Do You Rent Your Identity ?

I'm here in the city of Milan, Italy. [music] Now, if there's one city on earth that has become synonymous with luxury brands, this is it. from Gucci to Prada, Versace, Armani, Dolian, Gabbana, Valentino, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Maserati. You walk through the streets and you quickly [music] realize in this city, people don't just buy brands here. They build identities around them. And I think it's time that we talked about something that's a little bit uncomfortable for some people, and that is brand names. Because let's be honest, [music] the overwhelming majority of what people call name brand isn't [music] really about better quality. It's about buying into the brand's image. The idea that wearing that particular logo somehow makes you cooler, more successful, more important. Two t-shirts can come off the very same assembly line made from the same cotton made by the exact same workers [music] in the same factory in Bangladesh and one gets a little Gucci logo stitched into the front and the other gets shipped to TJ Maxx and one sells for $40 and the other sells for $400. What change? [music] Not the shirt, the story, the logo, the perception, that's all. And so you might say, "Okay, what's the big deal? I like expensive [music] things. They make me feel good." But that's exactly the danger because the minute a logo starts making you feel valuable, you've sort of handed your identity over to a corporation, [music] your confidence isn't coming from your character anymore. It's coming from a marketing department. [music] When we allow or even encourage a 9-year-old to only wear a shirt if the logo is right. We're teaching him a lesson long before he even realizes it. That [music] we're teaching him that respect isn't earned by his character. Success isn't measured by who he becomes. value doesn't come from what's inside of him. [music] It basically comes from a logo or telling him your place in society isn't determined by your integrity or your kindness or your work ethic or your values. It's determined by whether you're wearing the correct symbol that a handful of people in [music] a boardroom somewhere in Milan decided was cool. Think about how crazy that is. We've allowed complete strangers, marketing executives we've never met and we don't aspire to be like to define in our child's minds and in our [music] minds what successful looks like and what a valuable person looks like. When a teenager believes he'll finally be accepted because of the symbol on his sneakers, something much deeper is happening. We've quietly taught [music] him that his value comes from what he's wearing instead of who he's becoming. And that's a dangerous lesson because today it's Gucci and tomorrow it's the car and then it's the neighborhood and then it's the job title and then it's the size of the house and the logo keeps on changing but the insecurity stays exactly the same. Real confidence never [music] comes from wearing another company's name across your chest. It comes from car carrying your own inside of you. A person who knows who he is can wear a [music] plain shirt and he still walks into the room with dignity and confidence because confidence isn't stitched into fabric. It's stitched into character. And although what I'm saying applies really [music] to anyone on earth, it applies all the more so to a Jew because our identity isn't hanging in [music] your closet. It's not sitting in a boutique window. It's not something another company gets to sell us. The already told us who we are. We are we are children of Hashem. Tell me, what logo could possibly improve on that? [music] As Jews, we can never forget that the greatest brand you'll ever wear is the name you already belong to.