CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #119 Rabbi Zvi Romm - New Year, New Connection to G-d

Every rash shana when you open up your mxar and you read those three blessings on the first day of the year you're stating I believe in the three fundamental principles of Judaism. There is a God. God holds us accountable for our actions and God gave us the Torah. So right off the bat we just took something that seemed a little bit boring and dry and we realized you know there's something more to it. I'm making a declaration of faith on the first day of rashim [Music] and welcome to Torah Talks Kazak's program with special guests. We have with us Rabit Ramlab. Welcome. How are you? Thank you so much. It's so wonderful to be here. So great to have the rabbi over here at our headquarters in the new Khazak studios. Thanks to Natan Bahar. shout out to you for all that you do for Kazak and we're really excited to speak about new year new connection to God and before we have that uh topic if we could give a little background about the rabbi. Sure. Uh first of all just to reiterate it's a pleasure to be here and to see the incredible work that Kazak is doing. It's really uh very uplifting as just seeing everything that's going on over here. Um so I studied in yeshiva university yesan uh spent two years in karan bavna and uh basically after coming to uh yeshiva university at the age of 17 I more or less never left I continue teaching there to this day I'm a little bit older than 17 at this point about four years about four years or so right I have the privilege to teach in the Isaac Bourier college of yeshiva university And uh for 20 years I had the privilege of uh being the rabbi of the Bialistoer synagogue, the Lower East Side. That's where we met. That's where we met. Yes. And many programs have taken place over there. Wonderful, wonderful Lower East Side community. And uh for about 13 years I've had the privilege of being the administrator of the Manhattan Bethon for Conversions, which is associated with the biblical council of America. So just through teaching and helping guide people in different ways uh I've had the privilege of being coming into contact with a lot of people who are searching for God and uh trying to connect to God in a meaningful kind of fashion. Amazing amazing amazing Rabbi Ram for all that you do for very much appreciate it. And uh you know we discussed and we said that the the topics new year new connection to god and rashash shana is around the corner and the prayers of rashash shana is a little bit longer than usual and sometimes people are going through the mas and the sitter seeing how many pages are left and uh how do we tap into prayers of rashash shana making it more meaningful. So it's such an important question and it's it's so frustrating on many levels that on rashash shano which is the day where we want to connect to God in the deepest possible way we are scared by the prayer book like he say you're just turning pages you know you're trying to figure out how many pages it is till the end and what's more I'll say something that people maybe are scared to say many of us find the prayers very boring and particularly ly the centerpiece of the prayers of Rashashana I know I always found very just difficult to connect to. You know the rabbis tell us that there are three special blessings that we say is part of the amida and the musaf amida and rashash which are unique to the days of rashashana. They're called malot talking about the kingship of God. Zikronote talking about how God remembers everything in the world and chauffar talking about how the chauffeur plays such an important role in Jewish history. It was blown when the Torah was given to the Jewish people. And God willing, it will be blown when Mashiach comes and brings the final redemption. And each of those blessings is long. And each of those blessings brings a whole bunch of verses from the Tanakh from the Bible that illustrate the ideas of malot of kingship of God's remembrance and of chauffar of the uh the blowing of the chauffeur. And it's very nice. But by the time you get to it in in the prayers, first of all, your stomach is growling a little bit. And you wonder, why do I need all of this all of these verses and all of this these lengthy prayers to describe these concepts? Why are these concepts so important? What's so central about these concepts? You know, Rashi in his commentary on the Torah alludes to the fact that maybe the obligation to read these passages on Rashana might be a Torah obligation. So there's something very special and fundamental about these things, but at the same time, I hate to say it, I think most of us find those pages in the MAR the most boring pages in the whole MAR. So that can't be obviously there's something wrong with us if we see it that way. So how can we get into that and how can we use that to grow in a spiritual way on rash that's really the question okay I hear it so maybe the rabbi gave us also a breakdown of these three pillars that the rabbi mention of okay so to give that breakdown I first want to share a very fascinating idea that uh goes back probably about 700 years or so it's a great Jewish philosopher who lived in the Middle Ages, Rabbi Yoseph Albo, still has descendants today with that name Alba. I I know a Yoseph Alba actually, and he's not 700 years old, or if he is, he takes care of himself very well. Um, but uh, Rav Yosef Alba was a philosopher who lived in the middle ages. He wrote a book called the Safer Haikarim, the the book of fundamental principles. And in that book he asked the question what are the fundamental faith ideas that a Jew has to believe in. You know if we ask a Jew summarize what your religion is all about. What what are the what are the fundamental aspects of Judaism? So if Albo said there basically three fundamental fundamental principles of the Jewish faith. Number one we believe in God. Number two, we believe that God gave us the Torah. And number three, we believe in what's called reward and punishment. That when we do a mitzvah, God is going to reward us in some way. We don't always understand how he gives us the reward, but he gives us a reward in some way. And God forbid if we do the opposite, if we neglect a mitzvah or we do a sin. So then God is going to hold us accountable in some way for that failing on our part. Right? So three principles. There's a God. God gave us the Torah and God holds us accountable for our actions. and says Rav Albo. The three special blessings that we say on rash and chaot correspond to those three basic beliefs. There's a god in the world and he's our king. God remembers everything that we do. He remembers the good that we do. Unfortunately, he remembers the bad that we do as well. And he holds us accountable for that. That's the idea of reward and punishment. And chauffeur wrote, well, we know the Torah tells us that when the Torah was given at Mount Si, there was a sound of a chauffeur that was constantly blowing. So the braha, the blessing of chauffar reminds us of the giving of the Torah. Every day, every rash sha when you open up your makar and you read those three blessings on the first day of the year, you're stating, "I believe in the three fundamental principles of Judaism. There's a God. God holds us accountable for our actions and God gave us the Torah." Amazing. So, right off the bat, we just took something that seemed a little bit boring and dry, brought life to it, and we realized, you know, there's something more to it. I'm making a declaration of faith on the first day of Rashashana. Amazing. Amazing. But let's go a step further. Sure. Let's look at each of these different blessings and try to bring out some ideas that are very, very important for us, right? Let's take the idea of Mot, right? So, there's a God. Good. Okay. There's a God in the world. And what's our relationship with that God? Well, the blessing says he's a mel. He's a king. That's what it's all about. God is our king. We say on Rashashana throughout the meduv throughout the 10 days of repentance, God is a malo. He's our father and he's our king. Good. Is there any other dimension of our relationship with God? So, I'm going to say something which at first glance might strike us as a little bit odd, but then we'll we'll go into it a little bit deeper and we'll see that there's that this is really what Mot is talking about as well. God is our king. God is our father. God is also our friend. Now, what what does that mean? I mean, at first glance, that doesn't seem quite right. You know, friends are peers. You know, friends are people on the same level. You know, I I think it would be a little bit inappropriate to talk about God as being our buddy, our pal. You know, that doesn't really sound right. But the truth is God is our friend. Where do we see that in the Mot? So, I mentioned that the Mia talks about how God is king and then it brings a whole bunch of verses. I don't know, you know, as a kid, you know, trying to pray on rashashana, I was always bothered, you know, what do we need all these verses for? They're just hammering home the same point. So, one of those verses says about the Jewish people, God is with the Jewish people. What'sbo? So Rashi explains in his commentary on the kish that the friendship the word is related to the word which means friendship. The friendship of the king is with the Jewish people. God is our friend. That's that's what we say in Malia. God is our friend. Many people know the the song which people sing at different points on Shabbat. We describe God asidesh, right? He's the friend of my soul, my closest friend. What does that mean? So, what what does it mean that God's my friend? So, you know, I think all of us hopefully have authority figures in our lives. Some some more than others, but hopefully we all have authority figures in our lives and we feel close to those authority figures and we respect those authority figures. But I don't know that you'd confide in those authority figures. Meaning, you know, sometimes you really mess up and you know, you're going back and forth. You're debating in your head, should I let my parent know, my mother, my father? They're going to be so disappointed in me. I think all of us have certain things we don't tell our parents. I'm sure all of our kids have certain things they don't tell us, right? With a friend, you can be open. A real friend, you know, is not going to judge you. You have a you can confide in a friend in a way in which you can't confide in a parent or an authority figure. God is our friend. We can confide in God. Very nice. We can share things with God and we can feel comfortable that God will accept us no matter what. Amazing. So think about that. That's the first rash, right? The brah of m God is our king. Yes, he's our authority figure. He's our our father. He's our parent. We respect him. He's not our pal or our buddy in that sense of the term. But he is our friend. He's someone that we can unbburden ourselves to and feel that he accepts us no matter what. What an amazing thing to think about on the first day of the year as we're just setting ourselves up for a year which hopefully will be a year of success. Amazing. That's amazing. Then we have also and but uh the question is how does you take all this and make the connection to God more meaningful? Like this sounds all gishmach as they say amazing. Right. Right. So let's let's take it a little bit further. Take it into zero note for a minute. Sure. So one of the ideas which is mentioned in Zote is is a character who I think only comes into our prayers on Rashana and that character is Noah, right? No survived the flood, right? The the first uh captain of a ship in recorded history, right? a ship that he couldn't really control. Big box, right? The TV. So the the blessing of talks about Noah and talks about how when Noah was in the ark and the waters were casting him around to and fro, God remembered Noah. And we say to God in the prayers, just as you remembered Noah, remember all of us as well. So it's so interesting. And you look through the rest of the prayers, there are a lot of other important people that we mention. Aviet Jacob, right? The founding fathers of the Jewish people. We mention them all the time, left and right. King David, we mention all the time. I think it's the only place in our prayers where we mention Noah. Noah wasn't even Jewish. How'd he get in there? Who did he know? How did he make it into the prayers? And why are we mentioning Noah on such an you know the first day of the year such an important such an important day. Great question. I think the answer is like this. You know Noah experienced the biggest trauma that a person could ever imagine. You know sometimes people say I'm sure you've heard this many times from people. My whole world is falling apart. Unfortunately we hear this a lot. Yeah. With the line of work that we're in. And people and people really mean it. They don't they're not joking, you know. My relationships are falling apart. My job is falling apart. My sense of stability is falling apart. My my my mental state is falling apart. And and people really feel like their world is falling apart. But there's one person in history who could really say literally my whole world is falling apart. That's Noah. The whole world was submerged underwater except for Noah and his family and an awful lot of animals. his whole world fell apart and God remembered him and God said, "I'm going to help you put the world back together." So, we get up to the blessing of Zikronote and we remember not only the fact that God remembers the good deeds that we did and the bad deeds that we did, which is very, very important. But we also know and we we reaffirm for ourselves that no matter how bad our world has fallen apart, God will remember us and give us the strength to go on. That's the blessing of zakron. Powerful message. Powerful. So think about two things so far, right? You just open up the mote. God is our friend. God is a God king father friend. And God has our back. Yep. God will rebuild our world even if our world has fallen apart like the world of Noah. Amazing. And there's one more. Chauffar. Right. So it's interesting when Rav Albo talks about the three principles of faith, he organizes them in the following fashion. First you believe in God. Then you believe that God gave us a Torah. And then you believe that God holds us accountable for our actions. And philosophically that makes sense because in other words, you need to believe in God before you can believe that God gave us a Torah. And you sort of need to believe that there's a Torah that tells us what to do before God can hold us accountable. If God holds us accountable, we don't know what to do. What does that mean? Right? But it's interesting in the prayers, the last two are switched. It's first we believe in God. We hold that God. We believe that God holds us accountable and chauffeurel we believe in the Torah. Why is it switched? Right? Why why is it in that order? I I think the answer is as follows. You're right. Philosophically, it would make sense to first talk about the giving of the Torah before talking about our being held accountable for our actions. But that's philosophically. On the personal level, it's very important that it be in the order of chauffeur. Why is that? So again, let's just review what we spoke about. God is there's a God and he's my friend. I can pour out my soul before God. God has my back. He will rebuild my world even when it's broken down. Just like Noah. Chauffar wrote is about the idea that there are times in history when we can connect directly to God. Let me explain. Sure. So there are two major events which are described in the blessing of chauffar. One is the giving of the Torah. One is the coming of Msiach. That hasn't happened yet. We're hoping it'll come very soon. The common denominator to both of those events is that we don't just think about God, but we actually experience God. We were standing at Mount Si. We experienced God directly. When Mashiach comes, we'll experience God directly. Anytime we experience God directly, the chauffeur is associated with that with that event. In terms of our personal relationship with God, we've established that God is our friend. And we know intellectually that like Noah, he will have our back even if our world falls apart. But then we get to the third stage, which is a third stage for us on a personal level. The idea that there are times in life where we can really experience God directly. Now, what does that mean? Okay, you know, sometimes you walk I used to be in Manhattan, right? Right. You walk around Manhattan, there are a lot of people walking the streets who tell you that they experience God directly. You usually try to cross to the other side of the street when you encounter one of those people. You know, they're a little bit scary sometimes, right? I don't mean people who are a little bit off. And again, we don't experience prophecy nowadays or the like, but there are some times in life where you just feel that God's presence is with you in a very, very tangible way. Sometimes that could be at an incredibly happy event and sometimes that could be at a very very difficult event but you just feel that that God is there. Some people feel that when they go to shul every day and they pray on some level. You know, if you pray well, you feel that God is there with you. That connection. Certainly at rashashana, we we're supposed to feel that. That's what the chauffeur represents when we blow it. It means that God is imminent. God is present. We can we can connect to God in that way. If you first work on believing that God is your friend, that you can pour your heart out to. And then you work on that belief that God can put your world back together even when it's broken. You can get to the point of chauffar, the third blessing, where you can feel God's presence in a very, very tangible way in different parts of your life. If you pray these three blessings thoughtfully and you think about what you're saying and you think about these ideas, you're a different person by the time the the prayers end on Rashashana. This isn't boring. No, this this is this is transformative. It's it's not just okay, let me read some words. 100%. I always tell people in order to make the prayers and anything really in life is there has to be a buildup. There has to be understanding. There has to be, you know, opening up the sidor or the a little bit before the holiday and studying it, understanding what you're getting yourself into. If you just run into a meeting, uh what am I doing here? Like what what's happening? like you don't know what's flying and you're not going to be able to connect properly. Same thing when it comes to when it comes to prayer. We prepare like listening to this podcast, Torah Talks and amazing amazing insights that the rabbi is giving over and that way we connect to God in a more meaningful way. I think it's 100% true. The more you put in to prepare, the more you get out of anything. 100%. And um you know it it's true. Sometimes the most meaningful things in life are boring at first glance because, you know, the things that come easily to us are often the things that don't really last long. Easy come, easy go, easy go 100%. It's the things that you have to put work into to that that stay with you. 100% amazing. Rabbi Ram, so many beautiful insights, so many ways to connect through to God Almighty, our father, our king, and our friend. And uh we have a minhaga custom and Torah talks which is a final message for our broad audience if the Arabic can give it. Right. So I I think what we've seen here is a this idea that things that strike us as boring or difficult in Judaism just need for us to work on them and try to understand them better. 100%. You know there's so many things which at first glance I I look at and I say I don't get that. I don't understand that. So, you could just walk away and just say, "Well, I guess I didn't get that. I guess it doesn't make any sense. All right, I'll move on to the next thing." Or you can say, you know, maybe I can be a little bit humble and realize that if I don't understand something, it's probably more about me than it is about the Torah. That's right. And let me take a little bit and try to understand this. Dig deeper. And the deep the deeper I I dig, the more gold I'm gonna find. That's true with everything that connects to to the holy Torah. Amazing, amazing message. Rabbi Ram Rab for this beautiful Torah talk new year, new connection to God. We should take these messages and not let it just go in one year and not the other, but take it to heart. That should make a difference. And this year should be a year of happiness and success and goodness and all the blessings of the Torah. Amen. For you and for everybody listening to the podcast and even for all the people not listening to the podcast. Everybody should get the Amen. Thank you very much for everyone for listening. Kazak Tour Talks Tuesday nights 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.orglive as well as many so many different podcasts. A special shout out to uh Tour Anytime for hosting this uh podcast as well. And special shout out to Natam Bahar and the Kazak team for this amazing studio that they put together. And uh you know the experience is definitely so much more wow amazing. And uh I hope you have that feeling as well wherever you may be. We always enjoy feedback. Please send it over. Suggestions for future Torah talk guests always welcome [email protected] info@ chazaq.org and be part of the Kazak revolution. Please make sure to reach out to Kazak to see how you can be involved. That's right. You you watching or listening can be involved with the Kazak revolution. changing the world, making the world a better place. Bringing the gula, the final redemption to come. Amen.