Rabbi Akiva’s Message for a Broken World - Rabbi YY Jacobson

Everybody knows that today the 33rd day of the is celebrated far and wide in the Jewish world. And it's fascinating because the yumpt of is not like a regular holiday that is recorded either in or even in the gam for example we have is in kipper you have purim was later in migillisester you have kaneka was added later during the time of the second bdash comes from a later point in Jewish history and the fact that it's a day of celebration created a lot of discussion when did it begin? What is the reason for it? because it's not so clear in the sources which only adds to the mystery and curiosity and uh fascinating energy of but the fact is as the Gmorrah says trust the Jewish people they may not be prophets but they're children of prophets which means that has prophetic instincts um the once told somebody He says which means the Jewish people have a collective sense of divine inspiration and when something lasts something sticks the Jewish people have a healthy immune system. It doesn't mean individually we can't boost our immune system but collectively when a people has been around for so long there's a certain healthy immune system which spits out toxicity after a while and embraces that which nurtures the organism. And you could see it throughout Jewish history, different fads, different things that happen and ultimately they fizzled out after a generation, a few generations, the descendants either come back to Yiddish or just unfortunately get lost. You have this throughout Jewish history. A day like is one of those days where you see it took root and of course the pisk and the authorities already established this that is a day of joy among the morning of among the grief of Sira. And the general two reasons that are given is either because the tremendous pandemic that struck the students of Rabbi Yaka seized and the second reason discussed especially in the works of Kabala is that it's the Hayulah the yard site of Raba's great student one of the said before he passed away in the Zoya it's recorded he called the day of his passing Hilula which means a wedding he called a day we don't have that a yard is not a wedding it's the opposite of a wedding but he called the day of his passing hila which means the joyous element of the wedding wedding component and that's what it's still called actually means in Aramaic hila means festive wedding and that's what he defined his passing as and therefore he himself requested it should be a tremendous day of joy and indeed it is [clears throat] one of the very interesting customs of which we don't have throughout the rest of the year is the lighting of fires everywhere. Of course, in Miran, unfortunately, this year because of drone attacks, they shut down, at least to most people. But bonfires in Iran and all over the world where Jews create mid fires to commemorate and dance and sing and celebrate during this day. There's another very interesting custom alim that I want to zoom in today zoom in on today and that is the custom of the bow and the arrow where children especially would go out to the fields and practice their skill of shooting arrows and this is a very interesting custom where did this come from how did this happen which is one of the very famous works of he writes in his sectional and he says what's the reason for this and he says the reason is if you'll take a look in your first sources in the fourth very interesting reason the gmorra says in throughout the days a rainbow never appeared in the cloud after the rain there's also a song one of the stanzas Second source which means all the days that he lived the sign of the rainbow did not appear because he was the sign. This is our master the son of Yai. And of course, what this is referring to is the fact that the rainbow was established after the flood as a covenant between the creator and the world. That never again will there be destruction. Even if there is moral depravity and a breakdown of morality, there will always be repentance and rejuvenation and healing. That's the significance of the rainbow. In the days of his grace, his merit, his righteousness, his holiness was so powerful it saturated the world. It substituted the rainbow. He made the world a worthy place. When he passed away says the Saskar based on the kazal, the rainbow appears. So the arch and the bow kes is a rainbow. But kes is also the word we use for an arch when we use the kates. So to commemorate the fact that passed away the rainbow appeared. Therefore the Saskar says they play with bows and arrows to commemorate the significance of this day. In fact, they bring in smarter than the apost says in chapter one the third source like the appearance of the rainbow that will appear in the clouds on a day of rain because usually that's when the rainbow appears refraction of the sun of the light in the clouds. So it's interesting that the words bim are the same numerology the same gimatri as the words yim the day of rain when the cloud appears passed away it's 401 so these are all hints but there's something still difficult about this cuz if is a festive day and a joyous day this seems to commemorate something very sad that once he's not here the rainbow bow appears and therefore they're playing with bows and arrows to commemorate that. That would seem like a pretty negative and depressing custom. Besides the fact, let's face it, the connection between a rainbow and a bow and arrow seems a little far-fetched. It's true the word keshas is used and we have the word rainbow and bow and arrow, but it's two separate things. Now, it's true the shape of the arch is similar perhaps to the rainbow and that's why they got the name, but it seems like a little bit of a far-fetched maybe symbolic on some level. Is there something a little more significant and and and positive and joyous in this day? So, we're going to delve into this a little deeper and go on a little journey and we suddenly realize the interconnectedness of stories and themes. And this is a story that begins close to 4,000 years ago. And uh it's still a middle of it. In fact, now we can truly appreciate the depth of the story. And before we begin this journey, I want to thank my friend Rabbi Yitzk Feldheim from whom I heard the nucleus of this insight a number of years ago. We were together at a program and it really really moved me and touched me. So we spoke about a few weeks ago I think before Pes. So I want to be and thank him and add a few other insights and perspectives. It all begins with a story which uh at the onset of the story one does not realize how significant and cataclys cataclysmic its impact will be. We go back to the safer batious to the parishes vira and over there we have the story of Arainu who not having any children and s not having any children she asks him to be together with Hagar her maidervant and huger indeed gives birth to a child Ishmael but the relationship ultimately between Ishmal and the son that would be born 13 years later is very very stressed. The PK says that is mocking is he's mocking. He's dismissing. He's pro persecuting. And the way our sages interpret it is that Yeshal was trying to kill Yitzk. And it was a very very difficult relationship. That's when Sarah tells Abramu that it's impossible. They can't coexist. You need to send your away. Abra doesn't want to. Yeshal is his son ultimately. He was born from Hagar. It's his son. Now wasn't a little kid at the time because was already yitzuk was born 13 years after. So when yuk is born is already and this is already when is a little older that's when he's bothering him. So now is 20 years old or a little younger a little older but he's not such a baby still. He's a child and he doesn't want to send them away. And that's when Hashem tells of the famous words, "Whatever Sah tells you, whatever Sah tells you, you listen to her, which has become the 11th commandment of the Jewish people. In marriage, it's not the 11th, it's the first. The rest of the ten commandments is number 11." Okay. [snorts] What happens therefore is the next moment. Let's see the next scene. And here you have it in your source sheets. You have it in the original from the you also have the translation in English Genesis 21:14. Wakes up in the morning. Interesting expression. He wakes up early in the morning. The same expression would be used later by the when he brings to Mount Mariah. It's interesting to know because it doesn't seem relevant when he woke up that he woke up in the morning. If he did at 11:00 in the morning, 7 in the morning, but it was early in the morning. And he took bread and he took a uh flask of water is like a leather flask of water. He gives the bread and the water to hug her alma. He places it on her shoulder together with the lad and he sends her away. She leaves and she wanders in the large desert, what we call today the negv area in the land of Cananan, Israel. The water from the flask is depleted. It's used up. She casts her child under one of the bushes. There's no more water. She's in the wilderness. She has no way of hydrating herself or her child. She's desperate. What is she supposed to do with him? She He's thirsty. So she throws him She places him under the bushes. What happens here? She goes away. And she sits down at a distance. Means like far away. At a distance. A bshot away. How far did she sit from him? How far? One foot, 10 feet, 50 feet, 100 feet, how many meters? How many feet? The Torah says as far as a bow shot. >> Uhhuh. Okay. Right. You're saying it's pretty ambiguous, right? Depends who. Depends who's shooting, right? There are really skilled archers and there are those who practice once a year in the park here and it doesn't go very far. But apparently the tit is talking about some professional bow shot. You know, a real bow shot. That's the distance. That's how far she sits. Omra. Why? Because she said, "I will not look at the death of the child. I cannot see it. I will not see it. And therefore, I want to be as far away as a bshot so I do not see him perish." She sits at a far distance. Vati says and she bursts out sobbing. We all know the continuation of the story. She has a vision. An angel says, "Why are you crying? Open your eyes. There's a wellspring." And she opens her eyes and there's a wellspring. The med says on this sum, "Everybody is blind until God does not open your eyes." Which means there's a well right here. But if my eyes are not opened, I don't see it. That's a whole she in and of itself which we'll have to do one day because it's a fascinating medish how life works. And of course she has water. She hydrates herself. She hydrates her child. What happens next? Hashem is together with this boy and he grows up. He lives in the desert and he becomes an archer. Kashas is an archer. Roa means like from the word rav a master a master of the bow. Literally cashes is a bow. We said before kesas is a rainbow. In this case kesas is the bow which the archer uses and he becomes roashas. He becomes an archer professional archer a master of the bow. That's the story in paras. We don't hear a lot from Yeshal. Again, it says that Hugger married him off to a woman and later we'll meet him at Aram's funeral. He's going to come to say good blast goodbye to his father. And actually, it says he walks after Yitzk, which means he lets Yzk go first, realizing that Yitzk is the actual era of his father, even though Yish is 13 years older than Yitzk. And then we don't hear from again, even though we know about his family and his genealogy and so on and so forth. But I want to focus, you know, when you read stories in Kish, as we often know, little little expressions become clues to very very profound messages. It seems like it's a simple story, a very interesting story, a fascinating story. But there's a strange expression here and that's what we want to focus on. When you look at the second the in the source sheets which is the third verse it says she walked away and sat down at a distance. The story is pretty clear. It could have said she went a distance and she sat down because she doesn't want to see how her child perishes. But then the makes sure to tell us something. How far a bow shot away. It's interesting. This is not a common expression in Tanakh. It's the only time the only time that this expression is used in the entire 40 in the entire 24 holy books of never again do we have this expression? What is it supposed to mean? What is it supposed to symbolize? You already said she sat at a distance. You want to give me the exact distance? Give me the exact distance even though that wouldn't be relevant. What is the who's talking about both shots? what she thought to herself, okay, I want to go far away from my child. Let me think how far a bow shot is. [laughter] Is that what she's thinking? Or just let me get out of here. This is too painful. This is very hard. What's even more interesting is or equally interesting as the Pa continues says she said I don't want to see the child die again. She sat at a distance. So in the beginning of the verse it says she went to sit at a distance. At the end of the verse it says she went to sit at a distance which itself is a redundancy. And the middle it says, "And by the way, it was as far as a bshot." So you could say, "Okay, you don't have to take it so seriously. Maybe Hugger liked this sport." So she was thinking in those terms. You know, when you're into football, you talk everything in terms of football and a baseball maybe. But one second it becomes very curious because just a few sukim later we come back to the bow and then you see it's not a coincidence because what happens to as he grows up what does he take on as a vocation he becomes an archer he becomes the master of the bow what's the significance of this detail he took on the sport okay he may have also taken on pickle ball very popular amii he may have also taken on yoga or pilates ies popular by some people. He may have also taken on some other sport. But the ter points out one thing. This is who he became. And you ask, is this connected? She moved away as far as a bow shot. And then he decided TO BECOME NOT JUST AN ARCHER, but Rokashas, the master of the keshas, the master of the bow. The truth is there's a very profound message here and it may teach us about our world today and our lives today may be more than any website more than any book more than any article or newspaper in the world. These two words only once in Tanakh in this story depict a drama so fantastic, so glorious, so profound and sometimes so tragic and yet so meaningful and instructive to our mission today. For this we have to inter everything is interconnected. I mentioned last week zer sha copy paste copy paste copy paste. When YaKob is on his deathbed, he speaks to his children and he tells Ysef that I'm giving you the city of and he describes it in par. He says, "I have seized it from the hand of the Amorite with my sword and with my bow." He speaks about two weapons is a sword and bashi >> [clears throat] >> When Yitzk asks as to go bring him food because he wants to bless him and Yakov dresses up like Asov and he gets the blessings and then Asov comes back with the food and he asks for a blessing and ultimately gives him a blessing. He tells him you shall live on your sword. We see here Kashas he becomes the master of the bow on his deathbed Jacob will mention two weapons connected to his brother Asovashi my bow connected of course to his uncle his father's brother Ishmal Jacob was son and Yitzk was the younger brother of the first weapons devised by man were designed for hand-tohand and direct combat the sword the spear here, the axe, [snorts] the knife. In all these weapons, the damage one afflicts on their adversary, on their enemy, is a result of the direct force that they strike with. Whether it's an axe, whether it's a spear, whether it's a machete, whether it's a sword, the person who invented the bow and arrow, and this is very, very ancient. This person, whoever he was, had to grasp a paradox. And what's the paradox? The arrow has to first be pulled back away from the target in order to strike. Where in other weapons, it's direct person to person. Here, he's actually pulling it back. The bow and arrow are a tensionbased device. The other devices that they devised were not tensionbased. They're based on a direct strike with the force, position, and skill of the perpetrator. Here, I have to pull it back. And when it gets pulled back, that's what creates the momentum. So, this is a tension- based device. And the more tension, the more pressure, the more I pull back the bow in the the more I pull it back in the the arrow in the opposite direction, that is what generates the momentum for the arrow to fly far. So the bow shot is a symbol of the power unleashed through stress and tension. It has to be stressed. It has to be tense. and I pull it back and that's what creates the momentum. >> You mean he? It doesn't say how he killed >> He was killed. >> Oh. Oh, that's seven generations later. So, who devised it? I don't know. I don't think we know who devised it. >> Now, let's go for a moment. Let's go for a moment to hugger. Who is hugger? When the terror speaks about people, it doesn't usually give a depiction of personality type, a shik resume. She has this hobby. She likes these colors. She loves nature. She works on herself. You know those resumes. She works on herself. I hope so. I hope everybody works on themselves. >> [snorts] >> The Tyra the Tyra doesn't give these depictions but you have to figure it out. It tells you isolated stories but each story is usually extremely instructive. What do we know about Hagar? >> She was a mistress. >> Huh? So yeah, it says she was a mitress. She came from Egyptian. Kazal says she was a princess. When you look in the itself, we have two stories about Hagar. But when you see both stories represent a similar theme, you understand that this depicts something very true about the personality of Hagar. So the few stories that the Tyra shares about Hagar all point to the same truth and it's actually a very common challenge in life. Hugar has a very very hard time which makes a lot of sense because this is a human trait. Hugger has a very difficult time to deal with the pressures in her life. What does she do? She does something we call today in English checking out. Check out. It's a very powerful, skillful and actually non-confrontational coping mechanism. I check out, I disassociate and as a result of that life becomes manageable. Where do we see this? Let's take the previous story. Before this story, there's a previous story. This is in par in parl hugger's relationship with S is very stressful. Sor challenges her. That's what the Tyra says. What does Hugger do? Hugger. Hugger flees. She escapes. An angel meets her and says, "Go back to Sara. Go back to the house. Deal with Sara. Talk to her. Confront her." IT LOOKS LIKE, "OKAY, IT'S A STORY." IT'S not a story. All these stories, these isolated stories about people are giving you a hint, a clue into the vel into the internal. Somebody knows what on Shaolong is. Yeah. Okay. into the hashkaf the world perspective of hugger is because hugger avoids today they call it avoidant an avoidant relationship avoid I avoid I run away there's running away physically there's also running away emotionally I may be present physically but I'm shut down I'm not here I checked out you could see it in the eyes you could feel it in the nervous system I'm checked out it's a way of avoiding danger hugger runs If you're not sure about that story, take a look at this story, right? It's her child. Her child is going through a very, very difficult moment. She's not sure he's going to live. It looks like he's going to die. Her son lay there thirsty. You would think instinctively, what would a mother want to do at that moment? Hold him, comfort him. She may not have a solution that will save his life. It's horrible. Nobody. It's not about judgment. I'm just I'm just describing the emotion. What's there to do? There's nothing to do. But she may want to hold him. She may want to sink to him. She may want to comfort him. She may just want to be with him. She does something else. She throws him. It says doesn't she throws him under one of the bushes. >> Huh? >> He's 20 years old. >> Right. Which which which brings out the point so deeply, right? And what does she do? Instead of being present, she runs away. She says, "What does that mean? I can't face I can't face what my child is going through. It's very very scary." I want us to understand what this means. I want to bring it down a little bit emotionally and psychologically. Sometimes sometimes if my child is going through a very painful situation instead of actually being attentive to that pain and holding it sometimes what happens is consciously or unconsciously what I need to do is I can't deal with the pain of my child. So I start looking for solutions to get out of my pain. It becomes about my pain more than about the other person's pain because it's too difficult. It's too unbearable. Now, it's very tricky because it doesn't look that way. It's like, "Oh, I'M IN SO MUCH PAIN. I'M IN SO MUCH PAIN." I AM, but what am I really in pain? Am I experiencing trying to be there for the pain of the person? Or is my pain of your pain so overwhelming I can't even tune into your pain or be present for you? What you need in your pain cuz I'm preoccupied with my own pain. Now you say, "What's the difference?" It's a big difference because if I can actually tune into the other person, I ask, "What is what this person needs from me in this moment of pain?" And probably what they need more than anything is to know that I'm here. I'm present. To know that I believe in them. To know that I really feel they got this. I'm here as a source of support, presence, unwavering connection and attachment rather than now two people are falling apart [laughter] which now the child is only so much more guilty because not only is my life destroyed but my mother's life is destroyed, my father's life is destroyed and that's a big pressure on children when they feel guilty for everything that's happening in their parents' life. So we have here two stories about Hagar, one with Sara and one with her child and they both point to a very similar p pattern and the pattern exists in our psyche. You know how many of our how many of us or people we know sometimes even parents, grandparents, other people in our life beginning with ourselves have shut down parts of our heart in order to avoid feeling pain or also avoid causing pain. If my heart is shut down, I don't feel the pain. If it's shut down, I also don't react and I won't cause pain. How many of us run away? Sometimes it's physically, sometimes it's emotionally from something discomfort. I don't want to be confrontational. I don't want to attack. I don't want to lose the plot. So, what do I do? I just put on a stone face, a stone heart. We spoke last week about the heart becoming stone, the concept of skiila. And that's how I deal with it. How many of us avoid facing reality, speaking truth, really communicating truth, communicating the depth of my heart, and even feeling it? Sometimes I can't even feel it. When things are tough, I may check out. It's a brilliant coping mechanism. Sometimes it even looks like a kind coping mechanism because there's a certain safety. I freeze up. But the truth is it's deadly because it paralyzes us. So this is >> huh. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Survival. >> Survival. Very very a very very brilliant survival mechanism and sometimes rooted in deep kindness. I'm maybe afraid of my emotions. My emotions may be too painful. And it's common. And you'll have sometimes you see it especially with uh [snorts] I was recently speaking to somebody very very extremely extremely loving and deep deep sensitive person and uh it was noticed it was noticeable though that there's a deep part of the heart that has so much so much love and yet is almost afraid of it and shut down and uh excuse I learned in a very deep moment of vulnerability from this person that as a child they observed something very very painful with another family member and they were too young and hopeless to be able to do anything about it. And the pain was so so deep that the only way to handle it was to blame themselves and to shut down certain emotions. And it makes sense because what is a child in that vulnerable state supposed to do? Like from that perspective, it makes so much sense. Sometimes if you're extremely sensitive and who's not but especially if you're uniquely sensitive and loving and that attunement is not reciprocated instead of everyday feeling the pain of being misunderstood or lack of attunement another way of looking at it is maybe I'm too needy maybe I have too many emotions and maybe I have to shut down that part of me become much more reasonable and intellectual and in control and then I won't feel rejected abandon abandonment, neglected, lack of attunement. But what happens is a lot of my emotional life is not here anymore because vulnerability is always risky. Let's face it, vulnerability means that connection is very very meaningful to me. And when it's not there, it hurts. So if I could say I don't need connection. I'm fine. I'm perfectly fine. The Tory says it's not good for Adam to be alone. BUT I SAY NO, for me it's good to be alone. [laughter] It's very trustworthy, so to speak. The the vulnerability takes a lot. It's a lot. It means I'm exposed. It means I'm without I'm without coverups. So, we do we have to appreciate how deep this can go. And sometimes my entire life, I may not even realize I may not even realize that this is my operating system. And I maneuver it skillfully. And when anybody ever gets too close, which may be triggering those emotions, I figure out how to keep them far away. You know how far away? >> Very good. [laughter] A bow shot. This is not just the Ter WAS LOOKING. OKAY. YEAH, WE'RE NOT GOING TO GIVE ENOUGH BOW SHOTS. WHY NOT? INSTEAD OF A FOOTBALL, we'll use a bow shot. This is actually describing psychologically and emotionally the story in in the most brilliant brilliant way. Basically, it's describing her describing her internal state much more than the geographical location she is. She sits down at a distance. That's geographical. A bow shot away is not geography. It's emotion. The terra is talking on two different levels. There's physically moving away and there's emotionally moving away. How far? The answer is as far as a bow shot. Get away from the bow shot. Remember what's unique about that weapon versus the other weapons. It's based on tension. It's based on pressure. It's the tension and the pressure that create the momentum, create the lethal force, create the power. Hugger says, "I'm not dealing with the tension." She makes sure to remain a bow shot away. A bow shot away. To withdraw from anxious and stressful situations, I check out. I'm gone. When things grow tense, [snorts] I'm not here anymore. It's too hard. It's too You want me to explode? You want me to implode? You want me to break windows? You want me to holl? You want me to scream? It's much better if I learn to. Everything is fine. Hashem, I'm checked out. Some of you may thinking, "How do you know my husband so well?" The answer is we're all, and maybe some will be thinking, "How do you know my wife so well?" Okay, I don't want to pick on anybody, but uh this is a very common issue. [clears throat] >> [snorts] >> Children, especially sons, have a special relationship with their mother consciously and even more unconsciously. Yeshal knows his mother. For many years, he's living only with his mother. He feels all of this. What's his response to Hugger psychological profile? You know what his response is? He becomes the master of the bow. This is literally his emotional template responding to mom's emotional template. You know how sometimes children make sure whatever their father loves they have to dislike? Whatever their father dislikes becomes their passion, right? If my father has a particular career, I may have to go as far as possible just to prove that I exist. It's true on many different levels. tell those truths often emotionally he becomes the master of the bow. You know why? Yeshal grows up and he watches the fear in his mom's eyes. He sees the fear. He sees her inability to be present. Her inability to really be here with a deep sense of confidence. He sees that the need to avoid ultimately comes from very very very deep fear. It's a fear that makes sense. But as an adult, I don't even know I'm reacting to that fear. I just know that my nervous system says, "RELATIONSHIPS, DANGER, DANGER, DANGER." IT'S LIKE literally a fire alarm goes off in your house. You know, when a fire alarm goes off in your house, it's so loud it's designed not to let you check out from the fire alarm or the smoke alarm. You want to like continue your shabas meal. You can't. The nervous system does the same thing. The smoke alarm goes off and says, "Danger, danger, danger, danger. Check out fast. Check out. And we need to be able to notice these things while they're happening because they happen like in an instant. Our nervous system is brilliant. It's survival from very very early age. So Yesh sees all this. He sees the dread. He sees the pain of her paralysis. He feels the anguish of her victimhood. The best I can do is just avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid. In psychology today, they talk about avoidant attachment patterns. Every person needs attachment. But if I haven't had real safe attachment with my caregivers, so there's no attachment at all. There's anxious attachment. It's on and off. There's avoidant attachment. And that becomes the pattern that I'm used to and I bring into my relationships as an adult. Avoidant attachment. Yeshal watches all of this in his mother. And when he sees the terror, the fright, the panic that his mother endures, he's determined to go in the opposite direction. His mother avoids the bow. I GO AS FAR AS I CAN FROM A BOW SHOT. I DON'T DEAL WITH STRESSFUL SITUATIONS. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to become the master of the bow. I'm going to be the one to create the stress. I'm going to be the one to create the tension instead of allowing the stress to make him flee to make him run away. Instead of allowing others to create tension in him, to create dread in him, he says, you know what? I will be the one to impose incessant dread on everyone else. What does the say about him at this end of the story? Hashem tells earlier about His hand is in everything. What is that supposed to mean? That's a description of a person. What's Why should I be stressed out by them? Let them all be stressed out by me. MY MOTHER AVOIDED IT. AVOIDED it completely. Yeshal had a mother who couldn't deal with pressure. She couldn't deal with tension. She had to numb herself. This was her way of numbing herself. Even her child in the most difficult situations, she's not going to be there. She's going to avoid it. She's going to go away. So, she became, understand, the target of the arrow. She became the target of the arrow. And that's what she wanted to avoid. So, Yal says, "Why should I be a target like my mother? You know what I'm going to be? I'm going to be the perpetrator. I will be the bow creating the tension. That bow that creates the tension. I'm going to be that. Let everybody else run away. Yeah. >> Because he is dealing with so much stress and for him to deal with her stress and her fear and her pain. Very often children cannot take the pain of their parents or their loved ones and that makes it when you leave them. They need to deal with their own issues, but dealing with the mother's issues. So, she went to the side. He shouldn't have to deal. He should take care >> perhaps. Yeah. Yeah. Now, >> yeah. Yeah. Perhaps what he means by her becoming a master of the bow is that he's confronting her with her denial and he is showing showing her the truth. This is what you're running away from. You're running away from me and my intention or whatever it is she's running away from. >> Yeah. >> Here I am. Myity is to show you. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. He he doesn't just embrace the intensity. He becomes the master of this intensity. Yeah. You're going to be the target. I'm not going to be the target of this. On the contrary, let others be the target. Let's see what happens. Now, let's see what happens. You're small perfects this skill. And I want you to understand that this is the essence of Islamist global terrorism. This is it. You see, let's go back. Asov is associated with the sword. Yitzk told him, "You're going to live with your sword. Yeshal is associated with the bow this ki and this kashi. What's the difference? The sword strikes directly. That's Asov. Yeshal becomes the archer. Asov and his descendants which ultimately became Edim and Rome. They represented the sword. Direct conflict, direct war. Yeshal perfected the skill of the archer. Terrorism doesn't only want to kill and maim. Heaven forbid it wants to do something else. It wants to create endless tension. Endless tension in everybody's life. It's not this is a war. These are the boundaries. This is where we're going to fight. That's not the point. That's part of it. It wants to create dread, fear, paralysis. standing at a bus station, god forbid, somebody could be gunned down in a pizza shop, on a bus, in a school, anywhere, coming out of shul in golders's green, in a kids in a basketball field, people learning, people walking. Take away that lack of any safety in life, any predictability in life. a person sitting peacefully in their home and they want to be able to create this internal panic among the Jewish people and among humanity that suddenly from nowhere they could god forbid be blown into pieces. The message of terrorism is you're safe nowhere and that's the objective. At no time it celebrates the panic, the fear, the vulnerability, the flimsiness, the instability that it creates in the hearts of ordinary people. So all missiles that are sent against civilians you want to fight an army fight an army. No in your home in the middle of your pes that's its objective that's its aim. Now look at this. Many people in the west in politics in academia are exactly like hagar. Exactly like hugar. Literally they don't want to face the harsh reality of evil of darkness. You also have people even in the psychological community. There are people in the world of psychology highly respected who have done tremendous tremendous work and made enormous contributions to civilization with their understanding of trauma of neuroscience of development. And yet due to their own inability to be able to find their truest soul and the true source of real reality, even they must neutralize everything and turn it all into psychological terms, never having the ability to say that certain behaviors are actually evil. That word doesn't exist. It's always trauma induced which means you have to actually be very very empathetic towards the perpetrator which means you're never allowed to create real boundaries and the entire world becomes one big target of terrorists who want to destroy you and your children. What happens is people don't want to face the reality that sometimes there is darkness. They turn like hagar. They turn their face from looking at the truth. They avoid. They minimize. They distract. Now in a free society where everything is good, you could do it for a couple of years. When you're facing a brutal enemy that wants every single Jew dead and wants another holocaust, that becomes the most dangerous reality in the world. Much more dangerous than knowing that you have an enemy is when you're ambiguous. If the enemy is your friend, if he's not your friend. So what do they do? They see it. So they blame the victim. It must be the Jewish people are doing something wrong. It must be, it must be Israel must be very evil and sinister. They would rather blame Israel for genocide because it makes them feel better that nobody in the world wants to turn burn babies alive. But if Israel is a genocidal country, nobody wants to burn babies alive. But you're dealing with a genocidal neighbor. What are we supposed to do? The Allies also killed many Germans. What does it do? It allows them to continue living in this state of ambiguity, denial, no real moral boundaries. The Jewish people and many good citizens in the world face the tension that Yeshal creates daily. You know, sometimes we don't even realize the extent of it. I was reading that just an example in two 2024 the Shinbet reported that it prevented 1,40 major terror attacks in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. Each one designed to murder dozens of Jews. Do the math. 1,040 that they avoided. Unfortunately, they couldn't avoid all. They uncovered 20 terror cells composed of Arab citizens inside of Israel. 20 terror cells. This is inside of Israel. Okay, do the math. [snorts] I saw in September 2025, Israel dismantled a secret rocket factory in the West Bank that is designed, this is not even Gaza, this is in Judea and Samaria, to terrorize all of Israel with endless rockets. The real news that's happening in Israel is what we don't hear about. That's the real news. What we actually don't hear about. Nobody even realizes. The Gmorra says, "I heard their chief rabbi of Israel Rabbi talking a few days ago and he said that at Yoma when they commemorate the soldiers that were fallen dad, the fourth of just two weeks ago. So he was at the at the graves of the soldiers in Mount Herzel and he said the head of the Shinbet came over to him and said to him, "I don't understand. I don't understand. Why doesn't the chief rabbinet create a special holiday for the Jewish people to celebrate the miracles that happened with Iran?" So the chief rabbi innocently looks at him and says, "Cuz it's still a middle. I mean, it's still the middle. It's it's this just didn't end. Epic Fury didn't end, unfortunately. So, he says, "If you would only know if you would only know the thousands of missiles that these murderers sent and how statistically the damage and horrors that could have happened, even though there were horrors and people killed, we all know that. But if you would imagine to if you would see the miracles of what happened you YOU WOULD C MAKE A DAY OF celebration and he says it's fascinating the shinbet is coming to the chief rabbi and saying why aren't you making a yamt so you're talking about something that if our neighbors had it their way sadly the holocaust would repeat itself every week that that as kamas said it clearly so in this situation You have the huggers and you have the ishals. Two different responses. I can respond like hugger. I can respond like ishal. You know in psychology they speak about four different responses to very difficult situations. They call it the four the four uh fs. This fight right there's flight this freeze and this fawn which is people pleasing. So I can take hugger's path. We know which that that's flight or freeze or fawn. That's one way. I freeze. I run. I become a tremendous people's pleaser and I'm safe. I avoid situations. I shut down. I escape. I learn how to numb my pain through a lot of different ways. I can do it through binging. I can do it through drinking. I can do it through my phone. I can do it through many, many different ways. Sometimes I could do it by getting more attention, getting more validation, working harder, working less. Everybody in their own way. What is my way of numbing the pain and avoiding it even inside myself? Forget about other people. But I myself cannot sit with that discomfort because I have a policy. I go as far away as a bosshot. Don't get close to me with bow shots. I am not here. I'm not here now. I'm eating and for the next 6 minutes I'm content. And then of course I'm miserable again and I have to find something else in the pantry or whatever. Or I could become like fight. I become the master of making others tense and miserable. I master the bow and I unleash all of my fright on you. Not to compare, but somebody before Pes sends me a clip and he says in our family we have a tradition. It's not a mitzvah before Pes to be stressed yourself, but it is a mitzvah to make other people stressed. Okay. And now let's discover a third way. And that third way is the essence of the Jewish way. And it's why we were chosen to teach this to the world. It's the Jewish secret, but it's not supposed to remain a secret. Ultimately, it's supposed to become the consciousness of humanity. Hugger sees herself as a target of the bow and arrow. She's a target. And when you're a target, either you fight back and you become the perpetrator, you start shooting the arrows or or you become the bow and you run away. That makes sense. Yeshal has become the master of the bow. He's not going to be the target. He's going to become the master generating tension, strife, and uncertainty in the entire world. He's the master of the bow. What's the definition of the Jew? The Jewish people are not the masters of the bow. We also don't avoid the bow. The Jewish people are the masters of the arrow. Yeshal was the master of the bow. The Jew was the master of the arrow. If you look take a look there's a second to the last source of amazing. Who are our children? and the children of our youth. They are the arrows in the hand of the warrior. And as Rashi says, this is referring to children and students of every master. They're called why why does he compare them to arrows? From all the metaphors, these are the and the answer is as follows. What's the secret of the arrow? The secret of the arrow is that the deeper the tension, the more you apply the pressure, what happens? The further it strikes with more impact and more intensity. Not only that, it strikes in invisible ways. Where the previous weapons can only strike somebody right in front of me, the arrow can strike far away, even to places that my physical eye can't reach. It's precisely the tension that creates a much further distance, a much greater impact. The more the archer pulls back, the more tension, the more pressure, it doesn't weaken the impact of the arrow, what happens? Much more powerful, much stronger, much more potent, and much further, much more intensity. We are the divine arrows of history. banana or him. The more tension the Jewish people experienced, our arrows, our force, our light soar and have reached the greatest distances with the deepest might and the deepest power. This doesn't rationalize or justify or minimize, god forbid, pain, anguish, loss, god forbid, grief. It teaches the secret of how the Jewish people responded and respond. It begins with Asov's brother in part middle of the night faces an adversary. The adversary threatens to kill him. He can't kill him. He ma him and he's limping. Morning comes and YaKob turns to him and the man says, "Leave me alone. I GOT TO GO." AND Jacob says, "Loy, I'm not leaving you alone until you don't bless me." What a strange request. Somebody attacks me in the middle of the night in a dark alley trying to kill me. All night I'm wrestling him. At the end of the night he mims me. God forbid. And now I don't want to leave him. I want to kill him. He says I got to go. AND I SAY I WANT A bra a blessing from you. Call 911. Callim run. Punch him in the face. I want a blessing. What's what's what's this idea? I'M NOT GOING TO LET YOU GO till you bless me. Bless me. This is how you bid farewell to a man who was trying to destroy you. YaKob at that moment was teaching the secret of Jewish resilience. And how do I know? Because that's the moment he got a name change from Yakov to Israel. And that's the name that we all have till today. What's the secret of Jewish resilience that to be a Jew is to possess the unique ability to look at every crisis and say I will not let you go until you bless me. I know that deep down the entire objective why you came into my life is to elevate me to bring me to a higher place. I will not let go of this encounter until I do not emerge from it stronger, wiser, deeper, holier, more authentic, more blessed, more empowered. And we see it throughout our greatest leaders. When Hashem wanted to make David a king, he didn't give him a crown. He gave him Goliath. He gave him Galas. When Hashem wanted to elevate Mosher Rabenu, he didn't give him a stage. He gave him 40 years in a wilderness. When Hashem wanted to make Esther a queen who would change history, he didn't just give her a bouquet of roses. He gave her a hmon and an aasher and a crisis. And when Hashem wanted to make Yfad the leader that he was that would save the world, he didn't give him a palace. He gave him a pit and then another pit and a prison. What is the meaning of all of this? Moherenu Ysef David Esther the people who transformed Jewish history because the pain is very real but deep down there's a deep awareness of the soul. One must say it with a lot of empathy to ourselves and then we can radiate it to others even if we can't really preach it to others because these are not things you could preach. You can only radiate by example. Every challenge in my life, every challenge in your life. Some of these challenges, you know, are perplexing. Some of them feel overwhelming. Some of them create a lot of heartache and a lot of pain and a lot of anxiety. And the question then is if God would come to you and say, "My dearest child, I'm giving you no now an opportunity to press control altdelete on three stories of your life. DELETE NEVER HAPPENED. I CAN GO BACK IN TIME. I know how to do it. I'm God. I don't mean me. Control all delete. And think for a moment now. You don't have to say it loud. Think for a moment now. The one, two, three stories of your life. Maybe when you're one week or even in your mother's womb, maybe when you were four or 10 or 15 or 20. Things conscious, unconscious things that I did, things that happened to me. And I could press delete. on all of them or at least one of them, two of them, three of them and their whole trajectory would have been different. Think even right now. We don't have to be abstract. Think right now things that are happening. Maybe in your family, maybe in yourself, maybe people around you, maybe past relationships, present relationships of yourself or loved ones where there's really really it's not a simple, it's not easy. It's not just okay, you know, just a little a little, you know, hurdle, but a very profound hurdle. And now tune in to a deeper part of your soul. Interview the deepest part of your soul. Raen Bakaya writes something fascinating and very intense. It would be hard to say this based onash. He says that every single soul before it comes down to the world, it is consulted about what everything it's going to experience in this world and it consents. Now you're going to say, "Please leave me alone. I DID NOT AGREE. NOBODY ASKED ME ABOUT X, Y, and Z." That's fake news. NOBODY ASKED ME. NOBODY ASKED ME BECAUSE IF THEY WOULD HAVE ASKED ME, I WOULD HAVE SAID NO, I WAS NOT ASKED. I WAS FORCED. Nobody asked me. Huh? [laughter] Yeah. I was forced even to explain. It's not only that the med says in before Hashem created the world and all of history, he consulted somebody who the souls of. Now it's fascinating. God had to consult me and you. Yeah. You know why? Because God remains God. We're the ones who got to go down into these places. And many ways there what the med is saying is the balat is like an ambivalence so to speak in Hashem. He's like guys I would love to do it but it's dangerous. And we had to say God we got this. We got this. You sure? You sure? Literally had to embrace it. But why? What is this about? This is telling us something very very vulnerable and also very very emotional but also very very true and God forbid it shouldn't be seen as a delegitimization of people's extremely painful journeys and experiences because that's completely antithetical to this entire message. This is not about that it's not painful and it's it's nothing that's not the point. No, it's very very intense. But there's a deeper deeper knowing in the soul. Deep deep knowing that our challenges all of them even the profoundest ones physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, social, financial, even things that are difficult to talk about are not here to break us. They're ultimately here to crack open our egos. They're ultimately here to allow us to become the people that we're capable of becoming. They're here to allow our souls and our bodies, our animals and our divine soul to reach its deepest deepest blissful oneness with source. It's here to crack open my fears, my insecurities, my fakeness, my pretenses, my superficiality, my cover-ups, my masks, my shells. And this is what we need to understand. And I know this is sensitive stuff what I'm going to say now. Somebody once shared this with me and it was life-changing. a person who went through a lot of this and he said you know I learned in my life that if the purpose of life if what we call good in life is having xyz abcde efg you know all these blessings if that's what it is then I look at my life and I say god you cursed me because a lot a lot of painful challenges in his life he says I came to learn that the deepest deepest bliss and joy and experience of goodness in life is ego death. Complete oneness with Hashem. Real Das, complete ego death. And he says in that sense my life has been so blessed because my ego is cracked open every day again and again and again. What this person was not saying is that one should not cherish and appreciate and pray for all revealed blessings in their life. Of course, we should and do whatever we can to bring that down and to change circumstances when we can. And everybody should be blessed with the most revealed blessings. Amen. And not press control or delete on any of them. What he was really saying though is that there's something underlying everything in life. Yakov said, "I'm not sending you away until you don't bless me because I know deep down you're holding on to a blessing." It's a deep blessing. It's not an easy blessing, but it's a blessing. I may not know it. I may not understand it. I may not be able to wrap my brain around it. That's fine. I may need to be able to surrender everything I know about myself and my life. I may need to be able to be cracked open completely. But in that cracking open and you feel the essence of your divine infinity, you know that this is exactly the journey that your soul embraced with every fiber of its being because of your unique infinite power and the fact that you're channeling the deepest truth and energy into this world precisely precisely in this journey. And it doesn't come by numbing and repressing and avoiding. It comes by holding on and looking at everything and saying, "Of course, there's tension and of course distress." But here's the deal. I realize that it's this encounter with this reality that allows me to become allows me allows you allows us to become the manifestations of infinity in our world to become ambassadors of God's limitless love, light, wisdom, truth, healing, redempt redemptive consciousness. We don't wait for the light at the end of the tunnel. We aim to become the light inside the tunnel. You are the light inside the tunnel. So what this really means is I don't avoid the Bshot. I'm not here to become God forbid the perpetrator. I'm here to become the arrow. The very tension, the very tension, the very stress becomes the catalyst where you truly touch your deepest deepest core and light. Not by making believe it's not painful, by actually holding it and then tuning in to my complete vulnerability and realizing that I'm a channel. I'm a channel of God in this world. I'm the arrow of Hashem in this world. And the tension is here for one reason to allow me to have the impact to reach the destination with the ultimate potency and intensity. And here is the deal. Who is the one who taught this to us? Yakov. We know in Cabala the reincarnation of Yakov in the same letters of Yakov generations later is going to be Rabaka. Which is why his wife was Raul who was a reincarnation of Yakov's wife, our matriarch Rahul. When do Jews shoot arrows? One day a year. Why? Why? This is the answer. It's the story. It's the whole story of Rabbi Akiva and Lagimar. Tune in. Rabbi Aaka lived in one of the darkest eras of Jewish history. Rabbi Aka lived in the years following the destruction of the second B mikd by the Romans. Raaka himself lost 24,000 students in a massive pandemic. The plague ended on now I want you to understand Rabaka's life for a moment. His parents weren't Jewish. He was a Bengrim. The Rambam says some say he himself was a convert. The Gomorrah says in Sanhedrin that he was actually a descendant of Cisra. Cisra the arch enemy of the Jew either his parents were converts or he was a convert so that means he grew up with parents who weren't Jewish and later became Jewish or he himself later became Jewish and it wasn't just an easy they came to the Jewish people till 40 he didn't know olive base he didn't know anything he was a simple shepherd completely completely ignorant in fact the gammorra says he told his students when I was an ignoramis I used to hate and I would tell them give me and I will bite him like a donkey says why not like a dog says a dog doesn't break bones a donkey breaks bones and says why did he do that he says because he felt that they were arrogant at the age of 40 he starts learning and he becomes the master of the generation he now has 24,000 students and remember then you didn't have 24,000 virtual school students didn't work. 24,000 views. That didn't work that way. It was actually students that came. It's nice, but that didn't exist then. And then he loses all of the 24,000 students. That's what happens to Rebaka. If you were a Yaka, what would you expect to happen to him at this moment? He went through so many situations in life and now everything was lost. You would think it would make sense for a yaka to say, "God, I did my job." And sink into depression. That would make so much sense. What happens? Take a look in the last source. 24,000 students died in one chapter, one period. And the world was desolate. The Jewish world was spiritually desolate. Came to our rabbis in the south taught him the rebu they established from 24,000 his classroom was reduced to five. And with these five people he recreated the whole tradition of the fact says the entire we have today comes from one channel. Everything was gone. He lost 24,000 and he restarted with five people. Now think about this. Imagine what that classroom looked like the first day. 24,000 gone. Five. And this is after so much he became a Jew till 40. He knew nothing. He finally rose and rose and rose and rose and then everything WAS LOST. OKAY, I'M DONE. AND HE WASN'T 12 YEARS OLD AT the time. He was a very very he was an elderly man. He could retire with a lot of pain. He found faust five students and because of these five and their teacher all of yiddishk is alive today. And the question is how did this? How does one do this emotionally? How do you do it? And there's one answer. The answer is he knew the secret of the arrow. He taught his students as Rashi says, "What's the secret of the arrow? The growth and the healing that is born from the deepest pain and grief possesses a depth, a strength, [snorts] a power and a truth that is beyond imagination. It's transformative. Once in a while I have the privilege of meeting such a person and you could see that the genuiness, the authenticity of a person that was born from their ego completely cracked open. It's unparalleled. As long as you meet that person, there's no qualms. There's no ears around them. There's no pretenses. There's no small fake talk. There's no coverups. There's no avoiding. You can sense the halo, the divine halo literally around them. The presence, the vulnerability, the truthfulness, not vulnerability from weakness, vulnerability from strength, knowing who I am, knowing who I'm not, knowing what my mission is, knowing why God sent me here, having an inner inner ability to appreciate what belongs to me, what doesn't belong to me, what is my mission, what is not my mission. And suddenly every experience in life, it's not about me having this, me not having this. It's not about blame on me or blame on anybody else. It's not about self-contempt or self-shame or guilt. Those are all normal emotions that all belongs either to hugger or there's something much much deeper and that is I may not know the reason for anything. I'm fine. I'm not God. I don't even understand a cell. I don't even understand an atom. I don't know how the sun works. I certainly don't understand the creator of the sun. I'm fine with that. I could surrender that. I could surrender my intellect. But there's something very very deep that happens when a person can really experience everything they experienced. And in that ego cracked open. I'm not here anybody more to impress people. I spoke to you once about two mountains. You remember we climb one mountain in history. You remember that cheer? We climb a mountain. We try so hard to get to the top. Some of us make it halfway. Some of us make it close to the top. Some of us make it mish to the top and like those are the few people like you look at them and like wow why not me right and it's like that top and that mountain is a mountain where let's face it there's a lot of external stuff there validation impressing this one fitting into this one even if it's couched in religious uh sensibilities you know we use Hashem very often as our masks and then sometimes life throws me off the peak of the first mountain into an abyss and I could stay in the abyss Or I could begin climbing a second mountain. It's a completely different mountain. It's a mountain where I'm not here to impress anybody. I'm not here for popularity. I'm not here for validation. It's a mountain of internal internal oneness where suddenly you are the arrow of God in the world. And suddenly every experience you had in your life simply was another experience that created the momentum of your arrow, the trajectory of your arrow, the direction of your arrow, the potency of your arrow, the depth of your arrow, the precision of your arrow, the elacrity of your arrow, and more important most and perhaps most importantly, the courage, the strength, the faith, the conviction of that arrow suddenly now. But why did this happen? Why did this happen? Maybe I know most times I probably don't know. But I stop asking questions that don't allow me to be who I was meant to be in this world. Suddenly everything became that which allowed this arrow to be here today. channeling the divine power and love and truth and depth that it's here to channel. Rabaka got it. He got it as Yakov said, "I will not let you go until you don't bless me." Raaka looks at the situation. He's like, "I'm not going to figure this one out. I started as a non-Jew. I became a Jew. Till 40, I knew nothing. I finally got it together and started to learn. I became the greatest leader and teacher and I lost everything." Okay, this is beyond me. But I have a five souls, fertile souls, open souls. Raika gave them his soul. And look, it's been 2,000 years since the story. We're here today. Tyra is thriving. The Jewish people are as alive and ever. This consciousness of redemption and transformation is saturating the world with with all the pain and with all the challenges until until the last moments of gullos and and the onset of the complete redemption. This this this ability of Rabaka is transformative. Time and time again this man had to discover the truth of the arrow unleashed by tensions. So his parents are not Jewish. Just think about that. He could come in and say, "H what? I'm just I'm just a regular guy." And he goes through transformation after transformation. And each time he says, "What? My parents are not Jewish. My parents converted." Wow. That's a whole different type of arrow. You take a look at it's fascinating. Has a statement in chapter 4. Who are beloved is every human being created in the image OF GOD. JEWS HAVE a special affection because they're called children. And then they were given the I want you to remember why is he the one who says that these are the three stages of his life. First he was a a person he wasn't a Jew says then he becomes a Jew but without at the age OF 40 HE HAS NOW IT'S IN ISRAEL THAT THEY HAVE THIS called and literally in every every time again he becomes the greatest source of light instead of wallowing which would have been made which hlessly would have made sense wallowing in a very very difficult past he understood one truth that still changes is each and every one of our lives and that is whatever happened to me in my life may be painful challenging deeply stressful it may still be deeply stressful it may things I may be things I have I there's things in my life I don't have a clear solution for them sometimes we see go here go there go there and thenashkin was once for bringing with us like in the tent it was fascinating and he said zaneka they made eight appeals I think to the Supreme Court. eight appeals to the court ultimately the Supreme Court for a for a uh for a re a re uh trial or or scrutiny into the trial and you can't do more than eight and zanuk in the morning he was in the middle of hollow and he got a letter that the supreme court said no on the eighth appeal that means now you sit 27 years it's all over now you sit your 27 years I mean he was already there eight years now you sit your other 20 years this is all over so He's he said he told me he was in the middle of hollow. He was telling the he was in the middle of hollow and uh know what's the what's the natural thing you stop saying halo right you're like okay God 20 years thank you after 8 years another 20 years right thank you thank you that was really nice great gift and he said he said he at that moment he remembered a story he heard from his father as a child about the holy rais of ran said that it says inimic yudgl chapter 13 and Beloved says three times. Three times is actually a beautiful song that one of the kids sings. I'm sorry. Three times. For how long God will you forget me? Forever. For how long will you hide your face from me? How long will I have to seek advice in my soul dealing with all MY GRIEF? IT'S BASICALLY HOW LONG VANG how long is this going to be? So the said, "No, you're misreading the capital." He remembered his father say when he was a kid. IT READS LIKE THIS. HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO FORGET ME? HOW LONG are you going TO HIDE YOUR FACE? AND HERE'S the answer. As long as I think that I will find the advice in my own mind. As long as I will still be holding on to my little tiny ego, to remain small and safe and in control, not ready to crack open, not ready to be really authentic, not ready to face the depth of my soul. I'm living in a world of detachment, but when I'm ready to let go of that, everything now is not different maybe in the circumstance. But you're a channel of oneness. You're not even your mulvada. You are our channel. You are Hashem. YOU LITERALLY BECOME HASHEM BECAUSE of your BL because there's no ego. You are a channel like says I'm going to give rain. How can you say I'm going to give rain? You're giving rain. So the says so in the middle of he remembered this story and he says ah finally the Supreme Court can't help me anymore. FINALLY, I KNOW TILL NOW 8 YEARS, eight years that THEY'RE GOING TO HELP ME. NOW, FINALLY, I REALIZE THERE'S NO anymore that the Supreme Court, the highest court in the United States of America, said no. Eight appeals, the last one rejected like a big X. Boom. THAT'S WHAT I FELT. I'M NAUSEOUS. SO, I SAID, you know what? Now, actually, GOOD THINGS CAN HAPPEN. I LET GO. GOD, IT'S YOU. A few hours later, the man was liberated. Zhaneka that day, 5:00 in the afternoon, he was set free. This is what happened in the morning by hollow. He said over this story a few days after he was liberated, there was a sudan in somebody's house and his lawyer was there. His lawyer gets up. He says, "I'll tell you the other part of the story. I got the appeal that morning, too. I got the answer that morning, too. And when I saw it, I didn't know that they sent you a copy. I thought they send it to me and I send it to you. I decided I'm never going to share this with you. Why should I stomp take away your last hope? I'll dre you a cup. At least let a person live with hope. I'm not going to tell you that this was rejected. Why should I aggravate you? At least you live with some type of dream. Maybe one day the Supreme Court will grant you freedom. So I decided I will not let I will not tell this to you. I never knew that you got your own message. So look at this. You see two people, the lawyer was trying to protect him. The lawyer was trying to tell him, "I DON'T WANT TO BOTHER YOU. I WANT TO GIVE YOU HOPE." But for him, this was his greatest moment. He was cracked open. It was literally his greatest moment. He also shared with us something very powerful. I'm just saying this parathetically was such a lesson in life. He was there and he said at that time there was another Jew who was also put in there. I [snorts] went to visit a few times. The food was horrible there. Horrible. And they had a vending machine with some nash. The challenge is that some of the items were not you know the are very mb even ud not to eat because there's a but it's not it's a little you know it's much better to eat is and uh and so he said it it wasn't even a consideration for me not to take those I think Hershey chocolate bars or whatever. He says, "But this fellow was hungry." So he called up his rabbi. The rabbi said, "In prison, it's you have no choice. You can eat it. You'll come out of prison. You'll go back to Israel." So said he started to do that. And he said this rabbi meant well. He was trying to help him. But he said he didn't realize that's the day he became a real prisoner. He said, "I never became a real prisoner. That's the day became a real prisoner." they ultimately managed to take something that was a real value away. He said it was such a lesson for me and I realized how strong I have to be because my real freedom they won't be able to take away even though the physical circumstances were not here. So Rabaka's lesson is there may be of course there's things I look at my life you may look at there's no clear solution there's no clear solution sometimes 1 2 3 4 5 6 it's going to be solved and if you could do that awesome it's not a mitzvah not to have a solution we live in Hashem wants us to find the right solution whether it's the right doctor the right healer the right partner the right plan the right etc etc but there's things we know that still create tremendous heartache anxiety and shutdown. And when I could learn with compassion that I am not the pain, I'm not the anxiety. It's inside of me, but it's not me. Who am I? And the answer is, I am Hashem's arrow. I'm not the pain. I'm not the anxiety. I'm not here to fit into anybody's model or to be a people's pleaser. I'm not here to get anybody's validation or anybody saying this about myself or about my spouse or about my family or about that's not what I'm here for. Who am I? I have challenges. I have insecurities. I have an ego. I have stuff that I got to work on. But who am I in my essence? Who are you? Who are we? And the answer is I'm Hashem's arrow that Hashem sent down to this world to channel infinite truth to channel his awareness, his truth, his love, his purity, his goodness, his redemption, his das, his anciph. That's who I am. Then all the tension, all the pain, all the heartache that I endured and some of them may have not been easy for some of you, for some of us. Some of them may still not be easy. It has the power to unleash the most creative, ferocious force of truth, of godliness. You become a powerhouse of courage and faith and resolve and love in ways that are unprecedented. Cuz every one of those experiences were simply the momentum to direct exactly where your arrow has to land in this world to be able to bring Messiah redemption to your corner of your universe. Since they try to silence your soul, it can scream much louder than any other soul. Since they tried to crush your spirit, it can now soar to infinite heights. So precisely on the day that the 24,000 students stopped dying and you would think what's the he had five left. Let's celebrate. What's the celebration? Five left. Thank you. [laughter] Where's the what are you dancing for? WHAT ARE YOU LIGHTING FIRES FOR? What are you shooting arrows for? But this is precisely the power of on this day. And one of the five students was I want to just finish with this story because it touched me. It touched me very very deeply. Edith Ager [snorts] was sent to Awitz in 1944. She grew up in Budapest. Uh secular Jewish family. Uh a ballet dancer very into gymnastics. She was hoping to get to the Olympics in 1944. She made it to the top in Hungary until she was told one day, "You're a dirty Jew and you can't join anymore." Once the Germans invaded Hungary and then a few months later, she was placed on a cattle cart, three sisters, her parents, and sent off to Awitz treble to Awitz um Burkanau. She said they traveled for a long time and then at some point her mother turned to her and said, "Edith, I want to tell you something. I don't know where we're going. I don't know what's going to be the end of all of this. I just want to tell you this. People can control everything about you besides the thoughts that you put into your mind. That's the only thing they can control. And remember, the thoughts you put into the mo your mind will determine the flavor and the future of your life because that's the only thing that will always remain yours. She didn't realize that this was the last thing she would ever hear from her mother cuz five minutes later they arrived at Awitz. The doors were open. The SS Yakum and their barking dogs had all the Jews come down. Her parents were sent immediately to the gas chambers. They didn't eat for a few days on the cattle cut. They didn't have food. So, they were starving. They were starving. And you know what it means not to eat for a few days, right? Not to drink for a few days. We don't know what it means. We know what we feel like after Yamipper. And that's a joke relative to this. And she says, "Joseph Mangala, the angel of death. He loved music and he loved dance. He came into her barrack at night. Her parents were killed already. And he says,"I heard that there is a great dancer that came from Budapest. Is she here?" So Edith said, "Yeah." And she came to the front and he asks her to dance for him in Awitz in the barrack to dance for her for him. And she's like, "I'm in the mood of dancing." Like, "How could you dance?" She heard what happened to her parents already. Somebody told her, "You see that smoke? That's them. Who could dance? Starving, downshtrodden, everything stripped away from her. Who could dance?" And then she remembered the last thing she heard from her mother. The only thing they can't take away are your thoughts. So she says, she closed her eyes. I closed my eyes and I imagined I I was in the Budapest Opera Hall and I imagined listening to the most beautiful classical music in the world and I started to dance like I never danced before. I wasn't in Awitz. I wasn't in a barrack. I was in my own little paradise and I was just dancing away. I finished. I opened my eyes. I could see that the mass murderer Mangala was impressed. He took a whole loaf of bread and he threw it to me. And a loaf of bread in Awitz was worth more than $25 million. You can't even compare because $25 million is nice. But this was life and death. I took the loaf of bread. I came back to where I was with other four girls on a few planks of wood. I wanted to eat it myself, but then I saw their faces. I distributed it between the four of them and myself. At the death march, at the end of the Holocaust, her back was broken. She weighed 70 pounds. She collapsed and she couldn't walk any further. And they would shoot you right away. And these four girls carried her to freedom and to safety. And this, she describes in her book, The Choice, that she published when she was 91 or 92. Edith Ager returned her soul to its maker last Monday, last week Monday at the age of 98. She remained till the end a psychotherapist and she gave out a book I think at the age of 91 or 92 called the choice. When I remember I read it a few years ago, it was so gripping. And she told the story to bring out how in the most difficult of situations, she knew from her mother that she had a power that nobody could take from her. And it became literally the source not just of her physical salvation, but of the presence and the light that she brought into the world. >> [snorts] >> She said once that in Awitz, her sister looked at her and asked what she said is a classic Hungarian question. My sister looked at me and said, Edith, how do I look? I'm quoting her verbatim. How do I look? And she says, I looked at my sister and you know how she looked in Awitz. My sister had beautiful long hair, was shaved, she was a skeleton. She was nothing to her. There was bones. But she wanted to know how she looked. There were no mirrors. You couldn't see how you looked. And she says, "I looked at my sister and I chose to focus on one thing that I could see in my sister. And I looked at her and I said, "My dearest sister, you have such beautiful eyes. And I'm grateful because when you had long hair, they eclipsed your eyes. And now I get to see how beautiful your eyes are. And it gave her sister life. Her sister also survived. And the fascinating thing is she married somebody who nurtured her back to health after the war also in the in the Holocaust. Their relationship was very very challenging. They got divorced and then she went to work on her emotional life. And this is not simple because she was an Awitz. This is not you instant people who are in the Holocaust. It's a different level. We don't even begin to understand what it means losing a whole family in one day, right? We don't even begin. But she started to work and she realized that her responses to her husband were coming from her own crazy crazy pain. He did his work and they remarried. >> They remarried and they lived a very happy life. So she she passed away last Monday and one of the great one of the great lights of the world and for me a living example a living example of not somebody who dismissed or repressed or disassociated. I mean she wrote all about it and you could see how deeply it impacted her. But the lesson I think to me the lesson to us is she's sitting in she's in that ganim. She could look at her sister and just not say anything or not say the truth or you know nod with her head and everybody understands what that means. But that power of what her mother told her that we really have a soul that is infinite and it's not cliche. It's very real. It doesn't mean I repress anything but it means I look at my sister and I say you really have beautiful eyes. There's something beautiful about you. It doesn't mean there's nothing else going on. It doesn't mean everything is perfect. It's not. But it means those eyes are divine. Those eyes are channeling something very very special. The way she could do it with herself and really focus where am I going to go with my thoughts? Where am I going to go with my life? I know about everything. She knew where she was. But she decided at that moment I'm going to go into a place of being God's arrow. and all the circumstances are here to create the power and the intensity of the light that I am today. This is why we celebrate this eternal quality. May the arrows hit their final destination and bring all the infinite light into the world. Thank you.