Rabbi Mordechai Kraft - Carona Chizuk

[Music] so i think you'll be interested in this concept we're going to talk about which is you know we're going to go back we'll look at something look at sickness right now and just explore it for a moment from a um really from almost you know i i'll use the word catalystic perspective but it's really just from a jewish perspective and then take a look we're going to read together a letter that israel solanter it was the great gong the great sage of vilna a letter that he wrote to one of his talmudim in france 48th founder of the musa movement then the muslim you know the leader of the generation and he wrote a letter to his students in 1948 during the chloria chloria epidemic and it was a very serious epidemic in europe especially in vilna i think over one million people died during it it lasted for three years it was a very serious epidemic for chlorine chlorine up as it were many type epidemics in europe this particular one 1848 and during this epidemic review he was a young rabbi at the time i think about 39 and basically he made an announcement that everyone is obligated to idiom kippur and it's a famous case where he actually went to the main synagogue in vilna and at the end of called ninjare he took wine and uh mizonos or something like that he made kiddush and he ate and he insisted that before everyone went home he had to we had to eat and it was controversial because you know the many robun felt um you know it should be up to everyone's choice these sort of things and he felt very strongly that it was because fish required a bald sock like that and and lives need to be saved what he also did in building in 1848 is he organized the hospital and it was a of i think fifteen hundred beds something like that he he acquired the funds and the building and he took sixty or seventy of his his students as she was students and he had to work as nurses and he brought them to the hospital and he created a uh created a hospital and and the claria is a very you know as i tell us it's a it's a germ right and it it doesn't could it could uh spread through water it it's it's um you know it uh very contagious he went into the hospital he created a hospital and took a student so he went in and he said we're obligated to be proactive we're obligated to take risks and serve the community and so his response is something which i think is is somewhat extraordinary and kind of worth studying a little bit and studying just a short letter that he wrote to his talmidam and you know just just because of that letter you hear a lot of really what was motivating him and and driving him the reality is you know we're living in an era right now where you know we're we're in we're facing a sickness you know hopefully he's getting better but um you know it's pandemic and the question is how do we respond and i think you know it's not a new thing but it's not a new thing in jewish history we've had precedent for it and again the 1848 claudia epidemic is one president a great great goggle who really taught us how to respond what we have to do and what we and what should be our attitude so that's really what i want to focus on that's half hour so is reading together the letter that he wrote but again you know just going just if we take this back you know we're telling us about drought israel there's a famous work called the musser movement that george mentioned and there's a chapter called the chloria epidemic and the rabbinical seminary and you know it said that i'll just read you a few lines of it it says the exceptional events of 1848 which is referring to this uh correa epidemic am i saying it correctly by the way is chlora how do you pronounce it cholera chloria how do you say era well right cholera yes i mean i'm spanish so i have an accent you're an accent another best person to ask it spells the ch that's why it's not like yeah yes but cholera thorough epidemic so it says like this the exceptional events of 1848 which i treasure it's not charging you sometimes i'm doing this so arlene good morning good morning izzy good morning good morning rabbi good morning arlene good morning good morning izzy good morning good morning so he says like this the exceptional events of 1848 however face to face with the populace says the greatness of his personality his attitude towards men and his concern for the welfare of the community became instantly evident here was the revelation for all the see of his completely consistent muscle outlook outlook which extends over all of human life it says gloria had broken out in vilna and many had died i mean it was many again by the time this thing was done i think it was over it was a huge amount money close to a million it says normally no robbery or tor authority would have been regarded as responsibility regarded as responsibility organizing help and care for the sick this is what you still thought otherwise as far as he was concerned saving life and benevolence the duty of every single jew the first and foremost of the torah educated jesus was expected to improve the spiritual lives of their fellow jews so they're required to promote bodily and material welfare of others consequently he placed himself in all his statures the torah authority at the head of these services he organized a committee which took upon itself the precision of aid to the sick which under his supervision operated with exemplary efficiency he rented a hospital containing 1500 beds the expenses entailed were enormous when he sold possessed no financial resources nevertheless he was not to be deterred he initiated an extended extensive fundraising effort to meet the budgetary needs he was only concerned to cover the outlet in the next three days one suspicion something disappeared been deposited in treasury ordered all fundraising there is cease and that all effort be made to save life so it extorted their response you have the gunnel hador the leading robbery generation saying that we have to we have to fight this chloria epidemic and we have to start a hospital and again as i mentioned before he took 50 or 60 of his tomatoes and they went in and he served as nurses and again there's a major pressure what he was doing was young kipper another famous case it was going on kipper knight and he got up and he made kiddush and he said we you know it's not a time for for you can't you have to be bold you have to be proactive you have to sometimes in life you have to be heroic and you know sometimes heroes live short lives you know that you got but we got to do we have to do we have to save lives and they took risks you know and this whole question how much risk are you allowed to take to to treat somebody who is contagious so it's a very interesting question i'm not just exactly right now but you know one's not supposed to take too good a greater risk than the 50 chance of not making it you know if a person is going to feel the 50 percent chance there's a 49 chance that a person will survive one is should take the risk maybe if it's 51 percent then uh one should not so you must have evaluated the risk there are others who say that when it comes to life-saving you could even go to totally different uh different um percentage that you know even if you're just if you have a greater chance of surviving than the person in danger you should go for it so it's a very big question what to do he certainly felt right now the time was to act and i'm just reading what it says over here in the safer um it says like this it says that apparently he said like this you know he apparently i could be very critical of his actions they were critical of what he was doing and um you know what are you doing endangering the lives of the students that he was bringing in just to serve the sick people it says that he said that he swell would make a special point to visit the sick on friday in chabous to surely the efforts would would not slacken through fear of destroying shabbos so there was concern that people would be concerned you know because desecration of the shabbos to not take action he would he would specifically be there on childless doing the work that needs to be done okay so what what's what strikes me about this is is number one his pro activity you know that that response of a great leader of a generation is to say what can i do what can i do i can't let the situation take control of me i have to seize the moment yeah george yes uh please i have a related question yeah um when it comes to um organ donations um over 50 years ago when i was a boy in tamil torah the uh the murad taught us that you can't make a you can't donate to organs because at the time of the uh the coming of the meshiach when we are the righteous are resurrected this will be a problem if you don't have all your organs and uh a modern question um some of the conservative rabbis are saying that we are engaged in a spiritual emergency so they are going to temporarily suspend some of the prohibitions of shabbos to allow um zooming uh services and on on shabbos so let me just address your question you know you both your questions are interesting questions that number one in terms of organ donation urban donation as long over the nation is is 100 permitted it's 100 permitted however there are a few prerequisites number one that we have to know the that we have to know it's going to a person in other words just to to take the organ and put into a bank maybe somewhere it's going to be used there's not going to be users that we're not allowed to do but for a specific person it's 100 percent a it should be done in this mitzvah this idea of that what we're not going to be hold when the mashiach comes that's not our calculation what hashem asked us to do is save lives and we could save lives by using an organ of our body in a specific way then we're obligated to do that the second part of the question you know is willing to do what we can do michelle will work out how her body would made whole again you know just like he'll take all those who were burnt in the ovens of auschwitz and make them whole again as well you know in in terms of the other side of it is to what extent are we supposed to endanger our life and that's a very interesting question you know and that's the whole luck of shiloh of endangering one's life to save somebody else so that one has to really analyze the data and if it's you know certain organs we know that we can we have more than one you know and we can we don't it might not jeopardize our life or to donate part of our liver wouldn't deficit jeopardize our life you know we have to we have to analyze it depends on each person it depends on you know what the danger is for that person but if we could analyze it and say that it um you know it's it's it's only a 10 chance of of of danger maybe or something like that a 90 chance of saving somebody else that's certainly a risk we should take there's certain percentages that are utilized for this so but today organ donation is seen as something which you know most times is not not dangerous and therefore if there's a specific person it it it's it's an enormous mitzvah um yeah is that helpful in terms of yeah i it makes very good sense to me that um that hashem uh could perform the nest of bringing the righteous back to life that he can make the body whole again right and this hundred percent you know we have an obligation to tell us it says don't stand on the blood of your friends which means if someone is in danger of obligation to help and save them so we have to take certain risks to help to help people rabbi crafted here um hi i mean at the time of um when we would be resurrected let's face it the body's not going to be whole anyway by that time the body very well may be turned to uh you know to dust or bones so hashem would have to be involved and um right i'll hear your point it's going to be we're not going to be like the same way the day we passed away i hear what you're saying darling to the point it's going to be a nace right and resurrection of the dead is going to be a miraculous thing which hashem is going to restore the body to what to it to for perfection so again when we you know the body is already decomposed unless a person is on an enormously high spiritual level like will magon or others when they reinterred his body in the 1950s he died in 1797 his body was still intact and the rally attached to new jersey was there the vast majority of us were going to be vast majority of us correct okay but the other question i i do i do want to hear your answer about the conservative rabbi but before you get into that yeah but how could we how could we specify that the body the organs should go to a person as opposed to medical for that we can so we we should you know we shouldn't sign the um you know donating organs on the back of the license that we should not do but if there's somebody specifically who needs an organ then there's a message again right but how do we know that after our death i mean um sometimes sometimes i think the organ is like you know i guess someone says something tells us is needed or it's it's that their lifetime is needed necessarily is there a way to specify that the our organs should go appropriately to a person in need probably yeah there probably is there's a whole lot of will i i don't i'm not familiar with it in detail but i wonder if that might be one of the clauses of it yeah is there a way to get it to the organs to go to a jewish person right right that's what we wanted to go to to service most likely a jewish person you know take care of a specific person but again it's it's again i don't know the legality how it works we don't want to just sign a general release form that that we don't do we need to speak to a rabbi about this there's a rabbi who's familiar with these legal legal words a lot of wills there's a concept called the luck of will agree that the rca has won and things that really say what our wishes are you know what's important to do important to do a lot of questions that come out of the end of life issues you know hopefully we have someone who could help make those decisions for us but a person might be a situation where they don't have somebody and they do need that so you know organ donation in fact i might even do a class on the next week something like that i'm working on this idea of you know when can you endanger your life to save someone else because it's a question i've been receiving from different students the last you know month and two months you know since the whole idea pandemic especially people in the medical profession have asked me should they take jobs right now and if people just graduate medical school they're offering jobs right now like just you know sort of just go right before your residency just we'll take you on nurses they just need help so of course people ask a question should they go in to the hospital knowing they're probably going to uh to catch it and and it might not be dangerous for them but they're going to go home and they might have um all the relatives who it could be it could be very dangerous for so we've had a lot of questions like that and so endangering one's life to save another life it has many different aspects to one is dormant organ donation and again one is to evaluate the the um the risk what is the risk and some risk we need to take but we shouldn't take a risk or we endanger ourselves that we're not allowed to do you know we shouldn't do unless we really want to and which we're we're permitted to do it but we're not obligated to do that uh rabbi i have a question regarding that concept how do you apply that concept in in a worse setting like when a person is defending their country right you have a high risk of being yes that's the excellent question that that when it when it comes to a soldier or anyone who is is calling so to speak at his job his job by definition requires that he put himself in danger and therefore soldier has there's a higher level risk that a soldier is obligated to take and and he gets a higher level of seat to the shamay also a higher level help from michelle fireman policeman soldiers but even even in war even in battle soldiers you know you know commander has to estimate this you know what are the chances of my soldiers coming out and and um certainly they have to take a risk of if above 50 not just it's a 50 chance of making it you might even have to go in a situation where it's it's a 20 30 chance but that's part of their job so they get soldiers do have to take higher risks as do doctors because that's what they've been um that's their that's what they've been trained to do and this is the responsibility to do and at the same time there's more to this for those who who are willing to take you know in those professions so uh rabbi craft when you're done with this question can you respond sure sure the second question george was that raising so the question came like you know what about zooms on shabbos and things like this and pesach seder by by zoom that's the question because you know people feel like we're isolated and uh we need to you know have a saver with family how can we connect with family if we don't uh you know maybe we should do it over shabbos or maybe the rabbi should uh set his camera up before shabbat you know and um not do any malacha and therefore speak and everybody should be connected so that that's the question that question was you know has come up this past pesach so there are different opinions i'll tell you what the majority of of the posts can say and and which i agree with is it should only be done in situations of great necessity for example if a person is isolated or alone and is um you know might have someone's level of depression if they're not with people one could hear it in terms of being utilized for uh just just just to make it better or just more spiritual my most posts can hold that it should not be utilized and the reason there could be two is number one just from halloween point of view it's you know you're saying well we set it up before you about but it's not so simple because you know every time we speak it it is bringing in it we are creating electrical signals into the machine we don't see it right like a phone we are creating electrical signals have been transmitted so there is output that's being activated so you'll say well that output isn't significant it is activating something but the question might even be more on just sort of a philosophical level it's kind of it creates a a strong breach in the sanctity of shabbat you know shabbat is is is meant sometimes shabbat just demands that we be in a situation where we can't be all together at times and once we make this type of breach in the fence you know there's sort of no stopping it like where is it going to lead to you know what's going to be permitted what's not permitted it's certain things destroy the sanctity of what shabbat is all about and and that's the feeling amongst benny which i certainly feel that way too yeah yeah george just just her brother okay just for further clarification the conservative movement is split i'm not giving away any secrets here to say that in queens some of the conservative rabbis are doing this others are not what i'm thinking about is this is saying the cat has been let out of the bag so that's right what's this letter where this is going on for perhaps uh three four months and people get used to it you know where the genie has been let out of the bottle how do you bring it back in again you know again in situations of enormous urgency it's probably a good idea again if there's someone who's sick and depressed and they're isolated yeah i think it utilizes it but you know it to say now we're going to sort of just you know we're going to create a shabbos experience technologically or resume we can't be together personally we're going to have this you know even if you could permit and find a way and say well there's no actual melaka that's being that's being violated you know like the question was always raised by the television set you know why can i keep my television set on before shabbat and they'll watch my favorite shows and sit there and watch shabbat you know watch television i'm not violating anything it's turned on beforehand i'm not doing so the answer comes into well like what is what's happening to your shabbat shabbat is a very internal point it's a place you're supposed to really be working on yourself in relation to the sham and and and you know what once you start opening you know opening the fence as you're saying george the cat on the back it leads me it's right actually it doesn't lead to good places it's it's how do you go back the other way now so who needs to go to show right like you know i turn on zoom in my pajamas and uh you know you know this there's it's even gonna be hard you know so i i you know the post screen that that i'm familiar with and and made the major post no no one has come out in favor of it except in situations of of great necessity and again if church is depressed and then sick and okay yes that could be important for them but the rest should not and and you'll be like i was going to be lonely you know be lonely you know yeah it's going to be lonely i hate to say it the whole sickness that hashem has brought into the world right now you know at least it may maybe start or maybe this statement is helpful you know just in terms of the big philosophical perspective you know it's we don't know why shem does things and the whys are beyond this we can't say okay i know it's because of this sin or that sin and this you know we know it's because hashem responds to our sins that we know there's a pandemic in the world and people are dying and we're locked in at home it's obvious a response to us hashem doesn't do things except to respond to us but we can't analyze what he's doing what he's doing is he's causing us to be isolated from each other and in isolation therefore that demands self-introspection those what he's doing is asking us this i think we can say pretty fairly for most of us what he is asking of us is not to connect in the same social way we've been connected before to stop to be still to be in our homes and what must that mean it must mean he wants us to learn to understand ourselves better through the longness the test right now is a test of discovering yourself as we had a class i think a few weeks ago we called it what we call the sound of silence you know a really finding meaning in the silence that's what it shot is signaling to us right now how do you find a real connection to who you are and to me you know and and and to really think about what life is about you know once we try to kind of put a band-aid on it and say well let's do we'll just zoom out to on shabbos and we'll be like you know shabbos miller we're kind of missing the point you know the point is there has to be a lot of self introspection and understanding how to deal with the loneliness and for many that's very uncomfortable because you know if a person hasn't really worked to in all of us including myself we have to work to develop a real inner world in a real world where hashem i'm really aware of you and alive with you the more it is more difficult it is to be quarantined you know there's some it's a blessing you know the time to but you know we we but the beginning of the quantity we used to make a joke we used to say i don't think it's funny and more blues to say this is an extroverts nightmare you know this extroverts nightmare you know introverts aren't doing great with it extroverts nightmare you know how could i not connect to people but what hashem is asking of us right now that's the what what are you what situation have you put me in hashem right now you've put me in a situation where i can't connect physically which is strange right we're here on zoom we can't connect to each other if we can't hug each other again we can't just look at each other hashem is obviously saying to us i want you to go inside yourself and i want you to discover something deeper in who you are and and really what your life should be about your relationship with me that's the what you know i i think that that we need to take very seriously i think therefore they just said well we'll ease it by opening it up to zoom on shabbos and like that it it doesn't seem that's the russell hashem right now it's not the will of hashem she wants us to get back to a synagogue he wants us to get back to a place where we can be together but in a new way in a way we're really alive with each other what's that that's that's that's that's that's the way i hear it and i see it personally again the the post game that i'm familiar with have been very strongly against it i know there's something there so i'll say what's the problem it might not be a problem but it's a problem in terms of a big vision of what shabbat is and and that sometimes takes people with a lot of perspective to just tell you like we're going off track just like like the television set you know nothing wrong with keeping it on right but you know i'm not doing them i'm not flipping the switch i'm not doing them but it's not chavistic it's not in the spirit of what we're supposed to be gaining of of a time period where we're we're going inward and upward you know and we're not we're not going outside you know through through you know even through good technology but we're not going outside where we're supposed to be we're within shabbat you know that's i don't see it leaving anywhere good and that's the you know who am i to say but i i think that's the feeling amongst big people that it's not going to lead to a uh due to a good place and you know yeah hopefully okay that's why i think probably agreement on it it's you know okay so let me just get what i wanted just to to touch on today a little bit again listen i'd like to read to you that this this letter right now from israel cilantro and just read you what he said to his tomina during this claria epidemic in 1848 and uh by the way you know during the scientific two you know he was telling he was we talked about social isolation adventures very ranches thing but you can't didn't stop they didn't be on the synagogues but you couldn't be in the synagogue with more than 15 people at a time to adopt it there's a big synagogue in vilna it's not that you know they're like a lot of space but you couldn't be in more than 15 at a time and uh not like today you know we banned olson for right or for wrong but i won't get into that debate i know it's hot topic on the chat on the rock chat but it um he talked about social isolation he talked about staying indoors um talked about cleanliness talked about eating well it talks about listening to the doctors very strong about listening to the doctors of the generation too very strongly about that that the doctors the generation are you know we don't know right or wrong you know medicine medicine is a is a moving target you know what medicine said 20 years ago is what they're saying today and probably won't say 20 years from now it's a moving target as as doctors will tell us but our obligation in terms of jewish law is to listen to the doctors of our generation and to make decisions based on their wisdom you know we could disagree we've got other doctors but then there will be disagreements on doctors right doctors will disagree left and right this is going to be a a um you know homogeneous decision it would be it would be many differences from all the way from very conservative to very experimental but our obligation in terms of jewish law is to say i'm listening to the what i feel is an expert i'm acting on that that's what we have to do and then takes care of things but we're not supposed to say we're on a level where we don't need doctors he was very much saying listen to the doctors so let's if we can hear the words of review and i'm just going to make a few observations as we read it and see if we can apply some of those these ideas to our lives right now to help us get to the next uh next step of this you know this this part of our lives so he's writing actually a letter and this is this is a safer called the original with your collection of letters that he wrote to his tommy and bev lanter was the leader of the generation he was the goddess in the 19th century there was nobody bigger than him and uh and now acknowledged technology great goddess you saw in fact i'll tell you the story about that he he left the vilna where he was so prominent and he went to germany why because he felt he wanted to teach the german jews we you know and the reason why he wanted to he wanted to bring them up he went to the universities and started teaching the universities he was the uh far far better forerunner of emmett outreach you know he was a forerunner of college cuba college outreach he he went in and imagine that sometimes his stature went to the university and he created a huge following and he went specifically to german jewelry and and the reason why is because the way he put it is very interesting he said in poland and eastern europe at the time he said the train was going downhill you know with the skull enlightened and enlightened the movement of enlightenment and uh those were kind of fighting terror there was all movement in poland but there were those were still very traditional and those who were fighting it there was a very strong battle of the urges the you know the predecessor of that battle still around today but he said that in poland and eastern europe the train was still going downhill he said when the trains going downhill it's very hard to stop it he said in germany if the train already crashed and already had crashed through the you know the reform movement began in germany in the early 18th century late 1700s it was already starting to begin with moshe mendelssohn and things so by the time he reached 1870 it already trained and crashed he felt that now we can start pulling people out and and so he left vilma i went to germany and he met with rav hirsch he was enormously impressive about hersh like he took the rehearsals 19 letters he had the training wanted to translate it into russian we felt this would help world jewelry so race rolls along there's an enormous personage and a great role model for for a generation he kind of built the next generation of leaders you know including the altar mckellan and uh you know you know this in the diesel and petersburg of which came the afternoon and all the we have today a really direct descendant of israel's vision of of creating an ethical person involved in the world okay let's release this let's see what this draw says that was a helpful description of the society a little bit so you know we're speaking back he's writing a letter to a student doesn't say the student is but the student lost his son in the chlorine epidemic so this is he's writing a letter which is both visionary in terms of how we have to approach it and it's also trying to be comforting and so kind of hear both tones it's not a long letter it's a very short letter but he wrote in a way where every word is so meaningful and i think it's particularly interesting to to study letters of a person because the letter kind of a letter reveals a little bit of the nishama below the heart of a person he's writing not for posterity he's writing from himself you know that's we love that letter so much you you feel the person maybe even more so than emails would you agree with me that everybody more so than emails do you remember that you remember the days we used to go to the public your mailbox and wait for a letter and you know you're so excited you got a letter from a friend you know you read it and then you respond to it you know you write it out like remember those days those are good days i try to tell my kids about those days they don't believe me really good you know you got a letter letter let her have your heart in it your heart you know just in the handwriting and the pens and the you know you you float into it you know it's like and you you know you have to take they take you you have to wait two weeks for the response you know so it's a lost art i think a little bit you know but that's what i think uh do you agree with that everybody you're with me on that one yeah yeah okay it some new generators they don't know what they're missing you know email became emails are great that's not but it it's it doesn't have the soul you know it's the instantaneousness of it it's it's it's not you it's it's you know the letter had you it's your hand your pen your feeling your the way you would write it a lot of things would be there you read what's crossed out right when you read a letter right where the person cross out nothing like they were going to say this way they said it that way you know like it's you feel the person that's the letters are so instructive i think it's so beautiful so let's see what this all says so he says like this it's a very short piece he says let me start here so he's speaking this person who lost his son okay he said like this mckenzie said that he goes like this he says who knows after this this whole battle he says who's going to live that's the beginning don't know who's going to live he said therefore we have to look at the words of our sages that came before us in order to find an approach to the way we're supposed to live right now in other words hashem is sending us a situation he's telling the student it's not an accident it's from the almighty from a very high place so he's saying that the sickness is coming from here thanks the sisters have a very high place he's saying and therefore we we have to look at our sages in order to find what is a proper response to what to do again you know the word sickness in hebrew is the word is from the hebrew word means mundane it means sand said what sickness first of all what sickness does like sand sand is separate one particle from the one that comes before it you pick up a handle of sand each granule is separate what sickness does is it separates a person that's the way our sages view it it separates you from other people it separates you from yourself normally there's a fusion in your body between body and soul you feel very complete sickness also the body is going one way and the soul's going another way and there's a type of there's a gap there's a void and by the way that's why the mitzvah of visiting a sick person is very important you have to build that gap remind them of who they are and what their purpose is and make them feel like a person again that's the word hope sickness it also means profane like we say like last night we said we separate between the holy and the and and the non-holy same word because what's what does it mean to be non-holy profane you know it really means not to be connected to hashem call is a state of of not connected not could connected show holiness on the other hand the antonym is to be connected passionately began that's what kadush is i'm connected to you hashem that's what it needs to be over like when a person gets married a man turns to his wife and says you are holy to me because i think you're holy to me saying you're now connected to me to the exclusion of all others the word kadosh means connection the word means like sand these particles disconnected so in the state of sickness when god brings the state of sickness into the world of disconnection he's therefore asking something of us to re-evaluate our lives to try to create a world of connection once again that's what god brings sickness to the world we spoke about it i believe the other time this class we talked about the plastic that governed the milk says he says double milk says the coach broccoli alvarez the vine coach bottle sustains the sick person of iris is divine heiress means a bad divine is a sick bed but this word divine people darling is the flip around of good verb dollars you'd involve donald trump alphabet it doesn't touch the top of the line don't touch the bottom of the line it just hangs there like a thought you'd always represent the thought dollar always represents the physical world the dollar does the four directions dial it means dell its door this world is a doorway to the next world what a yud is in the hebrew language is a huge loved one an idea connected to the world that's the correct idea we have big ideas that's the good love means and and connected to the dialect link it to the world make your ideas real in the world that's a good that's a hand a hand is a yacht a good dollar taking your idea and bring it out to the world it's the job of a hand the word for sickness dumb in the mouth uses in that passage hashem will sustain a sick person on the bed of his divine dalai devoured the you'd have slipped around the dollar represented the physical world comes before the year which represents ideas meaning sickness what happened because of sickness a person is too focused on lost track of what i love to try the purpose first focus on what's in front of them is focus on the physical has lost sight of that the year comes at the end that's divine that's the tsar says that's what the re says very beautiful concept so when hashem brings sickness on an individual way we have to say hashem what's the idea you want me to bring back in my life i'm going to bring sickness in a national world in a world type of way the question we have to say is hashem you're bringing you're causing me to be separate you're causing it to be disconnected and why it must mean that my ideas aren't there i have to reconnect to a world of what do you want from me what's what what do you what what what am i supposed to be doing with my life am i thinking correctly reevaluated intellectually and that's what quarantine's supposed to bring us to right it's like think if we're not doing that then we're missing you know my biggest fear by the way is to get back into the world in a way that i just have lost i haven't i haven't done the work i'm supposed to do during this time period that's that's my that's that's the fear i have let's see so your says to his tamil he says so now we have to we have to respond to what hashem is bringing us to find the proper path it took two to to to find meaning in it of yoga and by doing so we have to we have to hug him diego we have to remove diego worry the young and sorrow from our hearts it sounds like this and for this reason everything has its own time and so on period there's a time to there's a there's a time to be happy there's a time for for sorrow the world jewish cycle works in in in different ways the time to be to be more lighthearted there's time to be more serious you know we the job is more focused or we to more and more more involved in the world of the arts now that hashem has brought the sickness to us 1848 courier he says there's a taurus adam we have to ask ourselves the question what's the torah for this particular time period there's a total for every time period we have our torah but the torah is asking us how do we have to readjust to every situation we're in in order to say hashem what do you want me to learn what's the idea that i'm supposed to go for how am i supposed to live my life right now yeah george [Music] i read in a uh pamphlet from the uh bresliver hasidim that rebnachman says that when someone becomes sick it is an opportune time for um reconnecting with hashem and also for uh self um soul searching that's exactly i've i've read that if you i've read a piece from nachman also where i saw a very similar thing and he says exactly he quotes the re of course they are reset song and he says this whole idea of of the yud this obligation you have to get that big idea and bring it into the world again that's what he says exactly sickness is brought to bring yourself to it to re to reinforce what you believe go back to your basics get your ideas right that's that's what happened but that was very rude in you know that's why he's difficult to stand him sometimes because he's so rude and kabbalah but he's saying very very very basic ideas like that and i that's the p maybe saw the same piece and see if this play has to be simple we'll talk about in a second so he says like this so he says those taurus what what's the terrorist of them what's the what are what should be the work we have to do right now what's the term want from a person during sickness he said number one a person can't be afraid one can't be afraid now what does that mean not to be afraid sometimes things are fearful and it's natural to be afraid you know and and you know we once it means don't be afraid so you know i mentioned to some somebody this morning a person kind of gave me a little pushback on it and said you know fear is a fear is a natural emotion and and and not only that sometimes it's the correct emotion to be afraid you know it says for example by abramovino when he went down the miss they took sarah says he was afraid so i'm couldn't get above his fear and say everything's from god i don't need to be afraid he must have felt that it's the correct feeling to be afraid it's correct to be afraid so that's a shampoo situation where the fear is what motivates the mind to come up with with proper improper a proper approach and that's we understood you have to say this my sister not my wife but maybe that he understood right now i have to find a life-saving technique to try to get her back but it's interesting the word people to be afraid it's composed of three letters which means there's an opening in the oneness what does that mean an opening of the oneness fear is a function of not seeing god's unity in the world not seeing there's a plan not seeing there's a purpose but just seeing the event for what it is and and and not being able to connect it to god's oneness not to connect with something greater that's a pat in the heart an opening of the oneness like a breach in the wall so he says we have to find a way to be in this situation that we're not going to be trained it wasn't mean it means we have to start thinking we have to start finding a way to we have to start finding finding a way to see what does god want from me if we understand what god wants from me the fear diminishes if we say well right now the situation is such that yeah it's it's it's difficult there's a chloria epidemic people are dying but there's a turf for this time period too the tour for this time appears to say you're trying to instruct me to to to now to live heroically to say well i'm going to respond in a way that i would get outside of myself and to do something i never did before i'm going to look at life and state that life is meaningful and purposeful to take advantage of it and that's why ravi stroll responded they opened up a 300 bed hospital i'm not saying that's what we should do right now but it's certain that the principle is there fear is a function of not seeing a bigger picture and not saying what do you want from me now what's my job now i'm going to say i want life to be like it was yesterday i'm just going to be traveling i'm going to roll i'm just going to curl up into a little ball and say i i'm scared he said no there's a new toilet for now now it demands action now demands a certain degree of proactiveness now demands a degree of heroism then i'm not going to be afraid because i know what i need to do the fireman's not afraid because nobody needs to do the soldier is also not afraid because he's been trained for what he needs to do we're not trained for what we do right now right and that's the problem we're not trained first it's been thrust upon us but if we say it's a new situation what is my heroism right now that's how we that's what we say we'll look for the look for the unity and look for what you want from me and that's how we start the mission of fear so so the first thing he says number one is we have to find a way please and then he says also he says something very interesting such a balanced approach he says also we have to be very careful to follow the advice of the doctors you know very interesting that you know a balance what what life is all about it's a big vision we have to do what we need to do to recognize everything hashem and we have that big vision we have to go forward at the same time we have to balance it by saying what do the medical experts say and we have to follow their advice very very carefully thank you thank you and again he was very very strong about following the advice of the doctors you know it says that during the query epidemic so he said i'm just reading it says in the muslim woman book it says like this he warned everyone to obey the doctors he said how stringent was it he issued a proclamation to the effect that eating fish which the doctors had forbidden was tantamount to eating pork apparently doctors and making poor data development felt that eating fish was dangerous for for one's health i guess maybe i don't know why maybe they're bacteria maybe it was the saltiness of i'm not sure but these said these and now people should not have fish and he said if that doctors are saying it it's tantamount to eating pork so it says that one of the dignitaries of villain approached robbie's for all and he said listen um my minute and chad is is i always eat a piece of fish my whole life i have you know said in the song the buzzer of a dungeon feet meat and fish so you know so he cooked the fish himself he said about your swell and said can i at least taste can i at least taste the can i just taste it i won't eat it i'll just taste it so what did rabbi slow respond to he said sure go go ahead and buy pork and why not eat it together with the fish now interesting in his you know what it means to respond to a situation means we respond by saying hashem how can i be heroic but the same time one balances it by saying what do the medical community what is the medical community asking of me now again that might be up to debate you know but it's a big debate in the medical community right now a big debate as to what we're supposed to be doing masks no masks that's not it's a big debate or you know different types of things hydrochloric acid what's it called the proton not but we're supposed to be listening to it and taking the words of experts very seriously because that's what hashem wants in other words that's not being that's not being a coward oh you know i'll just do it i'd be heroic and ignore the doctors and just go for it hashem is with me no that's that's not the will of hisham the will of hashem is i have to always temper my heroism with what the experts say in every situation and that's that's the will of hashem that's what hashem wants me to do and and so he tells us he says time to stomach you have to act heroically who knows this is what's the torah from this time period same time you have to listen very carefully to the the wisdom of the doctors it says i share the vram he said the to the light of their words were obligated to walk according to their abiadas says you listen to the doctors you don't act without advice to the doctors you listen to the doctors and again unless we're on a a uh very heavy church thank you unless you're a very high level you know the person in such be talking [Music] and the sony room the test now is bring us to a place i should go where the sickness is intense and he said therefore we have to we have to lift our shoulders so to speak and to to be very punctilious very careful about the advice the doctors are giving to us the foods we have to guard our health like a wise person not like a foolish person says lo neil negro not for calling it's not if we do such a thing we won't have this nego i'm not going to get sick you've got to be careful do what just protect you're telling your health and there's a lot of advice that he gives he gives advice for example a cleanliness washing hands changing clothing keeping your house clean getting a lot of sleep eating certain foods which which are which are which are healthier than other foods like not any fish i guess that was the medical opinion at the time he says and therefore ain't the and now he says the second third thing so number one he's saying you have to you can't be you have to want to ask them a vision of heroism or understand that there's a different perspective that god is giving us right now and say how do we respond number two he said we can't look we can't be afraid and the way we are not afraid we look for the big vision of what's happening right now get rid of put it back to the heart get it back to god's oneness number three he says that part of our responsibility is to be logical and sensible and follow the torah's directive which means listen to the doctors and then he says number four very interesting he says beyond the dosha we have to avoid sadness during these holy days we have to serve us hold that for a moment the fourth thing is saying is there has to be one cannot let sadness overtake us now it's interesting he says it for two reasons reason number one is because it's going to weaken our our health because we know that sadness it will cause a person's health to diminish faster if you want to read a very good book on it one could read the works of norman cousins i forget the name of nordica's name of the book norman cousins was a physician in the 60s and actually i knew his i know his daughter and he he was he was given a some sort of he had an illness with a doctor getting one to ten thousand chance of survival like something ridiculous like that and fortunately he didn't take it seriously he said look if they're saying to this you know i have to go beyond the medical route so he he started saying i need to cheer myself up if i could get into to to to simple joy i'm going to be able to somehow overcome this so he started like working on joy maybe writes he used to watch a lot of candid camera another candid camera that show and everything things that make him laugh and apparently the simple enjoy you wrote a couple books about this we he felt like really helped facilitate his his recovery so number one very small says we have to mirabe become a good ocean we have to can't let sickness take hold of us get they can't let depression can't let sadness take hold of us you have to fight to have to find a place to be to be to be positive and and because we know what we can ourselves the second thing is very interesting he says he said we have to we have to raise the leash more votes the guard that's interesting you know in the hebrew language we have many words for for for for happiness we have simcha we have sassong we have many words that we say is a different type of happiness you know we stay like you're saying our davening on shabbos we said we say it's you know we say well we say sasson we're happy when we come in is a state when we complete something we're in a state of joy when we sense the completion our lives he's not saying to the people be in a state of simple because hard to feel that one's completed the joy of knowing that hashem is there there's a unity there's a purpose in what's happening get beyond the disconnection of the whole of the sand each particle disconnected look for that unity and what's happening the purpose of why god is responding to us this way i know that this purpose here enables a certain type of of of joy in life in english our words aren't so good right we have one word joy this type of joy is the joy of knowing everything is from hashem it's not the joy of simpho which one feels what's accomplishment but find power and strength [Music] in the joy of knowing that this is what god is from this is god's will in the world in league dog foreign and then he finishes the letter and he says to this man who actually lost his son he says he says don't worry and own name and don't don't don't mourn excessively on this this precious nephesh that led up the world king he says he left this world of the pain of this this world lovely he said some very positive words over here against his messages to even to this man who lost the son is is he's in a good place he's i'm giving you a very positive message to him so you know just to end right here i do want everyone's time too much it's you know just to sum up what i think the the four points that did i was saying this message is number one is one has to say it's a different time period hashem what do you want from me what's the the what's the heroism that you need from me right now he said number two i think he's saying that we we have to one has to find a way to to diminish the fear how do we diminish the fear we diminish the fear by realizing that it's all from don't have that look for that number three you have to be practical in this world that hashem wants us to be relying on on doctors and to be consulting them to insulting the medical community that's what we're supposed to be doing that's not taken away from trusting hashem that's the way we service him and number four there can't be sadness sadness is the enemy right now sadness and the regular goddesses i'm speaking like that also sadness is the enemy sadness will diminish our help and and sadness will take us away from that feeling that we have a mission right now we have to be proactive and sadness is what we have to fight against so okay i hope that's helpful a little bit just the words of of ravi's throat and his response to to an epidemic of 1848 which uh was a very serious epidemic it lasted for three years and and so this is not the first time in jewish history that we've we have um been forced to confront something like this it's it's we have a precedent from very great rabbis from past generations and i think the advice is very much advice we need for today to look for the big picture not to be afraid if we see the big picture find ways to be heroic trust the doctors and and then do whatever we can to to avoid sadness both for our health and in order to to ignite ourselves to to just to do more you know just to fight the sadness in a way and to have that big picture you know and not get caught on uh you know understand there's a big vision going on there's a big vision you know and uh and the more we keep that in focus and the more we're motivated to say what can we do to make a difference in our lives wishing everybody a wonderful day thank you very call i have to get on unfortunately something and wish you a wonderful day innovation to be safe and healthy thank you you're welcome okay take care everyone okay thanks goodbye thank you you're welcome bye everybody bye bye