CHAZAQ’s Torah Talks #40: Rabbi Ashie Schreier - Don't Let Your Struggles Define You

and welcome to yet another program of hazak's torah talks our tuesday night program with special guests tonight we have with us a very dear friend of ours rabbi ashish rabbi welcome how you doing i am great it's such an honor to be here with rabbi yeah what an honor really keep up the amazing things it's it's just a privilege to be here with you tonight well the privileges are ours rabbi ashish schreier is a mover and a shaker from our queen's community barack hashem uh we got to know each other since he came into the community the rabbi the youngest age of firestills and tonight the rabies and we're going to be discussing don't let your struggles define you should be a very interesting topic tonight but before we delve into tonight's exciting topic rabbi why don't you tell our audience just a little bit about yourself and the great work you're involved with sure uh again really just uh just a privilege to be here just such a such an amazing just opportunity to be here with the hazard crew and just seeing all that you guys do it should be continued success for all of you and really for all of us since we're all here working towards the same goal so i'm currently the rabbi on the youngstow forest hills where we have a wonderful diverse crew within our shul and just a whole a beautiful beautiful mix of just all different types of people and we try to connect to everybody and that's really the goal and i think that's what hazak tries to do as well and you know we try to be as warm and welcoming as we can give over real torah inspiring torah to show that we have to live our lives by looking through the prism of torah we talk all the time about current events and how luckily jewish thought and things along those lines because our goal is to put on those glasses as we look through what's happening in the world which is just crazy we continue to look through things through the prism of and through the prism of torah because the torah is not some updated book that we just mentioned and talk about for whatever reason torah is something that we're supposed to be interacting with every single second of every single day so our goal is to go and bring the torah into our lives so i work in the youngest real foreign stills trying to bring that into reality and it's not always so easy and i got to give myself physical loading i try to give a lot of physic but mostly to myself and then hopefully we're able to build from there i also work in home care home health care i'm uh i work in caring professionals caring professionals i know kazakh is uh caring professionals are friends so i've been there for about about six years now also and uh it's a big opportunity i get to help people on on that front and in the rabbi front so it's uh hashem it's been it's been quite an experience here in queens i still remember our first uh interaction there was some uh some big event and you're like oh just go speak fermented and go introduce for him and i'm like now i'm going here you gotta jump yeah i'm trying to into in i remember i remember very well it was actually uh charlie herrari in your show and uh i told you you got to do some opening remarks and you were really shy i'm like grab it you got to jump in and boxing we've seen the rabbi jumping i could attest the great work that the robbie does young as far as souls he has the main show meaning he has a young marriage meaning and the best meaning okay i'm a little bit biased but my family hasn't been in the starting mini running downstairs in the ballroom everyone's together everyone's happy and the rabbit does a great job putting it all together and uh the physical inspiration is always great so we're really excited for you to be on the program rabbi it's it's just it's an honor yeah i love it can't wait let's delve in yeah let's do it so so tonight's topic as we said is don't let your struggles define you uh we know that a righteous person falls down seven times and gets up shabba pahman and the apothec become now just past that we just passed the secular new year where a majority of the country tries to take upon themselves commitment to become better to lose weight to you know be a better spouse and all that good stuff right but rabbi how do we not let our previous mistakes hold us down you know many people unfortunately they fall and uh well what do you suggest i think it's such a great question and there's so many layers to the question you know i think when it comes to new year's resolutions a whole separate topic maybe for another tuesday torah talk we can have about taking small things realistic goals actual tangible goals not just saying i'm going to eat better or be better because what does that even mean and then when people take those types of goals everyone ends up doing nothing because you didn't actually say anything so we can talk about that another time but i guess more specifically towards the struggles not letting our past struggles stop us we hear so much about consistency you know one of the great divrei torah probably the ultimate pinnacle of a story of a dramatic story when it comes to the entire torah is yosef's revelation to his brothers it's me yosef after all these years and all these parties of this whole story of sending back but yuman and back and forth and this whole story yosef reveals himself and he says there's a classic basal levy where he asks i don't understand what yosef is saying was joseph not listening to the entire story that yuhuda just poured his heart out telling us his dad is not going to survive and his dad can't handle this now he's saying i'm yosef his dad's still alive was he not just listening to the whole story doesn't make any sense so the basal labia explains no no yosef was really giving them the greatest monster possible and this explains all the midrashim say all of the all the rabbis talk about how when yosef revealed himself to the brothers he was really giving them the greatest muscle the greatest rebuke that anyone can ever give because what yosef was saying is i am yosef it's me this whole time i'm the viceroy in egypt i'm the viceroy in mitzrayim is dad still alive what was yosef really saying says the basal lady what yosef was really saying was you're giving me this whole impassioned plea this whole speech about how dad's not going to be able to lose another one of his children and benjamin it's not going to work how's he going to survive now all of a sudden you care about dad you care about dad's feelings 22 years ago when you sold me he didn't care too much that's a bit strange and the message that basil levy is trying to bring out is such an important one you know so often we say i don't have the time to to learn this or to do this i'm not smart enough i'm not wealthy enough i'm not this i'm not that so god's going to come back after 120 really you're not smart enough to learn a little bit uh aren't you the guy who started that business aren't you guy who worked that job aren't you guys got that degree or that degree and you're not smart enough to go and try i think you are i think i think you are and and the message that this brings out is the consistency that the ultimate rebuke that we can get is a contradiction within our own lives when we say we don't have enough time to go and hang out with our families and our kids yet we haven't missed a football game on a sunday in 10 years which new york football is really if you're watching the years we got no excuse but otherwise anyway but this idea of consistency how it's so important to make sure that we're consistent i think this idea is is very dangerous it's important and we do have to keep it in the forefronts of our minds and our goal an ideal is to be toho kubota to be as consistent as possible but i think it's an ideal i think it's something that we strive for but we can never let the fact that we're not there yet stop us from doing other things so often one of the greatest traps we fall into and i think this is really touching on your question is that we have past failures stop us from accomplishing great things it's a new year i want to start going to minnie really me go to minion but i'm the same person who last night was doing x y and z i i can't be the one who goes to me that's ridiculous but this is such a trap of the sahara that's what the israel is trying to get us on and the truth is that this is actually a conversation and a debate that goes back to yaakov and yosef you know that kid who's being favored in class right there's a kid who's the teacher's the teacher's pet or even if he's not trying to or she's not trying to be you have that kid who's being favored in class and often times the biggest victim when someone's being favored by a teacher in class is that kid itself because the rest of the kids are so mad at that kid and it's a very difficult thing so yaakov favors yosef right he gives the possum he gives the coat to yosef he gives all of the favor to yosef and the brothers are really jealous and this causes the entire story the 22 years yoshi's being sold out to egypt and all of the troubles that come after that is all because yaakov showed inappropriate favor he favored one child over the other he favored yosef over everyone else now fast forward a lot of years and yaakov is on his deathbed and now yosef is bringing his children menasha and defran he's bringing his two children to him to get abraham from yaakov and yaakov seems to make the same mistake again yosef brings menasha on the right i fry him on the left because the right is the oldest the more kosher of and yaakov switches the hands and you can imagine what yosef's feeling was because the torah even tells us yosef jumps up and he says dad what are you doing we just went through this don't you know what just happened the last 30 plus years this was all because you showed this inappropriate favoring this is the same exact thing what are you doing and yaakov says don't worry i know what i'm doing what's this locus about what are they arguing about so some want to explain that menasha and ephraim represent two different types of children look at their names when we see someone's name we can understand their essence menasha is named the posix says because i want to forget ki narshani elokim i want to forget everything that happened with my father's house i want to forget all the bad things that happened to me in my life it's it's a focus on negativity and ephraim is named after all of the amazing things that happened to him in the in in the triumph it's based on positivity so yosef comes and yosef says listen there are two ways to attain greatness there are two ways to become great one is sur mera staying away from bed and the other one is ase do good so yosef comes to yaakov and he says the first thing we have to do is stay away from bad in order to get to greatness get rid of all the bad things in your life get rid of all of the temptations all of the challenges and then asetov then you'll start to do good so menasha then ephraim comes yaakov and he says no no i grew up with an ace of i grew up with a love on i grew up with wicked people you know what wicked people do wicked people wait for that perfect moment to start acting good they wait for the perfect sur mera when everything is gone when time is perfect when i perfected getting rid of all of the challenges in my life then i'll start doing good things but guess what that time doesn't come because challenges exist we have to become great and attain greatness through assaytov through doing great things we can't let our past struggle stop us we have to okay it happened we move forward we can't dwell on the past it's just gonna our future this is exactly what the etaro wants us to be doing so it's a tremendous trap and a tremendous opportunity if we can recognize it for what it is amazing rabbi schreier wow i love it i get too excited i get too excited so uh rabbi schreiber taught him we all know that no pain no gain according to the efforts is the reward right can you please rabbi delve into the importance of effort in terms of our spiritual growth of course yeah i want to just preface all these things and especially the first one i think these are things i struggle with too you know uh i know you've had some incredible guests on this uh slot and interacted with incredible robun you know i i struggle with a lot of these things too and it gives me physic to talk about them which is why i get so excited so these are just suggestions that have talked to me and in no way am i saying that these are the only suggestions or these are absolute truths this is just my my opinion my feelings so no one should take it in any other way but i think it's a great question in terms of the effort you know we have the time teaches us when we make a see them when we make a see them we say we work hard and they work hard referring to the jewish people and the non-jewish people that we put in toil and they put in toyota anua we work hard and we get reward and they work hard and they don't get reward hey my mailing star so that's the time i don't understand we work hard and we get reward okay i can understand but they work hard and they don't get reward jeff bezos doesn't have rewarding on musk doesn't it what does that mean these guys don't have they're doing all right for themselves what does it mean there's no reward it says the time without the specific people examples that i gave says that i'm no just the effort itself we are rewarded for when it comes to you spend five hours on one page of gemara i only accomplished one page no absolutely not you did five hours that ammo that effort that makes a huge impact on a person that's what god's looking for someone could learn that same page in five seconds they're not gonna get nearly the amount of reward that you got it's all about the effort as opposed to you have a lawyer who works hundreds and hundreds of hours on a case but he loses the case if he's getting paid based on winning the case whatever it is you get nothing and and what do you have now you have nothing left it's all about the effort we're so lucky that every single second of effort that we put in counts towards eternity we have the opportunity to tap into that every single second where hitler points out that constantly throughout the young naraim on rosh hashanah from kippur we're going right back to the akedah we're always referencing the akita when avraham was going to slaughter his son yitzhak and then the malach ended up saying no don't do it this has been avraham proved his loyalty and this is what we're trying to tap into as we beg hashem for his mercy for the year ahead says rehner nothing even happened he didn't end up checking his son why are we comfortable constantly referencing back to this the answer is it's because it's about the effort he went through that struggle to get up to that mountain to get up to the point where he was about to do it you're rewarded even for that even if he didn't go through with the actual action we put in our effort doesn't mean we're not going to slick doesn't mean we're not going to fall we do our best but the effort matters so much it's a tremendous bracha that we have it's a major blessing that we have that even if we don't reach that goal of whatever the goal is we're still getting reward for every single second you think about how many seconds there are in a day yeah every single second is an opportunity what an incredible opportunity it is that we have unbelievable you know we had a tour talk with one of my being he was saying how when he gets the report cards from his kids he focuses only on one area which is what the effort how do we do the effort if they put the effort everything else is you know they try but as long as they put the effort and uh you know just recently i got my kids report cards and i'm like no where's the effort let me they stop action they put the effort and they tried and the rest is you know what can we do it's interesting there's a lot of studies about that as well in terms of the effort thing because if you just tell your kid that's just saying i'm the way expert at this at all but if there's studies say that if you just tell your kid that you're so smart you're so smart you're so smart they're not going to want to try new things because there's a risk that if they're not great at it then they're not going to be that smart thing anymore if they're defined by smart then they're never going to want to try anything new because i don't want to lose my title as being smart but if you just reward the effort and say oh i love how much effort you put in how hard you tried then they're going to say oh you know we'll try new things we'll try new things very interesting idea very interesting idea wow never thought about that way very nice forever sorry i like it i like it so so rabbi shaw let me ask you in your opinion what do you think is the biggest struggle that people fall into that's a good question uh there's a lot you know i think practically just with our access and again i can talk for myself just with the access to what we have you know when you someone walks into i think they say that when we go into the city or look on our phones and ads and this stuff we we see more things than people in the 40s used to see in like a month and we there's a lot of access to a lot of things which is very difficult and obviously you know saying i am and all these things is very very challenging thing but i think going with our theme i guess you know i think one of the main challenges is is not defining ourselves by sin that often times if we're struggling with certain things then we feel like we said it initially like what we started with that you know i'm too far gone i've messed up too far god can't possibly forgive me or like me after i've done what i've done why bother trying why bother continuing to push and i think it's the biggest trap that people fall into because it's just it's so easy to say you know what it's too late you know we're in these parties of moshe rabbenu and it's yes mitsrayam and whatever it is and we just read all these things one thing which comes out from moshe rabbenu you look at moshe i mean the essence of moshe rabbenu is it's never too late most rabbenu from 0 to 80. i guess let's talk in sports for a second if he was getting submitted for the hall of fame i know in sports as the hall of fame discussion right now so if he was being submitted for the hall of fame from ages 0 to 80. he's a pretty good guy you know he saved those women who were being bullied by the well he killed the mitchell he cared about others he was fine maybe he would have gotten in but from 80 to 120 he became the greatest of all time he went from being average good to being the greatest that's at age 80. most rabbini himself writes yamesh that the average lifespan was 70. the in big veros if you're really strong shimon nimshana then you would live till 80. moshe was at this 80 year old stage he could have looked up to god said god golf time i got big t time i'm good but no moshe moshe turned it all around at age 80. ruby kiva turned around at age 40 we think that because someone's 20 30 40 50 60 it's too late thank god people are living long now we have a tremendous opportunity every single second we shouldn't think oh the last 10 15 20 years have been not what i would have expected so let's start right now tremendous fall that we fall a tremendous trap we fall into it's amazing rabbits try you know just the other day i got a call from one of uh one of our misspelling one of the one someone i know very well and he's saying oh it's over it's over oh i did this in the sin like listen to khabib my friend i told him if it's over god would have uh you know you're still alive right closed manchester united as long as you're still alive that means you can still fix yourself up i told him and he told me that was such a big physical such a big inspiration he thought it was over i'm like if it's over why are you still alive amazing no seriously what you say we say every single morning we say the fact that hashem gave us another day of life means that he has a moon that we still have what to do that's right exactly right way to save it always a pleasure to hear you know whenever i'm in the neighborhood once in a while i always um yeah i know i wish i could uh enjoy every minute every gem of those amazing inspiring words but before we let you go robbie schreier if you could leave us with one final inspiring message for our broad audience uh whether it's related to the topic that we spoke about tonight whether it's not a good takeaway for our for our crowd i'll give you a good take away i think there's a great takeaway you know one of the more fascinating characters in our entire history is a man known by the name of alicia benavuya he's also known as why because this was a great time he was a great teacher of torah who saw some unfortunate things was facing certain life difficult questions in life and he decided to drop it all and become acher and become other he was known as because he just strayed so far from the path of judaism and one time his talmud ribby mayor his student rebbe mayor was still learning with him even after all this occurred he was still learning from him and he was traveling with him one day on the shops and his review was going on a horse how he was able to learn from him okay different topic for a different time but he's learning from him and he says okay uh his review alicia benjamin says to be mayor you have to turn around now you've reached how far you're allowed to walk on childish you need to turn yourself around sorry mayor says back you could also turn yourself around and he wasn't talking just physically he meant spiritually you can turn yourself around as well so feliciano says back says the ignorant alicia benavidez is back look stop it already you know i wish i could come back but i can't because i overheard a basketball i heard a heavenly voice which said shuuvu varnam shove him i heard that everyone can do chuva chuva is always on the table except for me except for elisha benavilla who comes to urushima and quotes the story the jerusalem thomas quotes the story a little bit differently says the urushami the same story turn around now you turn around felicia pinaudius is back i overheard a heavenly voice which said that everyone can do chuva except for ah there's a difference in the bhavali it says everyone can do two except for alicia and you xiaomi it says that everyone can do too except for what's the difference sort of salvation explained beautifully and salvation explained there's no stira there's no contradiction one is what was said and the other is what was heard what was said what the bosco really said was that everyone can do tufa except for get rid of this part of you get rid of this rebellious part of you stop that and you can of course come back alisha we'd love to have alicia back but what he heard in his mind was everyone can do juve except for alicia because he defined himself ah elisha were the same thing to him he defined himself by the sin and that held him back from being the great teacher of torah that he could have been we can't let the sin define us we have to be able to move forward it doesn't mean to justify what we've done or to say that we can continue that's not what we're saying at all we're saying that things happen people slip people fall we are not we're specifically not malachan because we're able to continue growing but we can't let our past failures stop us we have to be able to move forward we have to be able to accomplish hashem onto bigger and better things rabbi what a powerful final message what a powerful torah talk amazing crazy amazing inspiration always a pleasure to see you and hear from you uh we want to thank our dear sponsors for this amazing program dailygiving.org an amazing unbelievable organization started by our dear friend dr jonath jonathan donuts um basically a dollar a day goes very far away about 40 or 50 different organizations check it out it's unbelievable and uh they're just amazing constantly growing and we encourage everyone to check them out and to be part of it uh we want to dedicate also tonight's uh event loving memory of uh anyone interested in dedicating future programs please reach out to uh reach out to our dear friend robbie at hazak robbie at caju.org reach out to us about future guests if you have a rabbi from your community as a guest speaker lecture that you would love to see interviewed on khazakh's torah talks tuesday's torah talks please uh reach out to us and let us know and uh we want to thank robbie schreier once again robbie schreier thank you very very much god bless you rabbi and uh we will see you all we shall all be shall merit to see that you will ask for another redemption would you come speedly in our days you