Etiel Goldwitcht

we have etl thank you so much for joining us on the show and it's such an honor to have you on charlie it's such an honor to be on this show i've been watching it i can't believe it's been over a year and you do this every single week unbelievable it's a full team and and it's an honor and i only knew it was over a year because the last year i had the beard at this time also so the beard reminded me of how long coming in it's coming in thank you so we're we were talking about this idea of rabbi akiba rabbi kiva was one of the greatest ever and what he exemplified wasn't just scholarship which he had it wasn't just kindness and all the qualities that we expect from one of the greatest jews to ever walk the face of this earth what he exemplified and i want to talk about tonight's idea of resilience here is an individual who bet everything on barcode on the revolt and saw it turn upside down on him and had this incredible strength to go out and start again which is really a lot of the the joy in my opinion of the the holiday that we have right now as somebody who's very familiar with kiva and his life maybe you can share with us some insight as to the man behind that moment what do you think led to having such resilience wow wow so the truth is as a child i would say rabbi akiva was my favorite you know uh tanay figure i grew up in a rabbinic home so i grew up with the stories that was mesmerized by his story you know he started learning when he was 40. you know the rabbis teach us that his life was divided into like three different sections and the first 40 years of his life was nothing that was connected to judaism he was a shepherd in you know kabbalah cevua's home and there's a romantic story he like fell in love with the rich man's daughter and she saw something in him and she fell in love with him and they got it was they got married when it was like inside and when her father found out that they were engaged he disowned her but she believed in him and i would i would say you know a lot of times we speak about ruby akiva and his greatness i think his inner strength came from his wife wow what a beautiful concept and and i think i think that gets overlooked i mean the ghazal speak about it more and more how she believed in him and she said you could do it and this story is like he's like picking out like the straw from her hair and he's like if only i could buy you this like golden you know crown that the women used to wear women of royalty that she probably had from her father's house but now she's totally disowned and she's like you know i love you and i see your potential she sends them to go learn and he's learning there with his son which is also by the way sometimes our children get us to do things that we wouldn't otherwise be doing he wants to educate his son and he decides to learn as well but he's consistent and she pushes him and she pushes him and i think that's where he has his inner strength because when things get tough she's always like giving him some more uh some more courage and you know there's the famous story i don't know if you guys discussed it here the story of rabbi akiva on his way to to study we have in isha torah we have the great fortune of teaching we have this great uh chihuly you know this glass art sculpture and it represents her renault weinberg's love saying over this story which was the story of true greatness how he became our greatest leader was he saw this he comes to the well and he see this smooth the rock is totally smooth and he's like how did that happen and they tell them oh it's it's the water that's dripping there the famous story and the the lesson over there is one drop of water if i ask you one drop of water that falls on a rock does it leave an impact on the rock wonder someone feel it one drop is nothing right right how could it but if one drop is zero so zero times a million is also nothing so rabbi akiba learned at that moment if a drop of water that is consistent every day in the same spot over and over again that's what penetrates the rocks of the words of the torah every day a little bit will penetrate my heart and he started with aleph he started with phase and every day he took upon himself just one more letter i don't need to learn the whole thing i don't need to master all of judaism i'm gonna learn one letter i'm to learn one mission i'm going to learn one puzzle that's what gave him that energy so so i i want to sort of double click on what you're saying because it's super powerful um the first point that you're making which is believing in somebody else that we we always underestimate how much believing in someone else empowers them and ruby kiva had the the full faith and confidence of his spouse which was it was the most thing to him and what you're adding is it's such a great element which is so true if we just stop for a minute and like calm down because we live in a world where everything has to be delivered yesterday the idea of one step in front of the next the idea of just a little bit it's such a it's such a it's such a difficult but simple concept right because you can imagine him getting up and thinking it's all over it's done i built everything and now it's and then remembering there's someone that believes in me and him remembering i don't gotta solve it i just gotta go one step today and that is so powerful that's right that's right and and that comes when you have a clear vision of where you're going and i'll bring it back to to his wife rachel because the there's one medrish that's fascinating where it was uh leo's wife all the way at the end of rabbi akiva's life he's he's wealthy now he's the he's on the top of the world and and his father-in-law rings back and and he wants to share them with all the gifts and rabia akiva buys his wife the best that a woman could have in those days and she's walking around like royalty and and rebecca leel's wife is like how come his wife gets to walk around like that and not me and he says if you would do or if you if you know what she went through and her persistence throughout all the and she saw this moment when they were newly wed 40 60 80 years before she saw that that's how they got there you have to see but it doesn't happen in a click no it does not have it's a step by step by step yeah you got to believe in the people that don't show it to you believe in your kids when no one else does you believe in each other you believe in yourself you believe in your spouses when you believe in the people around you when no one does that's why you're here and that's and and i'll add to that in the believing i think rabbi akiba people don't understand is it right we have unfortunately jewish histories filled with a lot of tragedies why is it that only the death of the students of rabbi akiva it has its own mourning period all of the other tragedies that we have we pile on to tisha and tish above the destruction of the temple that's when we we don't get married during the three weeks or the nine days we don't listen to music right we grow out our hair those are all the things of of mourning of tish above and all the other tragedies but yet rabbi akiva's students when they died we have the same customs why is that and i think that's the resilience it will when we understand it we'll understand where rabbi akiva got that inner strength to get up and start all over again with five students which all the torah that we have from ravi akiba is comes from those five students when he lost twenty four thousand the capitalists teach us that rabbi akiva's life the first third was tohu vavo was you know just like the world the first two thousand years was tobovo the second third was torah was learning and growing just like the second third of the world was torah from abraham avinu all the way to you know till this time period and the last 40 years of rabbi yakiva rabi akiva felt it was the last 2000 years which the kabbalist called two thousand years of mashiach the potential of mashiach coming was in the time of rabbi akiva he wasn't just galvanizing and teaching the secrets of the torah and getting his talmudim that they had the potential to bring mashiach but wasn't a false messiah they weren't able to connect as one review and the potential was there the torah was there the amistral was there we were in israel it was time to bring it back but we couldn't live together we were we weren't happy for one another's success and that's why when unfortunately it was all over he said i'm not giving up i'm going to start again and you know what we're in the generation where we're picking up the last piece of what rabbi akiva started we're talking about resilience we have to be resilient and realize all we need to do in our generation is what those tell me them failed which is to be happy for one another wow because we have to realize we're on a mission that's and that's the overarching answer here which is when you're on a mission you can't go down because you have a mission to fulfill that's right rabbi thank you so much for what you do and everything that you're teaching and all the the light that you bring to the world every day and it's an honor to have you on the show and keep on spreading your light to this world charlie you're amazing and i just want to say i'm personally a big fan i'm sure everyone that's watching is here is a big fan and it's amazing i would say your consistency has inspired me throughout this whole entire corona time period and that's the that's the resilience it doesn't matter how difficult they got out there another lock that we we're on a mission of spreading the light of trying to encourage one another of uniting when you're on a mission you don't let things stop you exactly and i think all of us at home we're on a mission and together we can accomplish it for me thank you rabbi thank you so much an honor to be here thanks so much for watching for more content like and 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