KLM: 4 Steps Closer to Hashem 17th of Tammuz (Love Sick for Hashem) Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

[Music] okay welcome to klmshear and i hope you are all well um firstly just a quick thank you to rabbi jason connor who's hosting the klm location in arizona today wherever big brown is joining us from he's out there doing a great mitzvah of uh helping his parents and that's why we've had a slight change in the schedule but hashem all is going well and also a big thank you to bara berry and dr goldstein for their kind donation very thoughtful of them to help klm move and grow while rabbi workbright is uh away and occupied obviously 24 7 with kibbutz aim so for the next couple weeks kelly will continue but obviously watch the whatsapp group for details and yeah i think let's make a start thank you parrots and i would also like to welcome members of yebene to this um class the vilna goin uh teaches us a principle that you just take one moment to think about it and you know it's true the gemara says that the greater the person the greater the yates are hara so the vilna gohan extends this he says the greater the time period the greater the yetzerhara that there's forces of opposition on rosh hashanah and shabbos and purim you know people joke about it purim is a time to get such to vegas in prayer and usually people are unconscious at that time etc so how about this one the three weeks of morning and versus summer vacation you got to give it to the yatara no is that not amazing timing vacation time and the time that we're supposed to be feeling mourning you know reflecting on the destruction that i call is a challenge so first of all what what my goal tonight is i'm going to outline a three-week program for us to to work on but i want to give you let's say a mindset or a heart set to help us deal with this fact that the vacation and the three weeks are lined up very very tightly and that's this i pray with all my heart that no one has to experience the mourning of a loved one but those who have will certainly tell you that one of the most difficult aspects of it is that when you have simchas and events uh and the one you love is no longer there for those events it's just that's obviously one of the most painful things you're ha you're having this um these events that you'd love to share with them and they're not there for them so that's the mindset i want us to have uh during summer vacation is like you know what a shame here i am on summer vacation what a shame that the base of midgash isn't here what is shame that the divine presence is not here et cetera okay so first of all that's the mindset i would like to um suggest in order to we're we're not going to succeed to be probably down 24 7 down as a mitzvah but we can indeed say take that image and think of oh they're not here right now what this is so painful that they're not here right now even though i'm having a wonderful time okay that's number one now i would like to start what i call the three-week program and uh what that means is if you will wherever you're going to be in these three weeks um i want to give you some things like consider this as a seminar that you're going to learn what to do in these next three weeks and i'm i'm praying that this group and whoever listens to this year that you will um all be moving us forward okay because the yavitz says to the degree that we're not mourning the loss of the basa mig dash we're extending the exile now with kavanah and with an appreciation of what to do we're going to be please god shortening the exile and advancing the redemption okay that's our goal let's get to it how does it look parrots yeah great right okay wonderful our enemy our enemy of course is the yetzer hara i and i we are about to enter this three weeks so we have to know what he's going to be trying to do that's our only shot so the first of all that uh you know people are not going to be shaving they're not going to be listening music etc you're you won't be doing this you're an observant jews you're not going to do this but what does he want you to do first and foremost to not have intention to not have kavanah to not have conscious intention to fulfill these men hogging okay so we're gonna of course try to yes indeed have conscious intention that's number one number two is once he get you think he's going to stop if we have cavanaugh for the midfield for these mitzvahs of course not okay but but if we get it if we get that in we're in amazing shape but of course then he's going to make it dry and ritualistic okay that's the second thing we have to be honest that we're gonna have some opposition in the next three weeks to not do these things in a superficial way thirdly and this is what i've been talking about will be focused on summer vacation right or just life in general yeah okay so that's the uh what we're facing now let's see what we need to do and the first thing i want to start with is these minhagen and make sure that you know i almost i have to speak this um some gadoli post game is this is just an interesting point about having kavanaugh from mitzvah how close to the mitzvah do you need to have that kevana so what i do like first thing in the morning i actually read through a list of cavanas and i have them in mind for the day okay now what i'm trying to say right now is i'm gonna i'm gonna display the kavanas you could say hashem i have kavanagh that when the three weeks start i have kavanagh for these me you might get away with having that right now even better is on shabbos it begins but on yom michonne in particular on on sunday you should uh um maybe i'm going to share these graphics these pdfs and you can go through the list and have that you you'll tackle the first thing of having kavanaugh from the minn hogging let's see what they are okay so um from 17th of tammuz really the whole three weeks but it intensifies at rochester no music okay ready so here let me model the process and let's do it as a tanay it doesn't hurt we're showing hashem we want to remember to have conscious intention okay so let's begin um i have in mind to not listen to music to observe the minhagem of a veilus as a sham head command it's a mitzvah medivh cabal it's a very strong mitzvah i am not going to be getting a haircut or shaving i'm doing this as a min hug of a veilus as hashem commands no weddings no planning weddings no going to weddings um again i have this in mind as a mitzvah uh because you command me to observe these men hugging and finally uh not finally there's more to make to not uh find a new fruit and make a shechiano okay so that's step one for the three weeks okay kovanna for that and then we will talk more about uh the the meaning and and depth of it but that's step one like i said even better is to print this out or read it on sunday and have that kavanagh okay let me remind you of this it's we're not just you know making a statement i have kavanagh what we're doing is we're responding to hashem in the moment right oh hashem it's the 17th of tammuz you want me to not listen to music okay i intend not to do it we're we're bringing hashem into the moment into the time period as opposed to just doing it without thinking okay let's go on and now and i have to thank my daughter for this beautiful poster this is going to outline the work we have on the 17th of tomorrow's but first of all the mitz is the to have cabana for the mitzvahs okay please go forward oops there we go all right look at the title everyone gives you a blessing may you have a easy fast and even better when people give you a bracha for a meaningful fast so if you look these are four mitzvahs for a meaningful fast and it's even more meaningful if you have conscious intention before you do this okay so the conscious intention the kavanaugh for the mitzvah uh this takes a few seconds right but again i want to i want to keep emphasizing this because it will change your eternal life and it'll probably bring you a lot of blessings in now too what is the difference let's let's take a look at the list right so we have f-a-s-t fasting available over the losses of the 17th of thomas s is for sinisternum working on the most recent cause of the destruction and the main cause of the exile which is sinus venom and t is for chuva which is a requirement for every fast day okay so these four mitzvahs um uh let's just say let's just take plony who's not a member of can uh klm versus plonita who is a a member of klm plony is going to fast he's not going to eat and he's not going to drink etc um let's say plony he's a serious person and he actually reflects on the various losses that took place on the 17th of thomas fantastic then plony even sets aside some time during the 17th and during the rest of the three weeks these things start on the 17th and continue for the three weeks so he works on seneca enemy makes a plan to improve there and he even does chuba okay that's plony who doesn't belong to kalin plonita plonita does the same thing except she does the following and again if a tanai works i'm working on finding it out halachically but you could even have it now or much better is again print this out or look at it on this on the 17th of thomas but ready let's take a look let's just go through it now right i have in mind to fulfill these misses just four okay i have in mind to fast as you've commanded me hashem i have in mind to mourn the losses of the 17th of tamus onwards i have in mind to fix my meadows which is a mitzvah of emulating hashem because every time we eradicate a bad meter we become more perfect we become more like hashem we're going in that direction and finally i have in mind the mitzvah to do chuva on a fast day right there you go how long did that take so if you look below i said time to complete it was five to ten seconds i mean i gave you a little commentary five to ten seconds so what's the difference plony doesn't do that clonita does so yeah i i'm you know what the difference is i'm sorry to say i'm not that good at math but even if i was the best the best mathematician in existence according to the rhyme it can't be it can't be explained the difference the ron says the difference in your reward and connection to hashem for taking five to ten seconds to go through this list and have conscious intention it can't be calculated but let's just say like one versus 40 trillion you know that you have to realize this you know this information is has i just i don't know what to say i'm gonna keep trying ways to say it but it is so crucial the problem is the yates heart is going to say this is not a big deal it's not a big deal so according to ron who's revealing the torah that's not true it's unbelievable just those four seconds so whatever you do again if if i told you on sunday you're gonna you can make billions of dollars you'll be able to take care of your family for the rest of your life of no worries no problems you will remember to do whatever that is on sunday okay so that that's my attempt to really get this through now i just want to before we move on from this list i want to uh mention a few a few things and that is um yeah okay so let's look at uh sinus venom and and then also uh chuba and then the availus i have some material for you but with sennheiser last year we spoke about this and if we will try to post that cheer for you if you like it but this is um uh the basic idea and that is this if you're uh if you're upset with p and any people let's focus on jews if some jew makes you upset i mean even upset not just angry and you just feel like negative you're judgey and all that stuff right so you have to realize unless that is a mitzvah to feel that way if it's not admitted to feel that we have to realize the following you are getting upset at the wrong one it is an aveira it is extending the the exile when we have those feelings we should get upset at the eights of hurrah for tricking us into getting upset at some jew okay somebody does something wrong there isn't mitza to remove it from your heart you do it as a mitzvah okay you need to process some issue with somebody or you need to vent okay but this lingering negativity you are you are being duped the yate zahara is the one you should be upset at that's my message to you so try to catch yourself being duped okay and just and get upset at him all right so that that's the eights that i have to to work on to begin with with sinus clenum okay i just wanna this is uh by two of it says shed of arrows not just fat okay so it is good to make a general heshbonne a nephesh uh and do and do some trouba so the problem is people put off chuva you know you hear any class about chuva and ello they'll talk about you put it off you don't like it so i'm i'm i'm trying to promote what we call here hori chuva pang's feelings of chuba pangs of trouba it means something to even say hashem to just take a few seconds on the on the fast day and say i i wish i was learning torah more oh yeah i wish i was treating my ex better and not my ex you know i mean plony um you know just just to even feel a little herata and you know hashem i really want to change even to that bare minimum you know it's a famous trick in the self-development uh uh field right now is you know let's say a person's wants to do push-ups and being good exercises do one push-up right that's the famous thing you know if you want to uh do a relaxation exercise do it for 30 seconds right right you know brush one two one teeth one tooth so what's the i what's that what do they discover when you do the little once you're doing it you'll do a little more and of course it would be amazing if you do a little more chuba than just feel those pains but if you feel those pains uh if pony was a russia he could marry on condition that he's exotic that's what the gemara uh conducion says okay so my advice for you with chuva on the semitone you have three seconds to feel pain i guarantee you i don't care what you're doing that day you have those three seconds start small and see where it goes okay so now the last part and uh we'll basically conclude the last part is is a for a bayless okay um there are specific losses that took place you know we know the overarching we don't have a base in mgdosh and the walls were breached on the same thing but there were some very specific losses that occurred on the 17th of thomas and the availus in other words this is a fast day where fasting and chuva is not enough you need to feel you need to mourn the loss right that that's a third requirement fasting chuva and mourning the specific loss okay so i'm just going to show you the laws you could google it and find it but let me show you the laws and give you a suggestion how to how to um mourn mourn these things okay okay i make this is uh the people that are helping me uh uh um develop klm would say you know to do avoid big lists and lots of paper i'm just giving you an overview i'm gonna share these as a pdf and you can read through these things okay but just take a look these are the five things that um we lost zafka on the 17th of thomas right moshe broke the lujos rishonos the walls of jerusalem were breached a posthumous burns a safer torah there was a uh avodah czar image put in the base of migdash and we lost the corbin tommy okay that's the list all right now even if you just again on the 17th of the time you read this but what you really want to say is what am i what was missing because of that in other words you have to think what did what did we let's say the walls of jerusalem we had security and now the security is breached um but think about what did i had what what did we have uh when no one burned to save retire and then think about the loss it's a very simple process i just want to show you that these other these pages i went through the work okay i did the work to think about what we had and therefore what we lost okay so you read this through with feeling and please add on or reflect beforehand okay so there's basically all five is here so this is i'm just sort of showing you um this is in my humble opinion great material to make uh enable to have a meaningful fast and most importantly when you have conscious intention you can calculate the difference of your fast state versus the most sincere pious person observing everything about it that missing of conscious intention is a shame because it offers so much okay so please god hashem should really help us stay focused and i remind you what we said in the beginning use that metaphor of like some loved one that's not there for all these occasions you're happening in these next three weeks and you know it's not me the the gemara says it to the degree you we do this work in these three weeks um we are shortening the exile and we're going to be amongst those that rejoice and i pray that i'll call you israel goes into this headspace and uh you know before we know it we greet the machia okay thank you welcome back rabbi thank you thank you very much sure sure what please solve so um one question and a couple of comments um when we are focusing on fast right um are we trying to apply the five joules ah that's always a good question yeah uh and if so more particularly okay good good okay so let me uh since you asked let me do a quick cavanation on that okay let's just take let's take fasting okay well you want you want to pick do you want me to take a vales or fasting which one should i take i think i think i think available well i think yeah yeah bayless your kasha comes out the most so let's do it okay right so by the way just to set up you know the famous kasha they ask is uh who wrote the most tragic prophecy was yermia navi right he he prophesized on the destruction of the first and he wrote echa right so they asked how could he have gotten prophecy because the divine presence only rests on a on a person who's in in a state of sempra and and it's just bitter you know you read it's so sad and bitter how do you do it so okay i'll try to infuse that into the connotation okay so the way and by the way for people are new what we're talking about is that the um evidence mohammed or zed saul he teaches us that there are five mitzvahs you could call them kavanagh mitzvahs or mitzvahs of the heart that accompany every mitzvah you do and charles pressing me to limits even this so because some of them are happy there's simca and ava et cetera so so those mitzvahs are obvious hashem this is good review for the old-timers i'm sure yuris hashem simcha the heart of behind choosing life and hayom uh doing the myth as if you if today you heard it at c9 okay so i'll just try a cavanation on this okay um i'm reflecting on the devastating losses um spiritual losses um that have occurred on the 17th of time this the reason i'm doing this is because i love you and i want to give you an office and you want me to do this so i'm going to do it and also i know that you're present and i'm doing these myths as i i'm going to attempt to do them with reverence and also with fear because as we know that if i don't do these misses not only is it uh not in my best interest i am i'm part of the problem of extending the exile now the thing is since you made observing these minha game and mourning you these are mitzvahs and you know what you do so much for me i'm done i'm i'm so excited any chance i get to reciprocate akashboku so i'm going to do these mitzvahs the right way but but my stance is i'm i'm joyous i'm going to do this with joy because this is your will and then i recognize that while it's easy to take your mind off in the summer in the summer days to take my mind off of availas in the three weeks i'm gonna choose true life real life i'm going to choose that by focusing on the morning and uh i'm going to um try to do this with the intensity and excitement of realizing that that you commanded me to listen to the navian and um who instruct us to mourn okay i think you've answered the question okay okay next what was your name right so the other thing is um a couple of comments you know when you said the difference the ron the incalculable difference right i mean i i just imagine maybe to take a page out of rabbi queen's playbook which is you know you imagine your your boss or your partner says to you look we've got a huge deal that's pending um i'm sending you to meet the ceo of the other company that can you know green light the deal which would give us millions millions the only thing is you got to get them in a good mood you have to you have you have to you have to do whatever you can to basically ingratiate yourself he's a big guy on personal connection so you know your partner your partner has spreadsheets and facts and diagrams and he's very smart but he's usually very dry and he just runs through the numbers and you're trying to impress upon him listen this is not about the numbers this is about showing the guy that you care about him and and and you know this is going to be a life-changing moment for us because we're going to go from our garage where we're operating our startup to like you know the nicest office in town and we're going to never have to work again for the rest of our lives so you just you know plug in the idea that a sales meeting with personality with warmth with with personal connection where you put yourself into it could yield unlimited benefits you get the idea beautiful are you in parshas uh oh wait we're not in parches pencils that's coming next week uh uh right we're right we're where we're right so i just want to connect uh uh something from pencils when pinchas um realized that um maybe he has to kill cosby right you know and right um so he asked moshe abandoned him am i correct that you're supposed to um when somebody's doing this horrible hashem you have to go kill them so moshe says you are correct and since you came up with the idea you go kill them all right so i would like you to please write up what you just said and send it uh forward to the klm treasury okay can you write up this metaphor are you are you calling me cosby [Laughter] no i'm calling you pinterest i could write up what you just said but you you you innovated it this incredible muscle so you you you put it in writing and send it forward with pleasure uh one last thing quickly is that you know we've spoken about substitution in the acting world where you substitute a real experience for an imagined experience and that in what they call the method of acting like you know if you're supposed to into play experience you know terrible news you can think about something terrible in your own life and call upon those emotions it's not so easy but in the four and the five losses you know it's very i think they lend themselves to substitution you know i just imagine for a second my young daughter who's seven who would uh if someone would break her favorite doll right oh my gosh and that not or you know you just think of a personal possession of your like your your own laptop right if if you're if your laptop fell in the water we would right right and you lost everything i mean right so call the homer even the lujos you can all you can you know substitute the corbin tommy right look what did the corbin tabi do for us every day was that like a kapara every day yeah so you didn't have to experience you didn't have to experience jewish guilt you remove guilt how to start the day with a clean slate every day right i mean what a loss yeah and you can you can just think of things in your own life like like let's assume you made a mistake in a serious mistake in business or in your family relationships and you go to bed worried and the next morning it says fine no problem it's all forgotten so there's so many ways to there's so many ways to plug in things in our own life to connect to the five losses beautiful suggestions so i i encourage everybody to do that and and i did a kind of um exercise of that in these doc in these pages and so yeah don't don't let the atahra get you to neglect these things beautiful and one last thing you know when you're trying to lose weight right and you feel like you're getting a bulge in your stomach right you don't really get angry at at the flesh you can pinch what do you do you focus on the food you're eating right so it's like that's the same thing like um when you said lose fat lose the similar skin it's not the person as you said it's not the person that you dislike that's the flesh on your stomach the real cause is the food you're eating which is the eight sahara exactly you're eating his uh sales pitch exactly exactly beautiful but paris we definitely keep this on the uh recording sure yeah fantastic all right very good excellent excellent all right thank you everybody um yeah i appreciate people continue to pray for gold of us fascia the social israel and i emphasize the social thank you everybody [Music] it's oh