Memorial Day: The Deepest Truth About Unity and Pain - Rabbi YY Jacobson

We still have the parents, the fathers, the sons, the wives, the friends of we can talk about those who are fighting at the risk of their lives and even more so those who have been killed in action. And and what is something that we can say to the individuals as opposed to the claw the individuals those parents etc. Those other relatives that have lost a loved one and obviously that is an unbelievable contribution that they've given to claw the show but the personal pain is so deep. How can we address them in particular? >> [sighs] >> I'm going to try to get through these words without crying too much. Let's see how that works. I'm always touched by the first vision of Moshe Rabbeinu with Hashem. He sees a burning bush that's not being consumed. He wants to understand it. What's the mechanism? A tree on fire should be consumed. Why is this thorn bush not being conformed consumed? I want to understand Moshe is you know the quintessential intellectual the Rambam calls him an oaf. And Hashem says, I'll take care of a line don't get close. Take your shoes off your feet because you're standing on sacred soil. In Medrash Rabba one of the metaphors in this revelation is that Moshe Rabbeinu was watching the pain and the fires that will consume the Jewish people. When Moshe was looking at a burning bush he wasn't only looking at a physical bush. He was looking at his people who thousands of years will be burnt murdered, tortured, slain. Like the Jews in the kibbutzim who were burnt shot killed [snorts] in barbaric ways. Their homes went up in flames. Many families who died embracing each other in their security reinforcement rooms or wherever they were by the flames ignited by the Hamas Nazis Moshe Rabbeinu saw it. He saw he saw the 6 million gassed and he saw the pain of the Jewish people throughout history. Moshe Rabbeinu wants to get close. He wants to understand more about it. Hashem says, take your shoes off your feet. You're standing on sacred soil. What that means for me is when I am standing in the presence of a person of a family in pain a family that has faced the flames of hatred and violence and death. A family that has lost loved ones in the war in this war against Hamas in the atrocities of Simchat Torah or in any other capacity in any other form now or earlier. I have to know I am standing on I am standing on sacred soil. I am standing in the presence of absolute holiness. Literally the people I am standing in front I'm talking to or I'm emailing or I'm addressing are in a different plateau. They're existing in a different reality. Life means something completely different for them. Death means different something different for them. Marriage, love they don't take anything for granted. They don't take for granted waking up in the morning and seeing your husband your wife near you your child near you having the ability to say goodbye to your child before they go to school. They don't take anything for granted. Take your shoes take your shoes off your feet. I think when we face these families when we talk to these families first and foremost our role is not to philosophize and not to rationalize and not to justify and not to find some brilliant philosophical equation that might make sense or make no sense. But really just to know that this is a story beyond our minds. My job is to be here to say we might we are brothers we are sisters. We don't understand why we don't understand the the finite mind has no way of wrapping itself around pure infinity. My job our job is I'm I'm here for you today and forever. Give my I want to give my shoulder for you to cry. I want to be able to be here on your terms not on my terms. I want to be able to attend here to your needs and most important and equally important as an orphan once wrote to me she lost lost both of his parents and she said, I don't need people to look at me in my eyes and think what a case. What a case. What a pity. Doesn't have a life her whole life is destroyed. I want you to feel my pain. I want you to empathize with me but I want you to believe in me also. I want you to believe in my power in the power of life. I want you to believe in the power of my soul. I want you to look at all of these children at all of these women at all of these families and completely empathize and be there. Experience them as much as you can. Be there on their terms. Be kind. Be gracious. Be attentive. Tune in to who they are and what they need and equally important see their light. See their power. Believe in them. Believe that don't detach them from their source of life. Don't look at them just as isolated detached victims who were in bad appreciate the fact that their journey is a sacred journey an inexplicable journey and humbly we have the opportunity to embrace them every moment and say, we love you. We love you now and forever. We are here for you. We will be here for you. You are our brothers. You are our sisters. You are our children. You are our parents. You are our families. We will never be able to thank you enough for the ultimate sacrifices that you have made to protect millions of Jews who the Hamas would love to murder like they did on Simchat Torah. Remember we're dealing here with people who would love to give us a holocaust every single day until every single Jew in Israel is dead and it's your your family members who literally went and are going on I saw a clip of a of a commander who spoke about a debate an argument with one of his soldiers in a few days ago. He told this soldier, I'm going in first to the home and the soldier says, no I'm going in first. You have four children. He says, you have two and you're young. You still have to build your family. I'm going and I have experience in Gaza and the other person says, no you let me go and he says, I am going. He says, imagine two Jewish fathers in Gaza fighting who's going to go in first to make sure the other person is protected and their children will have a father. Where do you find such people? Where do you find such people? I was watching this clip I started to cry. I just wanted to hug him and tell him, wow I am in awe of you. We are in awe of each and every one of you. All of Israel is indebted to you. Is grateful to you. Every Jew from till Messiah not only is part of your fan club but we cheer you on. We salute every one of these soldiers. We salute every one of these and we salute every one of their families who are surviving who are continuing their legacy and their life with such courage. I don't want to be able to ask myself why because the question of why is mute is mute. I don't have an answer for it. I don't think anyone of us have have answers for it but I think we need to go into a deeper place. Questions and answers don't really touch the nerve of the issue. This is this is a time where we go into a place where we call a means not passivity. It means the courage to face adversity head on looking at reality not being naive without losing our power of love and connection and commitment and our will for life. And [snorts] I think when we can approach this from this perspective it doesn't give answers and it doesn't take away the pain. But none of us can do that. None of us can do that. Our role at this point is to take off our shoes and embrace each and every one of them knowing how much of the love. How things are going to work out in the long run you know how history works out this is not for me to know. This is only one knows it the one who created the whole world. The one who's divine providence and every single person's life. The one who is the source of all love and all life and all bliss and is completely not defined by any that we make. Our job is at every moment to be an ambassador for God's love and light and empowerment and confidence. I just want to be a channel. I want to be a conduit. It's not about ego self-consciousness rationalization is every one of us being a conduit to say, what is my role now? What is my mission now? You know I had a zoom with a bunch of teenagers and a big question that came up was fear. Fear you know there's so much fear now and somebody asked somebody asked, what do I do with all my fear? And I I just something hit me. I was I was talking to somebody who was in Kibbutz Be'eri. Kibbutz Be'eri he's now in Tel Hashomer. He's recovering because he was wounded very badly. And he killed maybe 50 or 100 terrorists until they blew off his hand and he went to protect his wife and children and they survived. They were under a bed. They went into the box under a bed. The terrorists came into their bedroom and they didn't notice them and they were saved. His wife and two children were saved and he was also saved. And I asked him about the fear. What He was surrounded by 100 or 200 terrorists in Be'eri. I said, "What do you do with the fear?" And he told me a line, you know, he said, he said, "At that moment, you cannot afford to live in fear. At that moment, the entire body and the entire psyche tunes into one thing, and that is what is my role right now in order to save my life, to save my wife's life, to save my children's life, to save other people's lives, and to eliminate the murderers. Anything that distracts me from that space is going to literally endanger the life of my loved ones. Fear I can wait till later." It was such a powerful the defining moment cuz I realized in our own lives, obviously, we're not living every moment for Shalom in that moment, but it teaches me so much, you know, every moment I can choose, am I going to tune into what is my mission right now? Or am I going to allow myself to get lured in and slept in into the abyss of fear and depression and uncertainty? I have to respect and acknowledge all my emotions, but I think ultimately, we each have to make a choice. What's the space we want to live in? Are we going to sublimate our pain into a driving force for more love and connection? Or are we going to sink into that abyss? And ultimately, I think that's the choice of every single Jew, and every one of us is a leader, every one of us can bring that sense of love and connection to others. I guess that's getting back to the PTSD versus the growth question, but I I want to get back to this emunah that you mentioned. I have a question that somebody sent me, but before that, that was an amazing story about those two highly in the soldiers, who's going to go in first and the mesirus nefesh. Just to bring it a little bit more, I guess, common because none of us, almost none of us are ever going to be in a situation like that, but I remember when I was a little bit younger, uh I had two friends that were counselors in Hask and they didn't have a mattress. Between the two of them, they had to decide who's going to sleep on the mattress cuz there were too many, I guess, maybe too many campers came or whatever, so they were short of mattress. And the two of them got into a machlokes I'm going to sleep on the floor. No, I'm going to sleep on the floor. It wasn't I'm sleeping on the mattress and you're going to sleep on the floor, but it was the opposite. And I think we can all internalize that mesirus nefesh each on our own levels. It's It's Hopefully, we're not going to be in the situation of pikauch nefesh, but we can be moser nefesh in a very simple way, giving to other people. And we can use that as as an example. Yeah. But to get I I but I I would just say, I would just say if you would ask those two soldiers and you say, "Oh, wow, you reached such a madreiga of mesirus nefesh." They would probably both laugh and say, "Oh, you don't know what you're talking about." And I think it's important to understand, there are moments that the yechidus of nefesh, what the what the kabbalists call the core of the Jewish neshama comes out and then you realize that you're operating on a level of consciousness in which you're echad yachid umeyuchad me Hashem Yisbarach. You are operating on a level of consciousness where everything that 10 minutes ago or a day ago we thought was so significant, you're completely transcended. Not because you're crazy, not because you became an angel, because you actually tuned into the deepest deepest frequencies of your soul. And when you're on that level, it's like I'm not sacrificing anything. I'm not going crazy just because I'm such a such a nice person. I'm actually I'm actually connected to the deepest level of myself that says, "You know what? Of course, I want him to live and go back to his family." And therefore, there was a simcha. It wasn't with a depression or with a sadness. It was done with such a sense of simcha. And it's hard for us to fathom. What's more precious than protecting your body? What What else do we want to do? All of life, we're busy protecting ourselves. Why do we go Why do we go to work? Why do Why do we spend time going to a doctor? Why do we eat? Why do we sleep? Why do we take care of ourselves? Cuz we just want to protect our lives. And at that moment, you realize that you're part of something that's infinite. You're part of ein sof mamash. And even physical life may not even capture that truth, you know. We say, you know, according to Yiddishkeit, death is really, you know, the refrigerator's unplugged. When the refrigerator's unplugged, electricity doesn't die. The electricity doesn't die. The electricity returns back to the source of electricity. It's just not channeled through the refrigerator. And I believe at that moment, he felt that. At that moment, he didn't feel my life is going to end, but I'm a nice person, I'm giving it to somebody else. He felt that the dveikus of the neshama in Hashem and ein sof is absolutely eternal. The difference between death the tragedy of death is that we don't see it. We don't feel it. The electricity of the neshama is not being channeled through the guf. It's not being channeled l'havdil through the refrigerator. The refrigerator can't do its job because it's unplugged. Death is not death. It's not the cessation of life. It's unplugged. The soul is not being channeled through the guf. And therefore, on the level of the soul, there's an absolute clarity and certainty that this is not the end of it. There's complete oneness with Hashem for eternity. That's why we know every neshama is eternal. Yet we grieve because we want to see you. We want to hear you. We want We want to be able to touch you. So, they touched that deepest deepest frequency. You know, you're talking about you're talking about mesirus nefesh in our own in our own our own life. There was a moment I heard this from somebody. His name is Yair Einsbacher. He works in Tzahal, IDF, in the terror unit, anti-terror units. And he went to one of the kibbutzim. >> [sighs] >> I think it was Kfar Aza. And uh he eliminated dozens of terrorists and then they went home to home searching for Jews who were hiding. And he said this, he went into one of the homes and there were Jews hiding in the cheder mamad, in the reinforcement security room. And he knocked on the door and he said, "Zeh Tzahal." They didn't believe him. They thought it was Hamasniks camouflaged as Tzahal speaking Hebrew. So, he started to quote sla you [snorts] know, words in Hebrew and they didn't believe him. He said, "Sh'ma Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad." They thought maybe Hamas memorized Sh'ma Yisrael. But then he said enough psukim and he gave enough Jewish references that they believed him and they opened the door. And Yair said he came into a room that was filled with Jews who were hiding from the terrorists and they survived. And he said, "You know what happened instinctively? I just fell on each one of their shoulders and I just embraced them and kissed them and we hugged them, we cried. And then Yair said, "I walked out of that room." And I'm going to quote him in Hebrew. He said, "Yatzati misham im ratzon echad l'chabek ul'nashek kol Yehudi sh'ani ro'eh al ta'am habri'ut al pi ruchaniut." I walked out of that room with one feeling. I want to kiss and hug every Jew I meet. Any Jew I meet, I just want to kiss you. Don't talk to me about fragmentation and separation. It doesn't interest me. I realized at that moment, what do you say in in Israel? Nafala siman, right? I had an epiphany. Nafala the gem. Huh? A siman fell. A siman fell, right? An epiphany moment, right? A ha moment. You know, we we operate in psychology and neuroscience, you can operate on different vibrations. You know, there's the vibration of guilt, vibration of shame, of hate, of jealousy, of self-loathing, of judgmentalism. They're all vibrations. They're all They're all very active. I can operate on those levels of consciousness, those frequency levels, but they're very very low vibration levels. It's a very narrow and diminished way of living. And then you get to the higher vibes, you know. And one of the highest ones is pure love. And I think the Jew as Jews, we can operate and live on different vibes. You know, I could be in a place of judgmentalism, jealousy, hatred, anger, frustration, resentment, guilt, self-guilt, self-loathing, embarrassment, humiliation. We all know these emotions. We live with them. Yeah, what Yair experienced at that moment was the highest frequency of the Jewish soul. It was living on the deepest vibration. I see a Jew, and if I'm in touch with myself, you know what I want to do? Just want to kiss you. I want to hug you. Why? Why? Why Why do I want to hug you? It's a ridiculous question. This is not about a logical, intellectual, cerebral, you know, idea in science or mathematics or geometry or engineering. This is the deepest frequency of the Jewish soul. We're all one soul. I want to hug you. V'ahavta l'rei'acha kamocha. The bottom line is he says because he is kamocha. She is kamocha. Our souls are one. And on that moment, he felt it. He experienced it. I don't want to live on on lower vibrations. And I think this is what these soldiers can teach us all, that even as God willing, there'll be more peaceful days and we'll go back to normal, let's not go back to normal in the sense of diminishing who we are, of tuning into our lower frequencies. I want to go back to normal in the sense that I can remain always connected with the truths we discovered since October 7th. And that's what it means >> Having clarity. Having clarity. Having clarity, emotional clarity, even physical clarity in our nervous system, and certainly intellectual clarity, and not allowing other emotions and thoughts, which always come in, that's part of human struggle, to control us, to dictate us. And it's very easy to happen. Listen, we are a nation. It's very easy for us to be fragmented. Let's face it. You know, judgmentalism is pretty comes natural to us. Argument, debates, and it's not a curse. You look, open up any page of Gamara, it's filled of debates and filled of filled with arguments and filled with disputes. The first mission in Brochos already has a three-way argument. But the last mission says Brochos we have to learn how debates and arguments should never undermine trust, loyalty, connection. And living with mesirus nefesh in a practical way means that every moment of life I want to choose to remain in the space of godliness, space of kedusha. That means in a space of light, of love, of connectivity. And that doesn't eliminate pain. The soul feels pain. Shechinta begalusa. Im anochi betzara. Hashem feels pain. The soul feels pain. A chelek Eloka mimaal feels pain. But there's always clarity. There's clarity. What do I do? How do I relate to it? I don't detach. I attach. I don't drift away. I don't go into a place of ego and isolation and detachment and self-righteousness and self-consciousness. Those are all blockages. They block the soul. I want to always tune into the sacred space with these unbelievable amounts of love and trust and loyalty and connectivity and clarity what is good and what is evil.