KLM Ascending the Scale of Empathy on the 9th of Av with Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

[Music] hi welcome uh back to klm and we're zoho to be in the base midrash of the yibbana torah site it's a very big privilege okay we're going back to focus uh on something that's a little shockingly said normally judaism is about being in a state of joy in a state of content in a state of happiness right yet three weeks in a year maybe there's a couple more days we're told to be unhappy we're we're told to focus on what we're lacking right and that's a little shocking right because it says in perkiavos that a person is a wealthy person is happy with his portion and now we're supposed to focus on what we're missing and if you will be in a bad mood now listen to the degree they expect this of us okay we're supposed to uh the the arizona says that during right now the nine days you should spend half an hour a day crying okay and not tears of joy okay tears of the sadness so despondency crying it doesn't almost seem jewish okay so that's what we're told to do and i want to tell you this is a secret uh once you hear it it won't be but um there's something extraordinary about when hashem commands us to do something okay right we're talking about governor on the mitzvos but motion emotions that are not healthy okay worry and anxiety are without question first of all all the scientists will tell you you know the stress the doctors will tell you that stress and worry and fear and depression are very harmful for your health and the vilna going who was 300 years ago about he said this too he said that the emotions like fear and worry and sorrow he says they shorten your life and they make your life miserable okay yet here's something amazing when hashem tells you feel fear that we know from rabbanu worry worry about the consequences right or when we're told during the three weeks be in a state of mourning feel bad feel sad guess what says the vilna going all right based on michele it lengthens your life because it's a spirit there's a holiness when hashem brings it says this emotion you should have don't run away from it don't avoid it because because it comes from a divine source it won't affect you the same way it is healthy extremely healthy okay so i just want to point out that right now because you know it's funny somebody i really respect who has a torah site and he he was saying again he he selected a class because he says you know most uh classes right now are kind of focusing on sad things and this is an uplifting perspective he was talking about some other class and i i understand that the natural emotion but right now the the most enlightening thing you can do is to feel sad and bad all right so that's what we're going to continue but we're going to go to another level i want to raise our level to a very very high place okay now first i want to explain something because we're getting we're getting closer and closer to the ninth of off and the ninth ave says one of our greatest rabbis of all time ruby israel cilantro he says also a very surprising statement he says you can get more hizuk you can grow more on tish above than yom kippur that is hard to believe okay and one of the greatest rabbis right now explain this rav gershon adelstein he's one of the uh the godolly adore right now he want to explain how can rabbi solanter claim this you know on yom kippur we're we're like angels it's considered just a in the ho next to shabbos it's the holiest day of the year right and yet he says you can get more done on tish above right so how how do we understand this so he goes to rivena yonah and shari chuva he says you know when we talk about chuva what i'd like to focus is on is like becoming a better person improving yourself right um removing your deficiencies etc right so robyno yonah dedicates an entire section to how do you get yourself to do chuba how do you arouse yourself to do that right so revetostin says look at the first thing he says he starts with the easiest he says he says you know what cause a lot of people do chuva suffering and difficulty and troubles and trials i mean one of the things is i you know some of the people that i know that um uh struggled with addiction right and then they you know they got out of it these people are on the spiritual level that i envy okay but what often happens with them they hit rock bottom their life started to fall apart and they realized i have no choice but to improve here i have to change something right so that's the power of suffering suffering gets you to be dissatisfied with the status quo and there that's where change comes right so this is the thing that he's saying he's saying what are we doing these three weeks we're dwelling on the suffering that is taking place now that took place then what we're lacking with this is a tremendous stimulus to change to grow and to develop okay so that's why this is just an amazing opportunity okay but now i mentioned that there's actually you know judaism what's so amazing is it has all these levels right levels of uh you can reach you know if uh there's this is a divine self-improvement program you you know it there's no end there's no end milo celiano's in the midst of us right so we're gonna go for a very high level but the question is uh is it permitted to like act on a spiritual level that's seemingly beyond you okay now right or or to right to to do acts that are known to be for the very very holy okay so there's a gemara on this and rev freelander discusses this in sifte hayam he says like there's a fascinating gemara okay there was a a rav hamnunna i think was his name one of the rev hum nunas and uh he was walking in public wearing i think black shoes now back to in the times of the he was in amora back in the times of the talmud black shoes was a sign of mourning okay so the rabbis put him in rabbinic prison why did they put him in prison because they felt he was uh being uh excessively pretentious right because to to be mourning he was why was wearing the black shoes he was mourning the usual i am being destroyed and they said uh who are you know who are you how can you do that but then they tested him in torah and he they saw this person is what they call goveraba he's a very big person right so he's allowed to make a public display of mourning right it's okay for him because he's a big person with the implication if you're not a big person you should not be going around showing oh you know there's a great listen to this uh classic this is a classic there was a musser uh musa yeshiva in europe and um it was i think the time of sleekos right and these two guys come in to the show and they see their friend their buddies up by the iron kodish and he's holding on to the uh like to the paroches and he's going i'm nothing before you hashem i'm nothing i'm nothing so the other two guys look at me go oh look who thinks he's nothing luke who thinks he's a nobody it's a level to be a nobody right so how can we what are we doing right now we are publicly displaying that we're mourning right there's no music there's no haircuts we're not shaving you know especially if you're used to shaving it's clear you're doing public displays of mourning right who you know if you if your shirts look a little dirty yeah why are you doing this right so art do we know the torah of rav hamnunna what's our how do we have a right to do this right as for a freelander right so here's what's remarkable about these times okay says since the rabbi say right now publicly display your mourning right that means that there is a spiritual energy right now that elevates us that raises up that we can be on the level to mourn yerushalayim to feel the suffering of the jewish people we can reach a very high level right now so you hear now we can understand a bit right why this period can be like more than yom kippur we have a special support to reach a very high level and i want to dare for us to try to do that right now okay so i want to show you what i call a scale of empathy and this will hopefully uh and i want it by the way what i like to do in in since we're so focused on the misses and having kavanaugh from missus we're gonna mourn okay this you know it's not just on the 9th of we're supposed to be mourning right now that's the purpose of all these practices so we're going to we're going to i'm going to introduce this scale and we're going to mourn for on each level and have kavanaugh for that okay we're gonna take advantage of the fact that we've been instructed to mourn right now and i wanted us again since we have this elevated status i want us to see what we can ascend to and what we should try to do now and especially on tishoba okay so i call this ascending the scale of empathy empathy is actually a very divine characteristic right compassion um connecting to someone else's pain it's very right now it's become recognized in the world it's how important it is in psychology and all these things but it's a divine quality okay so we want to empathize with the agony right now again we're not this is not a happy time okay this is a time for us to connect to the pain and agony right so let's start on level one the the least advanced but it's also advanced is what i call the agony of the soul all right now it says in the midrish rabbi the kohalis rabbah the ramakhal brings this messiah it's such a deep thing they the they describe that the the following there was a princess who married a very common person a villager i don't know how the marriage took place but it took place and he takes her to his little hut and he's feeding her food and she's just it's just so distasteful to her and she's really not happy in the situation so what that's the muscle that's the metaphor what's it talking about it's the soul then the shaman goes into our bodies right now on the one hand that's a great opportunity but since the body is driven towards animalistic behavior right stuffing its face and emotions that are petty into those kind of coarse behaviors that the body inclines us to right our soul the inner princess is is suffering right you know and and this is we it'd be very good for us to identify with this you know uh as you get connected to torah you start that you want to be good you want to daven and connect hashem you want to make blessings right and there's a part of you that says i really want to and then you're you just get stressed out and you don't focus and and you get disappointed right who is that where is the discipline where is the desire to actually connect spiritually coming from and where is the disappointment coming from when we feel that way our soul that's your neshama right and just think of if you think of our track record you know we don't get angry we don't want to speak collection or we don't you know when we're feeling frustration it's the soul is in exile it's angolas right what is exile exile is a very difficult environment to succeed in right when you're away from home i mean it's a silly metaphor but when there's sports teams right so they call it the home team advantage right so when you're at home and you're in your environment it's much more likely for you to succeed so you know our soul is kind of trapped in a dungeon hence the picture right so the first thing we should feel agony over is the frustration our soul feels when our body dominates okay so what i want us to do right now again i want uh we do these um practices right now there's no music here there'll be no music in the background there's no shaving there's no bathing right now on certain levels right all these things let's have in mind right now two things one have in mind hashem i'm fulfilling the minhage israel these are men hogging practices that that hashem wants us to fulfill to mourn so i have in mind i'm fulfilling those but now let's put the purpose in okay so i want us to take a moment and feel the frustration of our soul which is in its own gullus from the body so just uh close your eyes for a second i'll speak to it a little and you can speak to yourself i'll just tell you all right i want you to stop and think for a second right now and have in mind the mitzvah of mourning okay and i want to think about how frustrated [Music] her soul is that it's not able to connect in the way it knows it wants to it knows it's good and think of the disappointment when we fail to control ourselves with other people we fail to slow down and savor the words of the prayers that we play this is the souls in our souls in exile and let's feel sad for it and realize that's what these three weeks before okay that's stage one now let's talk about we're going up in level right these are more sophisticated feelings it's already a level to not focus on yourself but your soul your best part that's a level but even better is when you focus on others and now we want to focus on the agony over our nation the jewish people okay uh let now i'm gonna in order to introduce that i'm gonna share uh a share a story with you okay and i want everyone uh is watching or here i'd like you to close your eyes unless you're going to fall asleep close your eyes and i'm going to share this story with you there was a prince that had acted poorly enough to be thrown out of the palace by his father now he's still wearing his royal garments and he travels on the road until he reaches a small farm village the simple villagers greet him warmly and they offer him food and lodging as long as he'll do some farm work the work is a killer for the prince you know his pampered life left him with a soft body and his hands are hurting with blisters and the simple food is a struggle to keep down after a diet of the finest delicacies he cries himself to sleep on a straw mattress after a year or two the prince is no longer pampered he now wears simple peasants clothes and his stomach is adjusted to the village food in fact he has become completely comfortable with his commoner's life now around this time the king who misses his son begins to long to see him so he sends messengers to find the prince and return him to the king the messengers inquire around until they find the village where the prince now lives when they are pointed to his direction they can't believe their eyes there's not even a faint resemblance to the royal prince who left the palace a couple years ago they spoke with the prince but they couldn't contain themselves they burst out in tears the prince reassured them i'm fine now i've completely adjusted to this way of life the time you should have pitied me is when i first came to the village i felt so out of place and miserable and i wanted so badly to return to the palace that's when i needed your pity and your sympathy ada just the opposite say the the king's messengers now's the time things are horrible for you you've forgotten who you are and where you come from you don't even care about whether you return at least when you first left you knew who you were and where you belonged you realize you are the son and the daughter of a king and you belong in the king's palace okay now let's take advantage of this story we now want to go to the next level and stand past the concern of our soul and let's mourn the state of the jewish people you know i i don't know the exact numbers but maybe there's about 10 million jews uh it's not i don't know the exact numbers but millions of jews have become villagers they don't know they have royal blood that they're that they're supposed to have a lofty leadership role to bring the world to hashem they've lost sight and they've become completely attached to the village right that's really sad right i mean there's so much to feel for for for the jewish people and so many there's been so much suffering right and i want to quote you know replenishment says you know if you can go to sleep at night and you're not crying over the state of the jewish people and their alienation from hashem from each other broken into groups and he says you're cruel very heavy statement but right now let's be sure we're not cruel okay so let's stop again let's have in mind hashem i'm doing these enactments to connect to the agony over our jewish nation right who feel this right now have in mind you're doing mourning right now mourn the state think of how far away from alienated how disconnected all the suffering and pain of our people the lack of realization of our royal purpose and the glorious world we live in let's take a moment and feel that okay let's raise one more level okay this is the highest level of all okay the agony of our divine parent allow me to explain uh this term in hebrews called to connect to the tsar of the shrina to the suffering that the divine presence experiences now this is a very very lofty uh level okay and to explain i'm going to give you a couple metaphors also okay now um most of the time the creator and hashem the divine is really feeling our pain and our suffering right but you know what we're really meant to do and the refinement uh legend says when you're praying you notice it's in the plural right in the the prayers of the shimones he says why are you praying you know hashem knows what he's doing when he dishes out suffering or allows suffering to occur hashem you know it says we declare the talmud says everything hashem does for good so why are we saying remove our troubles remove our suffering so listen to the beautiful reason why because the divine hashem suffers when we suffer he feels our pain and we if there's we're not trying to get rid of it for ourselves we're comparing we realize how the divine experience is suffering when we suffer such a beautiful thing to strive for okay and i allow me to say something very heavy again from rivkline volition what is the divine suffer over or what let me ask it this way what does this mean the divine presence hashem suffer over the most listen to this metaphor it's a little chilling okay there's a father whose son got drunk and he went to the roof of his house and in those days they had these flat roofs you could be stand up there right the sun gets drunk and he falls off the roof and he breaks so many bones in his body right now exactly i understand everything you can imagine right they take the he was alive though they take the son to the hospital and the father is of course there and they're resetting his bones and this shrieking in agony right now let me ask you a question when did the father feel the most suffering when he sees his son fall off to his possible death or when he's getting their bones reset falling off to his death right the bones he he loves the son he hates to see his son suffer but what's worth he didn't so the final version when we don't follow hashem's will and we hate other jews and when we do the wrong thing it's like the drunk kid falling off the roof hashem knows the destruction that we wreak when we sin and when we have hatred and we do everything it is devastating right now the pain is meant to heal it's resetting the bones and he still feels that no father no mother likes to see their kids suffer and you know they did something stupid right and you were terrified that they could hurt themselves but then when they you're not happy that they have to you know oh that shows you you're not callous hashem feels our pain that he needed to maybe allow right he feels it more than any of us do our own pain or the pain of our children it's incredible the divine agony over the jew suffering right so now this is what we should head for this is why you can reach an incredible level like yom kippur on tish above and right now is if you stop and think about the divine suffering right and so i'm going to just do a little guided talk on this too we're going to fill this right now and again we're supposed to be mourning now every day we should be morning maybe we can avert the 9th above but if we at least get to ninth evolve we we have a program here of ascending okay so if you want to close your eyes for a second all right so likely to think about um some suffering that you know god forbid low eleno but think of the the suffering of uh you know i was in a i when my son got hurt he had to go to the children's emergency room in the hospital you know and i see these young kids with their heads shaved and all sorts of like suffering so i mean you think of the that kind of suffering think of people who are unfortunately not married um who are just think of all the suffering that the jews are experiencing right now right you know in south africa there's terrible um problems with the corona and the jewish community of shenyarachim right so i just want to think about this and just think about that but stop for a second and realize that any single instance of these sufferings hashem feels so much more than the person who's experiencing suffering the loved ones everyone so let's stop a moment and identify empathize with the agony the divine present has that this is the way he just wants to shower us with love and good this is a killer if you will okay so just take a moment and feel that okay so i just want to review um tish above these nine days or not it's gonna get more and more uncomfortable right you know the showers the nuts the whole thing is uncomfortable and it's written in an israeli nice and juicy hot you know and you can't shower and all this stuff again speak to your local rabbi there's qualifications but right now let's let's take advantage it's for a purpose right this is the time of the year where you're going to feel elevation and actually an uplift if you feel bad if you focus on the agony of your neshama the agony of the jewish people and the agony of akkad [Music] you