Does Yom Kippur Cause You Anxiety? - Live, Blunt Conversation with Rabbi YY Jacobson

Hello. Shalom. Let me find him here. Let me pin him. Yes. Shalom. Shalom. How are you? Wonderful. How are you? Great. You could see me and hear me clearly. We can see you and hear you clearly. Yes. Okay. Beautiful. And you should be able to see myself, yourself, and Tova on the screen. Is that correct? Yes. 34 participants on Zoom. 34 participants. Yes. And plus uh 17,450 on your YouTube channel. So, no, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But you have uh we're we're keeping an eye. Okay. We'll give it another another minute and then we will uh Excellent. Welcome everybody. Toa is here. Thank you for bringing us together and arranging it. Thank you. It's an honor. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Okay. So, let let's just let's just start with some of the high level and then we'll we'll get into it. Welcome everybody to another um what will I'm sure be incredibly uplifting webinar with uh we always have this this is the second time around tough dalled. We did it last year Rabbi Y. It's gone viral already. Yeah. Um but this year we're doing it Kipper to do a a special um session with Rabbi Y. will have the opportunity to ask questions to ask some live questions. Thank you to all the alumni of Fresh Start and the members of Fresh Start and and Tova for bringing us together and thank you to everybody who is gracing us with your presence. It froze froze. Okay. Thank you for everybody who's gracing us with your presence and who's here tonight. As uh we announced, we're going to be taking questions and answer. We're going to be taking questions and hashm I'll try to address them to the best of my ability with God's grace. Please feel free to bring up whatever is on your mind, whatever is on your heart. Uh the point is that people should feel. This is a safe environment where you can express whatever you would like. [Music] Okay, I'm just going to give a few words of introduction and then we'll go to the main part which is dialogue addressing your addressing your questions. The fact is that there are many people, many of our sisters and brothers who experience anxiety or a lot of pressure at this time of the year. Rashana, El followed after L the days before Yam Kipper and Yamipper. The reasons vary but I would say the common denominator of the many people that I uh am in a conversation with whether face to face or even more through email classes lectures zooms etc. It's very often because of childhood experiences, child childhood experiences that have affected us. You, you, us, all of us in one way or another and sometimes childhood adverse and very negative experiences that have made these days called days of judgment and days in which the fate of the year is decided and days of repentance and days of confession extremely extremely difficult. There have many people who have reached out to me over the years and said, you know, my wish is just to sleep through all these days and get out of it. For some people, going to shul is extremely difficult. And for some people, it's not just difficult, but it becomes excruciatingly painful. As always, the point is not just to deal with symptoms and to say something nice and cute and endearing. The point is really to empower ourselves. The point is to go back to have the courage to everything in life get to the source and identify what is really bothering us and reach a place of greater understanding greater empathy greater self-love and acceptance and then opening ourselves up perhaps to a new experience to a new perception to a new perspective. Let me just state what is well known but it's interesting to reflect on this. The Mishna says at the end of track day that there were two days in the calendar and they were considered the happiest days of the year. I quote there was no y there was no holiday. There was no good day by the Jewish people like the 15th day of the month of Av. And what's the second day? Yam kipper. Now if I were to tell you that the happiest day in the Jewish calendar, that's the happiest most joyous festive day. You look at me like a little crazy. That's what you call happiness. Standing a whole day confessing how bad I am, how sinful I am, how horrible I am. I'm wrong and I did this bad and I did this bad and I'm embarrassed and I'm ashamed. Please forgive me. Why? Why is that the happiest day? Not only that, it says in Z thaturim, right, is also connected to the name of Purim. The language in the Zoy is that Purim was named after Yam Kipper. the name of Purim. That's the he says purim alshame is when they were looking for a name of purim the migilla says it was named purim because of the lot pur in pers in par is the lot because threw lots but the zar says that purim was named for yakimur so purim which is a holiday that comes later in Jewish history was named after the original now I ask you are there days that are more opposite than yiper and Purim. What a strange strange comparison. If you're looking for a name for the happy day in the Jewish calendar, Purim, we drink and we eat and we send gifts and we dance and celebrate and it's a mitzvah to drink. It's the opposite of yim. What this means, my dear friends, is that maybe we don't understand something fundamental about yim and it's not in a way of judgment, another judgment. It's in a way of opening ourselves up to a deeper dimension which is really the simple dimension of yim and that is based on a story with the balant and the story goes that the balant once came to a town and the people came to him and they said that they have a strange caner. What's so strange about him? He sings through the the confessional list of sins for the sin that I have sinned before you. And he does it in a joyous melody. You know, imagine I don't know what the melody was, but it was some leic melody. Come on. You have to match the lyrics to the melody. So, they thought that this was a lightaded caner. You know, he didn't care. It was just all one happy song. So the but the story goes that the asked this this can this what's the meaning of this why is he singing the the the the confession with such a happy tune and this is what he told he said as follows in the king's palace there are many different people who have different functions and positions you have of course the various ministers who run the country you have the chef the person who has the privilege to prepare the royal food. You have the butler, the saramashka. You have the peer person who prepares the beverages and the great drinks. All different types of jobs and positions etc. He says you also have the janitor. The janitor cleans up the mess. says, "All the people in the palace feel proud and happy and privileged that they can be part of such a magnificent kingdom and help such a benevolent king." Now, I ask you a question. What about the janitor? The one who's cleaning up the dirt? Should he feel depressed and anxious and dejected because he's dealing with dirt? No. He's cleaning up the king's palace. He's beautifying it. He's cleansing it. He's getting rid of the dirt. So he says this person tells the body of a person is the king's palace. That's where the divine energy dwells. Your body is sacred. It's a vehicle for for all the energy. Our soul could only function in and through the body. It's a palace. I may have dirt. I may have toxicity. I may have brokenness. I may have filth. I may have immorality. I may have addiction. I may have promiscuity. So I'm cleaning it up. I shouldn't be happy. I'm cleaning the the king's palace. The BMP was so moved by what he said. He repeated it and it came to us. His par this man's paradigm was right. And that's the question we have to ask ourselves. What's my paradigm? If my innate paradigm is I'm unworthy, I'm a piece of junk, I'm garbage, I'm a desperate, I'm evil, I'm undeserving, then y kipper evokes trigger after trigger after trigger after trigger and I need to heal. We need to heal. This person's paradigm was the exact opposite. Can you look in the mirror and look at your body as the vehicle for divine infinity? Your body is a bikash. It's a holy temple through which all your thoughts and words and actions and emotions, your love and your light and your conviction and your courage and your confidence and your commitment to healing and your commitment to become the person you're capable of becoming and your commitment to become the best and truest and most authentic version of yourself. That is who you are. And it's a day that I have an invitation from the creator of the world who says I didn't create this world for perfect people and I didn't create Judaism for perfect people. Yimip comes from the beginning of history. I created this world for people who fail and stumble and get hurt and then learn from their mistakes and learn from their past and learn from their events to become true to themselves. That's what it's for. It's that ability. What is more precious than people who are honest with each other sitting together and opening up and having the courage to be able to talk not about their perfections. I can everybody of us could talk about in our resume all the good great things but what about the places where I can be vulnerable and talk about all my imperfections, all my flaws, all my struggles, all my traumas, those that I'm aware of. And as we say in kipa many times and those that only you're aware of because I don't even have them in my consciousness and to be able to celebrate that ability. That's a very very powerful very very powerful opportunity. But the paradigm has to be you're dealing with a sacred person and you're dealing with a sacred palace. That's why we say again and again [Music] Shalom. The soul is yours. And the body is yours. It's divine. It's infinity. It's light. It's sacred. It was damaged. Maybe by abuse, maybe by emotional neglect, maybe by molestation, maybe by physical, emotional, sexual, psychological, spiritual abuse, religious abuse. So my own perception of my personality is one that is perhaps very very lowly. But the kiper is an invitation to be able to say you're as pure and as beautiful and as glorious and as sacred and as heavenly and as splendid. And God says all I want to be able is to you should be able to feel my hug and I should be able to feel your hug. Now it's easier said than done because we're working through this on a visceral level. I'm not here trying to give speeches and lectures. I'm talking I'm talking to my body and I'm talking to your body. We have to talk to our nervous system and we have to talk to our somatic self and we have to work through things on a physical level because that's where you know the body keeps the score like you guys know from all our conversations with uh with Dr. Bessel you know the body keeps it all the body keeps all the pain and all the anxiety and I have to be able to open it up but this is this is this is the this is the beautiful of I'm going to mention one last detail and then we open it up to questions. I got a question from somebody. The person wrote me an email and said, "You know what triggers me most is asham knew. Asham knew we sinned. But God knew we betrayed we stole. We spoke slanderously. We perverted. Here we acted wickedly. We behaved rebelliously. We robbed. We contrived lies. We gave bad counsel. We mocked. We betrayed. We uh we uh provoked or antagonized. I could go through it all, but you get the picture. And this woman wrote to me, "Really? I did this. This was done to me. If anything, God should apologize to me. My mother should apologize to me. My father should apologize to me. My brother, my sister, my rabbi, my teacher, my principal, my classmate, my cousin, my babysitter. They should be the ones saying a shamu a whole day. They're the ones who are the perpetrators. I'm saying asham knew for what? My life was ruined. I've been in therapy for 25 years and still working on it. I can't function. I'm emotionally damaged. Why am I apologizing? Not only are you not apologizing to me, you're giving me a whole day to apologize. And then I'm standing with this and with this with this and I keep banging on my chest like you bad girl, you bad girl. And she told me I'm not doing any of this. I can't I cannot be ret-raumatized and reexperience my agony. Pretty heavy. Pretty heavy. What's my answer? I don't want to give an answer because these are not things you give answers to. These are things that we have to be able to connect soul to soul, heart to heart. But I want to tell you what I feel is a very genuine response to this. And this is based, you know, people always ask me what's your story? What's your source? You know, pop psychology 2023, pop psychology to make people feel good and take them away from authentic Judaism. Well, I'm going to give you the source. And for me, the source, you can't have a greater source than that. That's the alterba. The alterb rab of leyadi the author of the author of was one of the most seinal thinkers and sages and scholars in all of Jewish history. To quote Dakavan he said the ra knew how to learn and was very dismissive about knew how to learn. quote Rabbi Salvich who came from the Lithuanian Salvic dynasty. He said the greatest psychologist in Jewish history is the alterb and this is Rabbi Salvik who was not aid at all. He was a Salv a son of Mosha a grandson of a great grandson of the B. I'm just saying this because I want to I want to say the authority there's a there's a discourse of the alterba begins with the word it's on in his magnum opus and he has other discourses with a similar idea and he says one point about the confession of yam kipper that I find extremely empowering and healing and I'm paraphrasing it I'm using my own words because it's written in you know a little bit of an abstract Hebrew but the point is not mine the point is Dr. You take him out a few hundred years ago before the word trauma was known in Bellarus where he lived. And he says, "The deepest part of the confession is to be able to have, I quote, this is almost verbatim, to be able to have empathy on the largeness of your soul that has descended into very very difficult places and ended up getting entangled in things that are completely below its true dignity." When I say, let me tell you the deepest meditation. If all you're hearing is, "I'm such a horrible, horrible girl or boy," you're missing the point. You know who you're really saying asham to? And I want you to open up. You know who you're really saying asham? You know who you're really apologizing to? You're apologizing to yourself. You're asking forgiveness from yourself. From yourself. You're asking forgiveness from God. That's a misunderstanding of what God is. We look, God is there. He's the big boss. I'm such a bad Jew. God, please forgive me. Says, "No, you got the whole thing wrong. You're divine. You are divine infinity. I want to ask forgiveness. I'm going to try not to cry. I want to ask forgiveness for my divinity, for my godliness that I felt in life that I have to survive through getting everybody's validation. that I have to survive by crippling my emotions in order that you should like me. That I had to survive by lying, by cheating, by becoming an addict. I had to become an addict. What do I have with addiction? You're I had to emotionally disassociate. What am I damaged goods? I'm infinity. You're full of confidence and power and beauty. You are the blessing to the world. You are God's blessing to the world. coming mish. Can I apologize to my sacred child that remained waiting in a hiding place because I hid it cuz I was embarrassed with myself. I was embarrassed with myself and I was been living by coverups. Those of us who are who know about living an act of trauma know very well what this means. for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, 51 years, 60 years. I've been living a life alien to who I am because of my shame. Can I apologize one day to that soul? Can I apologize to myself and say, "Wow, I'm so so sorry to you that this is how I felt I need to survive because of the messages I learned about you maybe when I was two or three or four or six or 11 or 18." Apologizing to God doesn't mean apologizing to a big king somewhere near Mars. Apologizing to God first and foremost means apologizing to your deepest self to you are to the God inside of you to the beauty to the holiness to the kadusha to the that's you that is you our separateness is an illusion that is part of our trauma that we're trauma doesn't only begin with I'm messed up and I'm anx I'm anxious trauma begins with separateness trauma begins that I I need I have an ego that I need to protect that I'm a separate reality that now I need to create defense mechanisms and survival mechanisms so that my reptilian brain should be able to survive not realizing my truest truest identity for the sin that we sinned not to you before you in your presence my soul was always there I needed to lie in my life I needed to become addicted to porn in my life I needed to become become addicted to promiscuity in my life. I needed to become addicted to hiding from everything and anybody. I need to be afraid of social settings and experience social anxiety. Really, what do I have with this? Oh, I don't even know who I am. I became a fake person. I became a person with shells and husks. And you know what? It may even be unconscious. I don't even know that I became this person. But I'm always in a position either of fight or flight or freeze or form. I had to emotionally disassociate, emotionally disconnect. Everybody was triggering me. I'm miserable. I make the people around me miserable. You're you're a man of love. You're a woman of love. You're an ambassador of love. You know who you are. You're a stick love. That's who you are. Rabbi W. You don't know me. You don't know you. You don't know you. I know you. You don't know you. I'm trying to figure out myself is a reflection on this part of us. Can I say for the sin that I s in the in the presence of my soul, the presence in the face of the of the divine that is always in front of me that I felt that I have to resort to behaviors, thoughts, feelings, emotions, not willingly even, not maliciously. It may all be unconscious. But is there a greater gift in the world than finding out how much of my life has been defined by my trauma and discovering the me that is beyond trauma, pre- trauma, and is still there and is always there and could look at all of this and say, "You know what? I'm done. I'm done. I'm done associating with my broken self. It's there. I will have empathy for it. I will have compassion for it. I'm not going to judge it because judging it never helps. I'm going to have compassion for it. But I'm going to choose to align myself with my infinity, with my power, with my goodness, with me being a reflection of God's eternal love. That's what all the confession is about. Before you say a shamno, before you say, I invite you all and I call he says you never start a sham before. Three words. And he says why means my consciousness is divine. Ao means the consciousness of my forefathers is divine. Where I come from, my source. In other words, I am divine consciousness. And now ask I ask myself, is this really what I need? I need to steal. I need to lie. I need to cheat. I need to reduce myself to the smallest version of myself. I need to live in shame. I need to feel in I need to live in guilt. That's why we say before every confession, we're not going to be audacious and say we're not going to do that. We're going to say that we sent. Why are you giving me this introduction? Imagine when somebody comes to you to say I'm sorry and they say, "By the way, I'm not going to tell you that I'm Oh, you know that doesn't sound good. Just say I'm sorry. No, I'm not really. I could tell you that I'm but I'm not." Well, what type of introduction is this? Every time we confess, you know what the answer, of course, is the answer is it's a very important introduction because yeah, of course, we could say that's who the person is. Of course, you're a satic. I know. You go to every person who's sitting here. Go deep down and you'll you you're full of goodness. You're full of goodness and righteousness. I promise you. But you know what? I have the courage not just to say deep down I'm good. I have the courage to say and therefore I want to live that goodness. I want to breathe it. So yes, I want to identify what are the triggers that cause me to fall and say, you know what, I'm done. I don't need that anymore. What is it that when my wife tells this to me, my husband tells this to me, my son tells this to me, my daughter tells this to me, it comes up on my phone, my mother, my brother, my father, my sister, my sister-in-law, my rabbi, it triggers me, and an hour later I'm doing what I shouldn't be doing. What is that? What is that? I want to identify it and I want to extricate it for my life because you deserve much much much better. I can't I cannot end this without mentioning the teaching of the student of the who said why in the plural knew but God knew speak about you why we I don't go to my wife and say we are sorry I am sorry not we are sorry you know what he says of kar says who's we you and God. Hashem knew we, me and Hashem. Why? Because ultimately, and everybody here knows this very well, everything that is part of our journey was not only our choice. Much of it was not our choice. You did not choose where to be born. You did not choose which member number in the family to be. You did not choose your parents. You did not choose your community. You did not choose the people who visited your house. And you know what I mean by that? You did not choose the school you went to as a little kid. You did not choose so many things that have determined so many factors in your life. Who chose that? Hashem knew. Hashem, we're in this together. We're in this together. I'm going to have the courage to understand that this was a mission, not a prison sentence. Asham knew we are both in this together. And if God is fully present here, it means that this is not just about evil and destruction. There's a mission. There's meaning. There's purpose. So I want to bless myself and all of you that we should be able to have the courage not to think about these words because that's not going to do it. But rather to be able to breathe them in, to internalize them, and to be able to experience it. to be able to experience it. Probably every person needs sometimes different tools. I think the common denominator is we have to be able to forgive ourselves. The hardest thing about yam kipper is to forgive yourself. When you forgive yourself, you can experience God's forgiveness. If you don't experience your forgiveness, if you don't forgive yourself, you can't experience God's forgiveness. You have to forgive yourself. All of yam kipper is to identify your infinite beauty. If I can't experience that, I have to realize that I will I will experience yam kiper through the lens of trauma. Don't blame yourself, but just realize that. And if I'm experiencing yamkip through the lens of trauma, I have to realize that it's an interpretation that's coming from my own challenge and struggle, which is fine, which is normal, but it's something I want to work on. Whenever I'm wearing glasses, I experience the world through my lenses, through my glasses. And therefore, I want to encourage all of us to be able to pray and to open ourselves up to experience a yam kiper of dvas, of oneness, of love, a yam kipper in which you could tell yourself, I am beyond this. All this dirt and filth belongs to the abuser. Does not belong to me. Does not belong to me. Yes. Let's just sit with that for a moment. Okay. Before we go further, I just want to make a technical announcement to all the Fresh Start alumni. There's been some changes on Rabbi Ywise's live stream. If you do ask a live question, they will uh the live stream will hear you, but of course they cannot see you. Um, but I did want to put that out there. Um, that being said, uh, I think from it. Are you there? Yo, can I jump in for a second? Sure. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. I feel like I I wanted to ask my question first because I thought it maybe like be able to set the tone well for myself specifically with my journey before um fresh start and where I am now in my journey. I feel like the message that you just gave was just so beautiful and so heart touching and it it was so beautiful and I keep asking myself like did I go to assist him that everybody freaking lied to me? I'm sorry. like my seven-year-old's coming home from school and he says, "Mommy, I'm afraid of Yum Kipper. I think I'm going to be dead. What are the people going to do for me in Shamayim?" He's afraid to walk and talk. And those are the messages that I lived with for 35 years. And here the past alumni we had last week with Rab and you and we have all these I'm like, I don't understand. Is there two Judaisms going on? Like, are you just like trying to make me happy? like are all abundant today? Just like trying to soothe my soul because I went through so much and I I want to ask this and I'm not I'm not stalking you in any way. I'm just like these are questions that keep on coming up to me all the time and I hear these beautiful messages and I was like it's not that I don't trust you. I don't I just like almost like where's Judy? What's truth? What's Kipper? Like there's so many questions. Yeah. I don't know if this is out of place or not connected. I'm going to give you a very honest answer. So your question I get all the time. I even alluded to it in the beginning of my word because I get it so frequently. And the basic question is Rabbi WA what you said was beautiful and touching. But this is not the Judaism that anybody is taught. Now a child is not taught this Judaism. I was not taught this Judaism. It seems like you're inventing a religion just to soothe those who are wounded and traumatized in the 21st century. It's inauthentic. And anybody who studies the sources knows that Yumkipper is a dreadful day. It's a scary day. It's a day that you should be scared that you're going to be struck down and die as your seven-year-old child told you that he is scared of going into Yamkip. It's a very very important question you ask and I'll answer it very bluntly and very briefly and that is as follows. If you go to many swarim especially like uh swarim of mus which means of ethics that focus on repair and fixing and repentance just to throw like gracious khakma or shi chuva these are very classic works about about chuva in similar books some of them especially will have very very harsh words about uh penalties and about consequence and about punishments and about separation and about the day of judgment etc etc. Now you have to understand all these people who wrote these books, many of them were very holy people. Instinctively they knew their holiness. Instinctively they were aligned with their souls. So it was almost like they were writing, you know, if you put your hand in fire, you're going to get burnt. They were writing about the fact that souls are very sensitive and you should be aware of consequences. What happened in this generation is, and this is very important to understand, 2,000 years of exile, but especially the last century of exile has created so much pain and so much trauma within the life of the Jewish people that today all those paradigms upon which all of Judaism is based has been forgotten. So in our curriculum we still have the literature when we talk about God judging you and there's punishment and there's ganon and all this is true in a context of understanding your greatness and your infinity. You understand? If I have an amazing marriage, if I have an if you have an amazing amazing marriage, right? Amazing. And your wife or your spouse comes to you and says, you know, I want you to know, I want you to know that the words you said yesterday were extremely hurtful. And you can apologize. You could say, "I'm sorry." And repair the marriage. If somebody comes and gives you advices, I want you to know that a relationship is very fragile. Safeguard it. Protect it. Your relationship with your children is fragile. Don't take it for granted because you know what? One insulting comment can hurt a relationship very badly. No, it's the best advice you can get. But if that's the only message you hear and whatever you say is going to destroy a relationship, then it's horrible. So if Judaism is in a context of understanding your infinity, then Muser is not a bad thing. It's basically telling you you're fragile, you're sensitive, your soul is sensitive. Be careful. Yeah. It's like it's like a a good nutritionist, a good dietician says, you know what, your body is sensitive. You're going to eat cheesecake. You're going to suffer. You're going to suffer. They're not. But if all they tell me is you're a fat hog, you're a narcissistic food addict and I don't want to deal with nutritionists. Leave me alone. But if I somebody wrote a a line, don't go to the gym because you hate your body. Go to the gym because you love your body. You understand? If I love my body and I go to a nutritionist and he says, you know what, Rabbi Y, these carbs are killing you. That's not trauma. That's called That's called helping me. These carbs are killing you. The language of our books is these carbs are killing you. So all we understand is yeah, whatever you do is bad cuz you're evil. You're evil. God is out to get you. We need to reclaim the essence of Judaism. And yes, a lot of our curriculums and a lot of our schools, we are not aware of this. We have been affected by horrible suffering. And Judaism is experienced through that lens. I'm sorry to say it. What I am saying here, every word I said I believe to be the most authentic expression of real real Yiddish and anybody who learns especially the works of which means the bal and his students the alterba and his students I was a student I sat by the feet of the reb of the labba for two decades I was there every single shabas I don't maybe missed very very few and I heard I heard Judaism from a mouth of a true uh ishaim, a true man of God, true holy person. And you could feel the positivity, the belief in people, the understanding that it's all about the power that you have and all the all the negative comments are in the context of trying to to to to protect and nurture your truth. It's good when somebody gives good advice when you're solid. The problem is we're not solid. We're so weak. So we have to build, we have to tell people what Judaism is. So that's why it's very important to understand all the quotes that sound so negative. They are in a context that is not healthy. And when they're in a context that's not healthy, it's going to be experienced as distortion. And we have to go back to the context. We have to go back to the basics. And when you go back to the basics, everything falls into place. This doesn't mean life is not painful. There's a lot of mystery in life. There's a lot of things that God does in this world that I don't understand. And that's fine. But that's also part mystery is also part of human dignity. But this vindictiveness and self-loathing has no place in authentic Judaism. At least the way I understand it. All I can tell you is the way I understand it. I really appreciate that answer because I feel like my authentic part which I believe reflects on a lot of like the fresh start alumni part. We just want truth and that thought came back and forth so many times. And I felt like before we set all the answers, let's set the tone straight. It's not that the Rabbi Y is pitting us. He's actually telling us the truth. So, thank you for clarifying that. That was really helpful. Yeah. Um, you know what? I'm going to ask everybody think about an experiment in your own house. Think about in your own house. Okay. You have a husband and a wife or parents and children and they have a really good relationship. It's loving. They're best friends. They appreciate each other. And they go for a walk. They go on a vacation. I don't know for a week. They're walking in the woods. And at some point at a very intimate moment, the husband, you know, breaks down sobbing or the wife breaks down sobbing. and they talk about their most vulnerable painful moment in life that they feel destroyed their whole life and you're watching that so to speak and you'll say wow wow look at the trust look at the connection the other person could just hold space hold space that's what yam kiper is that's yam kiper is the ultimate romance between man or woman and god the ultimate roish says that's why they make yam kiper The girls would dance. It's a Mishna. Why they make? It's the day of love. It's the day of romance. It's the day when there was forgiveness. Imagine if I have a spouse or have a child. I have a best friend and they've been an act of trauma for 30 years. And it wre havoc in life and they could break down and say, "Wow, I didn't realize what I did to you. I didn't realize what I did to myself. I didn't realize what I did to my kids." And the other person could say, "I understand. And let's start a new chapter. Let's create a new future for ourselves. Let's forgive each other and let's create a new future." That's love. That's beauty. That's connection. This is what happens in good relationships. This is what happens in good. You say, "No, he he was confessing all of his sins. It was horrible." You missed the point. He was spitting out all of his dysfunction. He was identifying how many mistakes he made because of his ignorance. That's a beautiful thing. That's how you could start a new future. You get it? So the same exact event from one perspective, you could say, "Oh, was such a negative conversation. It was the most beautiful conversation in the world." Is there healing? Is there repair if we don't talk about our issues? In fresh start, could anybody heal if they come in and they say, "Oh, I had a perfect life. My mother perfect, my father perfect, my siblings perfect, my school perfect, me perfect. The all of healing is by talking not about perfection, by talking about where we went wrong, where I went wrong, where I distorted myself completely. That is that's beauty. It's pain. It's pain, but it's beauty. It's it's healing. It's love. That's what it's all about, my dearest friends. You know, the day of judgment, the day of judgment is the biggest trigger. Judgment. I don't want to be judged. I don't want to be judged. You're going to judge me. Everybody's judging me. The rabbi is judging me. God is judging. I don't want to be judged. The day of judgment. I'm laughing. We have to heal ourselves. The day of judgment is a good thing. What does judging mean? We know the word judging. He's judgmental. Let's Let's get rid of judgmental. Discernment. A day of discernment. But they when somebody imagine I could sit with somebody, they could look into my soul and say, "Wow, this is what you're dealing with. These are your mistakes. These are your traumas. These are your struggles. This is what you need to figure out. I would be grateful to this person." We try to go to therapists for this. This is not judgmental. It's called discernment. It's called identifying, yeah, my weaknesses, my brokenness, my triggers. What am I responding to? What am I reacting to? What is my schedule based on? Why am I waking up late? Why am I calling myself lazy? Why am I so scared? Yeah, these types of discernments are the recipe for health, the recipe for growth. That's what these days are about. You get my point. Beautiful. I think also if you go back and just say in in English it's the day of judgment, but in Hebrew it's right. Like we're actually forgi, right? Yeah. And then we call it judgment as I'm judging you. You know, I'm sitting here and I'm judging you. Oh, oh, you're not a balabusta. You can't have a clean house. You know, the mother was in the hospital for two weeks with a child. You kind of have a clean den is not I'm judging you from a distance. Den is the courage to be able to dissect my life, to be discerning, to be detailed oriented, to be nuanced, not just to sugarcoat everything. I sugarcoat my life when I'm weak. I sugarcoat my life when I'm not capable of hearing the truth. When we're when we're when we're courageous people. Yes. Talk to me. Talk to me. Tell me, Rabbi Wa, you know what? You just did something and you didn't have to do it. You were a sur this a survival mechanism. You know what? Challenge yourself here because you're responding to an old paradigm. These are these are statements and observations and reflections that help us grow. Like a personal trainer who puts more weights on you or has you stretch more or do another five push-ups, not to punish you, to build muscle, to stretch, to become strong. Okay. Thank you. Yan, you want to jump in with our first live? Yeah, I was going to say Rab Y that the people that want to come to Fresh Start and have a perfect life, we're opening up a separate group for them. That's going to be a whole different It's not going to be a week. It's going to be a month. That's going to be a 30-day program. But the people who can talk, it's a lot easier in seven days. Um, okay. We'll go to some live questions from it. Are you here? Yes. Okay. Go ahead. Um, so I I wanted to ask what uh Tova asked. I want to add to that. Um, so the the way I grew up with the message is basically that Hashem is here to he wants me. He wants to hurt me. He really wants to it's like if I keep saying the is basically I'm telling him what I did and he's I'm I'm justifying him basically killing me. Um, so I through my growth and healing I learned that that's not true. The messages that I got is not true. So what you said earlier, it's like I I need to believe I know I know as adult me I believe what you're saying is true. Little me is still holding on to all the messages that I got before. At the same time I know I want to I I want to go into your kipper in a way that I want to embody my yiddish kite. I want to know without the fear. I don't want it to come from a place like I'm so afraid that God is going to hurt me. Why? It's like I I don't even want to do this. I want to do it in a way of love, of acceptance, of of wanting to and know why I want to do this. Beautiful, beautiful question. I grew up I'm just going to summarize. I grew You're saying I grew up with the feeling that God is out to get me. He would love to get me, kill me, punish me, and and it's still there. And how do I go into the kipper and generally live a life with a different attitude? I got to breathe. This is tough. I'll tell you why it's tough. I can give you very nice answers if you want, and I will. I'll try to, but that's not the key. The messages that God is out to get you is in your body. It's in your nervous system, right? These are instinctive triggers. Am I right or wrong? True. Yeah. So, lectures are not going to help. You need this is somatic work. It's true for all of us. We have messages from childhood. It's ingrained in our amygdala in the stem of our brains. It's ingrained in our nerves. It's ingrained in our kidneys and our liver. They have intelligence. All these cells and and and they come out and that's what we're experiencing. So we need to heal today on all levels. We need the information. We need the words and the ideas. But we more importantly, you know, the cerebral speeches are not working anymore. And I'm the one who gives speeches. I'm telling you from experience. You know, people they don't care for speeches anymore. That that ship has sailed already. That ship has people want experience. They need experience. Don't give me more speeches about God. Give me experience. Malik says instead it with a [Music] is good. That's what we need. That's what you need. Can I convince somebody that sushi tastes good? Can I convince somebody that milkshake is gishmach or a coffee is good or vanilla ice cream is good? If you think it's good, some people don't think it's good. Maybe kale or spinach or celery. Taste it. Tamaru if I'm not experiencing God as goodness I have not tasted God I have tasted paganism I have tasted idolatry I have tasted a des so in our generation we need to have the courage to say I want to taste God I want to taste I don't want to think I don't want speeches I want to taste it the nama is godly and that's where self love comes from by the way self love means you love your real self and your real self is divine. So that's the deepest aashem. C can you accept and love your deepest deepest deepest self? That is your divine self. Let's think about it. You're a mother, right? You're a mother. Okay. Hashem is called a mother. He's called a father. Would any normal, healthy father and mother want their children to die, their children to get ruined, their children to have a horrible year? Hashem created us. He didn't have to create me. He conceived us in love. What? To torture us? To give us a miserable life. It's true. There's much of life that we don't understand. We understand very little. But the whole of everything is I love you. I love you. The bant used to say that Hashem loves every Jew more than parents love an only child who was born when they were elderly and they lost hope for having a child. And then they have a child. You can imagine the affection. And he said it doesn't come close to the love that has to every Jew. What was the bash teaching? Was teaching that a person needs to be able to know doesn't mean I understand everything about my life. Hashem may have sent me to very difficult places because apparently he thinks that I'm as powerful as he is. That's what it looks like. But the point is that he the foundation is that Hashem loves you infinitely and he wants to see you succeed and every jur every experience in life is part of a mission of the soul. It's part of a journey that is filled filled with belief in you and we have to reclaim that power. Love is power. Power is love. We have to reclaim that power. So you say that Hashem that Hashem loves me even if I keep doing like according to my parents I am betraying Hashem every second that I am alive. So my so Hashem loves me even first of all that's not true. I see on your face that it's not true. I see on your face holiness. I see on your face divine light and I am sensitive. I'm a sensitive person. I know what I see. You are divine. You are a very holy person. I could see there's a light coming from your face even on Zoom. I can only imagine if I would see you in the same room what I would see. I would probably have to run away from the holiness. I'm serious now. You're laughing cuz it's not what your parents told you. They're telling you that you're wicked. So, I feel bad for your parents because basically they're telling you what was told to them. I have empathy for them. But don't believe that. Don't believe that. Not only that, I will argue, I don't know about your life, but I will argue that every betrayal that you did is probably coming from a very, very, very holy place. I would argue that some of your mistakes are holier than other people's mitzvah. Your what's your deepest yearning in life? Your deepest yearning in life is to be authentic. True. That's your deepest yearning in life. That's the most godly yearning in the world. There are religious people. Their yearning is not to be authentic. Their yearning is to fit into the community. Their yearning is that everybody should say they're good people. Their yearning is that they should be able to say, "I'm more from than you." Your yearning is to be authentic. You know why? Because you're godly. And God is truth and authenticity. You don't care for lies. The says MS. You're looking for MS. You're not betraying God. Please. You're betraying fake gods. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you you're betraying the fake gods. The gods of lies. The god of politics. The god that's just there for social conformity so that the kids should be in a perfect family and get the best. That's what you're betraying. You know what? Good for you. I'll tell you who else betrayed God. You know who else? Arainu. He used to smash idols. You know what used to tell Ara? You're betraying God because he smashed idols. Thank God he smashed idols. If God is an idol, you should smash it. Yes. Thank you, Rabbi. Y. Thank you. That was You know this woman. Am I right about her or not? Tell me the truth. say I'm going to say you're spot on about her and I'm going to say you're spot on about I'm sure I I believe that most of Clus is the same way but I can only attest to the 220 amazing holy nishamas that have gone through that we've literally had this to spend seven days with and um it's unbelievable. I want to tell you I want to tell you that your greatest sin you know what your greatest sin is. I'm now going to tell you what your greatest sin is. Your greatest sin is that you think that you're full of sin. You know what you should do chuva this kipper on? You should do chuva on the fact that you feel that you are a betrayer of God. That's what you should do chuva on because that's not true. You're a beautiful, wonderful, holy person. And I say it with full responsibility because I could see it and I could feel it. And it's true. I know it's true. And you know it's true. You know it's true. You're just listening to messages that are abusive. And those messages you should not internalize. You could feel bad. You could have empathy. Have empathy. But don't internalize them. Don't make them your god. Don't make these messages your God. You know who you are? You are and God is crazy about you and open yourself up to that and forgive yourself and accept yourself and love yourself and love your children. And you know what else? Dance. Put on the music in your house and dance as often as possible. Put on music loud and dance and have fun and take care of yourself and celebrate life. You know how to do that. That's your resolution for the year. This year, you're going to put on the music and dance. Dance with your kids and dance with yourself. Close your eyes and dance. Thank you. And by way, I want to say on behalf of myself and I'm sure other people, this was like an experiential. It's almost like you came into the room with us and you were like the positive parent correcting some of the experience. The message for from Fitment is so true and for everybody else I know that it came with so much love and it literally felt like like like my father a father was sitting and giving me messages that I needed to hear my whole life and didn't. And we all need to be here for each other. Friends, we all need to be here for this is a very crucial time in in in history for every one of us. We all have to be here for each other. And you know what? You know, somebody told me the other day, you know, I was going to speak said, "Oh, you're going to speak about trauma again." Whenever anybody makes fun of me for talking about trauma, I know that they understand about trauma a lot less than I understand about kangaroos in New Zealand. You know, even if you don't have trauma, because you're perfect. We know that. Why are you making fun of it? Why are you making fun of it? But people don't understand. They think trauma is an excuse. It's an excuse for everybody to sin. Oh, I can't fast in I have trauma. Oh, I can't go to Shom. I have trauma. Have trauma. Trauma. Trauma. Trauma. But if people don't understand, they don't understand. We have to be here for each other. We have to be here with empathy, with compassion. And with empathy for everybody. And empathy also for people who don't understand. But empathy for people who don't understand does not mean that you have to go back into a cage just because there's people who don't understand. Don't go back into that cage. I can have empathy. I can have respect. I can be kind, and we should be kind to everybody, especially to people who we owe a lot of gratitude to, even if they're clueless about a lot of things. But that doesn't mean you should steep, stoop down, and surrender your soul and your integrity. Don't do that. Don't do that. You have to create healthy boundaries to protect your soul. You are too precious and you are too sacred and you're too sensitive just to let anybody uh what's it called? Trespass your nama and violate something that is too sacred. Don't let anybody do that. And you have to know who's violating and who's not violating. And if they're violating, respectfully create a boundary, a conversation that's making you feel guilty and horrible, and it's taking you away from your kids. It's taking you away from your spouse. It's taking you away from yourself. It's it's throwing you back into addiction. It's throwing you back into depression. Those are not conversations you need. That's part of Yamipa resolutions. Yippa resolutions is you choose where you're going to hang out, who you're going to be talking to, whose energy you're going to be absorbing. You want to be with people who who empower you, who you could be honest with, people who are who are reflective, who are self-aware, people who just want to judge you and tell you what a horrible person you are and you're destroying your kids in the name of trauma and you should grow up and and and you don't have their and all that. Okay, you know what? I love you. Have a beautiful year and and and and Hashem should help you and Hashem should help me if I'm making a mistake. But be confident enough not you have to know when people can trespass. It's very very important because victims are are are very fragile and you have to be you have to protect that. It's extremely important. I hope you understand what I'm saying. Okay, let's move along here. My we got we got we got lots of questions here. Live ones, recorded ones. Um Gy, are you there? Getty, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Go ahead, Gy. All right. Thank you so much. Um, so what you said resonate with with me so strongly. I I almost cried. Um, and I feel like it's too good to be true and maybe I didn't understand. So I want to know if is it okay if I repeat to you what you said. Yeah. Yeah. Just to know that. I just love that line. It sounded too good to be true. Take that in because that captures the trauma of gullus. It's too good to be true. Imagine. Let's I want everybody to meditate on that for a moment. If God and Yiddishite are not heavy and painful and torturous, it's not true. If it's if it's gishmach, it's not good. Rabbi, why? Why? What Judaism did you invent that it should be gishmak it should be blissful. So I want to tell everybody the reb used to have an expression in Russian gulos enough with gull trauma that everything has to be evil and bad. The purpose of life is bliss and pleasure and that's where you're all heading to. You're all heading to a place of bliss and pleasure. Now continue. It's too good to be true. You know why? You know why it's too good to be true? Too good to be true. Because our truth has been tainted by by lenses of terrible, terrible suffering. I understand. I understand. We don't believe that life is good. We believe life is supposed to be horrible. And God is the author of life. So what does that tell you about him? He's the horror movie author. All his movies are horror movies. You know horror movies. What do you say about directors of horror movies? So now it's time for all of us to breathe and breathe out the toxicity and open ourselves up to infinite love. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Rebbitson Gittle. Yeah. So, so I in my journey of healing right now it's it's interesting that I heard what you said because right now I'm a lot in a place where I'm mourning. I keep on mourning like because I see how my traumas and my behaviors affected my life and I'm really struggling to forgive myself like with things that I did and I'm realizing now when I change I changed so much of my behaviors and I continue to like look how my life turned around and I became like everything changed. So I'm having a hard time. I constantly have this thing like where I have to mourn and like forgive myself and then obviously forgive Hashem for what he put me through. Like he put me into this crazy childhood and I'm having a hard time. So when you said it I was like wow like I almost felt like I'm getting the answer what I needed and so I want to make sure like that I understood. So I'm like yes. So I basically when I'm like asking for forgiveness for myself that I didn't know better and therefore I did all these things and I need to forgive myself and and it's like almost like I can't believe it like I'm actually also Hashem is asking me he's asking you for forgiveness very well. I like that. Yes. Like it makes sense cuz I know I just want to make sure I get Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And in order that they shouldn't say that I'm just a liberal mug the Gmorrah says in page 60 that the the offering of it says in that it was it was for God's sin. So the Gmorrah says Hashem says bring atonement for me because I diminish the moon. And diminishing the moon is really the idea that a person can suddenly feel that they're dark. They have no light like the moon. The moon needs the light of the sun and sometimes the moon becomes a crescent and sometimes the moon just disappears. There's no light whatsoever. So, Hashem says, "I need atonement because I'm the one who's responsible for that." Andurim is plural. It should have been what'sim atonement. There's you asking forgiveness and there's also Hashem asking forgiveness. So, yeah, you can close your eyes. Kipper and you will be able you can close your eyes kipper and breathe and I believe you'll be able to sense Hashem asking you forgiveness because you went through a hellish life as I could see on your face and you went through a lot a lot of trauma and you lived a life based on that trauma and it really wasn't your fault. You did the best you can. You tried very hard for correct me if I'm wrong. You fought every day of your life like a lioness to be a normal person, didn't you? Mhm. Yeah. Every day of your life, you could cry. It's fine. Every day of your life, you fought to be a normal person. And you ask yourself, why am I not normal? Why do I have so much anxiety? Why am I weird? Why am I different? Why? Why? Why? And it has nothing to do with your choices. Terrible things were done. And you suffered. You suffered the consequences. And you know what? The people around you suffered. So of course, of course you want to make amends, but the deepest person you want to make amends to is yourself to forgive yourself. You know, you tried so hard to survive. You went to anybody who can help you and the people who were supposed to help you most hurt you most. They hurt you most. So yeah, you want to make amends, but the more you'll forgive yourself, the more you'll be able to make amends. You know, people think that if we forgive ourselves, we're going to become selfish and narcissistic. It's the exact opposite. The only way the only way we can ask forgiveness from God is if we forgive ourselves. You know why? Because when you forgive yourself, you can have empathy for your mistakes. And when you can have empathy for your mistakes, you could say, you know what, this is really not for me. When I can't forgive myself and I'm busy telling myself how bad I am, I can't have empathy for my mistakes. All I'm feeling is my negativity. So, you know what? I can't even do real chuva. The day you forgive yourself, listen to me. The day you forgive yourself, that's the day you do chuva. You know why? Cuz when you forgive yourself, you could say, "Wow, I tried so hard, but you know what? every day I was again living from a place of trauma and I don't deserve this and it's not who I am and I forgive myself and then you say and therefore I'm finished with this behavior I'm not going back there that's when you do real chuva so forgive yourself and you will hear God ask yeah Hashem will ask you forgiveness also and have the courage to forgive him also and the reason you should forgive God is and this is deep. The reason we why do we forgive God? We forgive God because at the end of the day we are really part of God made with us. He didn't make them separate from I know it's hard to hear. But when you become completely completely healed, you'll be able to look at your life and you'll realize that your nama chose this journey cuz you're going to become a powerhouse of inspiration and love. And the only reason you're going to be a powerhouse is because of your journey. So one day you're going to go to your soul and you're going to say, "Wow, wow, wow. I see you chose this journey." So when you say Hashem chose it, he chose it with us because we're part. We're all one. We're all one. So to put it like in three words, it's basically like I'm thinking it's basically we're all going to forgive ourselves. Like Hashem is going to forgive me. I'll forgive him. I'll forgive myself. Yeah. And hopefully there's three there's three there's a chain there's a trio of forgiveness. Wow. I never heard this. Like this is amazing. I feel like Hashem answered my my questions that I suffered for the past few weeks. Hashem will forgive you. You will forgive Hashem. And the first is you will forgive yourself. Thank you so much. Yeah. Yeah. The word, you know what? The word forgiveness comes the word. You know what means? A dance. What? A dance. M is a dance. A dance. When we forgive ourselves, we forgive Hashem, Hashem forgives us, we go back into the dance of life. We start dancing again. There's a circle. It's a dance. We become part of the dance. Everything is a dance, you know. Wow. Okay. Why? We're going to move along. I'm going to I'm going to ask um it's it's really vis right now. One of our alumni is uh it's 3:46 a.m. in Manchester, England. And I don't think he's up because of Caparus. I think he's up because of Rabbi Y. So, uh Yasi Ysef, are you there? Are you there? Wow. Manchester. Okay. 2:46 a.m. Welcome. 2:46 a.m. from Manchester. 3:46. 3:46. 3:46 a.m. Okay. Maybe he fell back asleep. Is he there? Yassi, are you there? Okay. Uh, there's only one there. Yeah, that's you. You're there. Go ahead. Helloam from Manchester. I can't believe I'm actually speaking to you first time. I listen to a lot of your classes and it's given me a lot of inspiration and uh different uh Thank you. a much broader perspective on a lot of things in life. I'm just a conduit. I'm just a conduit Abraham. Yeah. My first question is that um you know we go through first of all I love the time of the year. I I I I love I love this the sh I love you know I'm not one that that hates it. I actually love going to sh um although most of the year I hardly attend but you know I I like this time of the year. Um but you know we we ask for forgiveness. I mean now you've said this for ourselves. Yeah. But you we know ourselves you know year in year out you know we're we're we're not really changed much. We continue with the same way you know we ask for forgiveness you know we hope and and and pray you know this year will be different and you try and then you fall back and you know so you know who who we actually fooling here. That's question number one. The next question is as you may have answered already you know you said you know we have to come out and realize who we really are and forget about all the external and and just you know see who we really are will not make us a bit you know arrogant and and and horty um and the next question is um you know you sometimes you know you get into trouble whether it's your parents or your or your your teacher you know they've caught you and you say you know it wasn't wasn't Just me and my brother did it as well. He want to ask me about why we saying our parents also sinned. Great questions. Okay, just to make sure I understood question number one, what's the point of yimipper? We ask forgiveness but nobody none of us really change. Question number two, if you focus on how good you are, you could become hoy and arrogant. Question number three, why you throwing your father and mother under the bus? I think the question to all the answer to all three questions is really one and that is when we understand our true goodness it creates the exact opposite of arrogance and hortiness because when you say you're really good it doesn't mean in an egotistical sense that I'm superior to other people and I could do whatever I want and I can exploit people what it means that I'm really good is it means that I'm a derivative of infinite consciousness. It means that uh you know imagine you have a bottle in the Atlantic Ocean, right? And the bottle is filled with water and the person plucks out the bottle and thinks that all there is is the bottle of water when really you're part of the ocean. You know your sh that goes into the bottle is just a part of the ocean that goes into your gof but really you're part of the ocean. You're part of a so it's not in an egotistical sense. It means that you're part of Hashem. So this greatness of a person also makes you so humble because I'm part of infinity. It's not my ego that becomes great. It's the fact that I'm a channel. I'm part of the ocean. I don't have to reduce myself to a bottle of water and then pluck out the bottle and fight with the ocean. You are the ocean. That's incredible. And the more I can identify with that oneness, the more you could see yourself. And that's where all change comes from. I think when we say people don't change, it's because I think the paradigm from where change comes from is guilt. In other words, oh, I did this bad. Okay, I'm not going to do it again, but tomorrow, you know, when I see it, I'll do it again. But if change comes from a different place, if change comes from a paradigm shift, I go from the bottle into the ocean, then things like stuff that I was doing, it's it's it's below me. It's alien to me. That's where real change happens. Real change doesn't happen of just saying, I was so bad and I'm not going to do it anymore. Okay, that's better than nothing. Real change happens when you can truly truly identify yourself with the source of consciousness. The way I understand it is is the fact that you I'm not throwing my parents under the bus. I think it's it's describing the fact and I think this is so relevant to all of us. There's so many stuff that I inherited from my parents. They call it epigenetics today. Epigenetics means there's things you're dealing with not because of yourself. There's things you're dealing with to repair stuff from your parents and grandparents and greatparents and great great grandparents. In fact, I would say that this generation in many ways is a generation that's repairing all of the past of Jewish history. Why not? Huh? Not just Gilgulum. Not just Gilgul. In our genes, we carry our parents' genes. They carry their parents in their dreams. You have all their trauma and all their faith, all their flaws and all their miser and it's coming out now. So we have the ability not just to repair our own stuff. We could stop the cycle of viciousness that's already going on for generations. When you choose to respond differently to a trigger, when you choose to be be authentic, when you choose to be vulnerable, when you choose to deal with your stuff, you're not just repairing yourself. You're repairing all the all the the the difficulties of generations, including with your parents. So, it's not about blaming. The word, by the way, in Hebrew doesn't mean sin. Katano means missing the point. is when you miss the target. You know, you shoot the arrow, you miss the target. That is what is I missed the target. What does it mean? I miss the target. I'm like missing the point. I don't realize who I am and why I'm here. I'm distracting myself. So, I have the courage and the ability to fix all of that for previous generations. That's very powerful. It's very powerful. The healing that everybody is doing is not just for yourself. You're bringing healing to your grandparents, to your great-grandparents. Thank you. Thanks. Thank Thank you everybody. Why? We're going to move along here. Um we have uh you did. Okay. Not yet. Okay. Not yet. There's still time. But he can go now and do it. Now that he heard Now that he answers. Um, Riiffky from Toronto, are you there? Rifky. Hi. Hi. Go ahead. How are you? Okay. So I had a question that was answered that I really want my like to come into Yom Kipper. I felt like I really needed an apology from Hashem versus me giving the apology cuz I feel like so many of my mistakes are like cir so circumstantial and you answered it really well. So thank you. But I have like like two other questions. The first one is just like um I'm just curious like are you able to do something wrong that's officially wrong according to the Torah but it's good for you it's right for you and it's an important question for me like coming into Yum Kipper to know how to feel about that like I could give a small example like I don't know if eating ud gives you some kind of I don't know comfort or something like that like I know it's a good question it's a good question and somebody asked as on the yeshiva.net in the question a similar question that for them they were abused sexually abused for many years and fasting on yam kipper triggers that abuse it it it it makes them feel unsafe and makes them they need they need to eat and they ask me so that's you know questions where people feel that in certain situations they're in a very stressful situation and following the law will compromise their health or their mental state and so forth so these have very very good questions and these questions have to be answered with tremendous tremendous sensitivity individually with empathy by a person who knows but also understands well the struggles of people because if you have one without the other it's not fair so I suggest to everybody who has this question it's too hard I go f fasting kiper I get triggered or I can't go or or similar things that maybe not you know fasting kipper is is is a mitzvah but there's other things. So you need somebody in your life that you trust, somebody who who has empathy, somebody who knows about the challenges of people that's not just going to be dismissive that you could really speak to about different things that are very very difficult for you within at the moment and work out something that you should be able to feel empowered by the day rather. There's a lot a lot of ways, you know, there's a lot of things we can do. There's a lot of things we can avoid that can that can that can help us. On a general level, the point of mitzvah is to create a blueprint for a person living life to the fullest, maximizing their potentials and manifesting the light of Hashem that flows through them. But if I have been for example terribly wounded in ash right I can't go to sh or for me a shabas table or a seder or a shashim kipper creates terrible terrible triggers or respecting father and mother but this person going to his father's home or a father's home brings up horrific memories so then you have to acknowledge the fact that I need to respect where I am and do things that will help me grow not destroy me again. So it's important for everyone with these questions about fasting, about doning, etc., etc. to be able to have a a a competent rabbi rav who can pas these sh about. There's no mitzvah. There's no mitzvah to torture ourself. That's not the point. The Rambam says the whole was given to make peace in life, to make harmony in life. The function of is to enhance people's lives to make people blissful to give us a happy life and if it's giving us a miserable life we have to revisit the Judaism that we have been taught. So that's just a general paradigm and the details I think it's a very individual question. I don't think it would be fair for me to give a a sweeping answer. Um uh but you know but you are asking about oh you I'm just going to tell you an interesting story. I'm not saying it applies to you. I'm just going to tell you a story. Sharabashkin told me, you know, Sharash, he was in prison. I went to visit him. It was it was it was not maximum. It was very very big security there. It wasn't like a camp. It was a very serious security, like max security or almost max security, high level of security. And it was very difficult. The meals were horrible. And they had a vendor machine. And the vendor machine had food with UD. Now some people rely on ud butim don't rely on ud because of so he said that he had a friend the Jew and that person got a from his rabbi that since he's in prison and they had I guess Hershey chocolate or whatever in the vending machine u so he should eat it he got a because he's in prison when he goes out of prison he'll be able to buy what he wants in bor park but now he was in prison so told me something very interesting he said that rabbi was trying to help this person to be able to give him more food. But really, he said he damaged him. He said the day that he changed his moral kashra standards, he became a prisoner. He says, "I never became a prisoner cuz I said they're not going to define my value system. I remained free." He says, "This person that moment, he lost it. He he he said the rabbi was trying to help him. He wasn't he was trying to help the guy. He was giving him a hat." But it's a it's just an interesting I'm not saying it applies to you at all. I'm just saying that sometimes when I could tell myself I don't need this. I'm beyond this. I'm choosing not to eat it because it's not for me. That can be a very powerful message. But it has to be without anxiety. If it's with anxiety and guilt, it's usually not going to work. It needs to be a choice that comes from strength. Almost like a food that you sing. You say, "You know what? I am my body does not deserve this food. this food is not for my body. If it could come from that place, it could be empowering. So, it's just important to be very sensitive to where you are without guilt and figure out what works. I understand. You understand what I'm saying? Thank you. Why y we have uh listen, I just want you to know there's I'm sure you're watching, but you have 470 people live on YouTube. You have 50 people. I didn't know. I'm not watching. soul to soul. whoever is watching. It's even more than that. It's even more than that cuz you have another few hundred. There's a thousand people right now counting on you to help us taking things. So, there's a thousand people watching. So, well, stick with us. So, stick with us. I'm sorry. We're in it together. We're in it together. We're in it together. Okay. So, um I have a question, then I have a few more live questions, but a question that has you. Did you get the answer for I want an apology from Hashem? Yeah, I think he I think he um like said it to another person like it's like a three-way. He took the answer that we spoke to to get so she's using the same. Okay. So um stam as we as we enter the shabas one of the sukim that that I and maybe it's only me but I suspect it's not so I'm asking um the and I'm sure you can translate that I realize now as I don't know but at least in our circles we start by vayikra now I know why because they didn't want they didn't want to hear that prairius But can you explain first of all can you translate it of course and then how how do we how does a person look at that fuss was it simply meant for that prior generation is that it's it's a it's a very strong statement obviously we would never say just we would never we would never say such a thing to our children all right it's a great great question the question is that amberious In Genesis, the opening portion, the end of the first portion of the entire Torah, God says, which loosely translated means, I regret that I have ever made. I I take it back. This was a bad experiment. This was a really, really bad experiment. And uh and you know, I think let's just let's just call it a day. Let's just go back to the way it was. This was really really bad. And of course, there's a flood. and humanity gets destroyed and we have Noyak and his family just eight people in their little ark and they're saved and they rebuild human civilization like you know what is this all about will you tell this to your children oh I'm sorry that I ever gave birth to you let me kill you what happens after the flood there's a rainbow and the rainbow represents the fact that God says I'm never going to do this again I'm never going to do this again so now he regrets what he did well he doesn't regret what he did but he says the future it's not going to happen. So this is this is a very very profound conversation here but I'm just going to give you know very very just brief insight and that is as follows. Something fundamentally changes in the evolution of mankind and just to apply it psychologically to our lives here's the biggest question. Can you endure trauma to the point that you're a lost cause? Many of us have gone through such painful experiences that at some point we tell ourselves, "I regret that I was ever born." I want you to hear God talking as you talking as your soul talking. Okay? Let's let's get away from God there and let's go to God here. Can we all do that? Okay. Let's get away from God there. Talk, you know, let's not call it God. I don't like the word God because it's too stereotypical and it could be traumatizing. I want to talk to I want to use God as the ultimate authentic reality at the core of your consciousness. Okay? The ultimate authentic reality at the core of your consciousness. You know the cabalists and theidic masters don't use the word God. They use the word. You know what means? The endless reality. the endless reality, the infinite reality. We're all part of the infinite reality. Did any of you ever look at yourself deep down and say, "I regret that I was ever born. Anybody? There's no hope for me. I'm screwed up. I'm damaged. Death will be the easiest solution for me." So, I think we all know that there are moments that people experience that. That's the voice of pre flood. That's the voice of pre flood. I'm so damaged. I'm so ruined. I am such an addict. My brain is so fried. I am so triggered. I'm hopeless. I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. That's the pre flood sentiment. And what happens? What happens? There's a flood. The alterb says that the flood was like a mikvah. 40 days is like a mikvah. 40. So it cleans the planet. And after that, God says we never lose hope. So let's understand in the beginning of creation, the human being is created in a way that he or she can damage themselves or get damaged so much to the point of no return. And that's a very very powerful statement. That means that means that God is saying if you're connected good and if you disconnect you're cutting yourself off from the source of life and if you cut if you cut the line there's no life anymore so you're dead what happens after the flood that's the main story after the God says you know what now I'm inside of you forever now truth is inside of you all the trauma in the world can't destroy you there's no such a thing that there's no turning back that you're dead. You're a dead man walking. You're worthless. There's no point to your life. That's over. So, we have these two paradigms in our lives. We can have the pre flood notion of what? I'm just chopped liver. It's all over. And it's important to appreciate how deep that experience can be. In other words, the belief that I could become so distant from myself to the point that there's no self anymore. And therefore the only the only alternative is disaster, destruction, which could mean addiction. It could mean uh you know self harm. It could mean anything that just continues to keep me in the abyss. It could mean suicide. And then reality goes through a tremendous transformation. Recovery. What is recovery? Recovery is the awareness that you could never become detached completely. In other words, even somebody who abused you, somebody who molested you for years, physical abuse, emotional, sexual, psychological, your soul remains wholesome and therefore you can always come back. You could always go back. That's the shift of consciousness that happens in history. And it's a shift that it's important to each and every single one of us. Hashem changes that reality. In the beginning, man was dependent on his closeness to heaven. And when he became too far, you lost hope. Afterwards, Hashem says, you take heaven with you wherever you go, even when you go to hell. [Music] Can I ask? Hold on, Mendy. If you want to ask, I'm going to put your name down. We We have a few ahead here. So, my wife is asking me home. So, uh, okay. There's a limited time here. We got a list. So, go ahead quickly. I understand everything you said and I appreciate some of it answered by the previous ones and thank you for giving your time. Thank you and you mention to all all of you. Um, I understand what you mentioned about being a youth and everything, but at the end of the day, I'm my my struggles are every day. And even though I many times like try to kill myself to fight with because I I constantly got to remind myself that, hey, I'm different than everybody while I got to remember to function like everybody in the in the street. I have all these voices from all the damage and abuse and denial and loss of hope over the years constantly voicing in my head even though I know it's not true and um how how I can try to do ch but I have no no connection. I'm trying to find the connection but the connection is like hey there's voices in my head and I don't know what what this is about. I it's it's it's a lot deeper than that. Yeah. Sometimes chuva means it's a very good question. Sometimes chuva means simply to work on your healing. That's your chuva. I think at this point you just need to work on your healing. And I think you want to be able to get the advice from top top people in the field because today as you know mamish in the last few years there's a lot of very powerful new healing methods for the horrible anxieties and traumas that people have things that were not done in previous years you know and there's a lot out there. So I would I think you the biggest tumor for you at this stage from what I'm hearing of course I don't know the details is to be able to respect your need for healing now and to be able to focus on that. you know, healthy, happy, religious. If we're not healthy, if we're sick, if we're suicidal, we have to start with the foundation. You have to be able to to to find to find some hope in your life, to find some hope in yourself. You know, usually we're supposed to have this as babies. As children, we're supposed to get that attachment, that feeling of goodness. If not, you have to nurture yourself like a one-year-old, like a one. You have to hold yourself, caress yourself, give yourself respect, give yourself dignity, give yourself empathy, and open yourself up to the healing opportunities that Hashem has given our generation. And there's many of them. And I'm convinced that it's not a mistake because all the trauma of previous generations is coming out now. And it's the time before Msiah. So therefore, we have to heal everything. And for that, we were given a lot of opportunities. That's why there's so many healing models today. There's centers, there's people, there's plants, there's somatic stuff, there's all types of psychological and somatic and bodily healing with all different types of methods that are very very powerful. And I think with the we all need guidance. We shouldn't do these things on our own. But seize the day, seize the opportunity. And I think that's the best tutor for you. William Kipper means for you at this stage is it's not about guilt and not about this aa that aa I think is hashem hold my hand and let me discover the value in my life let let me find some hope in my life that's that's the biggest chuma that's the biggest truma chuma means return to what return to I promise you your soul is not full of anxiety and suicidal thoughts your soul is a it's not suicide God is not suicidal. Your soul is not suicidal. In the connection of your soul and your body, your brain experienced a lot of wounds and because of that we have all you have all these thoughts. So you want to go back to your purity. That's true. Your tru is to find your pristine purity. If if yipper is bringing people to a place of of more selfhate and I just want to kill myself, then it's not yipper. It's not yim. So we have to go back to the basics and say let me start and let me just find a way to be able to feel better about myself and begin a journey of healing with patience and with empathy. I would not get religion involved in this. We're not there yet. We're not there. We have to we have to like it's like a oneweek old baby. Treat yourself like a little infant who needs attachment. You don't throw the infant to go do the m and go hear and go say kidra three times. The infant will grow up and do kidra three times. I'm not worried about it. Right now, we have to protect the infant and give them the milk they need and the love they need and the attachment they need. Give that to yourself, my dear friend. Re um thank you Rabbi Wad. I want to try and hop around a few more here. Ris from Connecticut, are you there? I am. Thank Thank you very very much. Uh, Rabbi Ywi, I heard you maybe a hundred times, probably closer to a thousand times. I confess I've never heard you as well as tonight. It was a masterpiece and a a tremendous. I I will say that most of my question has been answered. I I recall a story that's told about Sansza who once um after Yipper he said why do you say by slack I mean it just between end of yipper and and is like a couple of seconds it's not possible to do any a what what what's the llanu for and he said that the llanu is for the a of not belieing ing that forgave you and that's what we're saying after. So I would say my question to you is how does one actually keep oneself from um committing that a I know that is one that has not gone or has not gone past when I was and that's and uh yeah I mean but yeah wow powerful question I'm just going to paraphrase there's a in said I heard it about says it's the one of the greatest masters of Poland said why is it that right after right after literally we start off Hashem forgives sin who sinned nobody sinned even the greatest sinner is between the hungry to sin so there's no sinning why are you saying so people who don't think about the words what's the difference it's another blessing But it's a genuine question. Why? Why you asking apology? Imagine I sit with my best friend for 24 hours. I apologize about everything. And he says, "Forgiven, forgiven, forgiven." And we're finishing the day. We're going to party. And I say, "Oh, by the way, forgive me for sinning. Come on. It's it's tasteless." Like, you don't take me seriously. So he said, this is what he said. This great master said, "We're asking forgiveness because we don't believe that God forgave us. That's the sin after yim kiper. The sin after yim kiper is I can't believe that you forgave me. Now it's a very very powerful insight. You know why? Because it's true. Like all powerful insights they're true. I I don't think this is an intellectual thing. I think we could tell ourselves a thousand times and listen to a thousand lectures and read a thousand books where it says Hashem forgives. Hashem forgives. Hashem forgives. It's meaningless. You know why? My body does not believe it. My body, my goof does not believe it. I don't believe I was forgiven. In other words, this is not about Hashem. This is about me. Hashem says everywhere, I forgive. I forgive. I forgive. The Mer says it not a 100 times and not 500 times. The Mak says it 5,000 times. Every line, I forgive. I forgive. I forgive. I forgive. I forgive. I forgive. I give. And we tell God, it's not true. You don't forgive. Why? Because I don't forgive. Because I don't forgive myself. Because deep down I feel that there's something terribly shameful about myself. And if you would really know it, you would not forgive. So God, you probably know it. Oh, so you don't forgive. And if you're saying you forgive, you probably don't know it. So I think that's a different type of work. First is to become aware of it. to become aware of how fast we go into that place. We really believe terrible things about ourselves. It It's It's I'm laughing because it's funny, but it's so true. And I think it's true about so many of us. Like in our deepest place, almost in our almost It's not our deepest almost in our deepest place, we re we are really horribly ashamed with ourselves and we're like, "You can't forgive me. I I I I'm just evil beets. I'm like I'm like I'm Malik. I'm like evil incarnate. And I think this is such important work. The important work of of of really real where did this come from? I'll tell you where it came from. I'll tell you exactly where it came from. I can't talk about you know any specific person but I could talk about a lot of us more in a general way. I asked Bess Bessel uh we did remember Bessel Vanderulk the second best we did two interviews with him they were both unbelievable stuff that he said the second interview I asked him a question I'll tell you the question I asked him I asked him and I'm not suggesting this about anybody god forbid I'm just telling you what I asked him I said if a kid if a child was raped or molested not at age 10 or 15 but at age two, three, four, five, right? And they don't have a memory of it. They don't have any memory of it. What does that do to their brain? What does their brain look like? I want to understand from your experience. And he said these words, I'm not quoting verbatim, but this was the concept. He said in such a case, don't say that the person has trauma. The person is trauma. In other words, it's not I have trauma. I am trauma. In other words, you want I should remember what happened. Which eye should remember? The eye that forms memory is the molested eye. My memory is molested. There's no eye outside of trauma. What does that do to my self-image? In the deepest place before my thoughts, before my logic, before my intellect, before my cognitive faculties, before my emotion, before everything there is shame. That's my baseline. My baseline is shame, shame, shame, shame, shame. That's our baseline. Now, a whole day we hear Hashem forgives. Hashem forgives, Hashem. It's all after the shame. He forgives. All forgiveness, it's a sham. Shame. Sham. It's Hashem. It's just a part of me that I show to everybody else that he forgives. But deep, deep down, there's no forgiveness. So I say to all of us, what we really, we have to go to that place this year. Go to that place. Open yourself up to that. Say, I need to release that shame. We need to release that shame. And when you release that shame, you're a free person. Of course, God forgives you. Think about your think about your Think about somebody who sits a whole day with you and genuinely says, "Forgive me." What? He doesn't forgive you. The whole world was created for forgiveness. The whole is about chuva. The the med says chuva was there before the world was created. Chuva is everything. Everything. But I don't accept it because I think I am I'm Hitler. That's what people think. They think they're Hitlers. And why? Cuz they were raped. Cuz they were molested or they were neglected. whatever happened to them and therefore deep down there's nothing there and you know what I give up my soul to the rapist we we must liberate ourselves from this and I know it's not through words but at least the awareness of saying you're good you're good you're good can you experience your bliss the truth is like this when we can let go of all the shame you will experience tanuk it says in Kabala and in many works that by is which means it's the deepest form of pleasure in your own deepest self. It's not pleasure from food, not pleasure from music. It's not pleasure from a good book. It's not pleasure from anything outside. It's pleasure from within. Because God in his essence is filled with pleasure. And when we're aligned with that, we're filled with pleasure. the exact opposite of what we're used to. You know what I mean? More guilt and more guilt and the gates of heaven are closing. I want to tell you something that the lab once said before. He said the world says the says the ill is the gates of heaven are about to close, right? So you have to throw in the paper. You know what I mean? The zoom is over. You know God is leaving the zoom. It's over. Last question fast. He said there's something much deeper. Nilah is not the gates of heaven are going to close. By the gates of heaven are closed, but you're inside. You're inside. It's you and Hashem. Complete oneness. But to be able to feel this, I have to let go of my shame. I have to let go of the message. You're remote. You're distant. And I'm not I'm I'm using words. We have to get away from words. We need the experience. And it's hard because I I everyone needs to find the tools. How can you let your body open up and trust the love? And then you stop with the guilt. We stop with the guilt. Of course, he forgave you. But you have to forgive yourself. So now I realize what's happening here tonight. We don't have a problem with God forgiving us. We have a problem with us forgiving ourselves. So this we all need to forgive ourselves. Friends, the mitzvah of the day is to forgive yourself. What does it mean to forgive yourself? To say, "I'm not guilty. I'm a good boy. I'm a good girl." O, you know, there's a horrible story on the way to the gas chambers. You know the story. There was a little boy who turned to his mother and said, "I was always a good boy. Why am I being punished this way?" That's what he told his mother. Why am I being punished this way? And what is his mother supposed to tell him? I don't know the end of the story, but I know that today that's what people are saying. I was such a good boy. Why did they do this to me when I was four? I was such a good girl. Why did they do this to me when I was six? And you know what my answer to you is? I don't know. But don't doubt that you were a good boy. Don't doubt that a devil came in and caused damage and wre havoc and your good boy and good girl status was not changed. They snatched your soul from you. They stole it. But now you know that. So reclaim it and say, "I'm not going to believe that anymore. I will not believe that anymore." And again, I know it's easier with words, but that's the place I feel. This is where we all got to go to. We got to go to that space. That's where the pain is. That's where the pain is. That's where the gems are. That's where the soul was lost. You have to look where it got lost. It got lost over there. That's the place where it got lost. That's the place where we're going to find it. We have one more live one and then we're going to wrap up. Roa from Montreal, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Thanks so much for this yeah for this whole talk. So forgiving myself um I can start trying to do this in but there's one thing that I have a hard time forgiving that I can't forgive the people that hurt me like I literally like the people that hurt me through my life especially especially my parents. Your parents? Yeah. Yeah. Like is there a of like forgiving people that hurt you? The more we heal, the more we could forgive. Your is to heal. Let me tell you what forgiveness is. Forgiveness doesn't mean what they did wasn't terrible. Forgiveness doesn't mean I wasn't damaged. Forgiveness doesn't mean they didn't destroy my life. Forgiveness means this. Okay? And you may not be ready for this and that's fine. Don't forgive yourself for that. That you're not ready. Okay? I'm going to tell you what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is come out the way it's supposed to come out, the way it's intended to come out. Forgiveness is that I could look back at my life and all the people that hurt me and I could say in a very deep place that they did not destroy me. They put me on the journey that allowed me to become the person I'm supposed to become. That's forgiveness. Forgiveness is when I could look at my perpetrators and not say they did a good thing or they were not crazy or sick or disgusting or obnoxious or Oops. How much didn't you hear? Go ahead. Go ahead. That's fine. It was just I was I was muting someone else. It doesn't mean I'm naive and doesn't mean I didn't live for 30 years with terror and horror and addiction. It means that at this point I could really like Ysef Ysef he looked at his brothers and he said you didn't sell me. Hashem used to put me on a journey to become the person who I had to become which is save the whole world. Let me tell you something about myself. Okay. There's a lot of things today in my life that I understand very well only because of experiences I had. I wouldn't have had these experiences I could have never understood. Were these experiences good? No, they were bad. But if I look today, I see that because of certain experiences, I can be a voice of healing for a lot of people and for myself. It doesn't mean it's easy, but forgiveness comes. You can look at the perpetrator and say, you know what? I feel bad for you. This is how you have to spend your life. But me, I'm a free person. God put me on this journey using you for me to become the person I could become. You can't force a person to get to this place. And I can't say that I'm in this place, but that's what forgiveness is. So what we can pray for and hope is that we can reach a place of such deep empowerment that we could look at the perpetrators and say I'm not part of your game anymore. Ysef said people said you guys tried to sell me. You wanted to kill me. But you know what? You tried to bury me. But you know what happened? I was planted. You know the difference. Somebody buries you and then a tree comes out. You tried to bury me, but I was planted. That's the difference. And then there's forgiveness. So don't look at it as I'm to forgive and then destroy myself and say they're sadikim or even they're notic but I'm going to forgive them. Focus on your healing. Focus on realizing how good and powerful you are. Don't give abusers your soul. Don't let them control your story. You control your story emotionally. And then you could say, you know what? This was my mission. This is my journey. I'm I'm reaching the place I'm supposed to reach. It's a very painful place. I don't wish on anybody else, but but I'm good. I'm ach I'm a of Hashem. I'm not a victim. That's forgiveness. I cannot obligate somebody to do that. We want to encourage ourselves for full healing. Full healing. Now, I have to say something. Forgiveness, if the person is still doing it, is a bad thing. Don't forgive. Somebody is is is is hurting other people, why are you forgiving them? Let them stop. Number one. Number two, I can't forgive somebody for what they did to somebody else. Number three, if somebody didn't apologize and is not sorry, I don't have an obligation to forgive. The Rambam says if you're a very very worked out person, it's a beautiful thing, but it's not an obligation. So, so am I supposed to ask like forgiveness for my parents if I hurt them? You should ask them for forgiveness. What did you do? Yeah, I betrayed them many times. In what sense? Because of their I'm not talking to them. I spoke on them. I like I can't answer that question. Maybe you're not talking to them and it's a good thing. I can't answer that question. I have to know much more of the story. But I'll give a general outline. If you have to ask for forgiveness, you have to ask forgiveness if you did something wrong, not if you protected yourself from abuse. Okay? You understand? You know what you have to have forgiveness? You have to ask yourself forgiveness for not protecting yourself earlier. and protect. Ask yourself forgiveness. You think you could do that? Ultra. I'll start this here. Okay. Wow. Rabbi Y White. So, we're going to wrap up. Yeah, that's a good idea. Powerful. I I think I think this is going to I think this is going to go viral as all your speeches do. But, um there are many gems here tonight. Thank you very very much. Thank you to all of our fresh start alumni. Uh Rabbi Y a final braha for everybody but especially all the fresh start alumni that are are dedicated to this journey of healing that you speak of and have made such a major commitment to it. Um Braha you can end off with. Sure. Um first of all I just want to thank everybody for joining us tonight. It's really amazing to see all of you here with fresh start. Um, I see on the yeshiva.net we have close to a thousand people on YouTube. I see also a few thousand. So, there's a lot of people. So, I want to thank all of you and also for all your comments and all the questions. I tried to address as many questions as we did both the live questions and the questions that came in on the comments. So thank you very much for the questions and I want to just conclude by blessing all of us and saying that you know just this event itself I want you to appreciate the beauty of it. We came together tonight not to compliment each other and pat each other on the back oh you know and flatter each other. We came together to have an honest authentic conversation about relationships, about healing, about forgiveness, about yamiper, about yiddeshkite, about hashem, about growth. This is exactly what a real gathering looks like. This is yamkipper. This is the preparation for yipper. talking real, talking honest, talking authentic, talking about our struggles, our challenges, growing together, and having the courage to identify our goodness. I want to bless all of you that this should be a year in which the unconscious blockages that have been wreaking havoc in our lives should be opened up. A year in which we should be able to experientially tune in to the space in us that is pure, glorious, sacred, holy, divine, untarnished. To be able to really align with that and to see ourselves as conduits for the infinite light of Hashem flowing through us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. that we are ambassadors of light and love and healing and truth and authenticity and ems and redemptive consciousness. And once I'm a conduit, you're a conduit of that, then you're the most powerful person. Then you don't have to deal with social anxiety. Then you don't have to deal with fear. You don't have to deal with insecurity because you're a conduit for everything. You're the ocean. You're not the bottle in the ocean. And to be able to do it with health and abundance and prosperity and aas and expansiveness and to get out of that mode of of of negativity and how life is supposed to be negative and shabas is torturous and yam is torturous and yamip is is guiltridden and sukus is ridiculous and you know shak and the but to be able like to go back to a paradigm of playfulness and childhood childlike purity to be able to celebrate it and to realize if it's Hashem, it's supposed to taste delicious. It's supposed to taste good. And if it's not tasting good, then I need to find out what's what's wrong with my taste buds. This year should be a year we should be able to experience the thank you and a year of real to all of us individually and collectively. Amen. Thank you. Sending my love and blessings to all of you. Record [Music] by [Music] uh Bye. Bye. But I'm byum. B. Alhamdulillah. la by