Deep Dive with Josh Brody Sept 14 2022

thank you daniella for the intro much appreciated um it is great to be here and to see some friendly faces um amongst the uh the throngs of people who are on the call um i'm really uh appreciative of a project inspired to uh given the opportunity to share some thoughts with you it is what personally i find to be the my favorite time of the year um when i when i tell that to people i often get a kind of funny response because you know i think that for a lot of folks this time of year they're kind of gearing up for for the high holidays and rosh hashanah new kipper there's a certain aspect of it that brings with it um maybe trepidation for some people is a little bit too strong a word but certainly certainly that not everyone often looks forward to and there's probably a couple different reasons for that you know it could be because you know maybe you're not necessarily looking forward to which probably a much longer um you know governing or service so if you go to schwann on russian yom kippur um but but another aspect to it that i found it's kind of really an interesting idea which is you know i i'm guessing that if not everyone on on this call that probably just about everybody is going to be you know dipping an apple into honey on rosh hashanah and the reason for that is really pretty straightforward it's one of the things that we do that's really very easy to explain and we know that on rosh hashanah we get judged if you will and part of what that entails is hashem's going to decide what kind of year we're going to have and well as a result that means we want to do whatever we can to give ourselves a good sweet new year you know for all all of us have gone through things in this past year that we probably wish we could have avoided one way or the other and some or some less and so we want as the year comes up we want hashem to do what it is that he can do to make sure that our year is going to be as good as sweet and enjoyable as we can make it you know when you look at rosh hashanah and yom kippur in a lot of ways they go together as well because we'll talk about what that really means is that you're basically viewing this as i'm kind of coming up to judgment day i want to be on hashem's good list and that means that i need to be on my best behavior for the next you know you know week and a half or two weeks or two and three weeks whatever it is and i just gotta i gotta hold myself back i gotta behave as good as i can such that hashem puts me down on his good list you know of course when you say it that way it starts to sound a little bit like rosh hashanah yum kippur is christmas and hashem is santa claus and i just i want to be on the good list so i got to do whatever i can and then hopefully when it's over okay and then you'll go back to do whatever it is i was doing now when you view the high holidays that way it does have a certain amount of just like i gotta i gotta put it in this as best i can it's like if you ever were a fan of the you know comic strip calvin and hobbes you see that calvin like trying so hard to behave you know in the league in in in in those upcoming weeks because he just wants i gotta get the presents i want i got him hey he's like killing himself trying so hard to do it that way and and that approach brings with it it's just like it's gonna be all effort and i just gotta get to the payoff and then be done with it and and in many many ways probably frankly the most fundamental of ways that's not the right way to think about what rosh hashanah and what yom kippur are really all about the real idea here is this is really true as adults something we can much more appreciate is that there's no question i can't imagine there's anybody i've ever even met who didn't have things about their lives or their personalities or the way they went about their day-to-day living that they didn't want to change things that they said i want to make better maybe it's you know like me i i tell the guy guys i'm gonna call i've learned what the forefront just me said a million times like i i i have a pretty bad temper and it's not the kind of thing i enjoy living with so you know you you know you don't like being that way you know you don't like getting angry you don't like you don't like losing your cool but it's sometimes just hard to control yourself and it's something about our lives and whatever it is that you're jealous of somebody else when we speak too much you gossip okay whatever it is every single one of us inevitably has something about our lives that we wish that we could change now the thing is that's not a bug in the system of life it's a feature hashem created us because he wants us to improve ourselves and make ourselves better now just imagine sort of the following example imagine you have a guy obviously he's a guy as an example and you have a guy who looks like brad pitt is extremely easygoing is you know easy to get along with always a kind word for people has a lot of money he's charitable and then he's just naturally that way and so he lives his life as you might expect right everyone loves hanging out with him he's very giving people always want invite to invite him to their parties they want to be around him because he's just a great guy now imagine you have somebody else who you know probably looks a little bit more like danny devito and is you know has a pretty short temper and he's not a particularly nice guy and he doesn't even have any money again like and he lives his life the way you might expect with one difference this second guy he tries to improve himself maybe he's not even necessarily particularly successful but he's trying to make himself into a better person you know from hashem's perspective when all said and done these guys live their lives and it's all over they they make their way upstairs when hashem looks at each of them you know he looks at the first guy and says well he lives a very great life that's that's very good of you but you know you didn't do anything differently than with the gifts i gave you you were a nice guy but i gave you a naturally easygoing temperament you're very giving but i made you that way and i gave you the money to do it with so good you lived a good life but what did you really accomplish what was the growth you know the second guy who from an outsider's perspective looks like yeah you know not the kind of guy you want to hang out with but hashem looks in and says like wow you did something you tried you put in the effort to improve your character to make yourself a better person but all the gifts that we have those all come from hashem where we have the opportunity to really make things better is when we make things better for ourselves we improve ourselves we make change and that's the kind of life hashem wants us to live and the reality is i think it's probably not a big stretch to say that we all kind of recognize that when we are able to improve ourselves and control ourselves and lead a life that's better than what we were doing the day week month years before there's something about that a certain sense of satisfaction that you get from that that candidly i don't think there's any other feeling you can have that's better and so what we're doing now is we're getting ready for shashank kipper is we're working at changing we have that opportunity now this is like the time of year hashem sets aside for us it says look i'm going to give you this time this opportunity we're going to have to go through this year-end review but use it take it as the opportunity to work on yourselves to stop and think a little bit be a little bit more introspective about what kind of life i live in am i living life in a way that i can say i'm better today than i was a few years ago or even the better person i was yesterday and that's what this time of year is really all about of course like the key word for the for the season is teshuva right which of course is typically translated as repentance and of course when you translate it as repentance it has a certain connotation that comes along with it you know it's sort of this is where jewish guilt like comes totally over the top or like oh my god i've done so many things wrong and i need to fix it and i know what to do and you know can be the kind of thing that if you think about it the wrong way can really weigh us down and by the way even if you just really are think about it the concept of teshuva that hashem says look now you've done things wrong i want you to try to fix them the idea that we can actually fix them is in and of itself an amazing unbelievable concept that almost defies logic and here's how you know have you ever done something wrong or somebody did something wrong to you something that really really upsets you and and they come forward to you and they and they sincerely apologize they feel bad you know you forgive them but you don't you don't really what you really do is you say i want to forgive you and i i'm saying the words i forgive you but it still hurts and it's going to take me time to get over it or imagine even worse i mean imagine god forbid somebody you know somebody you know destroys your car they can say they're sorry all they want that's not getting your car back they destroyed something it's gone yeah hashem gives us the ability to do teshuva in a way that does away with whatever is we did wrong it's like that thing didn't exist and take it even a step further done properly yeshua actually makes it that the thing that you did wrong itself turns into a mitzvah which again these are some kinds of some people you know you may be familiar with but it's a thing that anytime i really really stop and think about it can be kind of mind-blowing that hashem gives us this ability but of course even that shortchanges what sugar really is right the word to show itself really means to return repentance is sort of a more you know kind of newfangled english definition teshuva means to return to return to what to who well there's two aspects to it part of it is to return to hashem that hashem as our father wants nothing more than for us to just walk back in the door if god forbid anybody ever went through the process or had the terrible experience of like a child going away having a fight with your kid and they did something wrong at the end of the day you want nothing more than for them to just walk back through the door and that's what young kipper is that's what hashem is about she says just just come back but there's another aspect to it too you know one of the greatest ad campaigns ever run and one of the longest was done by snickers you know the city's commercial the snickers you know you're not yourself when you're hungry commercials like it'll have some guy who you know is like acting you know he's being played by betty white and it's like but it turns out it's actually a guy and it's just that he's hungry meaning there is who the person is but there's something that's getting in the way of them being themselves in the snickers situation it's hunger we are inherently at our core people who want nothing more than to be close to hashem every single one of us has a neshama has a soul that is literally a piece of hashem inside of us so returning to hashem sort of the natural way to go and that means that our actions our behavior on a daily basis naturally we all want to do the right thing every time the problem is things get in the way things that we do maybe we shouldn't or the fact that we're human beings and we have emotions and they tend to overwhelm sometimes our you know logical mind so we end up doing things that we later regret so when we think about the process of doing teshuva and the process of coming closer to hashem and becoming the person that we really want to be it's not about changing ourselves into someone that we're not yet it's about just getting in touch with the person that we already are it's just all this schmutz and all this other stuff that's covered on top of it that gets in the way and while this is you know to me always a very you know sort of mind-blowing concept the reality is that we probably often experience this when we we react a certain way to a situation it doesn't upsets us and we lose our temper and after we calm down it's like what was i thinking why did i react that way and the reason we have a thought is because that's not really who we are that reaction is not really us that reaction is things that are getting in the way of us becoming who we already are we just need to uncover it so as we go through this process this growth process it shouldn't be as daunting as it sounds because we're not trying to create something from scratch it doesn't already exist what we're trying to do is just uncover what's already there and the whole process starting with starting with today right now as we get ready for rosh hashanah to get ready for yom kippur it's about trying to be mindful of it and trying to work at it and that really is the key at the end of the day we can have all the wonderful thoughts and ideas in our minds about who we want to be it's just never going to happen unless we put in the work all the wonderful speeches you can hear and all the video different sheet room you can listen to and all the inspirational messages in the world won't create the lasting change that we want unless we put in the effort ourselves and that's what hashem's asking us hashem was looking at each and every one of us saying my child i want nothing more and for you to be close to me and you to be the best version of you you just got to put in some effort and you got to put effort in in a mindful way and when you approach a shawnee coach and kipper that way you get this is just this incredible opportunity to grow it's not about just trying to get on hashem's good list and then i'll go back to whatever it was it's about trying to improve myself so i will have a better happier life so the sweet year that i want almost comes automatically because i'm living a life that is better for me because i'm going to be happier i'm going to feel more self-confident i'm going to have all the things in my life that i want because or even if i don't i'm working towards them and that's what this process is the shoe that's what the high holidays rosh hashanah and kipper are really all about but of course again it's about the work and so i think what we're going to be learning about tonight focusing specifically on yum kipper is one particular angle that is something that we all get involved in on a regular basis and it's part of our lives constantly which is understanding and appreciating the power of speech because speech at a very basic level is what separates us from the animals and it's how we interact with people and if you want to sort of at least start taking that step towards that growth start taking those actions that you need in order to improve your life you got to have a better appreciation of what speech is really all about and so for tonight we're going to do is the materials that we're going to be learning in a minute or so really are going to be focusing on the power of speech and then plugging that into recognizing how that interacts with him kipper and so i guess now i will sort of let you guys go to breakout rooms and we'll come back and wrap it up okay great thank you so much mr brody i'm going to go ahead and put the learning material linked to learning material in the chat box again if anyone needs that to pull up the material and we'll see you back in about 20 25 minutes i hope everyone enjoyed the materials um i luckily had no part in putting them together i happened to think they were absolutely fantastic um and i really wanted to focus on um one thing in particular there was i think it was in looking at it now sort of in um in in what was source number four and here's the the general concept you know i think we often tend to think of the words that we use as just simply you know an expression of what's going on in our head and don't necessarily give it any more thought maybe we're we try to pay attention to the words that we're saying but we don't necessarily think about or really pay attention to [Music] what words are and what this source is really is really getting at and i think it's based in part on something that the the morale talks about a fair amount is we as human beings straddle two completely different worlds on the one hand were physical beings on the other hand because of the fact that we have an ashama we have a soul that means that inside of us is also something that is completely spiritual and as a result the lives that we live straddle these two worlds it's something in and of itself is pretty much impossible to explain how it can be that something that is so spiritual and so completely removed from physicality exists inside of a physical body but that's what hashem did but he also created for us was the thing that bridges those two worlds see when we have thoughts those thoughts they can get jumbled by the physicality that we exist with within but those thoughts really are in many ways connected to the ramban actually writes that the way that we connect to hashem is through the process of our thoughts that's in some ways we're on the shama so to speak the extent that lives in a particular part of our body that's kind of where our summit is and our thoughts being completely spiritual when we speak the words that reflect what's going on in our mind that's the bridge between the physical and the spiritual and so every time that we talk we're not just saying words and it's whether you're sort of you know tossing up a word salad or saying things that are totally meaningless or you're actually having an extremely meaningful conversation the process of talking is taking the spiritual and making it physical and as a result every single time that we talk there's an incredible power to it it's not just sounds you know i was talking to a friend of mine once and you know kind of explaining this idea of the shoot what makes us different as human beings is the fact that we talk and he said to me well come on i mean animals communicate too like yeah but their communication is not words and the words is the fusion between the spiritual and the physical and so every time that we do this we have just this incredible experience that we don't even realize but we're taking the spiritual and making it physical now of course this comes with a little bit of a danger because aside from the fact that we can really misuse the power itself and we'll talk about that in a few minutes but even that aside you know taking something spiritual and making it physical in many ways is sort of downgrading it like really if you want definitely spiritual it's better that it should remain spiritual taking the spiritual making it physical is kind of degrading in a certain way and yet we often find reason to want to talk and people like talking all the time and even somebody who's shy you know when they're in the element that they're comfortable in they will want to talk right you know they say you know the expression that the gemara uses that you know even the bathhouse attendant when it comes to his thing he feels most prominent and he's going to be very specific about the words that he says because he thinks he knows his stuff better than anybody so any situation which you're in we always feel the need to want to talk you just sit in a meeting and i know i'm i'm like this myself and somebody just feel the need to want to be the one to make the point like i have this idea i'm sitting on a meeting with you know 15 people i want to be the one to make the point or somebody else just feels like they have to be the one to make the point well in a certain respect when you do that you're taking your something that's very spiritual making it physical and from that perspective even more powerful than speech is silence it's not talking one of the ways that we get ourselves into trouble is by talking and this i mean the examples of this are pretty much endless but just to focus on one in particular you know ever somebody says something to you and you're upset by it and you try to hold your tongue because you know that if you respond it's gonna come out bad and and you can't help yourself and you start responding and then your anger level goes from like zero to ten in like five seconds because the process of talking you start taking the spiritual and downgrading and making it physical it's like forget about you basically just you know set things on fire and all of a sudden all the spirituality that you have is now physical in a bad difficult challenging way and so in many ways what's potentially more powerful than speech is silence and really i think that if you want to talk you know kind of following that one we started with in the in the context of learning how to work at something to work on your spiritual world like a practical specific thing that you can do it's learning how to control yourself and just to not say anything unless you have to you know you think of all the various personality types like strong but silent like that's the kind of thing everyone seems to love the strong but silent person like oh my gosh it's just you know doesn't talk much when he doesn't mean something and and part of the reason for that is because that person is keeping his spirituality with him or her the entire time they're not letting the physical get in the way and so one practical exercise there's different ways to implement this but i'll kind of give you one sort of trick i've learned along the way like set a reminder in your phone for a certain point every day whatever day you think is most practical and doable for you where you're gonna try to take the the silent challenge if you will and you're gonna make sure that over the next take call that 15 minutes half hour or whatever whatever you think works for you you're just gonna try to not be a mute not be a hermit but just be more mindful for a period of time of the words that you use and trying to if you don't have to say anything don't let somebody else raise the good idea let somebody else be the one that you know does the ordering at the restaurant just hear not work on controlling yourself to not talk because this is an exercise that helps increase your spirituality because now you're taking your thoughts which are purely spiritual which help connect you to hashem and you're keeping them inside now of course the other practical piece of this is it also helps make sure that you don't say something stupid right i i definitely have foot mouth disease i cannot tell you how many times you know in a meeting with somebody whatever it is and i say something i'm just like what in the world did i just say that for i it was no reason for it didn't need it didn't make any point didn't matter in fact i just feel like an idiot right you know is it i think this is as the saying goes i'm gonna butcher this as the same goes you know better to stay silent and be thoughtful and to speak up and prove yourself one right like if you can work at just one okay i don't need to talk every single time there's an opening that in and of itself has to connect more to your spirituality and that in itself is an incredible growth process and just one word of caution this is unbelievably hard this is not something that's easy it takes a lot of mindfulness and thought but if you can do it it can be incredibly powerful now of course let's go to the other side of it you know i i guess maybe i was a little bit glib before when i said that every time that you talk you're downgrading your spirituality now that that is true but there's of course another aspect to it which is instead of viewing it as downgrading your spirituality you can think of it as you're raising up your physicality i mean now the words that you're using that are a physical manifestation and having how it has a duality to it right so the physical on the one hand and spiritual in the other it's that fusion instead of letting the physical weight down spiritual you use the spiritual to raise up the physical and the way you do that is go out of your way to say positive things to somebody else right we've all had this experience where somebody just says something nice to us and it just makes you feel good well you know if you're the person who says that and you're even you're mindful about it that you're looking out trying to use your words in a way that raises up the physicality not only did they feel good you end up feeling pretty good too and this way it's not a question of just taking down our spirituality now we're raising up our physicality and the reality is look in all of life this fusion between the physical and the spiritual that hashem made each one of us into in many ways our job in living here in the physical world is to raise up the physical to not let the physical get in the way and drag us down but to raise it up and some of some of some of the hasita you know rabbis write that you know sitting and learning torah is of course unbelievable but there's something you can only accomplish when you're taking a mundane physical action and elevating it something that this can't be done in spirituality alone or hashem only wanted spiritual beings he's got more angels but for us we have a unique opportunity here where each and every one of us has the ability to take the physicality of ourselves and that of that around us and to raise it up and speech because it's the natural fusion between the physical and the spiritual like that's the moment of maximum impact and even more so than actions you know people say talk is cheap actions not words the reason people say that is because the power of speech has been so misused and so abused that we have this sort of natural tendency just to dismiss things that people say we want to see what they do but if you've ever worked with somebody or know somebody who truly stands behind everything they say when they say it it's as good as done i don't worry about it he said it i mean you know i know this guy there's no way he did he said it it's going to happen i don't need to see it happen i know because he said it because that's a person who has used the power of speech properly and appropriately and so that in many ways is better than actions it's that initial fusion between spirituality and physicality so you can raise it up specifically by impacting another person positively by saying a nice thing by complimenting people by just being nice always trying to have a kind word for somebody and we all know people who need it right every single one of us needs to hear nice things from other people like i don't care what people say sticks and stones they bake by bones but no words never hurt me yeah we all know that's just not even close to true the things that people say to us can have a greater impact in the physical things that they do to us and so as we're getting ready for you pressure and getting ready for young kipper days when our speech is so important because we're gonna be spending so much time using those words to davin spending so much time trying to connect to hashem by praying doing everything we can as a lead-up to make our words as powerful as possible by saying a kind word by trying to make somebody else feel about the things we can say to him or her that's i mean to me is is is one of the best single things you can do to get ready for surgeon young kipper and prepare yourself for the growth that we want and so again a similar exercise put a reminder in your phone just at some point i think to remind you look for someone to say something nice to and you'll get you'll probably have multiple opportunities a day if you're looking out for because we take the time now just look at these two aspects of speech both speaking and not speaking we can take this spiritual and raise it up and take the physical and raise that up too and to me that is sort of just the best way to start getting ready to go to walk into schlong rosh hashanah and then kippur wherever you're going to be prepared ready locked in because you've already started that process of growth the process of change that you can absolutely take with you when all is said and done and your kipper is over so wishing you all a casino a sweet and happy new year and i hope to see you again thank soon thank you so much mr brody thank you so much everybody for joining us wishing you and all your good family very sweet and happy new year