Transcript
Okay good morning Boker Tov welcome back to living with Emuna so good to be back in person last week we broadcast from London I love London it's lovely but I love Boca and my bed and my family even more so it's good to be back with my Emuna people thank you so much for coming Emuna series is generously sponsored by Dr. Avi and Bella Morgen in memory of Rabbi Dr. Brian Galbut and in memory of Bella's mother Dr. Ellen Schanz our sponsor this morning also by the Sadowsky family L'ilui nishmas גרשום בן אהרן סדובסקי and by Cara Wald in memory of her mother חיה פרידא בת ירחמיאל Neshama should have an Aliya where's Cara there she is and by David Block in gratitude for and in loving memory of his parents Beila and Roy Block may their beautiful Neshamas have an Aliya thank you to all of our generous sponsors very very grateful grateful to have my family back and Atara special shout out we'll find out if you're actually really listening live right now okay we have some great Emuna emails before we get to the Emuna emails a reminder we've got some merch available right after everyone take one if you haven't taken one yet it's a late Chanukah present early birthday present early Afikomen present take one there's an iPad in the lobby if you want to make a donation of any amount to make you feel better about taking one feel free take it for yourself take for others we're gonna continue to give away some of the merch we produce caffeinate with Kavana we've got the disposable cups I use every single morning reminds me to make a Bracha to caffeinate with Kavana Shehakol niyeh bidvaro everything not just the coffee last Friday we all remembered how important coffee is it was Asara B'Teves the fast so not just the coffee is made with God's word but the ambiance the world every part of what it took to make that coffee and get it to us and the difference that coffee makes it's all Shehakol niyeh bidvaro happy to tell you that our dash our windshield stickers and luggage tags are on its way we ordered them so we'll have them to you soon that we are where we are meant to be so very excited to share that as well let's start with some emails then we'll get back into our Torah text I got a if I tell you the thick pile of emails Baruch Hashem every email I read every email I respond to and every email inspires me every email touches me everyone who takes the time I want to apologize I can't I could get to all the emails then we'll never learn Torah we'll just get together every week and read emails which may be very worthwhile because there's a very high level of Torah to see the people practicing and putting into place the actual Emuna but even if I don't read it I'm inspired by it and I would argue further even if I don't read it it's worthwhile to write it because the exercise of putting down I would say pen to paper but no one knows how to do that anymore fingers to keyboard that exercise of articulating and capturing and communicating a moment that you felt a wink a nod a hug from Hashem is very very valuable anyway but I'm gonna try to read a bunch of them then we'll get into the text hi Rabbi I just want to share with you an Emuna moment I experienced yesterday many things had gone wrong that morning I was feeling an overload as I headed to my doctor appointment I arrived at the office and there was a young man in a wheelchair who suffered with some deformation he looked at me with a big smile and said hello I answered him back with a big smile and a hello and continued to speak I put everything in perspective in that moment thought of my Emuna class and knew I was there I was where I was supposed to be thank you for the class it has made a difference in my life sometimes when we look around and we see the plight of others we can put into perspective whatever it is that we're going through and feel a little bit better about it ourselves I got this from a friend of mine and I love this he actually doesn't he didn't email to me he sent it to me as a WhatsApp and I just took a screenshot and printed it for myself a Hashgacha story this week Tuesday we went to Lakewood for a wedding and we planned on going to a second wedding that we had in Lakewood we arrived to the second wedding and it isn't that wedding apparently on the Hebrew side of the invitation they forgot to write Ohr L'Yom Gimmel and wrote instead Yom Gimmel when we arrived to the hall we see it's a cousin's wedding that apparently the invitation got lost it's an amazing story amazing story the invitation was confusing so they went and it was the wrong wedding but it was really the right wedding because it was the wedding of a cousin whose invitation got lost a wink a nod a hug from Hashem there are no coincidences everything is for a reason and while these emails are lovely and we love them they're not my favorite because you know it's easy to have Emuna Bitachon it's easy to submit an email when everything works out and everything goes right and everything came together and isn't Hashem amazing but it's when it doesn't that it's not as easy Rabbi Goldberg hope all is well I'm a big fan of the Shiur and listen to it religiously blah blah blah when I was listening to living with Emuna this week I got to the end and heard you mention you'll be away this week and not be giving the Shiur this was two weeks ago normally I wouldn't pay close attention to the end as the announcements don't pertain to me I'm in New York but this week I was disappointed to hear since I'm coming to Boca for my winter break and I planned to come to the Parsha perspective and living with Emuna I've been looking forward for weeks was very excited anyone who knows me knows I'm a huge fan I quoted you a lot in my Michlelet Chabura this this past summer and it's been on my bucket list to come hear your shiurim in person. And although I'm disappointed I won't be able to check this off my bucket list on this trip to Boca, I'm trying to live with emunah and I know that is what is meant to be. For whatever reason, I don't know, I don't understand, Hashem does not want me to meet you and be able to hear your shiurim in person this time. I know why, it's because she can only be disappointed if she met me. Thank you. Thank you so much for the inspiration blah blah blah. Anyway, so I feel bad. You're invited, come down, come back anytime, we'd love to have you. We'd love to have you. This is an email from my dear friend Rabbi Leo Dee. Rabbi Leo Dee, who you remember before October 7th, the horrific tragedy on Chol HaMoed Pesach when his wife Lucy and two of his daughters were brutally murdered by a terrorist yimach shemo vezichro. And at the funeral, Rabbi Dee spoke about living with emunah and the themes and the shiur and the energy and the chizuk it gives him, and he's done nothing but inspire me since then, and Baruch Hashem we've forged a close friendship. So he sent an Emunah email. Rabbi Efrem, I just want to share the following with you. Over Chanukah, I took the kids to the Dead Sea for a few days, and we did a couple of my favorite walks. On the Monday, it was Maia's birthday, and we all felt a little low. There's a hike I used to do with Lucy in the good old days which starts halfway up the road to Arad, about a 20-minute drive from the hotels. You park the car and walk a beautiful two-hour hike back down the mountain to the hotel. Only problem is retrieving the car. In the past, I've never had luck tramping, so I order a taxi from Arad, it takes an hour to arrive. They charge you the full 200 shekel fare to the car. But this time as we arrived at the small car park, which I was just in London so I can tell you means parking lot, at the bottom of the hike, there was a single taxi just about to leave. I asked the driver if I could pay him to take me to the car, but he insisted to take me for free, without recognizing me, despite the fact that he and his brother sitting in the front next to him were headed the other direction. It was a 40-minute diversion for them. We got talking and he asked me what I do and I told him my story. He said he was in shock. He and his brother had been born in the yishuv of Hamra where the terror attack took place against my wife Lucy and daughters Maia and Rina. He knew the story intimately and felt honored to be helping me out. I have never had a taxi take me anywhere for free, ever. And this would have been Maia's 22nd birthday. I felt her hand in this somehow and it gave us all chizuk and Hashem's hand in this as in with everything. All my love, Leo. So on that birthday just when you needed it, a little wink, a little hug, a little something from Hashem, wasn't just a taxi driver and it wasn't just for free, but he was from that community where the terror attack took place and he knew about it and he knew about it well. So those are lovely seeming coincidences that are actually the hand of Hashem, but then there are the emails of the people who things don't go as easily or as well, where things are challenging and things struggle. Oh my goodness, there are so many here. These are all still going well. We're going to save them, they're good, and I appreciate them all. Where is the one? Sorry. Okay, yes, this is it. Rabbi Goldberg, I hope you and your family are doing well. First and foremost, thank you for the inspiring words blah blah blah. I really enjoy listening blah blah blah. This is not an email describing a hashgacha moment or a great story describing my emunah and how I saw Hashem's hand. Baruch Hashem I look for yad Hashem in my everyday life and I can find those small hugs and winks from Hashem. When things don't work out, I'm training myself and getting better at knowing it all comes from the One Above. I'm writing to you because I am struggling. I am such and such age and having such a hard time in shidduchim. I know I'm still considered young, but I don't feel that way. I want so badly to get married and start building a home with someone. I want to have children and create a home that is deeply connected to Hashem. I just ended things with a guy I thought might go somewhere, but ultimately I gained clarity he wasn't the one for me. Yet, I have never felt so lonely and sad. I'm at a low point where I haven't felt like this before. Baruch Hashem I have friends and family around me and a good support system. I regularly turn to Hashem for support and guidance and talk to Him. I ask why are You doing this to me? I'm Your daughter. I yell and scream Hashem don't You want this for me? Wouldn't a father do anything for his precious daughter? I want to go up to Hashem, shake Him and beg Him. I cry so much pleading with Him to listen to me. I want to bring simcha and nachas to my family. I've been waiting so long and sometimes I feel like maybe it won't happen. I don't know why Hashem feels this isn't the right time for me, but I trust that when it happens it will solely be because of Him. You always say in the shiur let go and let God, but I'm having such a hard time letting go and letting God because I am so, so sad. And so she asks, can sadness and emunah go hand in hand? I thought I had emunah and bitachon in Hashem. I do trust Him, but I feel sad and angry, and am I really trusting in Hashem's greater plan for me? It doesn't seem like there's hope, but deep down I know there is because I know I am where I'm meant to be. But this place I am in is so hard. People will tell me make the most of the place, the time and the age that you're in, but all I want is to be somewhere else. I know this is where I'm meant to be. I know Hashem loves me. I know He'll provide for me. That is not a happy ending, everything works out, everything comes together, all is good. That is raw and that is real, and that is how many of us here and listening sometimes feel, even if not always, at times when there's something we so desperately want and don't have. And so I want to address it for a moment. I want to address it for a moment: Is sadness, sadness and emuna, are they a contradiction? So the answer is, I just kicked the camera, no, the answer is no, they're not a contradiction at all. They're not a contradiction at all. I don't even know what number we're up to or how to find the other shiurim, they're not indexed, that would be a great thing to know what we spoke about where. But in one of them we read the letter, Rav Leuchter, an article Rav Leuchter, a great talmid of Rav Wolbe wrote, where he spoke about leaving a shiva call with Rav Wolbe to a Rosh Yeshiva who had lost his wife, who thought his job to demonstrate that he has emuna is to be happy even while he is in mourning and to say it's all from Hashem and I'm so lucky I had her when I had her, and I have no sadness or grief because it's all from Hashem. And Rav Wolbe turned to Rav Leuchter after they left and said, this great Rosh Yeshiva is going to crash and burn. Because to deny and suppress natural and normal feelings we have is not a demonstration, an expression of emuna, it is a recipe for disaster. For disaster. If a person hurts themselves, if a person stubs their toe and breaks it and is in agony from a broken toe, emuna doesn't mean let me now pretend I'm not in pain. Let me put on a smile and let me tell everyone no, it doesn't hurt and let me not go to a doctor, let me say my toe is where it's meant to be. Not anyone in particular, right? Last Friday, or two Fridays ago, my children are living in Hollywood went to Miami for a simcha and got there right before Shabbos to discover they had left their luggage back in Hollywood. And they were trying to figure out what to do. Their children, their Shabbos clothing, and everything they needed. So I put a spin on our normal teaching. I said, not you are where you're meant to be, your luggage is where it's meant to be. Which was easy for me to say because I had everything I needed. But sometimes it's not that we're where we're meant to be, it's our luggage is where it is meant to be and that may not be with us. Our toe may not be where it's meant to be, correctly positioned at the end of our foot working. But emuna doesn't mean that when something hurts you pretend you're not in pain. Emuna doesn't mean when someone is taken from you you pretend you're not grieving. Emuna doesn't mean when something legitimately is a reason to feel sad, you don't feel sad. What emuna gives you is the strength and the faith and the hope and the resolve and the tenacity to get through it nonetheless, to keep going with the sadness, to break out of the sadness, to be able to feel the sadness but simultaneously be uplifted by the joy and the knowledge that nothing is random and nothing is chance and nothing is coincidence and nothing is accidental, but even this sadness is curated and choreographed from above. And so while on the one hand, on the one hand there's a sadness or the pain of what's missing or what hurts, but there's also the joy or the happiness that it was done by design. If a person comes out of a surgery where they needed something fixed and they have the excellent, best doctor because that's only what Jews only do, and the doctor says the surgery went according to plan and I have good news for you, please God you're going to have a full and a speedy recovery, you're going to recover all your faculties, everything's going to work out. On the one hand you're drowsy, still coming out of anesthesia, whatever it is that you had surgery on hurts, but you could smile with the pain because you know everything went right, this wasn't random that someone just stabbed you with a knife, you were cut open by a surgeon for the purpose of healing you. And so yes, it hurts, but the fact that you could make sense of the hurt and it happens in a framework and against a backdrop of meaning and purpose and it makes sense can help you smile your way through the pain. Have faith and hope through the agony. Understand there's meaning and purpose even in the suffering or the pain, even in the grief, even in the grief. It's confirmed that Tara is listening. Even in the, even in the grief, even in the grief. So no, sadness and emuna are not a contradiction. We try to break out of the sadness. Rebbe Nachman writes extensively in his writings about how sadness is the kryptonite. Sadness is what will corrupt us. Sadness is the poison that brings us down. Sadness is when the yetzer hara can strike. Sadness is when we become hopeless and helpless, and a person and a person has to be עבדו את השם בשמחה. And a person has to be besimcha tamid. We have to be ki besimcha teseun. The pasuk in Tehillim says, ki besimcha, through simcha teseun we could break out and break free of whatever situation or whatever is holding us back, ki besimcha. It's with simcha, with joy, that we're going to break out. So this email really spoke to me because I feel, I feel that pain. We don't normally take questions or comments, but we make exceptions. People are related to me. I was just wondering in like the Piasetzner Rebbe's writings, he writes about how you could be angry at Hashem and you were like supposed, like that shows that you believe in Hashem. But if you're angry, then you're also saying like his plan for me isn't what I want. So it's if it kind of, it feels like it's a lack of emuna, but it also like shows that you believe in Hashem so much. So I want to contrast. That's a great question. Tamara's asking the Piasetzner Rebbe, others we've spoken about, anger is not actually denying Hashem. Anger is an expression of faith in Hashem. You're not angry at someone that you don't believe exists. You're not angry at a figment of your imagination. The very expression of anger is because you're not angry at a stranger on the street that you never met and you say, "Why didn't you help me? Why didn't you do this thing for me? Why didn't you give me money?" But a parent or a sibling or a spouse or someone that you had expectations from is what you feel disappointment in. So anger we gotta use the right word because anger is never a good quality, but expressing frustration, disappointment, I'll call it protesting Hashem, is a demonstration and expression, an affirmation you believe in Hashem. Avraham Avinu did it. He said, "God, don't destroy Sodom. What if there are 50, 45, 40, 30, 20, 10 tzadikim, how could you do it?" Moshe Rabbeinu said it. הראני נא את כבודך. God show me your face. I want to understand why bad things happen to good people. I can't take it anymore. Why another diagnosis? Why the loss of more precious holy soldiers? How, why? I'm protesting. I'm demonstrating, God, not in Tel Aviv or Yerushalayim against a politician, I'm demonstrating against you. Every time we get together and have a Tehillim rally, it is, you may not think of it this way, it is a demonstration against God. It's a demonstration I should say to God. Hashem, we're not indifferent or apathetic, we're not callous or passive, we are here to demonstrate, we're here to protest, we're here to ask you to change your policy. We're here to ask you to grant that refuah shleimah, to let her get married, to let him have a baby, to give her a job. We're here. Every time we daven, it's a form of a demonstration or a protest, isn't it? And that's not a denial of Hashem's existence, that's not a form of heresy, or even of chutzpah. It's what's called azus d'kedusha. It is a holy chutzpah. It's a holy chutzpah. It's the holy chutzpah. Hashem, not only do I know you exist and believe you exist, I know you're in charge and you're in control and you can turn this around and why aren't you? And in the end if you say no, as he did to Avraham and to Moshe, then we will accept, we will surrender, we will submit to your will. This protest and demonstration is not an excuse to walk away. It's an attempt to draw closer, to lean in. But we are going to demonstrate and protest. That's what t'filla, that's what prayer are really, are really all about. That's a little bit different from sadness, but I want to contrast it. When I was in England I had a conversation, I had a meeting with somebody who went through a certain very, very difficult time. A young mother who divorced, whatever the circumstances, for whatever reason, very quickly, was left with a little baby, couple months old, and by herself. She shared that she has worked so hard, I was really startled by this, she had worked so hard on emuna. You are where you're meant to be, this is Hashem's plan, there's no shame or guilt, this is her life right now. She's accepted that and is leaning into that and that's her life, that's where Hashem wants her to be. She said, "Now some time has passed and I'm having trouble davening to get remarried. I'm having trouble davening to move on to the next stage because I have such emuna, I worked so hard to accept this is Hashem's will, this is his plan, this is where I'm meant to be. So if he decided this is where I'm meant to be, why am I trying to be somewhere else? If this is what I've been saying to him, I accept it, thank you, I accept it, this is where I'm meant to be, then why am I going to now start asking him, please put me somewhere else if this is where I'm meant to be?" Wow. That's emuna to the extreme. And that's what I answered. That's emuna to the extreme. Hashem doesn't want you to have emuna in him to the point that you're paralyzed. You don't say God forbid when you suffer an illness that, "I am where I'm meant to be, I won't go to the doctor, I won't take the medicine." ication, I won't ask you Hashem to heal me because after all, getting this illness is where I'm meant to be. No. You say, as I take the initiative to overturn it, overcome it, to heal from it, at each stage of the journey and attempt to heal from it, I accept I am where I'm meant to be. After I put in all my initiative, after I make all my effort, after I do everything I can do, I am where I'm meant to be. But never I am where I'm meant to be to the point that I forfeit and forfeit and surrender any initiative trying to impact my situation. We don't say, you know, I have no money, I have no livelihood, I have no income, I am where I'm meant to be. I will sit on the curb by myself and if Hashem wants someone will drop off a brown paper bag filled with cash. You say, the biggest segulah for parnasah is having a job. You have to take initiative. You have to make an effort. You have to do hishtadlus. You have to, you have to try to have a job, clients, customers, make an income. And whatever your salary ends up being, that is, that was determined from Hashem. So on the one hand, you can't live an extreme version of an emuna that paralyzes you from taking initiative. It's that balance, that yin yang. Remember what Hashem says, which we're about to get into in the text, when we stood opposite the sea with the Egyptians chasing us in the rear and Hakadosh Baruch Hu and Klal Yisrael did what we would expect them to do, what we would think they were trained to do, what you would think Moshe Rabbeinu would give them a round of applause and tell them such nachas, I'm so proud of you, you've learned. What did they do? They started davening. And what does Hashem do? What does Hashem say? What are you doing? What are you davening? Start walking. Start walking. What are you doing? The Egyptians are right behind you. You stand here and have a Tehillim rally right now, they're going to kill you. Hamas yemach shemam vezichram terrorists are shooting at the IDF. The IDF don't all say, let's take out our Tehillim, let's start davening. What are you doing? Put the Tehillim back in your pocket. It's incredible that you carry them in your uniform and you say them when you are safe, but right now fire back, eliminate them, take them out. Hashem says stop davening and start walking. So he wants us to take initiative. Initiative is emuna with our feet. Tehillim is emuna with our mouths. Initiative is emuna with our feet. Be his partner. You can't ask him to do things to help you if you don't help yourself. We have to help ourselves if we want him to help us. So he's waiting to say, to see, do we take emuna, do we show emuna with our feet and our hands? Are we showing initiative? Are we making an effort? Are we maximizing that effort and coupling the effort with the faith in him and the two in combination hopefully bringing that result? So emuna can't be to the extreme that we become paralyzed, but emuna also can't be in a way that denies how we really feel. If a person loses a loved one, Hashem expects you to feel grief. And the Rambam writes, an aveil, a mourner, who doesn't feel grief is an achzarius, it's cruelty. It's cruel to lose a loved one and not be sad is as if that loved one meant nothing and they never lived and you don't feel the impact of their loss, and you know what that is? That's downright cruel. So to mourn and not feel grief, bereavement, sadness, that's not emuna, that's cruel. That's cruel. To break your toe and not scream ow, that hurts, I'm in pain, is to deny and suppress a real and a true feeling and that's not going to help you. It's to say, I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to reflect and introspect and identify why Hashem wanted me to break my toe. What is it about my footsteps, my journey, my life? What do I need to learn? Why did I break my toe? But yeah, it hurts and I'm taking pain medication and I went to the doctor to treat it and ow, yeah, it hurts. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't. So when there's sadness, try to break out, Ki besimcha seitzei-u. We're trying to break out of the sadness. Sadness, atzvos, Rebbe Nachman says it's the kryptonite, it holds us back, it brings us down, it closes doors and windows and blocks out the light. Sadness is something which is very harsh and harmful, but if we feel it, experience it, lean into it for a moment, and then break out of it. Ki besimcha seitzei-u, it's not a contradiction to emuna. Okay, back to what we're learning, the Emuna U'Bitachon sefer of Rav David Abuhatzeira of Nahariya. We're in the Perek Kinyan HaEmuna, how to acquire emuna in our lives. We talked about emuna doesn't come accidentally, emuna is not something that you can download, emuna is not an injection that you can take. Halevai it was, even though they're now making all kinds of things that help us overcome our yetzer hara and help us in the physical world shape ourselves into the physical... people we want to be, halevai we would come up with an injection, a drug, a medication which would just inject emuna into our veins. We could inject faith into our into our into our bodies. But we don't. Yagata umatzata ta'amin. It requires igiya, it requires effort. You gotta work out those emuna muscles for them to grow and for them to not atrophy, for them to remain strong. Vekach nirmaz—we're on the bottom right paragraph, page yud gimel. וכך נרמז בשאלה ששואלים כל אדם בבואו לעולם העליון—we started this last time—that this is the question we are asked when we ascend on high in the next world. The בית דין של מעלה asks us nasasa venasasa be'emuna. Velichora—הרי כל אדם כפי משאו ומתן—did you do business faithfully? We mentioned, we're being asked this literally. Were you honest in business? Was your word your bond? Did you follow through? Did you market accurately or did you distort, did you exaggerate? Were you fair? Did you pay on time? Did you report your taxes honestly? Were you honest in business? That's the first question we get asked when we get upstairs. You see what's important and what matters to Hashem and what really defines us, no matter how hard we shokel, no matter how modest we dress, no matter how many Tehillim we say, if we cut corners and we're dishonest in business, we're going to have the price to pay, we're going to have struggle answering that question. And that's the simple understanding of of that question. But Rav David Abuhatzeira says not everybody's in business. So when he asks me were you honest in business, I wasn't in business. So what does that question mean for us? שואל כל אדם אם עסקת ויגעת במידת האמונה כמו יגיעת אדם שעוסק במשא ומתן. כי אין האמונה נרכשת בלב האדם אם אינו שם כל משאו ומתנו במידה זו כדרך הסוחרים המניחים כל חפצם ומוחם בעסקיהם. And what it means he says is the following: Not did you do business faithfully, did you treat your faithfulness like a business? Did you treat faith, faithfulness, emuna, like a business? What does it mean? Anyone in this room who owns their own business, whose family owns a business, knows your identity is intertwined with that business. When you're falling asleep, when you're in the shower, when you're driving the car, when you're going for a walk, you're thinking about: my customers, my clients, my marketing, my bottom line, my my profit and loss, my revenue, my team, my staff, my you're living, you're breathing, you're thinking. You have your team and your staff meetings, you do your quarterly evaluations, you have your annual reporting. It's all part of the business. It's part of your consciousness, it's part of your life, it's on your mind all the time, and you're constantly evaluating, reevaluating, setting goals, measuring against the goals. That's what it means to have a business, whether it's a makolet, whether it's a Fortune 400 500 company. That's what it means to have a business. Says Rav David Abuhatzeira, that's the question we get asked when we come upstairs. גמרא שבת דף לא. Nasasa venasasa be'emuna. Be'emuna. Hashem says your emuna, did you treat it like a business? Was it on your mind all the time? Did you set goals and did you measure whether you met them or came up short? Did you quarterly and annually meet with your team, your friends, your spouse, your family and say: how's your neshama? How's your emuna? Are we practicing what we preach? Are we putting in action what we're learning? Where are we with our emuna? How could we be better? הדבר משל לכוס מים המצויה במקום קר, says Rav David Abuhatzeira, it's similar, it's a mashal, a parable to a cup of water found in a cold place. שאם יסיח האדם דעתו מן המים הרי במהרה יקפאו המים ויהפכו לקרח. ויהפכו לקרח. I don't know, where's a cold place? Calgary, where name a Alaska. Alaska. If you take a cup of water outside in Alaska and you leave it outside unattended to, what will happen to the cup of water fairly quickly? It will become a cup of ice. What do you need to do in order for it to not become ice? You gotta be moving it around. If you swish it, it won't become ice, it won't congeal, it won't freeze over. כך גם עניין האמונה במעט הסח הדעת עלול להתקרר מאמונתו ולאבדה. Similarly, our emuna, our faith, if you're not engaging it, if you're not swishing it around, if you're not working it, it will freeze over very quickly. Every emuna shiur, every emuna book you read, every emuna WhatsApp group you sign up for, every emuna alert, every emuna chavrusa, every emuna story, every emuna conversation, every emuna hashgacha pratis WhatsApp group. If you let it sit for too long, if you're not putting it into practice, if you're not thinking about it, if you're not writing literally or figuratively your next email to us or just to cyberspace to capture seeing and feeling the hug, the wink, the hug from Hashem, then it will it will ice over. It will freeze over. So whether the mashal is emuna is a muscle that if you don't work it, it atrophies, which you know is true, you know it's true. Several years ago I tore my Achilles, I had to have surgery, it was miserable. You see, I'm not afraid to admit it hurt and it was miserable, and I had emunah that it was from Hashem, he meant for me to tear my Achilles, I think I wrote a whole article about the Achilles heel, where that expression comes from, someone's the weak spot, the Achilles heel, and the Achilles, and where we learned it from. First drasha I gave after the surgery, I had to lean on my knee scooter. So I finished the drasha, I said it was a short drasha, maybe the shortest I ever gave because it was hard to give, I said, 'That's enough on one foot.' Anyway, okay, whatever. Made the most of it. Anyway, so, so after I was in the surgery, was in a cast for a long time, and then a boot for a long time, and then it was time to start, months in, it was time to start rehab on that leg that the Achilles was torn and was repaired on. And when the cast and the boot came off, and I saw in the mirror the back of both of my legs, my right leg that the Achilles had torn that I hadn't used at all because it was in a cast and a boot, my entire calf muscle, the whole leg, was, was much smaller than the other leg. You may have seen it, you may have experienced it. If you have a muscle that you don't use and you don't work out, if you've been in a cast or patients who are in the bed for a prolonged period of time, how quickly those muscles atrophy and they disappear. If you don't use them, you lose them. If you don't engage them and work them out, they're gone. And the same is true for emunah, it is a muscle. It's a muscle. And the same way that the muscle, how does the muscle grow? When I started that rehab, and since then you try to exercise, work out, you try to be healthy. How does a muscle grow? What makes a muscle grow? Anyone know? It's pretty wild. When you lift a weight, whether you use your own body weight or you lift weights, how does a muscle grow? It tears. When you challenge the muscle, it has micro tears in the muscle, and the micro tears, the recovery of the micro tear in the muscle is what makes the muscle grow. It's the micro tears we have in life. And the micro tear could be, and I don't mean to minimize this, but I bless all of us this should be our biggest micro tear, you wanted to go see someone live for a shiur and it turns out they were out of town. Which I don't mean to minimize, that is a huge tragedy to not meet me. Just joking. It's not a tragedy at all. But that's a micro tear to the bigger tears of living with sadness and having your hope and your dream squashed and waiting for the thing that you want so badly. But those tears, micro or larger, will build our emunah muscle larger and stronger and stronger. If you don't move the cup of water called emunah, it will freeze over. Our emunah, our faith, our avodah, our service, our life of awareness and consciousness of Hashem in it, our feeling that we are where we're meant to be and Hashem there's a purpose and a mission. If we don't revisit and we don't have that vocabulary and that doesn't become our conversation, it will freeze over. It will freeze over. You see it. A girl comes back from seminary, she's on fire. Hashem and Hashem is amazing and im yirtzeh Hashem, baruch Hashem, b'ezrat Hashem, chasdei Hashem and Hashem is everywhere and Hashem wants this from me, it's where Hashem wants me and Hashem, Hashem, Hashem, Hashem. Or a boy from yeshiva, let's say. And they talk that language, and if it's not continued, if it's not nourished, if it's not fed, then it's going to disappear. How many, a month, six months, a year later, that language, that vocabulary, that feeling, that consciousness, that energy, that enthusiasm, it's gone. Because if the cup isn't swished around, if you don't engage it and keep it moving, it will freeze over. It will freeze over. If that muscle is not used, it will disappear, it will atrophy, it will get much smaller and weaker. To stay strong, to grow, it has to be nourished, it has to be nurtured, it has to be fed. It has to be challenged so it could have its micro tears and in its recovery, it will grow and it will grow, it will go stronger. Tonight on Behind the Bima you'll hear, we interview Rabbi David Aaron, who's written eight incredible books, transformational books. And a lot of his perspective, I don't want to give it away, but he talks about, he didn't grow up observant or with a Jewish education, but he did grow up in the home of a Holocaust survivor. And much of his image of God was a punishing God, an angry God, a God who makes us live with and feel guilt, the Holocaust and death. He talks about Judaism needs a major brand overhaul. Because when you talk about Christianity, you think about love and acceptance and forgiveness. You think about Buddhism, you think about mindfulness and spirituality. And when you say Judaism, you think guilt and anger and punishment and Holocaust and loss and that's not what we are and who we are, that's what he's dedicated his life to and it's well worth listening to him, it's very inspiring and it's very spiritual. But he talks about, I think he quoted Rabbi Twerski, alav hashalom. Zichrono Livracha Rav Twerski said to a room full of people, and we can try it here right now. We can try it here right now. Who, after something coming together in the happiest, most amazing, most successful way, had an enormous spiritual growth spurt from it? Who became changed? Who grew spiritually because something went right? Who grew spiritually, who had a major growth spurt, who grew because they had a challenge in their life? They went through a difficulty, a pain, a challenging time. Okay, no one's raising their hand to either, but I'm going to guess many. Okay, good. So you all raised your hand for the second and not the first. Your muscle doesn't grow when you lie on the couch, reading Mishpacha, sipping your coffee. Your muscles don't grow. Your muscles grow when you challenge them. When you challenge them, that's when your muscles grow. That's when they get bigger. That's when they get bigger. And coming back to this, Nasasa Venasata Be'emunah, to treat our Emunah like a business, to track it. You've heard me quote many times, Peter Drucker, the great management guru, who said what gets measured gets managed. What my friend Michael says, gets measured and gets recorded gets managed. I will say, not to show off at all, and at the risk that I'm going to be in trouble later, I decided several months ago to create my own spreadsheet that no one else in the world has access to, just to track certain things that for years I've been telling myself I need to improve in my life. We're not honest with ourselves about how much sleep we get, what time we went to sleep, time we woke up, how much sleep we got. We complain we're exhausted all the time, we don't get enough sleep, but we don't actually look in the mirror to measure and evaluate when we could have gone to sleep, when we really went to sleep, and how much sleep we got. And on the list of things I said I want to do is every morning when I wake up, I want to do some sit-ups and push-ups. Because it's not hard, you don't need to go to a gym, and you don't need a trainer, and you don't even need weights, your own body weight, and your muscles and your joints as you get older, of which I'm now heading towards that category of the back nine of life, I hope, the back nine of life. One of my children said to me recently as I observed a significant milestone birthday, how do you feel to be halfway through your life? I said, I hope I'm halfway through my life because I hope I'll live to double this age, which is not a given, but which is 120 and beyond, and beyond. But if you make it to that, you're well ahead as well. It's amazing. So I created this spreadsheet, and it has several columns, and I'm not telling you what's in all of them, but I started out, and to wake up and do push-ups and sit-ups in the morning, and if you haven't done them for a long time, you may not be able to do many. But I want to tell you the most amazing thing. Without trying, every now and then when I was doing the same amount I started with, I'd realize I could keep going. Why am I stopping just because I decided in my head this is the number that I do? And then I would do more than that. And then that next week or a week later, I'd say, you know, why am I stopping now just because I decided that's the number I can do? You know, so I started out from being able to do 10 at a time to 35 at a time and more. And I'm not showing off, a little bit I'm showing off. I'm not showing off, believe me, it's not, it's not impressive. My point is, none of it would happen, and you know, again, I've been known to be a little bit competitive, so even when I'm exhausted or flu or didn't have time, or wherever it is, there's no way I'm not going to put a check in that column on my spreadsheet even though no one else in the world sees it that I didn't do those. And even when it's less than the number I said I can get to, and I just want to stop because I don't feel like still doing it, there's no way the competitive me is not going to track. Whatever we measure and record, we manage. And if we do that for our business, which naturally people do, otherwise they won't be in business very long, we should be doing for our physical health and we should be doing for our spiritual health. To measure our Emunah. That's what Hashgacha Pratis WhatsApp group does. That's what Hisbodedus is. Hisbodedus, setting aside time each day to be in conversation with Hashem and with ourselves, and to ask ourselves and maybe even record, there are journals that people can report, record, gratitude journals. Hashem, here are three things I'm grateful for today that I see you in my life. That is tracking Emunah. That is Nasasa Venasata Be'emunah. I'm treating my Emunah like a business. The same way in my business, I have a controller, a CFO, the same way in my business, I have the C-suite of people who are managing and measuring, setting goals, having reviews, do we do that with our Emunah? Do we do that with our Emunah? Do we make an effort to track, to record, do I see you in my life? What are things I'm grateful for? What are things I'm demonstrating and protesting about? Do I record the hug and the wink from Hashem? Do I look back, will I leave my children, will I leave a legacy that I have a journal and I have a life of finding and identifying and feeling Hashem in it, in my day that I'm never stuck, I am where I'm meant to be, my luggage is where it's meant to be. My toe is where it was meant to be. That everything is where it's meant to be. That's the attitude we have to bring, because if we don't, then I'll still be talking about one day I want to do pushups and situps when I wake up. But if you don't record it and measure it and manage it, you'll still be talking about it, you'll never be doing it. And we can do this in accountability partners. You could do it with a friend, you could do it with a little chabura, a small group of people, you could do it, some with his spouse, with family members, but to really say this is my year. I'm going to break out, we're going to radically change. I'm going to improve, I'm going to redefine myself, I'm going to rebrand myself. A Yiddishkeit that's not about guilt and shame and fear and punishment and apology and Holocaust and only October 7th, it's going to be a Yiddishkeit that's vibrant and alive and dynamic of a hug and a wink and a love and a passion and a faith and a hope in Hashem. I'll tell you who's showing this the most is our precious holy IDF soldiers who all the rest of the world are angry and bitter and frustrated and mourning and grieving and sad and wondering where is God, and these soldiers, not all and not all the time I'm sure, but those I'm related to and many of the videos that we see and members of our community who are so courageously and heroically serving, and you see them sing and talk and they're learning and they're making siyumim. Someone who used to live in our community, his son was just at Rabbi Eli Stefansky, whose famous daf. What's it called? I want to remember Rabbi Eli Stefansky's daf. He called him to the front and he said is it true that you were listening to the daf? He said, yeah, eight guys in my unit we listen every day to the daf. He said how many masechtos did you finish together? And he says how many masechtos it was. And he said how did you do it? He said we had one Gemara and we passed it around and each of us learned the daf every day in Gaza. In Gaza. In Gaza. Wow. That's unbelievable. That is unbelievable. That's we, the emunah hotspots that we attach ourselves to to get a high-speed connection. When we're feeling sad, when we're feeling out of it, when we're wondering where he is, attach yourself to the hotspot called these holy precious soldiers. I'll try to post this video bli neder in our emunah group so you can see it. It's a small example and there are so many more, so many more of it. This is the attitude we have to bring to our emunah. It's your homework. This is your assignment for next time. For next time. Whether you make a spreadsheet, and you don't have to reveal how many pushups you did. You don't have to share how many situps you did or how many hours of sleep you got at night. But I will tell you this, I will tell you this from personal experience. If you make your own spreadsheet, you will start sleeping longer and more because you'll have to face how little you are. If you make your spreadsheet and you promise yourself certain things you're going to be doing and you're going to have to leave those spaces blank if you don't do them, you're going to start making these changes to your life. And one or more of those columns has to be about did you daven? Did you say Tehillim? Did you call and check in on someone? Did you feel that hug or wink or not from Hashem? Or three things I'm grateful for. What are three things I want him to do differently in my life, I'm demonstrating or protesting about? Nasasa venasasa be'emuna. To treat our emunah like a business. Reviews, goals, ambition, aspiration, team meetings. What gets measured gets managed and we should manage to grow our emunah im yirtzeh Hashem in such a way that we get בשורות טובות ישועות ונחמות we should hear today, please God, only, only good news and please stay to finish all Sefer Tehillim. Please feel free to take an Emunah Shiur caffeinated with Kavana cup. Make a donation of any amount that you want or none at all. And listen tonight to Rabbi David Aaron.
