The Challenges of Second-Stage Outreach - Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

[Music] the issue of cure for fakemon one hand is among the most simplest and most elementary propositions certainly if one is a know if Israel and one tries to be Inouye of Israel one wants to help bring other Jews to occur the sparkle that's the Rambam rights that is an expression of vivacity straya it is also an expression of Abbas a sham if you love Hashem you want to make the name of Hashem beloved among others so the obligation of Kirov Rakow Kim is a very very obvious one it's a very very great imperative of our generation so in some ways there might be very little to talk about because Bethlehem it's such a well-known idea of how not what's how importance how vital it is for koalas rel people often quote the so Erica there's Erick other says there are 600 thousand letters in the safer Tigra and that is makovan can negate the 600,000 souls that left Mitzrayim and therefore each jewish soul has its letter in the safe route IRA and people ask Akasha to well-known kasha that the terror does not have 600,000 lettuce the terror has around 325 thousand letters so it's way beyond the margin of error and one of the two roots in that is given is that in reality in the safer Tyra and shamayim even the spaces between letters also have letters and there but those are covered up those are invisible we don't see them but when we bring in a shaman to a cottage marker and we're magatha their letter in the cemetery and shamayim we are the safe route IRA again the secretary that's cursory sokka's is pusle so too until we're moshling those letters our own safe retirees puzzle so all of this is again relatively Pusha well understood and the very fact that you're here shows that you understand then the pizzas you understand the importance at the same time of course you also understand that in order to be a Matara one has to continuously work on their own Aliyah and Tyra there's a koala in your idea I need the treaty limb if lately Bubba which in Lucas Malika means if something is busy giving out its scizor it does not absorb and some have applied it the direct rush to the person who is so interested in being much pia on other people that they themselves are no longer growing in their uterus kites well your if it's treaty limb if lot your giving out out out you're not being by leia so I think Ventura understands that side by side with my aqueous towards others I have to continuously work and myself grow in my own learning otherwise I become stale otherwise I become burned out otherwise I literally don't have anything to give because there's nothing in me that continues to grow so it's a difficult Chico every person has to create a particular balance and it's not an all-or-nothing you grow by your being much beyond other people but at the same time you also have to have time and energy to concentrate on your own your own spiritual growth your own learning and delight but what I want to talk about is I want to talk about what might be called on some level the second stage of cure for Seiken which again this is not even a kiddush of mine at all this has been identified over a very long period of time and that is we've done a pretty good job on the entry level meaning taking people who were not religious not shomer mitzvos exposing them to the beauties of tara the beauties of learning and bertha Shannon they I'm a toy rather than they and they become committed to mitzvos and alike obviously there's a lot more to to to accomplish we certainly cannot say we've reached everybody obviously we have not reached everybody and even on that entry level there's a tremendous amount of work that has to be done one has to be very very careful not to be complacent not to be overconfidence at the same time it is important that the kirov elves give itself a little bit of a pat on the back to have a look that indeed they've done a lot and be a source of shame there's a lot more to do but one has to understand that the initial issue of making somebody from whatever that means exactly it's not at all the end of the process sometimes one of the HR Horace that we have in the Jewish outreach world is a little bit of the numbers games with an ending and in some way that's externally forced upon us by funding and various other political issues like that but the issue is we raised our success by how many people you know we've made from how many people we've changed and as soon as we've made you from we move you down the assembly line you're out of our ambit we checked the box now we gotta bring in new blood new snow flesh new people to make those titles to make those numbers like the Indians used to count them they used to give people you have forgot the word now when you stood we used to cut off the when they would kill somebody scalp right how many scalps they would have in their in their in their bellies and the problem is Bali chuhwa Baruch Hashem don't just die they grow up and they get married and they have kids and they have families and there's a whole bunch of new types of problems that have to be dealt with you know someone who didn't come from a religious family and doesn't necessarily have that many connections in the religious world there are going to be issues how do I raise my children what types of hush guffaws even in dating what do I look for how do i establish Arlen bias either I communicate with my wife with my spouse how much time do I spend with my children things that might be naturally understood by a person who is raised in a certain milieu certain things you just pick up to about rubra to a hose or patrulla all of this can be very very new and very often we kind of neglect the issues that people face once they are religious because we've gotten them already we can move them down and then concentrate on some new people and this has been called you know the problem of second-stage kirov and the like and it's a very very serious issue to give people the tools to deal not just with Yiddish guys but to deal with life which of course is ultimately the same thing Shalom bias time with your children you know for executive in example sometimes when people become overly mechanical like somebody wants to ask me how many minutes should I talk to my wife a week now you know I could answer that question but I think there's a certain problem we see day know why such a question would be asked meaning why wouldn't there be an intuitive understanding why doesn't the person absorb the idea of coz I love akka gufa you must love your wife like you love yourself Mohabbatein yo semicolon so this is an issue that I think all MacArthur map to face and that is on one hand we do some things very very very good we show people the masika's of Tyra the sweetness of Tyra how learning a suger be Ian gives you a sense of connection to the Reeb initial element how it engages your mind and those are things that brush em we do very very well even that I'll get the little later may not work for everybody either but the derrick plow this is a Mahalo of us as the you show me says how more Shabaab moxie will the motive the life of the Taira can have tremendous tremendous ways of bringing a person to our cottage horrible and we know this it's axiomatic in the Derek that we in the Derek of our Messiah that even if you're learning a sugah that has nothing to do with a spiritual concepts you're learning about the shore Shinagawa separa you're learning about you leafless yad you're learning about government as one and then people say where is the spirituality to them and superficially maybe there is nothing that you can identify as spiritual but we believe and this is our Messiah that connecting yourself to the mind if I could borrow and the intricacies of it Isis in the complexities of Reb Yaakov agar at a more advanced level or of reply oh you taste spirituality we do that British M very very well but at the same time the shame that we say everything's in the Taira but on the other hand the causing is perhaps from the Taira itself was able to figure out how to do brain surgery could be but on the other hand the regular brain surgeon who said I just went to yeshiva for ten years and you know I'll do the brain surgery we wouldn't necessarily trust so to have gone that everything is in the toy and everything comes from the tyrant but without directly focusing on the Yanam of showing bias how to raise children most people the average person will not men mainly get that hard Russia from the abstract learning of Zachary now you could say while the person is unmarried while the person is Nevada right maybe the time is to give them the foundation integra but there is going to come a time and we actually hope sooner rather than later from which a person as a Mitch Paco and the person has to know how to deal with these things and especially when you don't know they don't have a family a connection necessarily in different ways they're not well connected to a broader community and thus we find even among the nature a brother who have been closer but River we find divorces we find lack of showman bias we find difficulties and raising children now obviously nobody can ever make the claim and we have to be careful not to over promise become from and you'll have a wonderful marriage and all your kids will be perfect doesn't always work that way but still many people do feel adrift and sometimes they even describe it although this is a very harsh way of describing it as feeling betrayed they feel they signed up for a certain regiment and they thought certain things would follow from those commitments and those things didn't follow people tell me for example against Meshuga story that they hear many many schmoozing about how empty the secular world is how deccan did it is how selfish it is how none of their marriages are good so a person told me again it's it's a shrek is a story and you know it's a mitzvah Yossef she describes how difficult her life was she became a host Cazares Petrova she married a closer but rubra and with great great mysterious nephesh they strived to create a home and unfortunately they have many many different problems of all of a different magnitude and she described to me her sister who is not religious very nice person beautiful family all the kids are doing well and when the sister asked her sometimes like why did you make the decision to be religious and the woman initially would kind of say well you know the sec of the world aren't good families aren't good marriages and I'm good and she couldn't say it anymore because she's talking to somebody who on the other side did achieve something so where do you go where do you go with all of this so this tells us is that we have to be moshling we can't give up on people just because they become from and they've gone on there needs to be a catcher it needs to be his Contras there needs to be a notion of giving people seasick and Kirov not to take them from being non-religious to being religious but to understand how to live the life of a Jew within the framework of Tiran then it's really a second that's the second level hokhmah that's a shock one that may go beyond what we do with the Keisler based on interest and as I say there are many many people that have a great feeling of betrayal in this way again I I don't want to be a downer or pessimistic but I guess on a day of worship interpret some of the day of a sinus it is a smile where we do make a questioner nefesh and we think about the things that we do at the same time recognizing the many many many wonderful accomplishments that the world of Kirov has done and the mere session will continue to do let me share with you an interesting vort which may contribute to this in a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah we're going to read about the parsha of Asia passed Toa and I'm not going to go into the protein but the parsha which the Taira permits say a woman captured in war a non-jewish woman to be taken as a wife with all sorts of conditions and and alike the before some say LP theory sama that the whole concept of a mil comma waging a war and recapturing the asia's of Australia is a remiz to the mill comma of the Yeats er horrible that when you have an enemy that tries to destroy you it's the 8th Sahara and you can reclaim it in fact there Rizal even says when it says she cries for her father and mother 30 days it's a remiz to the 30 days of the month of L o with her days of crying and bethey and she cries for her mother for what she did to Claudia Israel and she cries for her father which he did to the a burster and Schley shenyang Amos play the cello and then there's a home Hollis of sugar okay I don't want to go into all of the symbolism but the Asia fest tyre is seeing as the struggle we have to reclaim our soul from the clutches of evil I want to raise a technical question Rashi discusses is a shochet fuss tyre what type of war are we talking about there are two types of wars there's no famous Mitzvah and no chemistry shoes Muhammad's Mitzvah is the war against the seven nations of Kanaan the war against the mullick no comments resources when the son Hendron authorizes a war of expansion we cannot do that today but the Sanhedrin and the or Umberto Miam give us just for a war of expansion sucked Rashi from the sea free the parsha of your fossa tyre is not talking about milk is mitzvot because in your famous Mitzvah there are no captives you got to kill everybody it can only be talking about Muhammad's wishes that's a crushing sense so here I want to ask Akasha again Tedeschi Castro from Rashi and the Ariza may not be Akasha but if you put the two together you get a certain inconsistency because if I were to ask you is the mill Hama against the Yates ur Hara a mocha mistress or a mocha miss Mitzvah we certainly would have characterized it as a mocha miss Mitzvah a Maha milk immense Mitzvah God da Mesa so isn't it a mutton as ass isn't it a very strange thing that the Taira would discuss the milk ama of the eight sir Hara in a parsha that is talking about optional Wars instead of mandatory Wars and your summary of seventh cranial Abraha says that there's a very profound insight here and that is although the milk on a science there is a mocha miss Mitzvah tactically you have to fight it like a mocha mistress and that is why the most famous Mitzvah is alluded to in the parsha of know how mistress how was that so what is the nos kameena between Mohana Smith some hummus versus no hummus Mitzvah is you destroying the enemy no chemistry chefs you can capture and subjugate the enemy in the no homicide sir there are two types of chuva a person can do one is a true vote you might call amputation a person looks at their past and they say that was evil it was bad I cut myself off from it i amputate 2 10 20 30 or 40 years and I act as if it doesn't exist at all that is the truth of amputation and that would be akin to a Mohandas mitzvah where the enemy is obliterated sometimes amputations are necessary but amputations always involve a great deal of pain loss of function and even something called phantom pain where after the thing is removed it continues to bother you the Tyra's Moranis when a pleasure be chuhwa confronts the totality of their life the optimal healthiest model of children is not a chuva of renunciation and cutting themselves off from their past but taking their past capturing it reclaiming it elevating it and letting that be the source of their Abijah and this manifests itself in many many ways people often come to the world of chuhwa having many many talents they could have been writers that could have been singers musicians poets and there's a certain pressure as it were to kind of give up all of those things because you want to become been tyrant whatever it would be and yes now granted there may be there may be certain occupations I don't have to mention them in which you sometimes do have to give them up I mean if you were a cocaine dealer or whatever it is you know we would we would discourage you from pursuing that but but Derek well if a person has koco's a person has abilities his turn to Yiddish guy shouldn't be destroying that which in himself that gave him fulfillment and joy but like a mill chemistry shuts you take the enemy and you capture it and you enslave it meaning you subjugated for a higher purpose same thing is true with family people have non religious parents non-religious grandparents sometimes there's kind of a rush to say sorry can't I can't allow my children to mix with Bubbe it's 80 or thousands after they're not religious but the truth of the matter is many people have gotten many many good things from their families you know person in fact the very fact that a person can become about tree-based sometimes because they got the intellectual curiosity the moral courage the honesty from their parents their parents gave them that foundation you know I'll tell you in microcosm this is something a rug often suffers I remember I tell you what this college barcode is mannish meter connected meter every rod will tell you at least the rub in the United States will tell you that if they were Makai of certain people who anoxia Shiva and then they became firmer than the rugs when they come back they no longer trust the rug for anything now I remember about gonna say no Robin is I did it as a kid and I've had it done to me as an adult so I understand both sides of that equation so you know many rep on them tell me in the states that the signs of their greatest success is when they're tell me them no longer talk to them that's the sign that they've been totally totally much Lia and again I you know I've been on both sides of it unfortunately so be careful because if you have that attitude it's gonna happen it's going to happen to you gonna happen to you also and they've got and of course if that's true it's a rather a person certainly it'll be true it's parents even from parents and Kovac homer parents - we're not religious not show my mitzvahs but at the same time it's part of basic occurrence a time that we recognize that our abide that came from that situation and to put it in a more deeper way you have to understand this anything that was not within the ambit of your bashira was the hush cos alpha college bar code so if a person is born into a certain family and he had no control over that decision and there was not a function of any choice that he made it must be that it was the Gazzara faculty Sparkle that a person's he conveyed Africa comes from the experiences that they had in that sphere and instead of making believe that serve even ever existed one has to go back and see it is bad Africa that's Aviva that is the bus sis that is the foundation of my abide assertion so when you come to Miami and you see a tenth generation you shall Maine shall kueh with gonorrhea and Tyra and mitzvos mido rate Doros hundreds and hundreds of years and you come from North Dakota and you've been affirmed for six months and you say what am i I could never be that they have something that I could live a thousand years and I wouldn't have that that is true they have a precious wonderful gift that you'll never have but here is the thing you also have a precious wonderful gift that's they'll never have the a burster put some people in South Dakota because they needed to go through South Dakota they needed to go through again what a person does when he's about behavior that's history that's not necessary but if I was born as a child in a circus Viva it was the Rutzen Hashem that - shaman needed those experiences and I am McCoy than Maya Biden to take from those experiences and not be ashamed of it but to say that is what gives me the unique quality I have to serve the rabona Shalom most people here remember the great mayor receiver of the since we think of the cradle of Russia great great static and a British M he grew up in a very religious family but he did have for a Russia Shiva at least narrative through a bit of an unconventional upbringing he went to Jewish schools but they were co-ed schools and he was on the debating team and he was in the high school basketball team and it was a co-ed school not too many Russia shivers of mirror come from that particular environment and I remember it that has paid them that the the basic you sight of that Spade and was you see that even a person who came from such a garbage backgrounds could achieve godless and greatness and that's that's 100% true valid points but I think you have to add to the point the little bit his greatness was not only in spite of his background part of his greatness part of his greatness was because of his backgrounds everyone knows when the Suns fees amazing ability to interact with every American teenage kid who came from anywhere because he basically oh yeah the basketball team I was there yeah I did all that and that hush ba came precisely because the a mr. put him in a massive where he grew up with all of those different things so he could be a guide at a madrina the point I'm making therefore is this goes back to you fast tire that's the Iker Chuba the highest level of true were the healthiest level of children is one in which you integrate your experiences and your family and your talents not by destroying them and advocating them which would have been the Muhammad Smith's four way of doing it but through the most ambitious now how does this tie in to the issue are identified on second level Kira because you see a lot of them malaise that a person feels when they finally eventually leave the clay base and mesh and start families is because if they had to cut adrift all of those different in the kudos in their life that gave them kleezak and then gave them joy and that gave them fulfilment and if the message was it's pusle try fuzzer get rid of it sober fish and maybe as long as maybe in there there in the case lay based on a dress they have shimira they have compensations they have all sorts of things when they get out into the cold cruel world they find themselves cut adrift so in many many ways this is why you sometimes find even in the isle on Michelle Tyrell which you might call and this is not loves Africa and when Bobby trivets even among people who are not the closer a Petula but you might call a low-level subclinical depression low level meaning to say it's not a an official psychological problem but people feel they're cut off from something there is something in that's not being addressed there's something in them that wants to come out that is not being allowed to come out that has many many many effects later they can come out in many many different ways so III do recognize that I'm not giving necessarily any answers but all I'm saying is that we need to understand they say oh haha hello made me call a dumb but who is wise you learned from everybody but one of the caseta interpretations how low made me call Adam you have to learn from the entire person you have to look at the entire personality of a person and try to build up a person in the totality of his being and not pushing them to deny or to cut off now in some ways you know we're foot there was once criticized for there was a long time ago but when they get done when the genre of Godot and biographies began to come out 60s and 70s so a foot near famously had some Tinus on the biographies of Kazarian because he says you know what type of picture do you have every biography is the same when he was four years old he finished bobbly when he was 5 years old he finished you saw me kiss faerie by the age of 12 in other words you're looking at phenomenal genius unbelievable house mother wonder stories miracle stories again our miracles are not the miracles of doing life sin but miracles in Lima in a smother in Chicago in UDF cetera and of course you live in your shrine you don't need to read books we have living living representatives of this but a foot your tenant although it's a wonderful thing to see how great a person can become but for most of us we don't get a message there because how can I imitate that I'm not gonna know Bob Lee when I'm four years old I already you know miss that a long time ago and my children too so you're reading stories of great and godless and unbelievable and there's no chef Estie syrup hookers solution which raises some holistic issues of Western holidays that we have to understand that Godiva two had their struggles they had their doubts they had their problems we know the suffix high and when he was already 70s and 80s how he trained himself to fall asleep when you spoke loshon Hara but what was the toughest times Nissan when he was fifteen years old and her footing her pointed out that sometimes looking at the struggles of the autumn girdle and even the occasional failure of the other girdle Chevy pelts either becomes its attic falls seven times and gets up could be much more inspirational than the unbroken successes again whether Liholiho you could write such a biography it does raise issues of Western artists it's not a punch of thing can you talk about you know if you're aware of different the fetus in the life but there's another time I want to be myself underfoot there I have another time on some of the gaddama biographies and that is by properly emphasizing tremendous godless integrin they sometimes combined it with Meissen that suggests that other parts of life are not important such as this goggle didn't even know the name of his children this God all only spoke to his wife two minutes a week now the fee the MOT draga of the god oh that's what the goggle does rebbi akiva and his wife had an arrangement that he made go away for 24 years but the danger is I'm an average and I read you that this also didn't know the birthdays of his children so I don't have to celebrate my son's birthday this God will only talk to his wife one minute a week because again that was the my dragon that the bias lived on that's the way I'm gonna live that becomes a Corbin that becomes a Corbin what becomes an advisor to Mima when it's done by a person who is Obama Dragan becomes a hot salsa and a Corbin when it's emulated by people who are not on that madruga or even if you're on that McGregor if your wife is not on that moderator because you can't be tsadikim on somebody else's husband as your vsauce2 lunch or say any situation with rebbi akiva but any situation is always talking about they are both ballet McGregor that are masking to that type of life so as a result we need to have biographies that tell different stories and let me tell you some different stories that ought to be included in biographies Story number one happened to me when I was nine years old revelation of finding the gut Allah door used to visit Hartford Connecticut he had a relative in Hartford Connecticut for two weeks in the summer and our joke used to be he wanted to go to the only place in the world that would not ask him any Shiloh's for two weeks so Hartford was a a good place for that and that was in fourth grade and I was so hard to be in the car that would take him to minyan every morning and I still remember and I had never seen it I remember the hard respond him to this day and I remember how he would even be learning machine iesson would be wrapping up his film I'd much had never seen such a such a thing in my life but I would go to show in the morning and then I would walk to school that was two blocks away and one day it was raining I was still in show and he had already left in ten minutes later there was a knock at the door and the driver came and said Rob Moshe remembered you were in the car he asked me to come back and take you to school the she didn't want you to walk in the rain now I didn't care it was only two blocks away I didn't care about walking in the rain I still don't care about walking in the rain and the guy who drove who knew me for 10 years no didn't occur to him there was a problem so who was the one that thought about it the gutter ha door in which who didn't waste a minute you know somebody asked her of Misha how does he know every Prima garden so he said remise she said well he said it modestly if you look reviewed it's 600 times you know it sticks in your head so sir am I shall learn every second writing learning and yet that's not a Steven and you should know that would Asha that hasn't me now this is a 50 years of more than 50 years later that I remember the godless of a person of the gutter hador cared about a child in the fourth grade we have fresh diamond it's a coin will grow and there are many many stories about your Steinman this is a story that there she was sent me about a boy in Bnei Brak who in Fortran a Breton firm family unfortunately when totally off the derrick and he was gonna marry a guy that's a hard thing to do in Israel it's not even that easy the America it's easy to do he's gonna marry chicks and his uncle convinced him that he should at least go to his parents and have the final conversation with them to tell them what his plans are and he came for shadows in the whole Shabbos as Friday night he was smoking on the map essa and Shabbos day he was on his iPhone Chuy served full Shabbos and iPhone right and in the afternoon the father said and what why the father had such a Halloween is amazing he said you would say listen I'm going to a steer to share from a vow and lev want to come to this year why would he even think of asking such a question and the boy said yeah i'll go to this year afterwards he brings him over to the rocha she with her Reverend Lev and Robin LAIV and he mentions that unfortunately my son is no longer showing me mitzvahs so Stockman says to him okay has there ever been how many years have you not kept Shabbos he says two years during those two years has there been any time that you've thought of doing children he says yeah how many times four times and how long would you hear Chava ten minutes so if Steinman said so over the past two years you had 40 minutes where you were about to vote and cuz I'll say the place where about Juba stands is greater than that if it's addict I'm jealous of you that was part one part two is the father asked his son why did you even come with I don't know why I asked you why did you even come with me so he said well if it wouldn't have been referee Donovan I wouldn't have come but when I was in kita Dollard when I was in fourth grade in Seder our whole class went to get a bachina from her Lauren and Tia he was taught to ask easy questions we're fourth graders and he s very easy questions and everybody answered the questions and they got a candy then he asked me a question and I couldn't answer and then he asked me a second question easier question I couldn't dance her then he asked me a third question I couldn't answer I was really embarrassed everybody else answered and they got candies at the end everybody went away and Robin wave gave me three candies and he said you know in Torah what matters is not your success what matters is the effort the among months everybody put in my nightstand through one question they get one candy you put in on my mind answer three questions you get three candies so he gave him three chances and the butter says that all of his life he remembered that and although he drifted off the derrick but together with the shear he became a a real Kaiser ahjumma is now a show my menses if hi major Kaczynski of kya miser alter the gut alot or not the charismatic speaker he very rarely spoke in public he was not in the Kirov business but I know of at least one bunk over that he made of hi a miser during the Warriors he died 1940 but in the early years of the war and they literally millions and millions and millions of dollars that had to be distributed to the refugees in different places and there was a representative of highest Hebrew immigrant Aid Society and the Joint Distribution Committee after World War one the dr. Schmitz who was a non-religious Jew and he needs to talk to her hi you miser about distributing different funds to refugee communities and they're talking about the details for a while and at some point of high miser puts his hands on dr. Smith's hands and says do you mind if I call you rep shul and dr. Schmidt started crying he says you know I'm a Mahalo Shabbos I I don't keep Shabbos a heat race I don't deserve the rough to call me red but Reb is a title of honor and if I Moser said to him what do you mean you think you're not worthy in the eyes of a Kurdish ballclub that you left the comforts of America you put yourself in a war zone in order to save other Jews do you think that doesn't make you worthy of respect do you think that does not make you worthy being a red and he said I'm gonna call you reps more because you're doing something worthy with your life and dr. Schmidt records that that afternoon he went home he put on tefillin Fuhrman huh and he became a show mimesis from that one conversation we need biographies that tell us these stories we need it for our own physically we needed to teach us how to be much beyond others how to raise our own children how to teach Tom Eden that nobody becomes better in a right assertion unless they have a sense that they are fundamentally good and worthy because if the message a person gets is that they are worthless that does not energize them to change it either creates anger and resentment or it creates yeesh and hopelessness but you build the person up and you show them the value of their Aveda then indeed they will move on to higher and higher levels so the answer session I hope Akash Barker will give us the kayak to move in that direction and we recite it to the opinion base--emitter from here of you mean [Music] [Applause]