Harry Rothenberg - Sefiras Haomer - Counting Towards Greatness

[Applause] thank you very much for the warm welcome and thanks for making it out on this uh difficult night weather-wise so um as the rabbi mentioned uh for a living when i'm not up here at an event like this pretending to be a rabbi i'm a lawyer i'm an attorney i represent people who get injured in very serious accidents i hope the only time you'll ever meet me is at a shabbat meal or to hear one of these talks not in my office after getting hurt god forbid so many years ago i was in court in the bronx and i was in front of justice suarez excellent judge hispanic judge not a jewish judge and we were picking a trial date and he said okay take out your calendars i took out my my old blackberry he's okay how about and he picked the date it was like at the very end of may and i looked in the blackberry and i see it's it's a holiday so i said your honor i can't do that day at the jewish holiday see smiles he says mr rothenberg i'm not jewish but i've been on the bench in new york city for 30 years and i know there's passover in the spring they're the high holidays in the fall there's no holiday in between i said you're honored yes there is he said what are you talking about i said it's chevillus he said what's that i said well you know on the way into court there's that statue of the guy holding the tablets he said yeah moses i said yeah moses so you know the story that he led the jewish people out of egypt when 50 days later he went up on the mountain he brought down the torah so we have a holiday not surprisingly to celebrate that he said i'm so sorry i i never heard of it so how can it be that he was so familiar with passover and he was so familiar with the high holidays and he never heard of schillis no lawyer in 30 years had ever said to him you're your honor i can't appear that day at chivos and the answer is that such an incredibly high percentage of jews thank god celebrate passover jewish jewish observant and reformed and conservative and reconstructionist and atheist whatever you of course say you're gonna have a seder we're gonna have some matzah and the high holidays the high holidays you know just in case you know i don't know i was a bad boy i was a bad girl it can't hurt you know i'll do a few of these shivuas okay which lewis so my theory for why that is is the following passover we're celebrating freedom freedom is when you get envelopes in the mail and you're going through the mail okay and you open up an envelope and it's a check that you weren't expecting i just had this happen to me i got an unexpected refund from uh from the department of revenue because like hey fantastic who doesn't like a nice check that's pesach it's freedom you got a nice check schluis is you open it up and it's a bill not only is it a bill but it's more than you were expecting oh for crying out loud right who likes to get a bill so passover freedom everybody's going to celebrate that shluis oh by the way here's the bill uh that's okay um send it to send it some send it some guy with a big beard i'm not interested in that one all right so that's a shame and that just leads to the question why are we so happy on passover like what was the point why are we getting so excited because we were freed well if we were freed and then we became slaves to god so we used to be slaves to pharaoh now we're slaves to god so what is it it's mazel tov because you know you were on a team and your team was the worst team in the league and you got treated to the best team in the league so now i want a better team no no it's a better locker room it's better uniforms oh it's in a better city i used to be playing in a cold weather city now i got traded to miami or to la that's it oh no it's a better owner i mean of course who wouldn't if you have to be a slave between pharaoh and between god you know god's a much nicer owner but at the end of the day if you're if your thought is i was a slave then and i'm a slave now you're missing out on something so i want to explain to you how to frame this so you realize what it is you're missing out on by telling you this great story that i just heard from a friend so i have a friend who is a scare i'm not a skier so i can't relate to this so well but i understand the sport so he's in park city very nice venue to go skiing and he meets some fellow i don't know the ski lift or in the lodge wherever and he's and he's a local somebody says oh you live yeah i live like whatever 20 30 miles away he said what do you do for a living the guy says funny you should ask i have an interesting job i manage the nicest home in park city it's sold you know a few years ago for 40 million dollars this is going back i don't know 10 12 years now it's maybe it's i don't know an 80 million dollar house he's so i manage it so my friend says then well what does that mean like what do you do he said what i do is they they lease a car for me so i drive her for my house you know it takes whatever 45 minutes or so and when i get to the house i flush every single toilet in the house it takes some time it's a very big house it's a mansion and i change the fresh squeezed orange juice and i replace the fruit and vegetables every single day so it'll be fresh in case the owners show up of course i take the orange juice and fruits and vegetables from yesterday with me because it's only one day old you want to eat them at home and my friend said what do you do the rest of the day is the rest of the day i ski they actually get me a ski pass for the whole season so i just ski every day so my friend couldn't help himself he says sounds like a great job what do they pay you says they pay me a hundred thousand dollars a year okay hundred thousand dollars a year leased car ski pass his job is flushing the toilets and changing the orange juice of the vegetables and the fruit okay not bad so for instance i just have one more question okay how often do the owners show up and the guy says they bought the house four years ago they have not visited yet not once not once for four years this guy has been driving on their dime skiing on their dime replacing the orange juice and the fruit and vegetables every single day because the owners might decide to show up and not call ahead crazy so i thought about the story and i realized i cannot imagine that there's an owner out there i don't care if they're a trillionaire that would have that would be that eagle maniacal to say to somebody here's what i want you to do i'm going to pay you 100 grand i'm going to give you a car i'm going to give you a ski pass i want fresh orange juice every single day in case i decide to show up that day and not tell you who's gonna say that so it seems to me if you want my betting money and i feel strongly about this the owner did not tell that to the guy the owner probably has a personal assistant who has carte blanche to take care to manage the owner's finances and possessions the owner probably has who knows how many homes right hasn't been there yet in four years so probably five they have a home in where in london and in and in the cayman islands and in new york city and in paris and who knows where else okay so the pa the personal assistant probably said you know what i don't know where they're going to be on any given day and if they show up i want it to be perfect i know it sounds overboard changing it every single day the guy himself was probably like you want me to change the fresh squeeze arm juice every not every other day yes every single day because if my boss decides to show up i want it to be perfect so that's the difference when we were slaves to pharaoh every day what do i want to do i want to do whatever i want to do i want to avoid of course getting beaten so if he tells me i have to make this number of bricks i'm going to make that number of bricks not an extra brick i'm not going to be careful about it or i want it to be the best brick possible for my master the wonderful pharaoh give me a break he told me i gotta make x number of bricks i'm gonna make extra bricks and then i'm out of here and hopefully he won't beat me up when god's the master it's not okay what did he give me huh what's my list today 613 mitzvahs okay and how many apply to me all right okay i can just help all right as soon as i get done i'm done no it's the exact opposite we're like that the personal assistant to that billionaire of i want to do whatever his list is i want to do it as well as i can because that's why i'm here i'm here to do what he wants me to do and the best part of that relationship is is that it's two-sided because he's doing the exact same thing he is up in heaven and knows every single one of us and knows exactly what is best for us and you by the way you wanna know what's best for you we know what was best for you today whatever happened to you today that was best for you today whatever happened to you yesterday that was best for you yesterday whatever's gonna happen to you tomorrow that is best for you tomorrow now sometimes i don't need to convince people right you have an unbelievable day you meet the girl or guy of your dreams you get into the school you've applied to you get a promotion you get a new car and you're like obviously god yes that was meant for me fantastic you hit it right on the head that's easy right other times you have a horrible day but even that horrible day is from him so i was thinking about what story to tell to make this point yesterday i was preparing and god thank god said to me this was clear that he was speaking right to me you know what instead of using an old story i got a news story for you okay so i'm going to tell you something that happened yesterday and then while this is going on another story so this is hot off the presses last night her starting yesterday morning my daughter one of my daughters decided she and her husband needed to get away so they flew to miami they took a 10 30 a.m flight out of newark airport so they got the airport at nine in the morning and once they got there just before boarding never told there's a slight delay there's a storm in miami and so they're limiting the air traffic and so the flight has been delayed till 11 o'clock all right it's miami how long does the storm last in south florida 10 minutes 15 minutes half an hour an hour then the flight got delayed till 11 30. 12 12 30 1 1 30 2 o'clock they take off so they're sitting in the airport from nine o'clock until 2 p.m big time bummer and you're not just hitting the airport you're missing out on that florida sunshine you're only going away for a few days it gets much better they get to miami after being delayed all those hours and the plane is circling the airport in miami circling and circling and circling and they can't land because of the storm because there's still a storm going on so the pilot announces we're so sorry we can't land in miami we're going to west palm beach so they then go through a tremendous amount of turbulence and they finally land in west palm beach the captain gets back on and says i'm so sorry about your deal we need to refuel so we'll have enough fuel we're gonna get you in the air as soon as we can of course if anybody has ground transportation you'd like to get off the plane we understand that you're free to leave okay my daughter who at this point in time has probably like white knuckles all right like says to her husband can you can you call the car rental company and see maybe they can let us get the car here because i don't want to stay on this plane any longer he says good idea calls the car rental company no problem at all extra 30 bucks we're gonna change your reservation from miami to west palm beach just go straight to the counter great they go straight to the counter the guy at the counter says i don't know what you're talking about who told you that we can't do that okay at which point at which point she finally breaks the glass okay grabs the fire extinguisher calls dad okay daddy what do i do all right so i listen i say take a deep breath i i listen to the whole story and i say here's what you're gonna do just just rent it just rent a new car you have my you stole my credit card put it on my credit card we'll figure it out we'll figure it out with the credit card company fine that's what i tell her okay in the meantime i have about 10 not even 10 minutes in between getting off the phone with her trying to calm her down and the beginning of my habusa at 10 05 pm with a rabbi in israel maybe when i finish this today on my way back to passage i'll be on the phone with him and so i have 10 minutes free you know what 10 minutes i decided i need a little recreation maybe i don't need it maybe i want it i'm a big phillies fan i'm from philadelphia so i turn on the phillies game because on my phone because the phillies are playing the game of the week against the braves it's a big rivalry and there's one sunday night game of the week so the phillies are on the game is tied six to six okay and in the top of the ninth inning the phillies have a runner on third base there's one out if anybody saw this replay okay there's a shallow fly to left field the philly's runner heads home he slides in he's very close to catcher tags he slides and the umpire calls him safe and the braves appeal there's instant replay in baseball now so if you appeal actually i think the officials asked for the whoever asked for the appeal so he goes to new york they take it out of the hands of the umpires on the field in new york there's a viewing room and umpires in new york city watch it and they make the decision and and it's taking a really long time like usually it's 30 seconds it's a minute this was like a good i don't know three minutes or so it's taking a really and meantime they're showing angle after angle after angle i have to admit even though i'm a phillies fan it did look like he was out but you couldn't say with certainty and that's the standard if you're going to overturn an umpire's call it has to be clear and convincing evidence you have to be sure so finally they they're listening and the call comes back in from new york and the umpire signal safe they upheld the call the braves manager runs out of the dugout like he shot out of a cannon screaming like a maniac screaming at the umpires and the umpires are looking and i'm like dude go go new york from us we we didn't do it like back in the old days when there there's no instant replay you could yell at us you know we just sat back like you did they made the call you got a beef go yell at them so i realized this is exactly exactly what goes on when something bad happens so i called my daughter back right away i didn't tell her this whole story she's not a baseball fan i'll tell her this if she's not watching i'll tell her over the story and i said they're listening to me very carefully okay this is very important you need to say the following two words haven't literally means like i love when bad things happen to me not because we're masochists it's a recognition that whatever happened to me it came from god and the reason it's so important to say that when something bad happens is that if you don't say that god might say you know i was trying to get your attention i was trying to send you a message i was trying to teach you a lesson you didn't get it you didn't realize it came from me so instead i guess i have to do something worse i said so just thank god that it wasn't something worse right you're okay you're in good health the plane didn't crash you had a horrible day but just say god let it count because if you spend your time railing against and there are people to be angry about the pilot united airlines the rental car company you're missing the point god's going oh by the way that was me what are you yelling at them for that was me in new york i made the call what are you taking that on the um for the braves umpire was taking it out on the wrong person so when we get upset at the situation or it's somebody else when something goes wrong god's up there going i was sending you a lesson what are you yelling at them for if we have a problem let's talk about it okay let's make a list let's be fair right you're upset about what happened today let's make a list let's make a list of all the things i've done for you in your life let's make a list of all the things you've done for me and let's see which is a longer list i want to meet one person in the world who's going to tell me with a straight face that their list of things they did for god is longer than the list of things that god did for them it's laughable so when you realize that it's like oh okay i guess i'm not gonna not gonna complain to you and that's critically important because everything comes from him so now you'll say to me oh yeah what if somebody punches me in the face what if somebody insults me what if somebody humiliates me in public what if somebody steals something from me that came from god listen to this this is a prayer we say before we go to sleep this is what we're supposed to say this is the bedtime shaman to read in english is the beginning of the first prayer we're supposed to say before we go to sleep master of the universe i hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me or who sinned against me whether against my body somebody punched me in the face against my body my property somebody stole something from me my honor somebody embarrassed me or against anything of mine whether he did so accidentally that we could understand okay it was an accident i'm forgiving him willfully carelessly or purposely he did it on purpose she did it on purpose and i'm forgiving them whether through speech they embarrassed me indeed they did something thought they were planning against me or notion no matter what i'm forgiving them don't punish anybody because of me and the reason for that is that we're recognizing that this doesn't mean you have to be a dishrag it doesn't mean if somebody embarrasses you have to walk away and you can't don't take it out publicly walk over privately and try to work it out doesn't mean if somebody punches you in the face shift to say okay i guess that came from god can i have another one you could defend yourself of course but at the end of the day when it's happened you have to recognize everything that happened came from him and it's best for you if it's good thank you so much for giving that to me and if it's not having you seren i want that to count i recognize it came from you and i want it to count don't do something else i don't want to be one of rothenberg's clients okay give me traffic over a broken leg any day of the week okay give me a missed flight or a delayed flight over a surgery any day that ends in a y trust me on this one okay so there are not too many people unfortunately who are counting the days that we're counting now to the extent that you're familiar with this in between passover starting on the second night up to schwarz we count 49 days leading up to the 50th day the 50th day schwa that holiday that so few jews know about and we count each day and we count up normally you would think we'd count down like 40 days left 30 days left 20 days left i can't wait eight days left instead we keep counting up it's the third day it's the fifth day it's the 10th day it's the 12th day it's the 18th day why are we counting on so to answer this there was a very famous athlete here in new york named joe namath broadway joe namath the quarterback of the jets back when the jets were good so it was a several years ago when they and they actually won a super bowl with naming this as a quarterback and nameth after winning the quarterback becoming very very famous he wrote his autobiography he did not choose the most modest title had he asked me i would have told him to opt for something a little more modest his title was i can't wait until tomorrow because i get better looking every day okay joe namath alright that's the title of his autobiography i can't wait until tomorrow because i get better looking every day if you take out one word of that one word that title should be like our anthem every single one of us should be saying every day i can't wait until tomorrow because i get better every day i can't wait until tomorrow because i get better every day that's our whole goal our whole goal of today is to be a little bit better than yesterday our whole goal for tomorrow is to be a little bit better than today people will ask sometimes you know you say we're supposed to pray so i've been praying and praying and praying and praying for this thing and it didn't happen so first of all might not be the best thing for you right little kids pray for 27 lollipops and their parents say you could have two but i've been praying for 27. 27 is not good for you god knows what's best but also you'll say but but why should i keep praying if the answer has been no and the answer is that if you've worked on yourself and you've done more mitzvot you have more good deeds it could very well be that when you stand in front of god for the seventh thousandth time you're a different person than was praying the day before you're better than the person who was praying the day before so we're counting up because each day i'm a day better i did some really good things today you may have done something wrong okay the fact that you even recognize it and feel bad about it and say and i'm not gonna do that again that already has made you a bigger and better person i i am uh i'm lucky in the following sense when i was a kid i was a very big fan of comic books okay it's probable it's possible that i still am and in certain comics they had something called parallel universe it was cute what they do is they would have a story like what if batman was a bad guy what if lex luthor was a good guy okay so i live i get to see the parallel universe this is not that many people get to do this so i i thank god all the time about this even though it's it's a little sad for me part of this but i'll explain what i mean i had a i had have a very good friend growing up and we went off to law school different law schools and i just before law school had spent a year in israel loved it spent two years talk about that a little later and got much more serious about my judaism and he had kind of just fallen off like he had gone to day school and then just got to college and stopped doing certain things and then stopped doing more things and it was you know sia this thing disappeared and the villain disappeared and the tt disappeared and and chavuz certainly disappeared and passed over the holidays and the next thing you know he got married to a non-jewish woman got divorced and so now he's the same he's actually a year younger year younger than i am he is wildly successful and when we get together he always loves to show me i don't like to look okay he's like oh you gotta see this model that i'm dating she's 23. okay that's what he wants to show me right and i can't bring myself to show him you know let me show you the picture of my kids and my grandkids like what's he gonna have what's he gonna look back on what's he what is he that's what he had that's what his heart now don't get me wrong i'm not saying that the guys excuse me for a second ladies i'm not saying that there isn't part of me that well i guess she probably she is not unattractive okay but at the end of the day that's what his life is about he has no he you can compare that to to the time you can spend with your kids and your grandkids and your and your forget your legacy forget after you're gone while you're here that is what it is all about that is what it is all about i i have my youngest are 11 and a half year old twin boys so when they turned 10 i said that i didn't do this one the older boys i said oh by the way guys maybe you want to start learning mishnais together you're 10 years old they said sure i said great you know what why don't we learn two a night because it's two of you you'll you'll each read one and i'll help translate it sure so we started learning to a night i looked it up on google how long does it take to finish all of the missionaries if you do tonight six years i came home that night i said guys i did the math i i looked it up on rabbi google it takes six years to finish if you do two a day if you do four a day you could finish in three years which means we could finish your bar mitzvah they're like let's do it i do four missionaries a day with them every single day i have done it from many different time zones different countries different continents in the last year and a half we're almost halfway done in time for the romans that is a legacy but how do you explain that to somebody who's living in the moment to his next you know fleeting pleasure of the next model that he's going to be dating you can't but if you're here living it the the the contrast is how can you compare it i just went to to a to a i was a nakhamov somebody i know was um lost his father and somebody else told me the story that that he he his father grew up not observant became observant and he has a brother and brother was very close and his brother came to visit you know he was also sitting shiva for his brother and it was not observant he was still sitting shiva and his brother remarked like when he saw the difference between his his observant brother's family huge family many kids and grandkids if their grandkids and the other guy was not observant with like a tiny little family and he said like i just have to keep asking myself why didn't i become observant like when you see the difference like you see that you know this side of the room is is it was a hundred people and this side of the room is three like it hits you in the face like maybe i should have you know gone with them to those shabbat meals maybe i should have thought of that do you know what the lowest birth rate is in the united states the lowest birth rate in the united states of any group in the entire united states is non-observant jewish women it's the lowest birth rate in the united states of america non-observant jewish women it's it's the difference between a massive legacy and the time spent together in the and the bonding and the and and making sure that you're continuing the jewish people i have a friend who has a very big family he was in the park once with a lot of his kids so he had his you know i don't know he's 11 year old and his 10 year old was nine-year-old his eight-year-old a seven-year-old six-year-old just that ridiculou thank god okay and this woman like couldn't believe it she said they're all yours he says yeah and he was still young enough right so she says to them like how many kids do you plan to have so he looks and he says six million okay what are you gonna say back to that right six million okay so that's certainly something we can do go out and and hope i'm gonna ask my blessing to all you should find your bus shirt and and uh and have as one one of my friends one of my friends likes to say every jew should have once they get married first you should find the right person every jew should have one more child than they think they can handle okay figure out what you think you can handle and then have one more than that because that's our job is to is to bring them back okay so now i'll give you one last one last bit of advice okay so let me just ask you a question be honest with me who rules your life if i can ask that who hashem hashem anybody else your wife okay it's honest we're being honest who else who else his wife also rules your life your mother okay ladies who yourself okay it's honest right yourself your wife your your mother sometimes people will say my boss god okay your school okay fine anybody willing to be honest anybody anybody willing to be honest nobody what who just said it your phone your phone i mean come on come on right it's a newborn baby a mother's with a newborn baby she could be sound asleep what was that did the baby cry that gets over like was it tweet was it facebook was it whatsapp was it an email what is it my baby absolutely rules our life okay so if you want to do one thing if you want to do one thing to turn yourself into that better person so that tomorrow you'll be better than today there are three apps download these apps okay i'll send it to robert keegan we'll send it out to you soon to write this down okay there's a meaningful minute they send out send out some videos every day there's the torah anytime app tons and tons of speakers you can type in there's there's one that i'm biased my parents like his name is harry rothenberg okay type in my name you'll see i do a short weekly video three four or four minutes a week and siffaria s-c-f-a-r-i-a sepharah sephoria has sepharia has everything you'll say what do you mean everything like it literally has everything so you'll decide go to your with your rabbi or your study party whatever you're close with and figure out what's best for you maybe it's one mishna a day maybe it's one jewish law day maybe it's something in jewish philosophy something in the in maimonides maybe it's some there's there's just pic so something you're not getting off easy okay don't i don't want to hear that i i downloaded it i don't watch your video every week that's great okay that was four minutes now let's talk about the rest of the week okay something so that every day one mission a day one jewish law a day something and you know why that's so important i'm gonna tell you why because when you get up to the pearly gates they show a movie the prosecutor comes in okay and the prosecutor is an extremely gifted attorney okay and he says and that god says okay what are the charges and the prosecutor says you know what your honor all i need to do is show you this and he's holding your phone okay and then you go to the videotape and all they see is you wasting a ridiculous number of hours on netflix on facebook on whatsapp on slack on instagram or like just non-stop at least if you download these apps and you spend five minutes a day ten minutes a day let's call it five minutes a day at least then when the defending angel gets up okay hopefully you'll have a good one the defending agent could say let's go give me the device prosecutor said whoa whoa what do you mean this is my exhibit give me the device and at least the defending could say oh look look they're watching a video on my meaningful minute they're watching a video on tore anytime they're they're studying something on sephora you can turn the accuser into a defender and i will finish with the following when i decided to spend the year in israel was not an easy decision i had i was at columbia i had gotten into harvard for law school was well on my career track but decided i got to figure this out i got to figure this out i had gone to d school there were certain things i was doing didn't know why i was doing them jewishly other things that i wasn't doing maybe i should be doing them i decided to go to israel for the year i will tell you i have yet to meet a single person in my life ever who has said if i hadn't taken off a year to go to israel i could have worked 53 years and said i was only able to work 52. oh do i regret taking off that year i've met countless people like me who will tell you that the year that i spent was life-changing it's life-changing i spent two years there life changing there was a young woman i was dating we were not serious at all when i got on the plane by the time i got off the plane two years later suddenly i was marriage material and now thank god eight children and many grandchildren later it was a very very big difference it was a life-changing difference it's the it it pivots you in in in it's in a direction that's solid you now understand what you represent as a jew you understand that you have a mission you understand that how did you even get here you know what the chances were of each of you still being here after all the countries that decided to try to kill us and you're here because god has a plan and every single one of you there's never been a person exactly like you and there never will be a person like you you have a mission on behalf of the jewish people it changes the person that you're going to marry going from like you know yeah i'd prefer somebody jewish to like what do you mean of course i want somebody jewish somebody's going to absolutely who's going to you know run a jewish household and it's going to be important to jewish identity he's going to send my kids to to where we're going to send our kids to jewish schools it changes everything about you and so i'll finish with with one last story which is completely ridiculously politically incorrect so it happened many years ago when you could still do things or say things that were politically incorrect i'll just give you that warning and here's the story so we were in the backyard in our house and i was probably i don't know eight years old and my younger sister um who's you're younger than me 16 months younger than me was seven years old roughly and we're having a catch with my father and my father's getting increasingly frustrated okay until finally he can't take it any longer he says for crying out loud randy it's my sister's name you throw like a girl so randy like you know she's a little kid and her lower lip starts quivering she says dad i am a girl to which he responds that's no excuse what do you mean just because you're a girl you can't learn how to throw like a boy again it's politically incorrect throw uh with fluidity whatever exactly he meant okay like it's not an excuse so that's what you have to ask yourself every day you have to ask yourself do you want to make excuses or do you want to make history and so we're counting on you because we want to see you all make history and so to summarize we didn't just get traded we didn't just get a different boss we got the ultimate boss everything he does is exactly calibrated to be the best thing for us whether it's good or bad it's always good it may seem like bad even if it seems like bad it was good it came from him calibrated for us we have to work on getting better every day i can't wait till tomorrow because i get better every day we count up because we want to show that we're improving hopefully you'll all find your your bus shirt and then add to the jewish people take control of your phone in order to take control of your life try to download those apps and use them so you could turn it instead of instead of a an accusing device it could turn it into a defending device and in the end figure out your mission and make history rather than making excuses thank you very much for listening and thanks for coming out [Music] you