An Upgraded Roadmap by Ayala Hart May 25th 2025

So as Mira said speak about your mother or can you speak about your mother and um Torah learning women's Torah learning and it's like for those who knew her is there anyone besides for my sister and my aunts here who knew her. So for for for those who knew her it's like saying yes that's the same thing talking about your mother and Torah learning like she was that's what she was about right um she was always going to shurim organizing sharim hosting shirim um learning anything she could learn to to improve to to increase her knowledge and to to grow always open to learn from really um personifying the saying um there was no one that she didn't that he thought like I can't learn from them anyone whether it was a child a grown anyone from anywhere she was always up open open to learning um so I wanted to just say a few things that came up for me when I was thinking about my mother and about she passed away of shabus um the Hey, before she was Hey Sivan, 16 years ago. Uh we were all with her, her children besides for my brother who was in Israel holding her hand, singing her songs and um um and it was very appropriate in a way that she she managed to count the sphere all the way through almost till the end. Uh the last few days she wasn't able to speak anymore. And I remember the last time I was with her in the hospital and she asked me for a pen and a paper. She was signing and I brought her. I didn't know what she wanted. And she wrote down the number of the sphere. That was her way of counting. Um wasn't 49. I think it was 47 or 48 because I don't think she was uh she was conscious conscious anymore at the end right at the end. So she went through the hakana for being Makaba the Torah and then she went up there to be Makaba the Torah all the way and we remain here to try and do our best over here. Um so um what I wanted to come up with a question which is a bit of a funny question to ask over here is why are we here? Why do women learn Torah? Anyone? Yeah. To teach children. To teach children. Okay. To raise a home. Thank you. So to teach your children at home to be a better Jew. To teach others. To teach others to cheat ourselves and for others as Rob was speaking about before. Okay. Thank you. Hashem in the world. uh to make a dwelling place for Hashem in the world. To increase our amuna to increase our amuna. Okay, great. I like don't have to say anything anymore. Sorry, that's our live. Okay. Yeah. To teach us knowledge. Okay. To teach us to use knowledge for good and not for evil. Thank you. Yes, that's quite exceptional nowadays. Um so um I I thought the first thing that came to mind to my mind was we learned Torah to know what to do, how to do it, when to do it, right? We like try and keep we try and keep you know all the halas that pertain to us nowadays. Um and we are obligated as women to learn that so that we know what to do and what not to do. Um, but there's a whole other aspect of Torah learning that's um, and that's I think and that's why it's funny to ask it here because we all here so I'm kind of a um, speaking to the converted and I don't don't mean to preaching to the choir as you say like I um, but really I come to say um, is to all of you and to the OU for doing this because you enable you enable everyone to learn and the ones who come to learn you are we are all you know growing thanks to your learning. So I remember in um when I was studying and we were learning physiology and uh we learned about you know the neurons in the brain and how the brain works and this like moment this Eureka moment of like understanding suddenly that everything in our body like like I remember the professor was like saying like if you prick your finger your finger isn't hurting the pain is here in your head everything happens in the brain and when you the more you know like now it kind of seems really obvious but um at the time I remember being like what like so nothing actually happens anywhere else but in the brain that's like so everything my the fact that my hand just moved the fact that I can speak the fact it's all from the brain goes down to you know the um nerves nerves thank you all in in the rest of my body and it's all directed from here which is the same in in the spiritual world and in the in the world of Torah and in and as you said like we want to be bas and we want to have covered and we want to behave in a certain way and we want to and it all comes from here all comes from the knowledge that we have and from what we choose to expose ourselves to in terms of um content and in terms of the people that we surround ourselves with and in terms of so the fact that you are all here learning Torah and And enriching yourselves with Torah and with words of wisdom and words of truth means that we are more likely to bring that into our lives in the day-to-day to like to and it elevates us every day. So that's part of the learning Torah um is part of it is what do we do and how do we do it and part of it is just to elevate ourselves. Now I call Miss Mirror asked for a title. And I said, uh, let's call this the upgraded road map. And the reason why I said that is because, um, let's say we're driving from here to Miron, as what a lot of people did recently. Uh, and you you follow a map, um, pre-ways days. So, let's follow a map and you can get from A to B. You can get from to Iran and you can get there and you can get to your destination um, get exactly to where you want to go. But imagine you have an upgraded road map. And it tells you right over here, go 100 meters off the main path and there's a stunning lookout point. And then and then it tells you and right over there, just take the exit and uh go to the left and then turn right and you'll see the most incredibly beautiful waterfall. And so you reach the destination but having taken in so much beauty and so much um and being so energized from what you've seen on the way. So there's you we we can just get to our destination. We can just get to doing what we need to do and what we have to do. But we can also enrich ourselves with so much more thanks to learning Torah. Now there's like like the rabb was saying earlier in terms of like not having space on the bookshelf for more books. There are thousands and thousands of books. There's lots of different things that we can learn and um especially as women and we don't have a to learn a certain thing or we don't have to learn gamora. We don't have to learn there's nothing we but besides for the we have to learn. We can choose and we can choose what it is that that puts us on fire. What is it that lights up our souls and to say what is my what what what what works for me and what works for me isn't what works for you and it's not what works for the next person and and what you were saying about um you know we to teach our children what works for me might not be what works for my child or my students and so I need to kind of try and adapt you know what I bring into the picture and um and what worked for me last week or last year or yesterday might not work for me day. So, it's like open up my my heart and my mind to like, okay, what do I need? I need some inspiration in terms of or I want to I want to hear more or I want to learn the Ramban or the Rambam or I want to have more makab. I want to learn whatever it is that that like is the right thing for me to say this is going to energize me. This is going to fill me. This is going to be my waterfall today. my stunning lookout point, my view, my this is going to infuse me with energy. Um I I'll say something. This was one of the things. It's a And I said it the way it's in the song and then someone looked at me and said that's not the poke. Um it says so the ones who hope to Hashem who look at Hashem they will have renewed strength. And what I said is and then it was like that's not that's whoever is singing it. Um so is they will they will so those who are who hope to Hashem they will run and they won't get tired. So we can get that. Yeah. You run you get tired. So um you run and you won't get tired. But what does it mean? Why would you get tired from just from walking? walking you can go kind of quite a bit usually when you're in a good good state and healthy then uh you can go and walk and walk and walk and usually you know you don't get tired so quickly from walking and um one of the explanations is that the just from the daily living it's like someone once said this is this quote we used to have at home that um anyone can deal with a crisis but it takes a takes a lot more to deal with daily life. Just a daily grind can make us really tired. Just a daily like getting through a regular day. And that's where we need yu everim is to to have the limbs to have the like the strength like an eagle or a vulture depending on the different people translated differently. So now Kaleim brought up for me something that um I heard from Ra Friedman from Anw and he once said that um um it says in the empa um you know the different animals that we should try and emulate in terms of their their their strength that we should try and emulate and bring into our Now what does it say? Be light as an eagle. Now an eagle or vulture depending on whatever it is is probably the heaviest flying animal that there is. So why does it say to say no like a feather or kaya like a dove or pigeon or like or butterfly why how is kal so the thing is that is not we are also not we have a part a big part of us that is putting us down it's heavy life the daily grind can be heavy but he kesha means to fill it up with spirit it and with with light and with whatever makes us light like I'm thinking of a hot air balloon and then and then it like it it goes up but it becomes light because we fill it up with hot air. It becomes light because we fill it up with inspiration and with joy and with the joy of just enriching ourselves with every the beauty that it is in Torah. Um it's like someone once said to me the what's the difference between a rock and a balloon? The rock is heavy because it's full. It's it's it's dense. It's full. But and the balloon is light because it's full of air. So, you fill it up with spirit. You fill it up with something that lifts you up. And then you can stall and you can fly like an eagle. So, um that's a little bit of kind of encouraging us to learn, which I don't really need to do here because we all here, everybody here came to learn. So I'm like um well to you and like that's what you choose to do with your time and um and that's what my mother Ali Shalom used to do with her time day in day out um a lot just um yesterday a high school teacher of mine called me up and she said like how many years has it been and I said 16 and she said are you sure and she was like really it seems like just five or six years ago. She said everybody who knew her just like it just looks like it was just now because she had such a big impact on whoever knew her and she's very much present with us for those who knew her and hopefully for those who didn't in uh in in this way. So I thank you very much for allowing me to share with you. And um I think um one more thing we say at the end of [Music] um so just to kind of um um add on to something I said before. Um, I said like everyone should um kind of have the opportunity to choose and to find what speaks to them and what makes them sore. And um um that way when I came back from seminary from my year in Israel, I um there wasn't really anything going on in terms of like in Belgium um in terms of CRM or things like that for girls. Um we kind of it was like over 20 years ago when it was kind of okay you went to SEM you went to school you went to SEM you you've done it you know like now you can start living your life and my mother was very much into like this constant learning so she encouraged me hugely was um this wanting to set up your room and we set up and she opened our home and we had shim twice a week for girls who had um finished seminary finished high school and um one of our teachers who who taught us there she said the reason why you should come and learn forever is because we it's like a now it's easy to know to like think about it's like a phone when the battery is dead it's dead can't do anything and you need to plug it in to charge and learning is our way of plugging in and um and the way and now I'm adding on to what she said is the way that the same way that you have different sources of power you have solar power you have wind power you nuclear power you have and um depending on what works for for you for you in this moment the different things that can inspire you so that's so go for it so that's what we should go for that's um what we say I'm going to finish with this as we finish in I say um So we say that rebuild and that we should um be to be to serve him in the B mikdash. Now in the middle of that surprisingly we kind of add in something that doesn't seem to belong there. We say like what does that have to do with like bring the mdash so that we may serve you there but in a minute does because it's only at the time of the mdash that we will each have our real own each have our own inah that will be complete and maybe also the way to get to the ba mikdash to get there is for each of us to try as much as possible to develop and to acquire our own individual unique part of Torah. So merch and always to continue learning and growing. [Applause]