MindFlex - Getting up After The Fall - Rabbi Menachem Lehrfield: All's Good in the End

people who gave almost everything they had to send their son off to college but after just one semester he failed to see the value in a college education he failed to see the value in what he was doing he couldn't justify his parents spending their entire life savings for him to be there and so he decided to drop out and instead of going to classes he decided to pursue his passion to pursue the things he was really interested in and he and a friend started a small company in his parents garage after just 10 years of working harder than he ever thought possible day in and day out barely eating or sleeping giving everything he had to this passion project he grew this tiny company of he and his friend of just two employees into a company worth over two billion dollars with over 4 000 employees and then in the middle of the night just like that everything he built everything he created was taken out from under him he was fired from his own company he wasn't just fired he was publicly humiliated on the world stage every magazine newspaper in the world covered the story of how he had been fired from his own company what a failure he was what would you do imagine you're 30 years old you have more money than you can possibly spend in your entire lifetime where do you go from there what do you do how do you pick yourself up i know if it was me i'd probably buy an island somewhere and spend the rest of my life just hiding the rest of my life sitting on a hammock with a corona in one hand maybe a good book or a movie in the other and just be done retire but that's not what steve jobs did steve jobs picked himself up and he started over again during the time he was fired from apple he started two companies one of them called pixar and the other called next most of us have heard of pixar especially those of you with children if you have kids you know what an impact pixar has had on an entire industry it was a game changer but it's the other company next the one that most of us never heard of that has revolutionized our world see i remember apple as a kid we had these big clunky apple computers with the floppy disk you need two hands to hold and you would shove it into the drawer and you'd crank that little lock just to get it to work how did we go from that apple to the apple we have today i'm filming this right now on my macbook pro i have my watch on my wrist i have my phone in my pocket i have the handout on my ipad where did it all come from all of the technology that led to the renaissance of apple all of that technology was developed at next in fact in a commencement address at stanford university steve jobs said that getting fired from apple was the single greatest thing that ever happened to him not that it wasn't so bad not that it wasn't painful or difficult but rather it was the most important thing that ever happened because without getting fired from apple we would still have those clunky gray boxes with the floppy dicks floppy disks and the crank all of the technology that apple has developed all of the things that we love about apple all of that happen as a direct result of getting fired says steve jobs often times it's those moments of greatest challenge those moments where we're beaten down and we have to suffer the most difficult and extreme circumstances often it's exactly those moments that make us who we are it's those defining moments that make us into the people that we can become let's take a look now at source number one this comes from the book of mecca and the prophet writes do not rejoice over me my enemy ki no faulty kamti because i fell i will arise because i sit in darkness god is a light unto me notice it doesn't say despite i fall and i get up it says kina faulty kanti because i fall i get up we find the exact same idea in source number two the book of proverbs writes because the righteous one false seven times he will arise again we find that word key not despite the fact that the righteous falls key shall i pulsate become because he falls he gets up kina faltikanti because i fall i arise it's not despite it's because of often it's those moments of greatest challenge those moments of greatest difficulty that make us who we are the darkness is the source of the light the hebrew word majbir can either mean a crisis or it can mean the birthing stool someone who didn't know any better who saw a woman in childbirth would be convinced that the woman was dying how could it be anything else you see this woman and if you had no idea what childbirth looked like you had no idea what was happening you would be convinced that she was being killed and yet it's the majpier it's the birthing stool it's that which gives life we have two children born in israel and two children born here in america and the contrast between the two experiences is like night and day i'll never forget when we had our first kid here in america so our tower was born here in denver and my wife gave birth in a midwifery practice as uh jim gaffigan says we use the midwife because we believe in witchcraft no we went to this midwifery practice at the university of colorado fantastic practice and sarah drexler if you're watching this she was our midwife they did a phenomenal job and we are so so grateful but one of the things that was so shocking to me was how quiet the whole experience was from the time we went in for labor and delivery till the time our atara was born and we brought her home i did not see another male i was the only man in the entire literally beginning until the end all the doctors and nurses and midwives were all women i didn't see another patient another father another visitor literally nobody when we were being wheeled out i asked the nurse just on average how many babies are delivered every night here and she said in a general you know you in a typical 24-hour period they have about two or three babies guess how many babies are born in charizadek the hospital in jerusalem where my first two kids were born they deliver on average 61 babies a day 61 like 30 times that of an american hospital so as you can imagine the experience was quite different in charity you're lucky to get a small little closet of a delivery room in denver we had what looked like the presidential suite at the hilton so in jerusalem and charizadek they have these doors in every delivery room that open up into what i call the hallway of hell this is a hallway for the fathers to kind of escape and take a little breather but the sounds that echo in that hallway are terrifying you have dozens of women jews and arabs who are delivering babies at the same time and all the sounds from all those delivery rooms just echo and bellow down this hallway if you can imagine it sounds like a torture chamber to this day i can close my eyes and hear those screams those owls if you didn't know any better you would think those women were being murdered and yet they're giving life that's the majbeer that is the nature of the crisis often that crisis is the moment of birth it's the moment where life begins it's all a matter of perspective i can see it as the crisis or i can see it as the birthing stool it's those moments of challenge that define who we are those moments of challenge that make us into the people we can become when yaakov avinu jacob runs away from his brothers trying to kill him he goes and he settles by love on and he works for him and love and takes advantage of him and he he wasn't the nicest of people cheats in time and time again finally it's time for him to leave lovin and he's going to start a life with his family and he's told that his brother asap is pursuing him trying to kill him so he sends a message and this is source number four he says to the people who come on behalf of asaph he says he instructed them as follows thus shall you say to my lord asav so said your servant yaakov jacob i so journey with lovan and remained until now in love on garth so rashi who's our classic commentator and i call him our classic commentator because in jewish learning we cannot take two steps without rashi rashi's job is to help us understand the words in front of us and he wrote commentary on practically everything so rashi says he gives us another explanation of what this means take a look source number five another explanation is the word guardi the hebrew word garthy has the numeric value of 613. as if to say i lived with loving and i kept the 613 commandments yaakov sends the message to asaph don't try messing with me in love on garth i spent this time with lovan and despite being with levan i've kept all the mitzvoth but if hutner explains once again it's not despite being with lovan it's as a result of love on because i've endured the experience the challenge the difficulty of living with lavan as a result of that challenge i have grown in my keeping of mitzvot i have grown in my spiritual level and if you try to mess with me it's not gonna go well it's not despite it's as a result of a jew is greatest when he is challenged that is what makes us who we are the jewish approach is always as we see in source three rava and some say rav said if a person sees that suffering has befallen him he should examine his actions it doesn't say that that's why it's happening we don't know why it's happening i'm not a prophet i can't possibly know the ways of god i can't possibly know why this thing is happening to me but the jewish approach is always facial look into your actions try to figure out what it is that i can do to grow from the experience i can't always choose the outcome of my actions but i can always choose how i respond in any given situation and my response is game changing my response can transform something from a crisis into the birthing stool into the mojbier it's all a matter of that perspective never let a good crisis go to waste figure out how you can learn how you can grow from the experience we see this once again from other than yaakov jacob let's take a look at source number six from genesis 32 27. yaakov said and he's speaking to the angel of asaph to he saw he says i will not release you until you bless me just some background into the story yaakov is going with his family they're fleeing lovan and then asev and he leaves some pakham katana in these small jugs behind so he has his family wait for him as he goes on the other side of the river to collect these belongings that he left as an aside we learn from this how precious everything is to righteous people because they recognize that everything we have every item we own every object that we acquire has been given to us specifically in order for us to fulfill our unique mission in this world so even something as insignificant as the small jugs for yaakov who is somewhat of a wealthy person he still goes back to get them so he goes and he gets the jugs and while he's there he gets attacked or ambushed by the tsar shall asa the angel of asap and the two of them battle throughout the entire night whether this is a physical altercation or some sort of spiritual or emotional fight is not so clear but we're told that yaakov wrestles with the angel that by the way is where our name israel comes from the idea that he fought with the angel and then he succeeded again an aside so the two of them are fighting and they fight all night long finally the sun comes up and it's time for the asa it's time for sorry the angel of asav to go back up and he says to yaakov let me go it's time i need to leave yaakov says no i will not let you leave until you bless me what yaakov is teaching us is we can never let a challenge leave us until it blesses us we can never leave an experience until we've learned from it until it has blessed us until it becomes the defining moment in our lives it doesn't mean that's why it happened but we can transform that into one of the reasons why it happened we can choose to learn and grow from the experience we never know why certain things happen but we have faith that despite the darkness we see right now that one day kina foundation one day that darkness will be the source of light it will define my life and make me into the person i know i can become there was a rabbi and his wife who received their very first position at a rabbinic school in an old community in brooklyn and this once vibrant community had kind of fallen apart the show itself the actual physical building was in complete disrepair the community had mostly moved out and they hired this young energetic rabbi and his wife in the hopes that they can breathe new life into this community and they were eager and excited to get working so first things first they have to renovate the show building so they come in and they begin renovations they begin painting and cleaning up the mess and doing everything they can to make it as open and inviting and appealing of a space as possible and their goal was to get everything done in time for a grand opening on purim night people would come they'd hear the mcgill they'd see this beautiful new renovated show and they get more involved in the community they decide to stay they decide to give it a chance so they begin these renovations and they finish ahead of schedule two weeks before purim that day new york had a huge snowstorm the next morning the rabbi walks in to survey the damage to see what happened and he walks into the shoal and he is broken he looks at the main wall the mizrah wall straight up ahead in the shoal and right there the ceiling had caved in snow had dripped in the wall and ruined all of the plaster all the drywall it looked horrible he knows how important first impressions are and he says to himself he had no choice he has to cancel the grand opening because if people come and that's what they see they're never going to come back again so he goes home to tell his wife and as he's walking the block and a half to his apartment he notices that there's this garage sale going on and something catches his attention it's a tablecloth with a big star of david in the middle and all of a sudden this light bulb goes off in his head and he says to himself wait a second i bet that that tablecloth is the perfect size to cover the discoloration on the wall so he buys the tablecloth and he decides he's going to go and he's going to put it up on the wall and he'll put it up as a wall tapestry no one will know that it's not meant to be there and the show can go on he's so excited it's as if this special gift was given to him directly from god himself so he runs he buys the tablecloth he runs back to the show and as he's about to go into the show he sees this old lady running after a bus and the bus just drives off those who've lived in israel or been to israel that happens more often than i'd like to admit but the woman is running with the bubby carton toe and she realizes she's not going to catch up the bus is not stopping it drives off she is there sad and now it's cold and it starts snowing again and even though the rabbi is so excited to get this tablecloth on the wall to see if it will fit he walks over to the lady he is a rabbi after all and he walks over to the lady and says i see you missed your bus that's so frustrating and he begins talking to her it turns out that she lived in staten island she was only in brooklyn for the day he knew the next bus was not for another 45 minutes so he says to the lady again and it already started snowing again he says to her why don't you come sit down inside it's nice and warm inside it's freezing out here the next bus isn't coming for another 45 minutes so just come inside i'll get you a nice warm drink and you can wait here and then you'll get the bus so she agrees and helps her with her bubby cart they go inside the show he gets her set up in one of the back pews he makes her a nice warm tee and then he gets to work trying to hang up this tablecloth so he gets how his hammer nails he begins putting it up on the wall and it's perfect it fits the space beautifully he is so excited he can't wait to go tell his wife about all the things that just happened and as he's walking away stepping back to admire his work he sees the old lady but now she's not sitting in that back view anymore now she's standing in the middle of the aisle and she is white as a ghost he runs over and he says is everything okay she says rabbi where did you get that tablecloth he begins telling her the whole story of the snowstorm and the ceiling and the wall and the discoloration and the garage sale and he but she says rabbi look in the corner do you see the initials e c b crocheted into the right corner of that tablecloth he hadn't noticed it before but he walks over and lo and behold they're there she says rabbi i crocheted that tablecloth with my own two hands back in poland during the war i remember the moment i finished it and we put it on our shabbat table and it was beautiful that next day my husband urged me to run away they got papers he urged me to go and i begged him not to make me do it but i did and i escaped but my husband never made it this tablecloth was the last thing the only thing that she had from her previous life the rabbi urged her to take it he said take it please it's yours but she insisted and said no i'd rather be here in the show and i'll come back i'll come to the show i'll see it on the wall and it will give me so much joy to see it here to remember what life was like before all went to hell the rabbi and this woman sat there in the pews just crying together as he heard all the stories of what life was like before the war and the tragedy and the hell on earth that she experienced and by this time she had missed the next bus of the bus after that so the rabbi agreed to drive her home so he drives her all the way to staten island he helps her into our apartment up to three flights of stairs with her bubby cart says good night and invites her to come to the grand opening on purim night she says you know it's difficult for me to get out but i'll i'll try to make it two weeks go by and now it's time for the grand opening and it goes wonderfully new people come and they have a great time and they enjoy everything that the show has to offer when the mcgill reading is over the rabbi and his wife stood at the door greeting each guest as they left bidding there for bidding them farewell hoping that they come back they're about to shut off the lights and go home and they see this elderly gentleman sitting in one of the pews he says rabbi where did you get that tablecloth it looks just like one that my wife crocheted back in poland and he begins telling the rabbi this very familiar story a story that he just heard before so he takes this elderly gentleman and he says do you mind coming with me for a drive and the two of them go for a drive all the way to staten island he walks them up the three flights of stairs knocks on the door and he said he witnessed the most beautiful miracle ever he witnessed the most beautiful magilla at every moment of that story snowstorm comes the roof and wall are damaged if you froze that in time and you said is that good or is that bad for sure you'd say that's bad woman missing her bus good or bad it's terrible the worst thing that could possibly happen at that moment and yet that woman missing her bus was the greatest thing that ever happened to her all things are good in the end if it's not good it's simply not the end we never know which part of the story we're currently in right now we can never connect the dots in life going forward we can only live life with the faith that one day those dots will somehow connect on rosh hashanah as we know we blow the chauffeur and there are different types of chauffeur blasts we have a takia which is a strong triumphant blast it's the kind of blast that we blow when it's the beginning of the jubilee year or when we're inaugurating a king but then we have the shivarim and the teruah which are broken sounds they're meant to sound like weeping or wailing crying there's an interesting interesting law whenever we blow the chauffeur blasts we never blow the swarm or the true by itself you never find the blasts that represent crying and wailing on their own they always come preceded and followed by a tequila they always come in the middle of a tequila sandwich tequila then schwarze the lesson is clear the lesson is that even if i'm in a moment of a true i'm in a moment of crying a moment of despair i need to understand that there's always a tequila around the corner they say that the darkest moment is always the moment right before the dawn it's exactly at that moment the moment of despair and challenge and crisis that leads me to the next that leads me to the dawn of the tequila of the strong triumphant blast it's always good in the end if it's not good it's not the end we have another interesting interesting law we never end a parsha a torah portion on perennials on something negative which seems silly come on these stories happened a long time ago we're grown-ups we can handle a bad ending why can't we end where it's supposed to end but the answer is if it's a negative note if it's something negative it's something bad it's not the end it can't possibly be the proper end of the parsha it can't be the end of this episode because the end of the episode is always good if it's not good right now it's not the end the problem is that we can't always see through to the other side when we're going through a moment of difficulty we're going through a challenge we're going through a crisis we can't see past it or beyond it i can't see the label when i'm inside the jar the hebrew word sar means pain you're probably familiar with the jewish yanta who has oliver tsaras that's just plural of the word tsar sar means pain a difficult challenge that word is intimately connected to the word tsar which means narrow anytime we find two hebrew words that mean the same thing or share a root it means that there's a common denominator there's a common theme that both of these words both of these concepts have so what's the connection between tsar pain and sar narrow any time a person is in a situation of pain anytime a person is going through an ordeal a challenge bigger than the pain itself whether it's physical emotional spiritual pain any type of pain bigger than the actual pain is the fact that they are in a tsar in a narrow place they can't see past it when we are in a place of narrowness when we go through life with those blinders on i can't see anything but my pain i can't just lift myself out i need to widen that space and only once i widen that space can i move past it we just finished the period of time known as being hamid sarim three weeks where we are between the straights where we're constricted or we're placed in this narrow space and we can't see past it we can't see the big picture in life we can never connect the dots going forward we just don't know where they're going to connect we can only connect them going backwards but we live life with the faith that one day those dots will connect i remember when i was still living in israel i was so fortunate to be able to learn and teach at the age world center talk about real estate this is a piece of property that is directly opposite the western wall so every day from the place that i sat in the study hall or the classroom where i would teach i would see the western wall right outside the window but there was something fascinating constantly whenever i'd come into yeshiva in the morning i would bike through the old city and i would see tourists from all over the world and residents that were all so different so unique towards the end of my tenure at aish right before we moved to colorado there was a woman who was working on a painting and this was the largest canvas i'd ever seen in my life every morning she'd come with a few people coming to help her and they would set up this massive massive canvas and every evening they would take it all apart and they'd have to re-stretch it and reset it up every single day but it was so interesting watching her paint she would and this was right on that balcony right before the steps to the coattail itself so right at the end of h for those who know where the gold minora used to be they moved it to the horva to that big square but where it used to be right overlooking the western wall so she would set up this huge canvas and she would be right in front of it painting but every 10 or 15 minutes or so she would walk all the way up the stairs she would look and then come back down and paint and then 10 minutes would go by she'd walk up the steps look and keep on painting you see she couldn't possibly see what she was painting standing at the canvas at the canvas all she could see is blurred colors it's only when she took all those steps up where she took those steps back that she was able to see the full picture and when she was able to see the full picture she knew what she was looking at the problem is that we go through most of our life with our nose against the canvas we don't see the big picture we don't even see what we're looking at all we see are those blurred colors and we say you call this a painting you call that the western wall all i see is browns and grays whites we can only see the picture when i take that step back the difficulty is that at many moments in life there aren't enough steps i can't stand far enough back to see the perspective as jews we believe in reincarnation that means my soul has been here many times before this one how could i possibly think that i understand the ways of god that i know what my soul needs right now this particular moment of this iteration of its existence how to think that i understand the ways of god is at best silly and at worst arrogant i can't possibly see the big picture because i can't zoom out far enough but i live life with the faith that those dots will connect that there is a bigger picture that all things are good in the end even if it's not good it's not the end i'm just not at the end of the story yet sometimes i am given the gift of perspective sometimes even if it's difficult now i can step back far enough to say you know what i see now like steve jobs said that this is the best thing that ever happened to me even though it was difficult even though it was challenging as children and every person who's watching this is someone's child there are things that our parents did to us and did for us that we didn't understand at the time but we know now they did for our best interest i remember when my oldest son ozzy was one one and a half he had several bouts of pneumonia so we had to take him in to get some chest x-rays now when you take a child for chest x-rays it's a difficult process so for an adult they just stand up they take the x-ray and you're done but with a child who can't stand up you have to lay them down on this table and if they move even a drop you have to do the whole thing over again so they instruct the parent in this case it was me to pin down my child on this metal table and then they do the x-ray and i remember looking down at my son as he's looking up at me and he can't talk yet but he is shouting with his eyes he's in this room and it's scary looking and there's lights and he's sitting on this cold metal table and it's uncomfortable and he's scared and he looks up at me and he begins shouting with his eyes and he says daddy how could you let them do this to me i thought you loved me i thought you were my father who was supposed to protect me and take care of me there's no way i could have explained to him in that moment that i was doing this not to hurt him or harm him that i was doing this specifically because i loved him he couldn't possibly understand that but i hope at one point in his life when he's old enough he'll understand we don't always get that perspective but when we do we have to take it we have to be able to look back at our lives to see moments of challenge moments of crisis where at the time i was stuck in the jar and i couldn't see the label at the time i looked at it and i would have said this is terrible this is bad but now that i have time on my side now that i have perspective i can say i know that that was for the best and the more i do that the more i'll have the faith that when it's dark or i don't see how this is good i'll trust that there is a plan i'll trust that there's a bigger picture even if i can't see it the rambam my mom and these compares it's being lost in the dark night i'm trying to find my way home and i can't see anything because it's pitch black but then all of a sudden there's a crash of lightning and in that moment i see everything with clarity i see exactly how to get home i have to go straight here make a left there make a right there but now it's pitch black again i have to reconstruct that image in my mind and that's what i do and i go and i try my best to reconstruct that image and to find my way home and then another flash of lightning and i see it again and now i can correct course a little bit we don't get that many flashes in our lives but when we get them we need to take advantage of them there's a difference between understanding that this is truly good and saying this is for the good let's take a look now at the next page source number seven this comes from brago60b a man should always accustom himself to say whatever the all-merciful does he does for the best as in ruby akiva was journeying by the way he came to a certain town and asked for hospitality but he was refused so he shows him at the inn and there's no vacancy sign what's he going to do nowhere for him to stay so he exclaimed anything god does he does for the best he went and spent the night in the field having with him a rooster a donkey and a lamp a gust of wind came and extinguished the lamp a cat came and ate the rooster and a lion came and devoured the donkey so i don't know about you but if that was me at that moment i'd be like oh that's not so good what does every kiva say he exclaimed whatever the all-merciful does is for the best that same night a band of robbers came and captured the town he thereupon said to them didn't i say everything hashem does is for the best let's take a look now at the next source the gemara mentions a man named nachm ishgam zu it wants to know why did they call him nahum of gamzu the reason is that with regard to any matter that occurred to him he would always say gam zulutova this too is for the good ravi akiva's expression stated everything god does is for the best what that means is right now it's not good right now as the child is scared sitting on the metal table with the scary lights and he's being pressed down it's bad it's painful it's difficult i can't say this is good because i don't really feel that it's good but i know it's for the best i know that i love my father and i know that he loves me and i know if he's doing this to me it must be it's for my own benefit it's for my good i know that commander anything god does even if right now it seems bad it's for the good i don't see the full story i can't see the full picture yet ganzu took it a whole nother level he said gom zulatova this too is good not just that it's for the good this is good there are moments in our lives where we feel pain and we feel difficulty and we go through challenges and we don't know why they're happening to us and in those moments we don't need to fool ourselves into saying that i feel good right now no i feel pain i feel the difficulty i feel that sar i feel the walls closing in on me but i take soulless in the fact that one day i might be able to see the picture i might be able to see the reason it might not be in this world moses moshe asked the almighty he said show me your ways he asked god why do good things happen to bad people why do bad things happen to good people and god says you cannot know that and live you can know that you can live you can't do both as a human being you are limited in your ability to see the full picture but sometimes we're granted the gift to be able to look back to see with perspective like steve jobs looking back he said it's not just that it wasn't so bad getting fired from apple was the best thing that ever happened to me going through that challenge going through that ordeal was the best thing that could have possibly happened because it created the person i am today either way we have to be able to see that big picture either way we have to be able to declare and to understand for ourselves all is good in the end if it's not good it's simply