I know for many years and I went to yeshiva with, his nephew was among the seven soldiers who yesterday or two days ago were attacked and were severely injured. So when you see the news a soldier was injured, you don't say, well, thank God he wasn't killed. The casualties were only, or there weren't any today, just injuries. I want to tell you what injury means. Injury means for this soldier that his surgery was successful, but he lost one leg above the knee, one leg below the knee, lost one hand, and the thumb on the other hand. And I want you to picture the rest of the life of this young man who lost a whole leg, part of his other leg, a hand, and a thumb. And that buried somewhere, buried somewhere at the end of the website is a soldier was injured. That's what these thousands and thousands when we talk about our injured, that's what we're talking about, we're injured. That's what we're talking about. And you want to know? I24news.tv has the number of injured every day. Wounded is up to 14,492. So when we talk about injured, 14,400, we're talking about thousands and thousands like this young man that please daven for him to get his Hebrew name. That's what it means to be injured, that's what his life is like now. If that doesn't make you daven from the depth of your being, if that doesn't make you outraged to want to personally pick up a gun and go into Gaza, I don't know what would. And that's no fatigue can set in, that's where we're holding, that's what we have to do. That's what this war is still going on right now. It can't get old, don't stop, don't slow down, it can't for the soldiers and it can't for us. And what Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz was saying not in a peacetime and not in a time of prosperity, but he was saying in the Yom Kippur War, which is as dire as it is now. And he turned to the mirror and he turned to all of us and he said that the tachlis of what we're going through is tefillah, is to realize Hashmiani es koleich, Hashem is waiting to hear our voice. And right as we finish right now, everyone's invited to stay we're going to say Tehillim. And I'm saying this and it's not just rabbinic hyperbole to try to guilt you into staying. We don't know which person taking on one more perek of Tehillim is going to save the leg of which soldier. We don't know. He's waiting to hear our voice, that it matters to us, that we care enough to stay for three more minutes and say Tehillim. Also to write a letter to wherever we need to write, follow Yocheved's status, today you'll find out where you should write your letter and direct your outrage. Also donate, dig deeper, give even more. Also all the other things that we do. But we don't know which extra chapter of Tehillim that we take on, we don't know which our krechts, our angst, our pain, when we see that headline, when we see that number go up, chas v'shalom it should never go up again. We don't know how that will translate to Hashem our Father hearing it and saying genug genug enough, I'm ready. It's over. I'm ready to finally take care of this and give closure to this war. So that's what we're going for. This is on us. This is on us. This is our part, these are our front lines, fatigue can't set in, we have to keep going. We'll pick up with the rest of this piece. הקדוש ברוך הוא המעלה מארץ מצרים He took us out of Egypt for this. We'll talk about this because it will lead us into Purim, Pesach. This is what it's all about when we go through these times. It's not only about, you know, the soldiers and the military and the anti-Semites and the and the cancel. It's also what about the that's following all of this down here. But there's something going on up here. And that's where we need to live is not only down here, we need to live up here as well. Please if you haven't yet, biurisonline.org/global, should be a day filled with besoros tovos.
