Urchatz - Dr Abraham J Twersky With Prisoners

A Torah anytime original series. Right after Kaddish, we have Urchatz. Kaddish, we declare ourselves holy. We say "Yiskadal v'yiskadash shmei raba b'alma d'vara chirutei." Hashem sanctified us through mitzvahs, through being chosen and guided. We remind ourselves our holiness is not self-generated, it comes from connection, from alignment, from following Hashem's word. And then immediately comes Urchatz, washing your hands. What's striking is that it doesn't feel like a new stage. It feels connected to Kaddish. The vav in Urchatz is telling you don't separate these two. There's Kaddish and then immediately Urchatz. Why are they connected? Holiness and cleansing are part of the same movement, but why? So, there's a powerful idea told over from Dr. Abraham Twerski. He would often speak to people who had completely lost faith in themselves, people from both broken homes and prison backgrounds, people who felt written off by life. And he was once speaking in a jail. And one man comes up to him and says bluntly, "You don't know me. Everything you're saying is nonsense. I grew up in abuse. I was in and out of jail. I'm not someone who can change." Rabbi Twerski looked at him and said something simple. He said, "Have you ever seen a diamond?" And the man replied, "Of course. I've even stolen a few diamonds." Rabbi Twerski said, "Do you know where diamonds come from? They come from the deepest, dirtiest, most pressurized places on Earth. In fact, the majority of diamonds are mined in places like Botswana. And to extract a single carat, you often have to move hundreds of thousands of pounds of dirt. But when you remove the dirt, what you are left with is one of the strongest, most valuable substances in existence. That is a human being. And more specifically, that's a Jew. A soul is not fragile. It's not broken beyond repair. It's a diamond buried underneath layers of life and confusion and noise. And sometimes the first step isn't transformation. It's just washing. Sometimes the first step to Kodesh is Orchos. Not becoming someone new, just uncovering who you really are. That is exactly the bridge from Kodesh to Orchos. Kodesh tells you that you are meant to be holy, chosen, connected to Hashem. Orchos tells you how to get there. Not by becoming something else, by cleansing off what is covering you. First wash off the dirt, then the diamond can shine. And that is why there is a vav between them, because they are not two ideas. They are one single journey.