Changemakers Podcast #1 Rabbi YY Jacobson

the yeshiva.net thrilled to have on rabbi y y jacobson uh rabbi jacobson is one of the or the premier jewish thinker and speaker in the jewish world today he speaks to thousands across the globe serves as meant as a mentor to many many people um he was the first rabbi ever to be invited to the pentagon to deliver the religious keynote to the us military chief of chaplains at the national security agency the nsa um he's been over over you know the pandemic he presented hundreds of classes to every demographic all over the world so like literally he has been someone who has been able to inspire millions he is the founder and serves as the dean of the yeshiva.net um his website which is his virtual uh classroom where people can go and be inspired and just when you when you get a chance to to hear him you can really see how he cultivates this sense of purpose the sense of importance for every single person to reach their greatest potential and the process of doing that has been able to serve as a light to so many people well this is a big kickoff robert i'm thrilled to uh be partnering with you on this project and uh have such an illustrious guest for our uh our first one rabbi yy jacobs and uh what a pleasure what what stuck out for you when you when you were uh speaking with him today well first of all having him is uh i'm really honored that he joined us but also just the type of person that he is whose really mission in life it is to inspire change in other people is such a fantastic way to kick all this off the knowledge that he imparted and shared with us not just about his personal story but also about how much he thinks that other people have the the potential that everyone has really was really quite inspiring to me so i'm really excited that we got to do it and hopefully people will enjoy it and i think that the idea that this is sort of like our first episode the the piece that's so important is that these are a lot of the fundamentals that that that you see that i see when we are kind of beginning on the process of like you know again a world-changing mission really biting off like a difficult problem to chew on and to solve is that you have to have some of these fundamental mindset pieces in place so that you can identify yourself as someone that can go out and do that and then also be able to actively engage in the process and then come out on the other side with a solution yeah things like having faith in yourself right not getting lost in your problem and understanding to look intrinsically and then sometimes when the problem does seem too big and knowing that you know god actually has faith in you like these are really fundamental ideas so i would encourage all of our listeners to grab i don't know pencil or some kind of recording device and they can take notes during this and i really hope you enjoy the episode this is changemakers the podcast exploring ideas changing the world and the people behind them hosted by robert rankman and jacob [Music] first of all rabbi jacobson thank you so much for for taking the time this is uh we're starting this podcast between jacob and i um and you're our first guest and there's an agenda here the idea of this podcast is to highlight change makers talk about what they're trying to do and accomplish what drives them to actually try to achieve that thing that they want to achieve i'm focusing on what's the idea what's the mission why are you doing things the way that you're trying to do it try to understand that jacob is an executive coach and he's much more focused on what is driving the person tell me about you why is this the idea that you want to do and the goal of this is to try to inspire other people to try to understand themselves focus on their idea focus on you know we're all sort of caught up in our own silly little world focusing on the silly things in people's lives and instead focus on the change makers to inspire them to be change makers themselves the first question i would start off with saying is you know robbie jacobson what is your mission i once saw a line actually my wife sent it to me i guess she saw it somewhere that love is learning the song in someone else's heart and singing it to them when they forget it and i think at the risk of sounding a little too poetic or dramatic you know i think one of the most transformative teachings of judaism at least for me is that really every single person has a song and it's a unique song and i think part of my mission statement is learn the song in other people's hearts and to sing it to them when they forget it i like that it's beautiful so if i if i could ask knowing now that you come from the home of a journalist and now that i see how that is such a close as close connection did you ever see i mean as as someone that consumes uh large amounts of media and jewish media you are the the titan of the industry thank god did you ever see this for yourself and what is this that you see like in terms of like taking all of your your cocos and the things that you care about like how did you figure out this this level of expression great question so i grew up in the home of parents both russian refugees they both grew up in the 1930s in the soviet union in the horrific days of the communist regime suffered under the tyranny of stalin and my grandfather was in the purging of he was arrested sentenced to death and then tortured and sent to the stalin's gulag and both of my parents were deeply affected by you know their most formative years in the shadow of such suffering and agony that affected them immediately and directly but they made it out to both families made it out of the soviet union with false false passports because stalin allowed polish citizens who escaped into russia during the second world war to leave the iron curtains so they both made it out with forged documents and they made it to the displaced person camps and then ultimately they made it to canada my father's parents and then my mother's parents the united states of america and my father i guess for more than 50 years of his life was that quintessential jewish journalists jewish journalists he was the correspondent of israel's largest daily idiot or not in the united nations he actually succeeded his good friend eli wiesel who went into full-time lecturing and authoring books and but really was a journalist for many years he gave over that job to my father they remained very close friends my father worked for the herald tribune he worked for newsweek he worked for a yiddish daily for many years there were large yiddish dailies called the day morning journal he was the front page editor and then in 72 he opened up his own yiddish weekly newspaper called the alga maynard journal so basically our home was extremely colorful i mean the types of people that would come guests jews and non-jews of all demographics all different political persuasions uh you know you had people like professor abraham joshua heschel from uh jewish theological seminary to people like you know ellie wiesel and all different walks of life it was really very fascinating both to uh to meet all these peoples it was really a very open exchange of ideas i never anticipated to do what i do today when i was younger i was uh i would say a good student very diligent i i sat and learned for for many years of my life uh i also had the privilege um growing up at the feet of the late lubavitcher ever schneerson and when i was at a young age my brother schlepped me into a short a small group a very interesting group they were called the oral scribes well barbara trudeau would speak for many hours on shabbos and holidays of course in the orthodox world no recording devices were present so everything had to be memorized and transcribed so there was this small but very intense team of minds that had to memorize and then transcribe and have to shabbos in the holidays so i was really immersed a lot in learning and writing and and delved into that you know for many many years and this type of work really i have to say it came unexpectedly it was i wasn't married yet i was maybe around 24 or 25 and i get a call one week from a rabbi in highland park chicago he read an article that i wrote a yiddish article that i wrote in my father's newspaper i would write a weekly article in yiddish on the parsha on the torah portion of the week and he liked it and he said would you come speak to my community for shabbos and i'm like no i don't i don't give speeches i don't speak to kyrie i don't know what to tell your community i'm a yeshiva i'm a shiva student i don't know how to do this and he's like i'll pay you a ticket i'll pay 300 i'll pay your ticket i said it's irrelevant about paying the ticket i'm not coming and he nurged and nurtured and nudged and i came and i spoke to this community on shabbos very very progressive modern a lot of secular jews in that community very affluent highland park chicago his name is robert shanowicz and apparently the people liked it because the next job is i got a call from a rabbi in great neck would you come for shabbos to speak to our community and the rest is history so really i wasn't expecting i wasn't anticipating wasn't the life i planned but organically and it just emerged and at some point at some point as the year started to progress i realized i realized that there are ideas and experiences that i'm passionate about and as i once heard from the late rabbi dr professor jonathan sax he said when your passion meets a real need in the world that's where god's calling for you lay and i think that's what i came to realize or to put it maybe in different words there are two very charged words in the bible in the torah that are identical with one little difference the word by yikes god chanced upon balaam there's an identical word with one added letter in aleph hashem god called moses and the difference is balaam and moses both experienced something balaam saw it as a coincidence in hebrew means a chance coincidence a random event moses looked at the same coincidence and he saw it as a calling by icarus i think in all of our lives we will see different things and then it's up to us to choose and to label it either as a just interesting coincidences or as a calling and i think at some point when i started to meet people and travel a lot i traveled to hundreds and hundreds of communities some point i realized that all of my training all of my education all of my learning all of the gifts that god has has given me in life is really a calling that's a calling to help people help our brothers and sisters each one in their own way become ambassadors ambassadors of love light hope to change the world i i appreciate that so much one one thought which is interesting because i was actually thinking about rabbi sachs when you were speaking about your your close proximity to the to the rebbe and how you know there was that moment where the rebbe really empowered him and said you go back to england and you become that that that factor of change and it sounds like that that almost you you found it he didn't direct you there but this was like was it was it interesting for you what was it like seeing him give cl and i don't know if he did or not but giving certain people like direct go do this and versus you that that almost chanced upon this amazing opportunity the skills that you have it's a great question that's a great question so i grew up and i would listen to the rebbe's teachings as classes as sermons as presentations they called it fabregans for 15 years 15 years almost every single saturday almost every single shabbos and every single holiday and he was not a rabbi who gave a 12 12-minute speech with a joke in the middle a joke in the beginning a story at the end that was not what it looked like these were hour-long presentations very deep very intricate and really weaving a tapestry and a mosaic of all segments of torah thought jewish law and biblical studies and talmud and maimonides and the code of law and muslim and ashkaf and kabbalah and sachinism and spirituality psychology and sometimes science and physics and current events and education was very very intense extremely intense and they can go on literally for hours he had no notes but it can go on literally for hours with some breaks for singing in between so i never really thought that i'm going to be somebody who's going to be mentoring or teaching or traveling or lecturing but what i always heard from him for many many years is that the greatest tragedy in life is when a person does not recognize his or her infinite potential the greatest tragedy in life is when a person looks in the mirror and says who am i what am i he always taught that much more than we should fear our darkness much more than people fear their darkness people fear their light their power people are not ready to really embrace the possibilities that are embedded in them and if you really believe this for him it was like a tragic situation when people did not realize that they are fragments of infinity they are rays of god in this world they are manifestations of the sheen of the divine presence and they are ambassadors of god who at their who are invincible and are filled with incredible incredible possibility and potential and promise so i really grew up with that message almost embedded in my dna in terms of my jewish education and it's interesting because now i share it sometimes i share this to communities and people say you know it's so interesting because the way i grew up i was taught that you know you should stifle you should stifle your creativity because your creativity can be dangerous it can it can lead you away from god it can lead you away from religion you know just just follow the good moral path that has been carved by by my aunts by your ancestors and it's so interesting to me because my education was the exact opposite of course follow the path of your ancestors and learn from them but make sure to remember that you know we're all born originals we should not die as copies and and it's so important to realize that you every person he would might he would always teach this every person is an indispensable unique note in a cosmic symphony and the world is waiting for your the world is waiting for your music so i think you know having that ingrained in me when i realized there's an opportunity here when i realized there is a longing there is a thirst i had no choice but to say this is a calling and to run away from this calling would be running away from maybe the purpose of my creation and the rest i didn't want to spend the rest of my life asking the question why why did i not live up to my calling so let me ask you a question because i i mean you and i know each other for quite quite a little while and we've spoken a lot about your particular product and approach like i i i love this area of like philosophy where we talk about the time that we're born the particular things that we're supposed to accomplish in our life i think that there's something very unique about what you do versus most of the other places that people go to for their inspiration and direction and i'd be really curious to hear color you have about what today's world needs and how you fill that role because you were sent at a particular moment in time uh to fulfill a particular thing yeah yeah yeah so it's i always take inspiration from that line in the mcgill in the book of esther which i always thought was an incredible line you know esther doesn't want to go into her husband to plead for the jewish people because she says my husband is a crazy drunken tyrant and uh if i go in without permission i come out with a head shorter and and mordechai gives her that one line that is historic he says meodeya in la escazo si gatla who knows dear esther if it's not for this moment that you have become queen all the years that you're here in the palace because she was a queen for many years it was all created all the circumstances were created for this moment this very risky moment of tremendous fear and ambivalence this is the moment when courage is needed because it will it will change history and when esther hears this esther hears this she gets it it cuts through her probably like a knife and she's i'm going i'm going in with a share of oddity of oddity if i perish i perish and the jewish world has that moment to thank for our continuous and successful existence and i think each and every one of us needs to be able to hear that powerful message that marduk told esther it's not a coincidence that i am here at this moment of history in this place with these gifts with these resources with these challenges with these traumas with these vices and with these virtues because of a unique mission that i have to play in the grand cosmic drama from sinai to mashiach until redemption and i think in in our situation we live in a world that is progressive progressing and transforming itself not decade by decade not even year by year now it's month by month and now it's week by week and now it's day by day i think the changes that we have experienced over the last 100 years are far more dramatic in scope and magnitude and depth than the way society has developed over thousands of years so the way things are changing in such a rapid fashion in areas of medicine biology science physics psychology spirituality health and geopolitical components mental health the issues of mental health pedagogy education and literally every area and every industry finances spirituality art and so forth and everything in between is dramatic and i think that judaism which is god's blueprint for humanity has to be able to compete on that level intelligent people are exposed today to incredible incredible powerful ideas in quantum physics and science and psychology if judaism remains much more primitive and underdeveloped there's no way that a real intelligent spiritually sensitive person can appreciate what yiddish guide is unless we can articulate a judaism that really is not just compete with other ideas but it's the blueprint of the creator that encompasses all of science all of physics all of psychology all that we know about cosmology astrophysics biology medicine and all of the progressive forces in our world judaism can anchor us and can give us a blueprint for world transformation to usher in a consciousness of organic oneness a consciousness of of infinity a consciousness that allows the world to experience itself for what it really is where we can cleanse the doors of perception and see reality for what it really is from a jewish perspective which is really a manifestation of divine energy and i think that things like today vulnerability honesty confronting our traumas our skeletons our demons which were not discussed some time ago dealing with our marriages with our children in a very vulnerable and honest way this is the only way you can really influence people today repression and suppression which we have been very good at for many many years and maybe served us well really is not working today so what i find is that the calling of our time is we really need to be able to spit out and confront our insecurities our fears our traumas our pettiness our divisions our fragment our sense of fragmentation people cannot live anymore with a narrow fragmented view of reality we are too sensitive spiritually and i think this age is a tremendous opportunity to introduce the infinite expansive view of judaism that can encompass all of us with all of our weaknesses with all of our virtues and all of our challenges can i i i love that answer so much and it was so beautifully i was i was so you essentially are at the precipice and if i'm sure you see yourself but i will put you on here that you have to essentially present a judaism that is so much broader and you are presenting a judaism that is so much broader than any of our ancestors ever had to deal with and from the lens of the fact i i work with lots of rabbis i work with lots of executives and i find that the thing that holds people back the most is this imposter syndrome who am i to do this oh my gosh i see that there's this need i know technically speaking i might have some but i'm not qualified i'm not ready yet nobody nobody taught me how to do this piece the way that i can help is just my little zone of genius that oh so what perhaps if you could share was there a moment in your life where you really experienced this like oh my gosh is there someone else to do this no how did you overcome that yeah excellent question i still suffer i still suffer from this syndrome and i'll tell you a little personal moment i had when my lecture started to become popular and i started to get a lot of invitations i called my older brother his name is rabbi simon jacobson i interviewed him for love he's awesome yeah and and i said simmon i'm having a crisis last night i spoke to an audience there were holocaust survivors in the audience there were people in their 80s in their 90s who have been in auschwitz who have been in birkenau who have been in bergen-belsen and matt house and who have lost their families where do i why why jacobson have the and the audacity a spoiled brat who grew up in new york our greatest crisis in life was when we lost the keys to the car or some other crisis where do i come preaching and pontificating and sharing wisdom with people who are triple my age who have been around the black nine times it's ridiculous it's absurd and he responded to me and i think these were wise words authentic words and he said why why you're right if you're going to be sharing your own brilliance your own experiences of life your own wisdom you should be embarrassed to not speak to holocaust survivors go home and speak to yourself or people who want to hear you but if you realize that you're not 30 years old or 25 years old whatever the age was at the time but you're really 3000 years old because you're trying to be a humble channel for the wisdom of torah for the divine wisdom that was articulated yes you're going to present it in your own way you're going to try to channel it through your brain and through your heart and through your cerebral and visceral resources but ultimately you're a humble student of toran you're an ambassador for your people and for the wisdom that the torah has given your people in the world over 3 300 years ago he says then you don't have to be embarrassed yes you are an imposter you are you are channeling the best and deepest spiritual wisdom of our heritage and the moment you can embrace that humbly then you're good and i still i still share this with myself almost every time i get up to speak every time every time you get up to speak you have that i'm not going to say every time i don't want to lie or exaggerate but almost every time especially when it's a serious talk i ask myself why in the world do i have this job couldn't i be a car mechanic okay i'm not really handy but i probably could have done some other stuff with my life and there's a combination of guilt and fear and insecurity and i really have nothing to say i'm in any way in a bad mood now it's like i just want to go to sleep i want to take a shower and go to i don't want to speak now to 4 000 people tell them how to live i don't know how they should live i'm trying to figure out how i should live these types of questions and dilemmas come up you know and they they come up very often and it's those moments where i have to breathe in very deeply take a deep breath and say yes i have my trauma i have my texas city i have my insecurities i have my dysfunction i have my things that i have to work on but right now i have an opportunity call it a coincidence or call it a calling right now another opportunity to touch the hearts of people and communicate to them a genuine message that i know at my core is real is authentic so instead of surrendering to despair and cynicism and cowardice and fear and all the other stuff that i can easily surrender to and then spend a lifetime figuring out why i'm suffering from all this i should rise to the occasion and realize that right now i have a choice to serve as a divine ambassador to god's children to be able to kindle sparks and uplift hearts and help them see themselves in ways that they may have not seen themselves before and i take the plunge so let me ask you a question because i j jake this is this is why i love talking with jacob about things because he asks about the person and i i'm not as nice of a guy i don't know what it is i i'm so focused on the problem and in our and the last the last question you were start you started talking a bit about the problem but robert today's world the problem and the person have yes well we're all yeah we haven't figured that out yet yeah there's no spirituality without psychology there's no philosophy without psychology there's no science without psychology no the basis of modern physics is the observer and his or her vantage point redefines reality matter is a derivative of consciousness consciousness is not a derivative of matter max planck father of quantum physics matter is a derivative of consciousness so if you're not addressing the person you're not addressing the reality the reality is based on the person this is why i need this is why i need jacob you know what would i be without him but the the i guess the question that i know i'll tell you with rabbis with i told this to a rabbi today i said the days of a rabbi getting up at the pulpit and giving this powerful cerebral well-packaged sermon i love it but those days are gone people want to see my heart they want to see my truth they want to know who i am so i people ask me like why you know like oh what synagogue you're part of i'm like i wanted to talk to jews so i didn't want to be in a synagogue i go outside of it but the question is just understanding i think you started alluding to the nature of the problem of where people are at today and what people need which is what you're sort of talking about now and what you're trying to provide but maybe let's i'd love to hear stepping back like what is broken and how do we fix it that's that's my world i'm a product guy i only think about what's the problem and how can we fix it and everything you're talking about is a part of it but you know we've spoken a bit about some of the stuff that you're working on through your platform what you're trying to create i'm talking maybe even a bit more macro and then we can go micro but like what's the problem that that you really worry yourself with and you alluded to it and how do we fix that i would identify two points out of many but i think two critical and pretty vital points one has to do about with judaism and one has to do with us and again the two are very much intertwined of course in terms of judaism i think that many of us cannot handle any more judaism that is very narrow and very petty and very small-minded and not necessarily small-minded in a bad way but very tribal very parochial people who are open who are longing who are sensitive who are spiritual and today there's many many such people people larger souls they need to feel that judaism has within it the blueprint or transformation of union of the universe ability to change the landscape of the planet to introduce a new consciousness if judaism cannot be articulated and taught and experienced in that way not just in the brain but in my gut i have a visceral experience of judaism as something that really allows me to operate on a level of consciousness that allows me and us individually and collectively to become real divine ambassadors the way god intended it at sinai when he gave the jewish people a mandate to change the world teach me how judaism can help me change me and as a result of that help change the world that has to be articulated it has to be a taught this is the judaism that requires deep spiritual awareness deep spiritual sensitivity seeing the macro and the micro fuse together because let's face it for many people judaism is very nitty gritty very technical it's all about ritual and details and nuances and you did this wrong and you have to do it this way which is all important it's part of the extraordinary mosaic but imagine you tune into one cell in the body and you fail to see that this cell is part of 80 trillion cells imagine you tune in to the gene but you don't realize that this in this genome you have the code the genetic code which is a blueprint the manual for the entire organism so in judaism when details are divorced from the big picture and the big picture is divorced from details we're missing really the living organism called yiddish called judaism so that's i think one level and then there's one other element and this is one that relates to mental health the way i put it is it's the story of the afikoman for hundreds of years we hide the afikoman at the beginning of the seder in a good we put it away in a good hiding place under the couch under a pillow in the bookcase and then our children at the end of the saturday come find the efficoman expose it reveal it and then we could finish the seder somehow i feel that everything that we have hidden away for decades for centuries for millennia our afikoman our children and our generation are bringing it to the fore and showing it to us and saying here it is instinctively we want to run to the hills we're like no no no afikoman has to stay hidden but our children our youth are telling us tatimami if you want to finish the seder if we want to get out of egypt if we want to emancipate ourselves and if we wanted to clear together next year in jerusalem we have to be able to look at our command we have to be able to face all of our fears all of our traumas all of our wounds all of our skeletons that we have magnificently suppressed and repressed over many many years today people are allergic allergic to a judaism that cannot encompass and serve as a guiding light of how i could confront my deepest mental health challenges individually and collectively the stigmas that once existed the inability to have honest conversations about our downers about our low points about those things that we're really not ready to face i think our children today are forcing us to look at afikoman and if we leaders teachers rabbis educators mentors pedagogues parents are not going to rise to the occasion and grow up and be ready to face all of our fears with compassion but with honesty we're going to fail a generation that's really longing for that type of fusion for that type of integration if i could if i could just ask a little bit about that last piece which is i think on the other side of the imposter syndrome once you see what's possible once you have this vision of what's available and then again to realize that a you have this very large platform but really the platforms that everyone on is like the tip of the iceberg because there's millions of people out there that are jewish and don't know this stuff and then there's billions of people out there that this would be so relevant for and this is like the healing salve that ultimately like we were kind of meant to bring to the world oftentimes it's like whoa so like what really is possible and so i see on the other side is when you start to get this image of like whoa that's a really big image how do you keep yourself sort of grounded and both thinking big while at the same time staying somewhat normal excellent excellent question you're such a sweet interviewer i really appreciate that it's great for me thank you it's really it's really a great question this uh i spoke with robert about this quite a few times listen whenever a person is blessed with with vision and with initiative and with creativity and with resources there is that very powerful frustration of not doing enough not achieving enough that good jewish guilt really i'm gonna go on vacation i'm gonna go to sleep i'm gonna sit down to eat lunch i'm gonna take a walk with my with my wife we got to change the world but i think i think i was telling once a hot salad guy who drives the jewish ambulances to the hospital i said you know you need a few minutes every day to learn torah and he said i don't have time i'm saving lives and i said you know there was a guy driving an ambulance he was driving a patient to the hospital the passenger says hey we got to stop for gas and he said we don't have time to stop for gas we have to save this patient and of course you know the end of the story they broke down on the highway the patient was not saved they could not get into the hospital to call another ambulance i said you know if you don't have the gas you cannot save anybody the only way we can affect the world is if we really really affect ourselves change always begins inside of me change is always very internal very real very authentic so if i say you know i don't have time for the small stuff i'm not talking to my kids i don't have my wife not time for me i don't have time for my community i'm busy changing the world it's neutral it's empty it's really laughable it's ridiculous because we're not talking here about slogans and commercials and you know cynical madison avenue statements that you know will just convince you to go spend more money on my product we're talking here about very authentic authentic awareness of each of us coming closer to our own innermost spiritual core if i am not a transformed person inside all my words all my statements all my sermons will ultimately prove to be youthful and ineffective so that's why focus always has to be how real is this how authentic is this what do my own relationships look like what does my relationship with god look like what does my relationship with my wife look like what's my relationship with my children look like what does my relationship look like on a day-to-day basis with the people i meet in the street or in my office or in the synagogue or in the supermarket and only when we really managed to conquer our own inner demons and skeletons and manage to defeat our own fears and to transcend our own insecurities and i'm talking about myself first and foremost then by osmosis can there be a ripple effect that's much more real and authentic there's no such a thing throwing in a rock into the water and expecting a ripple effect everywhere else besides in the space of the rock no right here is the first effect and then it can travel further and further so just a real nuclear reaction huh reiterate what what i'm hearing you say is that the way that you are so the the vision will will expand but what you're always primarily focused on is again saving you know putting on your oxygen mask first and how do you how do you live a life in integrity with yourself where you're getting the things that you need and if you have again because you you can know what you need so if you're able to take care of that and then if you're sort of plugged into your bigger picture and you're working on getting yourself out of your own way and just kind of stepping into it ultimately you can have faith that you will get to wherever you need to get to and have the effect that you're i think yes jacob but i think it's one step deeper than that if i'm plugging in if i'm trying to plug myself and humanity in through that source of divine electricity which is really the mission so then my inner work and world change is really one and the same thing because if we're plugging into a place of oneness that oneness includes me it includes you and it includes every human being living on this planet it certainly includes every jew and it really includes every living creature it includes the entire universe the oneness that pervades the entire universe the famous expression of moses anode mulvader there's nothing outside of divine oneness so if i'm really trying to plug in that oneness it will automatically right begin right here with me and if i'm not plugging into that place then not only will i'm not changing the world i'm not changing me so it's really you're trying to touch a place where we all become connected where we all become one and when we're aligned with that indivisible oneness then the macro and the micro confused in very powerful ways amazing robert i would have been a little abstract i know this is a little abstract but i think i think this is very authentic i love it robert do you want to fire the last question at the rabbi i apologize i dominated quite a quite quite a bit of time here what are your thoughts this is great i'm just taking it in i i would love to hear really give you an open forum to maybe maybe finish it off but let me frame it a bit so the idea of this podcast is what we call change makers and the idea is to highlight somebody who's affecting change and what drives them and what their mission is trying to do and inspire other peoples to try to do the same in their own life i think the last question really helped i to me concretize this idea that you know there's the interchange and then there there's the outer change and they're probably one in the same and normally the things that i struggle with or the things that i think about and that i'm worried about are the things that i want to impress on the world as well once i do a better job of refining that within me so maybe taking that sort of idea i'm curious if there's a message that you have as it relates to you as a change maker that you can then superimpose to everyone else to take with them beautiful great questions you guys we should hang out more often everywhere anytime there's a beautiful meditation that every jew says right when we wake up first moment we open our eyes before you check your phone remind them remember that before you brush your teeth there is that mantra called modani which is basically i thank god for giving me back my soul to be able to live another day but the last words are strange great is your faith great is your faith what am i telling god that he's a faith and he's that he has faith that he believed in god thank you what does this really mean it really comes from the torah moses says at the end of his life in deuteronomy of god is a god of faith what type of faith does god need i mean if he's god he probably knows that he exists do i need faith that i exist i need faith that god exists what does it mean he's a god of faith so one of the most earliest talmudic texts is called the c3 it predates the mission and the talmud one of the old madrashik oral interpretations of the torah and the rabbis say an unbelievable statement you know what it means god is a god of faith he had faith in his world and he created it and for me what that statement means is that very often in life what judaism is telling you is god believes in you even when you don't believe in yourself and even when you don't believe in him in fact i would say what does it really mean to have faith in god it doesn't only mean to believe that god exists and if i don't believe that god exists what's going to happen he's going to melt he's going to revert into nothingness if your two-year-old child says tati you're stupid you're not my tati you're i hate you okay what happened you melt you say oh he's so cute why is it that when we say we don't believe in god god is really offended and the answer is because what it really means to believe in god is to believe me i believe that i am manifestation of infinity to believe that i was conceived in love to believe that i'm not a random mutation to believe that i'm not an infinitesimal insignificant values blimp on the surface of infinity it means to believe that my life is purposeful and meaningful and that i am an ambassador of love and light and hope and healing and authenticity and wisdom and redemption so the first thing we say as jews in the morning is thank you for giving me another day rabba great is your faith in me to be able to get out of bed and to stand up and to know whatever comes to whatever may come today to my doorstep any curveball any conversation encounter business meeting any mood any thought that may enter into my head to be able to have that underlying paradigm that even when i don't believe in myself god has faith in me faith in my goodness and my purity and my truth and my idealism in my core that is untarnished invincible indestructible that creates a different type of day and this is what i would share i would i i would share with my constituents with my students with my brothers with my sisters with my friends and that is even when you're not believing in yourself that's fine but remember that god believes in you wow well that that's a really really fantastic message to end off i know you're probably one of the unique people that are able to end off in a message that both summarizes i think yourself and your mission and the message that you want to give to other people so that is a really fantastic message we really appreciate you joining us and spreading the love and the light and all the good stuff thank you very much my honor and privilege thank you for the opportunity this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at www.theyoushiva.net donate