Rabbi Joey Haber - Revealing the light of Shavuot

Good evening. Welcome everyone to tonight's very special shar presented by Kazak Young Queen's Valley. I want to thank you Queen's Valley for hosting tonight's event Marcus Ruben Paris and the entire leadership of the Shul. Let's give a round of applause to Young Queen's Valley. Today we a very special topic revealing the light of shuis that everyone's looking to prepare for shuis only a few days away and what better way to hear from reverber to give us to to prepare us and what we could do from right now until shu is to get ready for this this great coming up and is all about talking about revealing the light of of shu kazak is all about revealing the light sharing the light um to the Jewish world at large organizing different sharing programs in different communities like tonight and to give inspiration as well as a major focus on after school programs and Sunday school programs in over 20 different locations and since 2017 has transferred over 1800 students from public school to yeshiva so of course if anyone knows a friend family member relative has children in public school for help them give give him a Jewish education tonight's very special she is being dedicated by the Mermaly family by the free family in memory of Jacob Yoseph and Natan Nata Zan Mr. Jack Friedman who was one of the pillars of the Queen's community. He was kind, compassionate, and always gave his time to to each person. And he greeted everyone with a smile and a firm firm handshake. And he was somebody who not only supported Yeshivas and Mostos, but each individual whether in the United States, in France, in Israel. He was a person who was a self-made made a self-made man. And he was he was an Oscan. Someone took an aras forest. and um and um he was a person of tremendous caliber and integrity and he's been already 20 years since his nishama was turned to Hashem and people still reme remember him so fondly for for his smile and the mention of his name just makes people smile and may his nama have an aliyah may continue to work for the and um to to introduce um I I think um think I think the The the topic tonight is you could just you could just call it revealing the light. You know why? Because Rabbi Habber, he doesn't only reveal the light. You can find maybe before like Shu is, but throughout the throughout the entire year, he's inspiring tens of thousands of people literally around the world. And that's why that's why there's so many people here tonight because he's u he's not only he's not only revealing the light to the to the wide masses, but the reason why so many people grasp to hear his every single word is because he cares about each and every individual whether it's before this year, after this year, you could just see the sincerity and the care he has for every single person. So without further ado, let's call on Joey Gabber. Robbie, thank you very much for that very warm introduction and you know we've done a lot of things together and one of the beautiful things is audac is a tremendous amount of the work that you do. Just think about that 1,800 kids. Did you hear that number? 1,800 kids that were in public school and that went to yeshiva because of Kazak. That's that's not a kid. That's 1,800 families. That's 1,800 kids who on average could have 20, 30 grandchildren. It's an unbelievable number. It's an unbelievable number. So, Hashem should continue give you guys the kak to be able to spread Torah in these speeches and these lectures that you do so often um by so many different beautiful wonderful rabbis and at the same time also there's a that you're doing for these children and and these families should also never stop. So, it's an honor to be here tonight and you know when we say the light of shabat there's always so many different it's very broad topic so I can do whatever I want. No, don't you agree? So, I don't know how he turned it into me being the light. I'm not sure. That's not my topic, but this is and I thank you very much for for being here. What time was this speech called? Why are you laughing? I'm known for a lot of good things. Being on time is not one of them. So, it's okay. It's Jewish time. He said it's called Syrian time. It's a whole another level. Okay. We have I don't know if you know how it works with Syrians. We send out an invitation. and it says on it 4:00. We tell everyone that we really mean 6:00 and we start at 7:00. So that's how it goes. So here's what I'd like to talk about today and it's going to lead us into a message about Shabot. Although initially it's not going to start there. What I'd like to talk about today is the noise of life. I don't know if you've ever been in these conversations where they're just talking about a lot of noise. It'll start with, oh, someone will say at the table, maybe you'll be at a table and there's a few people and someone say, oh, did you hear so and so, sorry, she's getting, I heard she's getting engaged. And someone else will say, no, I'm not sure she's getting engaged. I know she's dating. Seriously, I don't think she's ready to get engaged yet. And then someone else will say, but you know, her sister's married for like four years and doesn't have any kids. I feel so bad for the sister. Someone say, no, no, it's really five years. I don't know if you realize this. Okay. And someone will say it must be so hard for her because she comes from a family of so many kids you know some people having so many kids today it's ridiculous you know you know Ra she has she's married seven years she has six kids already is that ridiculous and must be so hard for her neb I can't even believe it and and you know and by the way did you hear you're talking about Ra sister Freddy she's you heard she her marriage is difficult she's getting divorced and someone else is saying no no she's not getting divorced she's trying to work on it They're still trying. Have these conversations? Anyone ever in these conversations? And and it just it just doesn't stop. And then they say, "Oh, by the way, this divorce is an epidemic. You know, this one's also getting divorced and this one's also getting divorced. By the way, the other one's getting divorced. Her mother's not so well. Did you hear her mother? She's not doing well." And then we have these conversations and they're just going on and on about so many different things. Here's my goal tonight. My goal tonight is I want to get to a point where I don't care. I don't know. And I don't need to know. I don't care. I don't know. And I don't need to know. That's where I want to stand in these conversations. But in order to understand this, explain this clearly, I want to talk about one of the most important parts of Judaism. The way I know it's one of the most important parts is that we we say Amida every day. And in the Amida, we have 13 of request, three of praise, three of thanks, and in the middle 13 of requests. This what we're going to talk about today is the first one. says the dot knowledge is so important that it's the first thing we ask for when we ask Hashem for things because with dot you could do anything without dot you can't do anything what is dot so let's look at the that is this first we ask for item you graciously Give person and then you give him and please give us wisdom and is deep understanding and so you started with that and you ended with you ended with that. What is that? So there are two opinions. One opinion is that dot is basic knowledge. That means knowing that this is a podium is dot. Is this podium? This is a podium. There's dot. This is a mic. There's dot. That there are people in this room. That's do that. And then others say the grass says that is like the highest level of understanding. So which one is it? I think the answer is it's both. What do that is is that it starts with that you see basic physical things and then as you develop with and what happens is that even deeper things become as clear to you as basic things. That means as you start to grow in your wisdom you start to have a clarity in life that's things that other people might say are complicated other people might see are deep. You're advanced. You're experienced. You're knowledgeable enough to see it clearly. That something that's complicated for you could be as clear as this being a mic. That deep things are clear to you like simple things. So you give us basic knowledge. basic knowledge and then it builds and through that building it gets to the point where even deeper things complicated things complex things are also as clear to me as that that's the clarity that we want to achieve when we're looking towards matanor and we're looking towards to be able to be that nation that receives the Torah. The purpose of the Torah is it gives us such great clarity. You know, I just was on the phone and whenever I drive to places, I always have it booked with phone calls and people with their stories and their problems. And at this point, you learn enough Torah and you have enough Torah behind you and enough wisdom from great rabbis, things that to the person the other side of the phone might be complicated to you is clear. That's what the higher level of dot is trying to achieve. The says dot is so great is put between the two names of Hashem. What's the key? It says then it says Hashem and it says in between the two because the point of is it doesn't mean it's in between the two names of Hashem says the Mahasha and you'll get our point. Kel is Hashem's name of judgment. Hashem is Hashem's name of mercy. That means being able to balance those two. Hashem's judgment and his mercy. Being able to have a clarity of how things are supposed to come together and a clarity of the mind. If you can achieve this level of dot, if you can achieve this level of clarity, then you get to step number one. I don't care. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I know it's happened to me that sometime a conversational start and maybe my wife was only talking about my niece and she's dating, but she should probably get engaged and then I don't know, she went on did go on enough date, she did go on enough dates and we're going back and forth and all of a sudden I'll stop and I say, "One second, I don't want to care about something I don't care about. I don't care. She can get engaged whenever she wants. next week, next year, 10 years from now, I don't care. Why am I discussing this? How am I spending actual time on this conversation? I don't care. I don't care. It's not my business. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. But I think because I think I'm close to them, because I think I love them, then that means I have to care. It's not true. Just because I'm close to them, just because I love them, doesn't mean I have to have any opinion about them. And I told, in fact, this happened recently. One of my nieces, whatever. I told my wife, I said, "Send me the memo when she gets engaged. I don't want to know anything before that. Which date, how date, the boy?" I don't care. Send me the memo. Tell me tonight. I need to bring a tie. I mean, I pretty much live in a tie, but bring a tie cuz tonight there's an engagement party. Tonight there's a part and I'll show up. I'll find the time. I'll show up. I don't care. What are we talking about? Have you ever been in these conversations that you don't care? And you step back and you say, "Did I really just talk about this? Did I really just debate this?" When there's a clarity and when you have dot, you start to realize these are not things that I care about. These are not things that I want to spend my time about. These are not things that I'm going to get all worked up about. I don't care. This one, by the way, this one's expecting. I don't care. No, no disrespect. Invite me to the bris. I'll see if I can make it. I probably can't make it to the bris, but I don't care. I don't care. This one's going out of business. I don't care. This one has lost his job. I feel bad for him. If he needs a dollar, I'll give him one. Otherwise, I don't care. Why are we talking about this? Why are we getting busy with this? Why are we dissecting this? Here's what I realized. When it's a clear blue sky and my life is doing good, do you ever have days that your life is good? Yes. A lot of them. A lot of them. Oh, bar. I guess I asked the right person. Other people might not say so, but I'm glad you're good. So you have days that life is good where just you feel like I'm doing okay. My family I'm good. The weather's nice outside. Weather helps by the way more than we admit. Yes. The weather is nice outside. It's a clear day. I'm doing good. So when I'm doing good I don't care about these things and these things don't phase me. So when um that means if I am caring about these things so that means I'm so neb that I really want to discuss this like my life is so weak that I need to get involved into your life and into your junk and into your stuff into your things. Did my life get so bad that now all of a sudden I care about this nonsense. When my life was good I for sure didn't care. I I I don't want to worry about your dating. I really don't want to worry about your your engagement. I really don't want to worry about your marriage. I don't care. So, did my life get so bad that I really I'm talking about this? I want clarity. I want do that. I want the ability to see through things and be involved in the things that matter to me and not be involved in the things that don't. There's a talks about different ages and it says you know with the Mishna and so on and it says when you're 50 you're ready for I'm looking around the room there's not so many people here over 50 I don't think right you're you're pretty confident I like it you're 50 and you're proud of Thank God. Thank God. Phenomenal. It's true. You should be. So, what does it mean when you become 50, you're ready for it? So, says like this. Now, don't take this the wrong way. He says the average person, especially back in the day, you're supposed to live 70 years. Now, some people here are going to take that as a curse. Now, you're going to live much more than that. If you're like 65, you're going to go much more than 70. But that's our life is 70 years. So therefore, if life is seven years, it says each day, each decade is like one day of the week. Which means when you're 50, that's Thursday. Now you're over 50. Now you're getting into Friday. You got it? That shouldn't scare you. That's a beautiful thing because what's Friday? Friday is the day that you start to let go of haz and you start get ready for this life, this Shabbat which is with Hashem. He says a person who's over 50 should be getting to the point that they don't care about some of the nonsense of and because of that they have a clarity that they're not consumed with the gossip and the talk and if they have that clarity they could give they could give advice they have a wisdom and that's what we're trying to achieve. If you're hearing the noise, and you have to realize something about our life that we're in right now. Our life that we're in right now, we have so much more noise than people ever had before. Do you understand this? Do you agree with this? You've been my helper today. Do you agree with this or not? And let me explain to you why. Because back in the day, a hundred years ago, you lived on a farm. Yes, maybe. But let's let's go with it. Just Okay. Okay, let's say you lived in a village. You lived in a little village. There were like 200 families in the village and you knew the 200 families in the village and you knew every single one of them well. You had a wedding. You invited the whole village, right? There was a brisk the whole village came. So if something was going on with one of those 200 people in the village, then you knew about what was going with every one of the 200 people in the village. Today our village is thousands of people because our neighborhoods are tremendous. Our contacts are tremendous. How many contacts you have on your phone? Every person who's a contact on your phone is part of your village. And now we have the media is dramatic. So now every single day there's something going on with someone else in my village. So I can be consumed with noise because there's so many more people in my village. So in the old days my village was 200 people. Today the average village might be 2,000 people. It might even be more. It might be 5,000 people. So when you all sudden realize that so now I'm going to talk about every one of these people that is such a clouded life. The do that knowledge wisdom that's attained through our Torah is the clarity to be able to say I'm old enough. I'm smart enough. I don't care. But let me get to the next step is I don't know. Again, you ever been in any of these conversations that I'm referring to or am I the only guy who talks these conversations? You've been in them. You have you been in them? Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Yes. You've been in these conversations ever? Have you been? Good. Not really good, but good. So, you've been in these conversations. I want to tell you something about all these conversations. Something I noticed about all of them. We have no clue what we're talking about. We have no clue what we're talking about. You have people sitting there and they're talking. You You don't at all know what you're saying. Recently, I was involved with a couple that was getting divorced. So, both sides are trying to convince me that they're the right one. The boy, the girl, they're the right one. They're the right one. Whatever. And then I sat back and I said, I realized something. I don't know anything about anybody's marriage. I talk about marriages. Of the people in my village, I've spoken about plenty of their marriages. I spoke about his marriage, her marriage, their marriage. I have no clue. If you ask me whose marriage I know about I think I know about my parents' marriage, I think I know about my marriage. I think. And I think I know about my kids' marriages. I don't know any of my siblings marriages and I'm very close to my siblings, but I don't really know what goes on. So you think I'm going to have a clue what I'm talking about? You know, I heard she was right. I heard she I heard really he's impossible. You know what you're talking about? Maybe he's impossible cuz she made her nuts. I have no idea. You don't know what you're talking about. So literally when you're talking, it's not just you shouldn't be caring. You're a fool. You're talking about what's right and what's wrong and who's right and who's wrong. You have no clue. There's no way to know. It's impossible to know. You'd have to literally park yourself in their living room for 10 years in order to know. You have no way for you to know. So, what are you saying? And so often people are trying to guess what people are feeling. Oh, she's miserable. Oh, he's desperate. Oh, he's upset. You don't know what you're talking about. Oh, he's taking it hard. Oh, no, he's not taking it so hard. You don't know what he's saying. So, not only don't you care, you don't even know what you're talking about. And again, I mean this with the most respect, but you don't know what you're talking about. That same Mishna, that same says 18, you get married. Say amen. Okay. and benim l when you're l or should I say ask l got it whichever one you need what does it mean to to run to race so the ask what do you mean you say if you want to say to run say loot what does it mean usually means like to run after something is someone who's running after someone to kill him what does it So salant says this. He says means this. When a person's 18, they want to be married. If they get married at 18, it feels relatively easy. He says, and this might be then not necessarily 18 is the time now because we've been talking about boys. Most boys not getting married 18 now. He says, "But once it's two years after that, there's already a desperation." And now, I don't mean 20, but I mean two years after whatever time, anytime someone of these are getting married at 20, at 22 they're desperate. Some of these are getting married at 22, at 24, they're desperate. Some of these are getting married at 18, at 20 they're desperate. That's just how it works. Someone's getting married at 24, 26, they're desperate. So, what happens is that, and it's saying that after a couple years, the person is off. They're getting crazy. And it happens to be true. A lot of boys or girls that are not married that want to be married and they're in the para for a few years, they get nuts. It gets them crazy. So now you you think you know, oh no, they're fine. They're not fine. What are you talking about? You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know what they're feeling. You don't know. You can't tell. You can't tell from their face. Some people are good actors. Some are not good actors. You have no idea what you're talking about. So why are we having this whole conversation? So my point here so far is this that if we want to be people with dot, if we want to be people with clarity, if we want to be people with vision, want to be people with wisdom, if we want to be people that give that has everything the Torah has to offer, if you want to literally see the light, you have to know how to shut out the noise and not care and realize that you don't know. You have to be able to shut out the noise. I'll tell you where I learned how little you know. I once saw an exhibit on the media. I was a little kid. I learned to stand on yes as a bakar. So it was maybe I was in ninth grade and we had all Shabas Shabas Khan and my parents took us to a children's museum in Staten Island. There was a children's museum. I don't think it was a Jew wasn't a Jewish museum. A children's museum on Staten Island. I doubt it is there anymore. Remember this old building? Oh, is there? You don't know. So again, you're the helper here. So if you don't know, right? And and and you're listening to my class like you don't care either, right? Okay, good. So anyhow, so now this building, old building, I remember it had like a it had like all these paper plates clipped together made into a big dinosaur that was like two stories high. I don't know why I remember it, but that's what I remember. And then they had an exhibit that was one of the best lessons I ever learned in my life. You want to understand the whole media? This one exhibit will help you understand everything that goes on in the media. Right? The media today has got a lot of different stories and versions. This one little exhibit showed the whole thing. They had a little screen, little TV back in the day, the fat ones, and they showed you a scene. Was a twominut scene. Here was the scene. There was a white man, well-groomed, nice Armani suit, designer shoes, walking without ate sh. And he's walking on the sidewalk. There's houses on one side and there's parked cars on the other. And he's walking on the sidewalk, minding his own business, just walking right along. Clear day, everything's fine. And all of a sudden, from between two parked cars comes an African-American man who shoves him against the wall. And you're like, "Oh, wow. This is so clear. You see what you're seeing? This is obviously this man is being mugged. He's a man. He's a wealthy looking man. He has at the shake case and he has African-American man who's smugging him, right? Is that the scene? Yes. That's the scene. Just Yes. You guess. Okay. Good. Just Okay. You didn't know you came here tonight to work. Like, okay. Thank you. And then they show you the scene again. White man at that shase. He's wearing a designer Ammani suit, designer shoes. He's wellgroomed hair. He's walking with his his briefcase again. He's walking on the sidewalk. Same exact scene. And it's the same. You're literally seeing the scene for the second time. It's got parked cars on the left. He's got a house on the right. And he's walking minding his own business. And all of a sudden, from behind the two from behind, between the parked cars comes an African-American man who shoves him against the wall. But this time, you see the scene from afar. And you see that on top of the house there was a bundle of bricks that were rolling off the roof right to where the white man was walking. The African-American man wasn't mugging him. He was saving his life. And the point is he saw the same scene the first time he saw it one way, the second time he saw it another way. That's why sometimes Fox News has one story, CNN has another. And you know it's the same scene. They're just showing to you different ways. That's how it works. And it's the same thing are true with the girl side of the story and the boy side of the story. One of them showing you this way, one is showing you that way. It's impossible for you to know. It is impossible for you to know. There's no way for me to know what's going on in someone else's house. There's no way for me to know what's going on in someone else's mind. So if someone tells you, "Oh, this girl, you know, she's not married. She's desperate or she's not desperate or she's upset. She's not upset. I don't know. This person in their marriage is bad. It's not bad. They're getting divorce. It's his fault. The guy's crazy. And you know, I know the guy's crazy because his father was crazy. There's no way to know. There's no way to know. So, what are we talking about here? Oh, this person, they're not handling it. They are handling. Oh, they're doing great. There's no way to know. There's no way to know. So, when we're having these conversations, they really come from foolishness. They really come from having no understanding of how life actually works. Because if you have any understanding of how life actually works, sometimes the innocent person is actually the villain and sometimes the aggressive person is actually the good guy. Many times, many times in any story you're talking about. So if you want dot, if you want the balance that comes with having dot, you have to be able to not care about things and you have to be able to step back and realize most things you're talking about you don't know about. So stop talking about it. Mishnah says when you're 40 you have bina. What is bina? Bina means an understanding. And I would say the greatest display is of understanding is to show that you don't understand. Let's realize there are certain things that are my domain and a lot of things are not my domain. I don't understand. I don't know. So what am I talking about? Why am I debating this? Why am I discussing this? I can't tell if I'm if the scene is this scene or that scene. Oh, so and so told me that person told me the CNN view. They don't have the Fox view. Which brings me to one more is I don't need to know. What I don't need to know means is for some reason people love information and they believe that their status is determined by how much information they have. Have you ever been in a conversation like this? Someone will say, lady will say, "Did you hear so and so is expecting?" And someone else will say, "Yeah, she told me two weeks ago." And the fact that I was told two weeks ago means now I am now a person of status because I found out two weeks ago, right? And someone else is say, "Oh, you know, so and so is dating. Oh, I knew they called me for a for a reference. Now I'm a person of status." And some people have this need to know things, things that they completely don't care about. Because when that woman who's expecting has a baby, they don't even want to go to the bris. But for some reason, they need to know. You don't need to know. If you have any dot, if you have any wisdom, if you have any clarity, you don't need to know. If you if you understand what life is supposed to be about, you don't need to know. So like as if if you know if you you heard. No, I didn't hear. It's okay. I didn't hear. I wasn't the first person to be told and I'm confident enough to know it doesn't change my status as a person. I didn't become a lesser person because I wasn't told. So when we're talking about information and we act like it's so important like it matters so much. So much of this has become noise in our life that we're having conversations and we're spending our time and we're spending our energy on things we don't care about, we don't know about, and we don't need to know about. And if we had enough doubt to realize this, we'd realize that these are conversations that are completely irrelevant. And you know, we were given we were live, we were born in an age that life is supposed to be so much easier because we have the car and the car that pretty much drives itself and the microwave that cooks itself and the phone that buys things by itself. At least that's my wife says. She says not her fault. It bought it by itself. All these things that pretty much happen by itself. Our life, we should have so much more time. We should have so much more time. Why don't we have so much more time? Why don't we have the time that we so obviously should have? If you would have gone to that person from her village of the 200 people and you would have told them what the world is going to have in 2025, that person would have said, "Wow, you must be doing great things. You must be spending so much of your life on such important things." Imagine if you told that person from 100 years ago living in that 200 person village, you told that person, "No, no, no." You're right. We should be. But we don't because we care about stuff. We're talking about things we don't know nothing about. And we need to know things. And because of that, we're on phones, we're on chats, we're in conversations with of things that completely don't matter. But somehow in our head, we got ourselves to act like they do. This same Mishna that I keep referencing told us 40 has bina which is an understanding which means what you don't understand. 50 is which is a clarity of the things you don't care about. It says when 60y old now I don't mean it insulting. It's just what the Mishna says. What does it mean 60 year old? 60-year-old I think means that to get to a certain point in your life where you have to be an adult. You have to step back and let go of all of these things. Because if we're going to live life the way it was intended to be lived, so much of this stuff is the dumbest, biggest waste of time that's not even hard to let go of. If you tell me it's hard to let go of an addiction, I understand. It's hard to let go of of of you know obsession. I understand what's this. This is nothing. In two years from now, you think you're going to be able to go over to someone and say, "By the way, you know that baby that was born, I was the first to know." No one care. What are you What are we talking about? No one cares. So, if you could have once you get a certain stage in your life, you start to realize these are irrelevant things. These are completely unimportant things. How do I become that kind of adult? The beauty of the Torah, the light of the Torah is the clarity of the Torah. The beauty of the Torah is the ability to navigate through things. The beauty of the Torah is to realize that a lot of why the world cares about these conversations is it's a world that has no Torah. So a world that has no Torah has to fill it up with all this stuff. But that world is nothing to do with you. That world is not the same as you. Just because they doing it is not an excuse for you. For them they're excused. They're going to come before Shay. Hashem is going to say, "Why'd you waste your time?" They're going to say, "I had nothing else to do." But then Hashem's going to ask you, "Why'd you waste your time?" And that answer is not going to come fly. Hashem's going to say, "I gave you the light. I gave you the clarity. I gave you wisdom. I gave you richness. I gave you importance and you spent it on that you really had. You're an important person. You're a good person. When you were confident, you know, you didn't need it. So all a sudden your life got so bad that you have to talk about everybody else. Is that really where we got? And you're not 10 anymore. You're not 15. You're smart. You're an adult. I want to tell you some a description an image from the Gimrin that to me it was very powerful and it describes the image of what the ultimate Jew looks like and I believe that this Gimaran if you're reading it quickly you would have just read the line it's one line it's not a whole story if you read this one line in the gimar if you read it if you realize see the image in your head of what it is and what it means, you'd start to see, wow, that's what a Jew looks like. The Gimar is talking about these three great men. These three great men were thrown into the fire. They were made of fire. They didn't want to bow down. They didn't want to commit a sin. And they were thrown into the fire. And of course, we know that they lived. Says the gim. It says in Aramaic, so I won't say the word. It says to show us the greatness of Torah, the greatest of Torah is a person a real bad Torah. Even when he's thrown into the fire, he's wearing his rabbitical clothing. You got that word? Even when he's thrown into the fire, he's wearing his rabbitical clothing. That explains the whatever rabbis or great men wore in that time, if it was a robe, if it was a suit and a tie, a hat, they wore it as they were going to the fire. What is the lesson of this? The lesson of this is that if a person's a true benra, they carry themselves a certain way. They view themselves a certain way every single day. easy days and difficult days, successful days and not successful days. They carry themselves with a certain aristocracy, a certain dignity, a certain class, a certain clarity. And here these men were going into the fire knowing they would be thrown into the fire. They were pretty much believing they're going to die, but they were going to go in the right way, not flustered, not nervous. So many of us can be in a dumb conversation and we're nervous and we're flustered and we're gossiping and we're sharing stories and we're annoyed. How'd they not tell me? I thought we were close. I spoke that yesterday. How'd you not tell me? Think of they're being thrown into the fire and they carry themselves with the dignity of a great person. The Torah is not just something you learn. The Torah is something that gives a clarity of the mind and an energy to life. The light of the Torah is one that lights up everything that's in your life. So if we're going to be the nation that accepts the Torah, if we're going to be the nation that's ready for matan torah, we're going to be the nation that has the right approach to Torah, we're going to be a nation that's able to shut out the noise and realizes that most of what I'm talking about I don't care about. So much of what I'm talking about I have no clue about. And so much of what I think I need to know, I couldn't care less if I know. Instead, I want to focus on my life. I want to focus what I could produce. I want to focus on what I can accomplish. I want to focus on what I could learn. I want to focus on what I can give. I want to focus on what I can be. That's what a Torah life is centered on. That's what it means to be in the light. Living in the light means living in a way where your life is clear, your life is focused, your life is purposeful, your life has meaning. The world doesn't know that. said the world's on every chat known to men. 80% of which don't matter. You ever go on a chat and then you don't go in any chats? Your village doesn't have any. No chats. Not even texting chats or not WhatsApp chat. You have texting chats? No, just a text. Just one text back and forth. Good. I told you you're the person with the wisdom who should be giving this speech. Um, you ever see these texting chats? So, I have a flip phone. So, the way it works in a flip phone is if you're on a texting chat, it's not like convenient cuz what happens is you just see the last text. So, now there could be 25 texts up and I was busy. So, I didn't see a 25 text up. So, someone's saying no way. So, I'm like, oh, no way to what? So, I start scrolling to figure out what the no way is. And I go all the way up to the top and I'm like, that's what we were talking about. That was the story. Like I I just scrolled and was trying to I was trying to figure out Rashi and Tyus what they meant. It was that 80% of the time you get to mark my words. 80% of the time you see the conversation on the chat, it was completely stuff. either you don't care about or don't know about or don't need to know about. But we somehow got convinced to live in a world where all this stuff matters. The dot the wisdom of the Torah. The Gimar says one last line and I'll end with a story. Gimar says dot is so great. What time is our beat supposed to be? Is it like 10 minutes ago? Yes. Whenever I'm done. Okay. One last one last quote and one last little story. says dot is so great that it's as if you built the beta mikdash because the beta mikdash is also put between two names of hashem. So why is that like building the b mikdash? The answer is the b mdash is how the sheh not rests on this earth. If you have that, if you have clarity, if you're living with this kind of light, if you're able to cut away all of this fat, then literally the rest with you. You're learning, you're producing, you're giving, you're changing, you're smart. You're a whole different person. Let me give you one last little story of an example of that. And with this, I'll conclude. There was a woman who came to the rabbi. I don't know how long ago this was. She says, "You know, Rabbi, I'm getting more and more religious. My husband is getting less and less religious. I don't know what to do." She rabbi says, "What does he do?" She says, "On Friday night, he makes kush and he right away goes to watch TV." Rabbi, I don't know if I should even stay married. Do you think maybe rabbi maybe I should maybe I should get divorced. The rabbi says, "What do you say he does? He makes kush." She says, "Yeah." He says, "You realize he makes kush?" She says, "What's the rabbi say?" He makes kadesh. He picks up a cup and he, it says, "And he sanctifies Hashem's name." Do you realize how beautiful that is? Do you realize how beautiful that is? She said, he says to her, "Sometimes you need to see the flame and ignore the smoke." So she's confused. She goes home. Her husband says, "So what did the rabbi say?" Like, "Did he say we should get divorced? Maybe he was hoping. I'm not sure." She says, "The rabbi said you're at Sadi." He says, "What?" He says, "The rabbi said you're at Sadik." And so that Friday night, the husband made kush just a little longer and then went to the TV. The next Friday night, he said kush and he stayed by the meal and then he went to the TV. The next Friday night he stayed at the table. He never went to the TV. Maybe the Knicks were out of it at that point. I don't know. And before you know it, he became a full benra. And he went to the rabbi. He said, "Rabbi, how'd you know?" He said, "I saw what you didn't realize you already had." And I said to myself, that rabbi, the beauty and the clarity of that rabbi, there's some people who would say, "Oh, your husband right after the kdush. Did they really?" There are some people who would judge. Other people would gossip like, "What's he watching?" And they'd be and it'd be so foolish. And then there's wisdom and there's clarity. And ladies and gentlemen, as we countd down to matan torah with a little over 10 days left, as we countdown, we don't just we have the Torah already. What are we yearning for? We're yearning for a life that's lived the way the Torah wants us to live. Live with realizing that so much of the noise I either don't care about or I don't know about or I don't need to know about. And I want to have the wisdom of a 60-y old or the intelligence of a a 50y old or even the understanding of a 60-year-old. And I don't want to sit talk and debate and discuss. Instead, I want to live a life with dot. I want to live a life with clarity. I want to live a life with focus and productivity. And if I'm living that kind of life, then I'm living with the light. Thank you.