The FOIL Method for Spiritual Success - Rabbi Ori Strum

Anyone who's [music] ever been a student at school has asked the question of why am I learning this? This seems to be completely [music] irrelevant. When am I ever going to ever need this in life? Maybe you had this question when you were told to memorize the periodic table of elements, or maybe when you were taught to do long division without a calculator, or writing in cursive. One personal example that I had trouble understanding its relevance was the foil method. The foil method is an algebraic expression >> [music] >> taught in algebra one, which tells you how to multiply binomials. Yeah, I know, right? So, the foil method stands for first, outer, inner, last. A silly little trick to [music] tell you how to do this multiplication. And in truth today, from a mathematical perspective, I still think it's irrelevant. However, [music] from a spiritual life standpoint, the foil method is actually so incredibly powerful, [music] and it can be used as a trick for achieving spiritual success. Again, foil stands for first, outer, inner, last. This is the concept of the hitzonius, externality being the over of the pnimius, arousing [music] the inner. And while ideally we might want to start straight from the inner dimension, we often have to start the other way around. The access point for the inner dimension [music] is the outside. The Torah tells us, "Keep karveilecha hadavar me'od." Inside, we're all extremely close [music] and connected to Hashem. But sometimes we're just not in touch with that reality, and the Torah gives us a trick. Rav Yehuda Leib Eiger, the grandson of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, says that the Torah is teaching us, "Beficha uv'lilvavcha la'asoso." A person wants to get to a level of uv'lilvavcha la'asoso. He wants to access that deep, authentic relationship that he has inside with Hashem. The first step is beficha. It's connecting externally. It's doing something on the outside. And this beficha, it's an allusion to the shofar, which is something that's blown with the mouth. The shofar models the foil method, [music] first, outer, inner, last. We blow this loud sound externally with our mouths, but then it translates [music] into the bilvavcha la'asoso. Let's step into the message of tekiah shofar and apply the foil method to our lives. First, outer, inner, last.