CHAZAQ's Torah Talks #11: Rabbi Menachem Nissel - The Power of Teffillah.

welcome welcome welcome to yet another edition of tuesday's timely tour talks kazakh's amazing tuesday program tonight we have a very special guest a very dear friend of ours all the way from the holy land for marriages welcome rabbi how you doing very well thank you thank you rubio it's so exciting to be here and to actually see you at least using this incredible medium cool zoom i i really have to say that i sit here in my little rabbi cave here in your shalom or hakeers and every time i see the word hazak come up my whatsapps come on my email if it's a big smile you have this i don't know how you do it literally across the world impacted so many people all i can say to you from your shelimer kurdish hashem hashem should give you all the strength all the co-op to go on and continue doing exactly what you're doing but just like 10 times more keep up the impact thank you so much amazing wow rabbit okay we'll end the show right over there wow thanks for the thank you for the inspiration rabbi tonight we're going to be discussing uh the you're you're safer your amazing book are you the older rick shea lay woman and phila oh you have it right over there i actually remember when the rabbit was in new york speaking for hazak you gave me a copy and i believe i gave it to my wife so i appreciate it and it's amazing so we're gonna jump straight into it with your permission rabbi we're ready absolutely okay great amazing so can you please describe the impact and the importance of yourself in the amazing state of the amazing book rick shaylav so first of all thank you for asking that great question i actually started teaching tefillah when i was in my late 20s i was teaching in a seminary and i had a vision that the purpose of teaching te fila would be one thing and one thing only basically what i wanted to do was create some kind of a service where i would introduce the students to a kurdish borough i felt and i still feel very strongly that people feel that they live in a godless world they don't see a kurdish in their lives and just getting familiar with your sidor and knowing not just what to do but how to talk to hashem i felt that that oh my gosh okay why are people spending so much money on therapy tela is cheaper than therapy and it's much more effective so this is what i wanted to do this was my great mission in life is to introduce hashem to all the beautiful the mother out there what happened was is because my audience was was ladies i was teaching gumarat to the boys and to fill up to the girls they were sending me questions in the halacha and i had no idea they were asking me questions i never thought about quran what happens if i go to the synagogue and i come late what should i do should i jump in weather again should i catch up what happens if a different nusa i had no idea so i went with all my questions to quarter off scheinberg so this is i wrote them down and after about two or three years i had this teeny little booklet it never occurred to me that this should be a safari this should be a book but what happened was is that after a while i got bigger and bigger i said no this has to be done properly and i realized that in our generation there is a be kush from the ladies to know exactly what to do so many of them do not come from homes that were the mother that gave them a sarah these are vale they did not know what to do and that's how the book actually developed thank god hashem gave me a lot of seattle ishmael and the book was a bestseller and it was terrifically mad until this very day um people think of me as the you know the rickshaw is the man that sells this safer that helps women with prayer amazing rabbi wow wow wow rabbi i know that you're a being your rabbis were rabbi moshe shapiro and rap slowly will be a memory is there one tiny teaching of theirs that we should all take to the heart from these especially for our times rabbi so so first of all you know really to say one timely teaching from shapiro revolve it's like it's like i don't need to be rude it's almost like ridiculous this man over here he sits in front of my desk this is actually i'm actually i took this picture this is him giving the shield on friday and i was this driver for almost 20 years and um both him and revolver they permeate all my teachings and they permeate the teachings of their hundreds and hundreds of students i would like to share with you in terms of tefila the impact that they had on me that i tried to transfer to all my students is basically that every moment in life is another opportunity to turn into prayer the top of the mutant whatever you're going through in life life is this roller coaster there is not a single moment in our lives where we don't feel anxiety or stress and this is because hashem wants to keep us close this is how we develop this tremendous kesha the connection between us and god it's interesting because my teachers were very opposite in their personality revolver you watched him pray and um he didn't see much emotion he would be like seriously like a soldier in front of a king but once he let it slip he said you know the reason why i like to pray minha the afternoon service is always at lunch time he says because i can't go so many hours without talking to god i can't have a shakharit in the morning and then wait oh my gosh to like five o'clock in the afternoon to talk to him again and my other teacher ramos shapiro i mean it's just insane how he was a very very emotional prayer and you could hear him as he was talking to hashem he would govern for one hour a schwanna esre on a regular basis and i just heard this just a couple of months ago when i'm writing a book now about uh ramos shapiro and i'm writing 30 essays of the impact that he had on the world together with biographical sketches and um one of the things i just learned when he found out that his cancer had come back so he was in israel the moment that he found out he told his driver take me straight to kevin rahel and he always told us that kevin rahel is the place not the hotel the place is kevin rachel this is based on the writings of the god move will not the gun the vilnigan who says that if you want to cry to hashem there's no place than to go to the place of tears of rachel exactly he went there and he started to cry and he cried in prayer for five hours for five hours just to give you a little bit of a glimpse so i have the demo the image of my teachers in their own different styles of how they lived their lives everything everything they went through they constantly turn that into opportunities for prayers and that is something that we can all do every single moment in our lives something is happening our lives are never boring admit it okay it's never boring there's always something going on grab it and turn it into a closer connection to hashem beautiful wow so inspiring so rav shapiro and vivobe um how do they impact this safety rig shaylee that the rabbi wrote um well it's an interesting thing that you you won't see them mentioned during when you read the book i i almost never quote them but really they permeate every single page because what they did for me was to give me a mindset to understand what the mission of the book was all about i remember when i was single and the first time i went and spoke to ravalby rashford about shidduchim and i asked him a question and now all those single men out there listen closely okay this is for you guys he asked me what should be the number one thing to look for in in a wife so i expected him to say something something like from but you know revolver was against the word from i don't know what it was he had some kind of an allergy to that word he was more into like erlkaite and frankite and he said the following words he said to me he's the hebrew word which in i guess in english is like juan de vivre right love of life and he said that you should know that that you you know you're going to have it easy because you're going to you're going to go to the kalel you're going to study in yeshiva you go out to you go out outside and the wife stays at home and and it's not easy for her you have you know what i call the magic hamper where you put your dirty clothing and no one in our in our gender has any idea how it happens but magically everything comes back folded and cleaned in our closet how does that work well guess what it's not easy their job is very stressful with all the children and the food and everything you're doing and then not necessarily doing things that they enjoy a woman that has hit around a note she has a natural joy of life so she can always turn this into something positive she can always keep that smile on her face and it's a tremendous blessing when a woman has this particular this particular um tendency to be able to be not to be anxious i i recently spoke to the ruben leuchtter who i believe is the greatest student of revolver that's teaching today he's a lot of great students but he's made the most impact i asked him if revolver was around today what would he give what message would he give to the ladies and he said to me i don't know but i know what my wife would say he said women today need to hear two words those two words are good enough what is good enough mean good enough means that um if the house is 90 percent 80 clean for shabbat if if the kids they don't have to match perfectly you know if everything is just good enough you take off layers of stress from your life now i don't mean good enough in your te fila i mean good enough in just in general in the way that you have expectations from life when i went to my teacher with moshe shapiro and i said to him kotarov what should be my my how should i write this book what should be the goal of this book and he was very very clear he said listen to me the goal of your book should be to make life easier for women it's what he said and it's interesting because rav scheinberg who is the prosecutor for the book had the total opposite view now well he was not anti-women at all he had the most incredible marriage he i mean he loved he loved everything that women did but he felt that women should be treated like men in so much whatever they can they should so that was his whole approach was you know as much as they can women should pray like the men pray and my rebbe remote shapiro said no no no if they need to relax let them relax it's so important for them to feel comfortable with the way they talk to hashem so that impacted a lot of how this book came out and how i teach things right now when i teach 18 year old girls i tell them to go for less not not for more to start preparing for those days when their lives become more overwhelming that they should be able to learn how to speak with the quality and the power of saying less but from the heart than just to say lots and lots and lots of quantity powerful robbing this amazing amazing you touched on this point but in the book you described the woman's obligation in filing prayer can you please outline a few misconceptions in this area i know there is a lot of misconceptions oh it's um it's time down you know maybe we don't have to do it maybe we should do it and you mentioned from scheinberg your role based so you should know that the question you just asked really it flows seamlessly from my previous question yeah open up it's really you know this is this is uh this is the the guy book according to her scheinberg for women as well as men you open up simon kovac and there he says you know women are obligated in the schwann estrella the same as men by the way not out of it okay arvid unless you're a sephardic and you follow the cafe that says women should pray everything they say you should be saying twice a day ashwana esri comes along all my teachers and they tell me tell the women especially when they're married with kids they've got to know how to chill with my strength he should be well and healthy he lives down the road to me here in her north he told me when i started my book he said to me you know when you the title of your book you see this word customs he said if you don't write the word customs i'm not giving you a husqvarna you know why i'll tell you why because there's no such thing as halacha for women when it comes to prayer it's all customs it's all what they saw their mothers do you know tell me i mean you and i are going to laugh but it really our wives we have to give them so much kavod when you think about this rimershire streamer told me that said that the reason why women who are busy raising their children are exempt from tifila because they have the same halacha as when someone goes on a journey now in those days journeys is not just getting on a plane on and off and then you sit there comfortably in those days pc people used to travel for months when they came home they had three days where they were exempt from prayer from the sheer utter exhaustion from the you know they just can't think here's too much mr khazanesh guess what women are like that all the time it's a crazy women are constantly in that state of being if they're juggling today women expect it to work as well and raising their kids and they're involved in 101 different acid operations they're doing so much so they have an exemption from tefillah but of course as we all know that more than ever before that's when they need prayer when they're raising their families when their lives are busy and we desperately need their prayers because their prayers are so powerful rabbis so could you please maybe describe the differences in the obligations of men and women in prayer so again again there's there's there's the halacha and then there's the customs in in a you and i have to double three times a day women should darken ideally twice a day in practice and already arabic said once a day is is sufficient and it just in general the custom of women once they get married and they and they're very busy is they start cutting down i actually give a course to ladies this year i gave a course to women in chicago how they should darken every day and i said to them all they have to do is the morning blessings and the shema because these are women who are incredibly busy and they have to say what i call one three three fifteen one okay one is moda ani three tilatida kind of shama the next three is the three parts of briquette the 15 morning blessings and then they say the shema ideally the first paragraph minimum the first six words what does this mean they start off their day and they say to hashem we will notice the little things in our lives that we tend to take for granted that's thank you for my clothing thank you for my eyes thank you that i can sit straight and shema is their declaration of faith if you want to hear more about it they gave a class in queens to hazak called pledge of allegiance my class on the shema it's on tour anytime okay so the bottom line is so women have to be incredibly flexible um shema is another example women are exempt from shema it's a positive time-bound mitzvah have you ever heard of a woman that doesn't say shma of course they do a woman wants to express what she believes in the woman wants to give over her own her own um pledge of allegiance to hashem so for the rest of the details you're just going to have to buy the book what can i tell you rabbi could you maybe mention another special connection between woman and fila i know you touched on it but uh um the the the the the the most important woman in history is the most important governor of all time her name was hannah hannah her prayers the talmud brings down the gemara and brings down we learn more from her praise and from any other person in history who is hannah hannah was a woman her husband just didn't get it it sounds like you know a new york boy from 2021 he just doesn't understand his wife this poor girl she goes to the mishkan and there's ellie who also did not understand her and she cries and pulls her heart out and from those prayers there's so many halacha that we learn it's interesting you know i i know i'm constantly plugging my little book over here but my rebbe rama shapiro he gave me his ass come on and if you could see it over here there we go this is oscar over here and in it he writes the following words he says why is it that women are so much better than men when it comes to prayer i want to everyone that's listening over here think about your grandparents your your sabbah and your softer right your your boobie and your and your zeta your grandfather your grandmother how do you compare them your grandmother those in the king was matter where they came from from morocco or aleppo or they came from buharia or they came from lithuania or they came from hungary or germany it doesn't make any difference the women had this power of tefillah since rama shapiro and his in his in his in his blessing has come out to my book it's very very simple um you will know that we're just like a few weeks away from the festival of shivawat well wish everyone was a marriage king solomon said we became the bride god was the khatan was the was the groom and this was this incredible union that we had over there the the relationship between man and god is a female male relationship and again even although and what i'm saying to you now is more like in theory it's this way but the theory is the woman she runs the home and the woman waits for the man to come and give her whatever she needs the food the money whatever is necessary to build that home and we so to speak we run this world and hashem has to give us the shepherd the rain and the crops and the paycheck at the end of the month so we can do what needs to be done so when it comes to prayer women are naturally governors because prayer is essentially feminine so and obviously this is very deep on a kabbalistic uh level what it means that women are prayer they don't doubt they don't pray they are prayer their essence is prayer because they look so to speak for hashem to give them that shepherd like the jewish people look at hashem and that's why they are so naturally good at what they do um yeah i think maybe i could add yeah that and this leads me to my next question maybe it's because the obligation of men is shahari i read three times a day while obligation for women is like you're saying it depends on the woman but more or less one or two times but this leads me to the question how do we gain an appreciation and a new flavor for for prayer when we say the same exact words every single day you have any suggestions rabbi so so first of all your question is one of the best questions i ever get in tefila um and i'm going to be a moment of honesty and i think i speak for many of us we all work hard and to fill out but we all know how hard it is i mean oh my gosh you see the 19 blessings of the show and astray let's be honest okay how many little travels do we do from the beginning to the end you know like you go like that welcome come back in come back it's so hard it's really very very hard for us say the same words in and out now i could answer which i do not want to do i can answer and say so get used to saying your own words i always encourage before you take your three steps back stop think ask yourself what's really bothering what's on your mind now say to hashem in whatever is your language you feel comfortable with before you take your three steps back i want to share with you something i heard from revolver rachelle balba it's a very powerful powerful thing he said you know revolver was from germany and whenever he spoke about nature he always spoke about the alps he said if you take a train through switzerland put this on your bucket list next time you come to israel you take a little stop over you come to zurich you get on a train and the train takes you goes it's one of the most beautiful things to do in europe it takes you through the alps and as you are looking at niflotabara you'll notice something interesting you see this gorgeous mountain this beautiful mountain with the snow and the green that goes up to the snow and it's just like so fabulous but the train is going around it and as you go around if you blink for a moment you open your eye you think you're looking at a different mountain but you're not it's the same car the same mountain but from a different angle it says revolver that train is your journey of life it cannot be that you dump them the schwann estrella you double your prayers the same way last year as he did this year if you do you're not in touch with what is happening in your life on a personal level this year was the year of takanon takanon has a lot of references to plagues and i never noticed it before and never i never cared about talking about plagues plague sounded so like medieval oh my gosh okay i just saw i just said you know robbie wearing his mask here in israel we don't wear masks anymore thank god okay but you know that the whole thing i i i was i'm most nervous that my grandchildren are gonna think that wearing masks is normal this means that you have to pray differently your life is constantly changing so what you need to do and this i heard from my rebbe revolver many many times before you start praying you must and this is not just revolver revolver is bringing a source in the shohana before you start praying stop and think about what you need to tell hashem about in the last 24 hours or since the last time you prayed things are happening then look at those same words and you'll see like light going through a prism the colors will come out differently you'll study notice things that you never noticed before because what's on your mind you will find in those words now there's two things that have to come out of this number one is you have to actually look at the words and number two is that honestly i think every single one of us needs to spend time learning what the words mean and asking themselves a very very important question how do these words apply to my life i always tell this to my students please don't take menachemissa's classes and bring them into your prayers only do that if they work for you every single one of you should find the the words that talk to you and focus on them and you can keep on changing them so one day you'll hear a class i don't know from the words of pinkus and he said well that's that that's me he's talking to me and then you'll you'll put it into your te fila and then a yearly you'll hear from somebody else so your challenge is to make the words work for you make them dynamic hashiba shaftani kuberi shona bring back our justice system i'm sitting in israel watching a great country called america and you're asking yourself you know what's happening over here i don't want to get into politics at all but it's talking to us sure we want the shufftim to come back the way it's supposed to be and those that will that feel asked to come back and come alive suddenly real life should impact the way that you see the words in your tequila that's what revolver taught me powerful powerful powerful amazing oh everybody should take this to heart and apply it right away to to have these words apply to us and talking about us rabbi you know one of the things is that you know we just finished you should give over to your children what is the best way to give over the greatness the amazing power of tifila to our children okay so now you're asking really really important questions um honestly and just like everything is becoming more difficult for the younger generation i think tifila is also becoming harder and harder for them it's harder for them to focus it's harder for them to reconcile with so many stresses in their lives if i could say one thing and one thing only it would be role modeling which means my rebbe revolver said to us many many times when is the first moment of emunah the first moment of faith that a child learns and the answer is it's friday night ima my mother is lighting candles it's beautiful suddenly she takes out this little book and she starts crying with tears and she what's going on why is emma says mommy's talking to someone and it means so much she's not sad she's emotional but in a beautiful way sister blah blah that is the first class email and when not that a child gets interesting about five years ago i was at a family wedding and i met my cousin joseph frankel he lives in malaya he runs a school there and i asked him what do you teach he says me i teach tafillah and we're actually writing a book about now he's my first cousin and he did not really didn't get it that i also wrote a book on tefillah and he's writing a book in tefillah and he's a teacher and i said where does this come from and he laughed at me and he said did you ever notice that your mother was praying the whole time my mother was from germany my mother she didn't cover her hair she came from lexicon germany it was you know that it was a different vibe back there but when i grew up now i started to think about it she always was saying to heal and she got that from her mother and these were german women living in and with all the modernity of germany the one thing they never gave up was this constant constant attachment to the words of tequila and that is past together with the mother's milk it's passed into the genes of the child that you cry out to hashem so the number one thing if you want your kids to be governors is that you have to be dumb and they have to see you pray lead by example absolutely you know what you know what okay start off this shabbat everyone that's listening when you take your katamazon i want you to say it word for word thinking about each word why you need four different brachats and let your kids see how you took that seriously that's a powerful powerful lesson ah rabbi i'm telling you you gave me so much kazoo about tefila i can't wait to go run to daven now uh rabbi could you uh talking about your savior about you how does one gain access to the safer and is there any plans to possess them come out with another volume on this topic maybe something for the men what do you say robbie i it's a little frustrating that my wife always teases me that everything i do takes 100 hours and one minute which means basically it takes me one minute to do it 100 hours till i get there for the last 10 years i've been trying to come out with another edition of rickshaw and um it's actually crazy you can go on amazon it sells it for over a thousand dollars don't do it don't buy it just hold yeah it really does okay that's over a thousand bucks just just wait out a little bit you can get that the hebrew version i don't know if you saw this day the hebrew version that you can still get but we're redoing the hebrew version as well i have a son invite the gun he's a rosh khalel about three years ago he said to me abba enough is enough i'm taking this into my own hands he went through all the marijuana he took many many questions to refine kenyawski he redid the whole thing and he added so many different layers and levels and it's going to be basically a new book much more improved the english is going to be better and wait out and um yeah feldheym go for it okay they're going to be doing this for us and uh look out in your bookstores for rickshawed and then if you see me i'll sign something for you and then you can resell it on ebay for a profit just kidding okay amazing amazing rabbi okay looking forward for the news save for the new book visit uh rabbi to end off can you please leave us with some inspiring closing remarks that we haven't touched upon yet any final message you'd like to give to our large audience maybe some rizuk some inspiration something anything i do i have a lot to say let's say it in three minutes i'm just going to see the bottom line what's on my mind i mean it's i hope your audience is aware that we're going through a period of the in the jewish calendar called the week of the week of hot means it's the when this hera that we are reading is all about hodlichi means uh hugging splendor hot means when god says says modern to our prayers the week of heart began if you remember with pesach i don't know what your custom is yaniv do you have the custom of like crunching on matzot you eat that you find those stale matzos from a month ago and you finished them off hey he's giving a person a second chance we do a lot that day there we go it's giving a person a second chance it is a crazy story these people turn to moshe beno and say we missed out we missed out on bringing the pesach the korban a person does not bring the karban he gets correct he's cut from the jewish people because this is the essence of judaism we don't want to be left out but sure a baby should have said to them i'm sorry my dear friends you know what i mean like you missed the boat it's your problem wait round till next year it's not what he said he said let me ask hashem hashem is smiling hashem says my beautiful children they want so badly they want so badly to get close to me i'm gonna make a new hog i'm going to change the rules i'm going to give them a new festival and i want to say to every single person that's listening i am a teacher hashem bless me with hundreds and hundreds of wonderful beautiful amazing the shamath students that i have if you could if you could show a common thread of what i'm hearing especially in the last year so much so much frustration there's so many girls that i that i care about who are now in their 30s still looking for theirs young couples who have difficulty with with their marriages rabbi should i break up this marriage what should i do people that can't have children people that are raising kids and watching them going on what my sister calls the scenic route and then sicknesses and sicknesses and then people start praying to hashem and they get frustrated because we live in a world where we want instant answers it doesn't work that way but it works you have to tell hashem this is so important for me you have to go with them why should we be left out why should we be different hashem is all-powerful for him it's easy he can do anything he can change the world inside out outside in a flash he can certainly help you out with your little problems for you they're big problems but all he foreign is that relationship with you that's real that comes from your heart so pesach the month of er the week of hud is that time of the year will reflect that we have infinite power if we plug into the one and only and then hashem will smile and say hard modani you're right and give us all the blessings in the world so what can i tell you from your shalom to queens and to the rest of the world anyone listening don't stop those tears don't stop their prayers and hashem should open up all the gates of mercy and all the gates of love and all the gates of goodness and if next time i'm not going to be doing this through zoom you're going to be interviewing me in your shalam era kurdish at the beta dash can hear you thank you so much thank you very much wow what an inspiration what a powerful final message we really appreciate about municipal position we should see each other very soon enough to be merely new ones again every tuesday night amazing inspiring messages timely tuesday torah talks kazakhstan's tuesday program with a special guest revenue so once again thank you very much and we'll see you soon in our in your shelling