Born 2 Be a Jew: A fascinating Journey to Judaism by Yosef Chaim

do you know the feeling of something is missing in my life it can last for years an entire life if you fall back to your routine every time you ignore it is like dying a bit more so i say to myself today i face it and my life changed forever [Music] you are dependent in your mother's womb you get food blood oxygen then life your first breath you have a new mother now mother earth air food blood you grow and you are dependent again your senses gravitation emotions ego social life family school friends partner a new needs a new car a new phone and then you have your job you have a career and the monster of money good life fashion technology and your addictions you smoke or drugs or alcohol and sex porn gambling social media and then you must be more social you must share your life the world share every moment of your new perfect life speak into a phone with your virtual friends and wait for their fake comments and likes to get your daily reward or document you are where your mind is it's up to you to choose which world to live it's your turn to work your freedom out from this mess from the so-called material world no fake gurus no isolation no climbing himalaya just be yourself connect to your divine spark and express it here in this world the city is in you but don't waste it at birth is painful circumcision even more when blood comes out have no fear your old self is being sacrificed you have the potential to connect to build the holy temple it's written the asuli mikdash the shahanti betoham they shall make for me a sanctuary and i shall dwell within them the divinity will dwell within each and every one of us but who can guide you will tell you that you have a spark a divine spark within you you are a soul in a physical body you can experience unity with a creator you are a chariot for divinity how to work it out in reality only tell you that there is a work to do religion is the answer but what is religion how much religion affected you as a child in italy well you know in southern italy is like that you you're born with black eyes or brown hair you know what i mean lasagna exactly christianity comes with birth like playing soccer in the street you take the ball and run you don't ask questions it's part of your life imagine a little village six thousand people great landscape and sun and coastline job family friends a routine and you follow the local ships church bell rings bow to the statue and walk after the cross and confess your sin to the shepherd i was pretty wild as a kid i think my mother knew that so she put me in a school with the nuns i was about five years old i guess now can you imagine a young kid full of life surrounded by black and white frustrated nuns i mean i simply wanted to be a kid you know kids right they have to move around and enjoy and scream worst period of my life i remember there was a special room dark where they threatened to close me if i wouldn't follow their rules sometimes i was not permitted to move from my seat even to go to the bathroom i used to go back home sometimes with different clothes because i wetted myself my mother used to say who is this brought back the wrong kid but listen everything was done in the name of the lord [Music] luckily enough years later i got a promotion i joined the local priest as a altar boy i thought i don't get by with the ladies let's try with the men only later i understood that men and women were created to be together and not to run away from each other i think i was 10 years old back then i walked into a trap with this priest even then i got the best lesson in my life about the statue about the cross subordination frustration no self-esteem never show your real self hide your emotion save the priest no matter what he does you know what i mean there is a god but the priest that's what he wants and you must obey them it's a manipulation of life through fear fear of sin and devil and the fire the hell and the priest himself and the chain up to the cardinal and hope maybe down anyway pure idolatry the confession was my favorite moment every normal person would think wait a minute there is a god just speak to him and solve the problem you don't need anyone between right can you imagine this old man closing himself in a little dark box and asking the kids what what do they do it's time for them to emerge from these black boxes maybe they themselves will find time to confess directly to god some people puts you down when they see you're going higher i started to ask questions about existence or our role in this world as human beings what is to be done to reach freedom but i didn't get answers the best case the answer was open your heart and love in the worst case the answer was don't worry joshua came to save you he did everything no problem go enjoy life what what do i need to do i used to ask i was told nothing what does it mean nothing i must understand more so i can change myself they used to say listen he came he saved you you made it man please go to play with the balls so i took them seriously now my dream was to become the best soccer player in italy setting up player champions league [Music] well i was pretty good with my feet i was selected for a try out by a good italian soccer team but hashem this time my parents saved me they wanted me to go to university so i stopped running after a ball when you focus on your feet you don't really need to use your head right that's the society we're living today skilled with the feet and down with the mind skilled with your fingers on the phone but empty in your heart i left my spiritual search and focused on science i got my degree and i started work and money a new car illusion of career euro home company office home home office and feed the monster the more money you get the more you need i was very interested in computer coding how can a string of numbers 1 and 0 change lives of people technology can really help humanity i believe in that back then i didn't think that this would consume us now we need to protect ourselves from technology in a fraction of seconds we behave and make decisions based on impulses we experience by watching screens most of the times without filters do we agree to receive all these information and what's said about it is that you have no defenses you are abused mentally abused psychologically and physically abused by most of these overwhelming information we didn't ask for that the answer to this flood of information is let's defend ourselves from technology using more technology what a big mistake the endless spiral we we are quoting today i believe is technology so i thought i have only one way to save myself disconnect [Music] took me years to realize i was fed up every day 10 hours per day eyes on the screen and fingers running on plastic keyboards eating junk food before running back to office i started to have migraines and shaking so nausea or strange electrical waves running into my body i ended up with panic attacks your disease is an opportunity it's telling you hey there listen it's time to change you know yourself you know what's the right thing to do but around your doctor again fear and your doctor has a long list of patients waiting in line so it gives you sanix so you burn your brain and he solves this problem i remember myself walking on a beach today sound on my face tears i realized i was at the crossroad and i said to myself i don't want to take this crap that very day i left all my tears and fears i took a bag i jumped on my vespa and i draw to my [Music] freedom [Music] i rented a small house in the forest upon a hill in a village with a few hundred people the sea and olive trees lemons bananas roses birds and silence i closed my company and i started to live totally immersed in nature i was listening for the first time a voice was teaching me who am i i went back to be curious like a kid i wanted to know more about this world but in the real sense i showed my face to the world no masks no filters no social media just me [Music] i experienced the deep feeling of loneliness loneliness is a healer no place to hide i just faced it and i felt like coming back home my inner home long walks between sea and mountains and searching different worlds minerals and plants and animals or human realm in all its aspects physical and emotional mental or supernatural i read a lot i was attracted by all sorts of subjects and philosophy and religion and history astronomy or mysticism on psychology music i started to write my creative part my right brain was waking up and started to tie down the left brain the analytical one like abraham avinu did with its hakk his son so how did you discover the torah i remember i was reading a book about history of religions there i saw them for the first time they were pure divine signs i was tuning into a new unexplored world 22 letters that promised to reveal all the secrets of creation holy chain of hebrew letters like chromosomes of a brand new body called torah if you are true to yourself then you know how to recognize the truth i simply followed the tracks the hebrew letters i went back to the university this time to study ancient modern hebrew language and then i found my first contact with the me and mario another student decided to take it seriously we used to meet every day my house in naples and study very in ibro all day long from morning to the evening that was our daily food spirit of them we were listening to an audio of a certain rabbi and then repeat it ourselves to understand the meaning i remember sometimes it could take 10 minutes to read and understand one verse so the book of bereshit was speaking to me the torah teaches who you are where you came from and what do you need to do to fix the world your little world first of all all the best sellers unfortunately have fake hobbies idolatry cults pretending to suckle from that lively spring of knowledge they monopolize the control messes give a fake and scary model for survival let people continue to sleep except in a dream like everything is fine just fear me bow to me no work needs to be done as a human being i felt that i was advancing in the next stage of consciousness but for that i needed a manual well the world has this holy and amazing manual and its name is torah the torah was given to the jews but is accessible to the world of course in the original hebrew language our sages said that the torah can be read in four different levels we know that the word paradise comes from the hebrew word pardes it means orchard a garden but pardes is even an acronym it's a word of four letters corresponding to the four letters of the holy name to the four elements to the four spiritual words and to the four levels of soul that we can achieve the pay of pardess stands for the evil word of shat the simple explanation of the torah and the raj stands for remez a hint an allegorical reading of the torah and the dalat stands for the rush to inquire to go deep in the text through the study of the main sources like the talmud or the midrashim and the same stands for sod the esoteric meaning of the torah the secrets behind the text and behind our existence adam or the sages say that man is a microcosm an image of divinity we as human beings live in a reality that is parallel to a higher spiritual world i was reading in the torah about the abode around yourself and his brothers king david and i was learning about the history of the jewish people of course but even more i clearly felt that these were much deeper teachings for me i was learning about my physical psychological and subconscious processes my old world broke into pieces under my eyes and very sheet was promising day after day to fix it like a puzzle i was using that same thesis but in a correct way not forcing a false image of myself instead i was building a new self a new being totally in tune with humility all humanity is called to take part consciously in this process that is unfolding everyday more in front of our enlightened eyes it's up to you ignore it or participate so when did you arrive in israel for the first time [Music] in june 2014 i walked the streets of jerusalem for the first time in this life sirens sounded in jerusalem and all over the country to warn about rockets falling from the gaza strip i felt protected by hashem i was fully conscious that i wouldn't be harmed i came in jerusalem to study torah and that's it nothing else could prevent that and the first thing i did to connect the jewish people was studying their language i went to the urpan and the aleph bath gimbal and i found out that 90 percent of the modern hebrew language comes from the torah isn't that amazing speaking the street and create worlds practically it's the same language of 3500 years ago so powerful but you must be careful with what you say you are using now a divine language my only desire was to study torah i wanted to fix myself but how where with who i stated for the first month in a hostel i was going to ulpan and trying to meet people talking about torah learning about jerusalem it's history it's holy places the idea of am israel as i pictured it in my mind broke in pieces in a few days when i understood the different aspects and cultures of these special people now that they were coming back from the diaspora which lasted two thousand years i had a deep feeling of love for all the jews i met in the street i remember i felt that tom walking in the maya sharim i was like going hundreds of years ago in the eastern europe i used to look at these guys in these strange clothes and hats and recognizing them my family and they my father sabadov once i told to an old man he measured him you really look like my grandfather i wanted to hug him he was upset he told me leave me alone what do you want from me how do you say that in english last miracle first bills do for me yeah that's what he told me and i had the same feeling in tel aviv these people are my family with some friends in a lazarus in the bars there in frisman or yatro i was witnessing jewish people coming back to eretz israel it was not a movie it's real happening now i was there looking at it from my narrow angle and astonished amazed different cultures different phases and clothes and opinions but definitely one big family my family united consciously or unconsciously by the holy torah and by one god i delayed my flight as far as i could i really didn't want to go back to italy my visa was inspiring so i decided to spend the last weekend in spot booked a place in old city and started to walk around there are four cities in israel connected to the four elements chevron is earth and jerusalem is fire and iberia is water and spot is there well my first time it's fat it was like flying big kabbalists like the area vital or dramatic they were walking this street i remember it was a friday morning a few hours before shabbat and the young yeshua boy came close and i was walking in the street and he asked me an actor to fill in he didn't know i was not a jew i didn't know what was feeling and definitely i didn't know what really meant to be a jew so look at me the biggest man said ready to fly so he took two black box from this bag put one on my arm and then tied seven times the stripe and put one in the middle of my head and then look at me i take a took a page and said read aloud [Music] so i closed my eyes with a trembling voice and i said [Music] hashem washes [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] that friday was a special day for me i knew that shabbat was coming but not much more than that and the main concern was to buy food in advance otherwise everything would be closed while i was walking it's fat i recognized in the eyes of a man something familiar all dressed in white long peyos black long bird it was like we already knew each other since a long time i talked to him and i told him my name he said this is my son name what do you do for shabbos really don't know i told him so come to me in tiberia with my family he said i didn't think twice i took my back we went to tiberia and that was my first shabbat with slummy we arrived to his house took a shower he gave me all fresh white clothes and told follow me in a few minutes walk we reached the tomb of rabyakiva and yelled there i saw a mikveh for the first time he said undress and jump in the water and that was my first mikvah then we had the kabbalah shabbat in the nearby synagogue and we honored the shabbat in his family eating singing together the day after he woke me up at seven in the morning to go to the synagogue he gave me a siddur and i lost myself in these wonderful letters for hours i remember the bihatha my first time amazing and i remember the faces of the people pointing at the torah like kids staring at their most precious gift my first time shining powerful black leathers on a white cloth calling me back home i knew that was my life my people all of a sudden everything made sense for me and i made peace between all the apparent contradictions of israel sephardic ashkenazi yemenite ethiopians south americans indians russians chinese zionists that illumiki pastrugao traditional and converts religious not religious jews for yoshike and haredi ultra haredi from one eating only gladly superman dream the one eating shrimps in freshman or a pizza salami in tony vespa that was my family a queen a beautiful holy bride ready for the marriage the kedu shot holy souls fallen from the highest of the heavens in this reality we must not judge anyone he had amirelai naim hashem menses with the eyes but hashem sees into the heart this is one holy family it's one heart hashem is taking care to bring near the one that needs he does it through the holy torah he gives power a strength to do mitzvoth and to attach to the torah as it's written that's hayimi it's a tree of life for those who hold fast to eat and its supporters are happy [Music] i remember another time i was hosted by islamist fat we went to eat something together and walked back home it was one in the night he looked at me and said i go to the forest are you coming one in the night forest what do you do there and they told me it was meditation in a dark forest at night i thought that's amazing we went to wear something and we went to the forest we walked there it was really dark and in the middle of nowhere he told me i have to go now wait a minute i thought maybe it's dangerous what do you do where do you go from the dark i said you are protected if you see demons just say and then he disappeared i sat under a tree i was afraid i was in fear i remember i heard something moving in the bushes and i screamed it was a cat that night my fears of the world were cured i came back home with a feeling of love something higher was installed in me something like hashem is always guarding i arrived at thomas sunrise and shlomi was not there when he came back at midday i asked him if he was okay if he wanted to eat something he said that that day he was fasting the torah is the only food that tam israel needs that's what he told me i got the lesson we ashamed protect him whatever it is [Music] torah is easy to grasp and easy to lose when i went back to italy i came very near to forget about it i started to lose the feeling and the light and the fire of jerusalem so i was studying the book of shemot and i felt that that book was speaking to me i felt like i was in egypt and there was no moses rising above my horizon my diet had a deep change i became vegetarian my body was refusing to eat tariff before i even knew what tariff was on the other hand the pools were very heavy i went back to sleep in the material world it's like quick sand you go down a little bit more every day and when you understand it your mouth is already under the sand only from above you can be set free i remember that day clearly hashem presented me a last choice in or out israel or sleep forever israel or a mouth full of sand that glimpse lasted enough to let me book a flight back to israel the one that changed my life a few days later i was walking again in the streets of jerusalem divine providence is a well-known concept among the jews in hebrew you say our lives are connected there is a direction an evolution for our condition as human beings one who doesn't understand it calls it coincidence it's not by chance that you meet a person in the street or that you hear a conversation or some words come to you or you find a video online the fact is that in israel for me became revealed it's such a flow of events that you risk to get used to it or to treat them like normal but it's not if you pay attention to what happens in your life if you look back to the people you met or the choices you made or the events that led you in a direction not in another it's clear there is a basic plan that is guiding your evolution in life so the goal is to bring you to a higher level of consciousness tweet from the tree of life or go back to eden the choice is yours every moment we have free choice some people consider their life events negative and as something that they did not deserve and they blame the world what happens to you is connected to your choices actually one way or another we will get to the final fixing but in which way depends on you on me on us hopefully not through punishment but with a big hug so conversion for me was a rebirth new life and soul it's hard to admit that you were wrong for so many years that your tradition is not really true it's painful to dig inside and deal with your own garbage i found out that there is a higher pure spring of knowledge and i wanted to get there i understood that i am created a new every second of my life every morning in shahrit we say we have all the creation in us every moment hashem renews its creation in us through us conversion is total surrender torah and meets what fear and love are better oh and love conversion is pain and joy at the same time so in the talmud is written that god gave seven binding laws to the children of noah to all the humanity according to judaism people that follow these seven laws are considered righteous never place in the next world you're not a jew they used to tell me just keep the seven laws of the ninoh i knew it was not enough for me you want to study torah like a professor or cold intellectual knowledge that's what i was asking myself oh you want to leave the torah with your heart i choose life i was ready to put in practice the teachings of the torah in my everyday life and keep the commandments mitzvot that's how you really change yourself i was in jerusalem no father no mother no friends no work no house and what i felt to be my spiritual family was slapping doors in my face from all the sides i was detached from the world as i used to know it and my ego and my pride they were totally erased i didn't know who i was anymore when i felt in my flesh and bones that there was completely nothing hashem gave me everything i wanted now the more i was rejected the more i felt accepted and during the first month of convention i was completely overwhelmed sometimes i could even go out to my bed so my body was going under full reconstruction and fixing new shape and new colors on my soul new cells new energy and the result was painful like a birth stress weakness and pain all over the body i was building a new vessel if i may use an example to describe my conversion process i would talk about cars judais teaches you how to drive the fastest car in the world your neshama but it's even warning you don't rely only on your human qualities you will crash and remember in every single moment of your life the architect of the world gave you the opportunity to be part of this amazing soul race called life we really should start to look at human beings as souls fallen souls in these physical bodies because that's what we are wonderful souls jewish tradition explains clearly and in an amazingly detailed way all the levels of the human soul and its attributes and inclinations of men in this world and the pitfalls the inner self dynamics like a scientist i was learning and i'm still learning how my inner world works and what i must do to fix myself in this physical world to reveal the full potential of my soul today six years after arriving in you shalom what would you like to say to amistral in hebrews [Music] teja and ta-da she's she is the one she is the one [Music] she is my inspiration my power my joy my beautiful wife my she's everything i have [Music] cut [Music] you