MindFlex - Shavuos & Our Road to Freedom, with Mitch Barnett

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening everyone my name is mitch barnett and i'd like to talk about the topic of the road to freedom the final act so you know in jewish consciousness we look at holidays as opportunities where the same spiritual energy occurs year and year out we don't just commemorate holidays in jewish consciousness but rather we relive it and so what we try to do is understand the spiritual power the opportunity of the time in order to take advantage of living it and growing in the way that the holiday is meant for us to grow there's a connection says the rabbis between leaving egypt it's mitzrayim passover and shavuot the giving of the torah in fact the rabbis say the reason why we were let out of egypt was in order to receive the torah 50 days later on mount sinai in addition the madrashik literature talk about the connection in the following way they say just like a festival like passover is an example where the first day is a yomtov when the last day is the tub and the intermediate days have holiness but not on the same level so too passover in that motif becomes the first jumptiff the intermediate days between passover and shavuot are the intermediate days counting the omer and the last day of the the festival is shavuot and finally the rabbis say in a learning that you don't really have true freedom until you become someone who learns the torah it's only through torah that you have true freedom they learn it out from a sentence in the torah which says the words of the almighty were engraved horus on the don't read chorus read heroes heiress means freedom and so we clearly see that the culmination of the idea of freedom occurs says the rabbis when you are when you receive the torah we want to understand just what that means so in order to walk through that basic understanding and to get more of a depth of understanding of freedom i'd like to ask three questions the first question is usually when we count when we're anticipating an event we say grandma and grandpa are going to come in 20 days we count down oh that's 15 days left oh there's five days left i'm so excited there's two days left it's interesting we're excited to get to the to shavuot to the receiving of the torah but yet we count up why do we count up why don't we count down anticipation of this great happiness that we're going to have to receive the torah the second question is how does torah really lead to freedom i would submit that all the rules and regulations perhaps take away from our freedom so how is it that torah actually allows us to be free on a level we can't achieve without torah and then finally if we're anticipating shavuot the getting of the torah and it's such a wonderful wonderful event why do we assign to the counting a rather esoteric agricultural ancient agricultural sacrifice offering called corbin omer and we count every day in accordance with sverata omer the counting of the omer very strange so i'd like to discuss those three in order and when we discuss those questions i believe the answers give us an insight to the depth of what it really means to be free so let's begin the first question you know it's interesting when you're anticipating your grandparents coming you don't really care about the intermediate days you want to get to them coming so that's why you count down you're not concerned it's not something that you care about the five days the 10 days the 15 days you're really marking the time when your grandparents come it's not the same thing with the the build up to shavuot for instance let's say you're building a building and you're up to the 10th floor of this great skyscraper you've been dreaming of building you tell harry harry i'm up to the 10th floor and on monday i'm going to be up the 15th floor and then the 16th is going to be on wednesday and then the roof i'm going to frame out the rooftop cafe it's going to be great why do you spend that time because every stage in your development and your growth in your building is important to you and so too that's our process that we're going through between passover and should vote we're becoming something we're gaining an awareness that we started in passover that we need to develop and grow and culminate in shavuot so the building process the rungs on the ladder for us are very important so we count every single day because we want to make every single day a growth opportunity for us the question though is what are we doing what are we counting what's the process of us we know it's freedom because we know we started that process on passover but what does it really look like how do we get a growth day in day out to be people who can receive the torah and really be free so i want to submit that what we did on passover is we had a we were lifted up and we were given a sound and light show which clearly showed that the almighty ran the world runs the world is mightier than any other power there is there's nothing else really to live for he dismantled egypt he had a special mission for the jewish people and he wanted us to start that mission therefore he took us out of egypt and he had a process of giving us his terror his mission statement to succeed and change the world 50 days later great but how do we work that in how do we understand how that that freedom changes us what do we do with that so it reminds me of a song that i remember back in the 70s it was a song that sammy davis jr if you could recall sammy davis jr he sung the song i have to be me is the song that he sang and the lyrics are very interesting in the end of the song it says i'll go it alone that's how it must be i can't be right for someone else if i'm not right for me i've got to be free i've got to be free daring to try to do it or die i've got to be me as long as i've got to be me i want to submit that we'll understand that the essence of freedom is wrapped up in understanding who we are and therefore what we need and so really what i want to discuss is i've got to be me so who am i so let's talk about spiritual physics if we can the spiritual physics goes like this and i think everyone understands that we're created body and soul we're body and soul more specifically we're souls in a body and as you all understand our soul wants to get up and accomplish 24 7. nothing standing in the way wants to be good a giver a lover a parent a leader all the causes in the world 24 7 out of bed that soul wants to accomplish all there is to accomplish in life problem is they have a body and when that soul hears the alarm clock that body hits the snooze and that body wants to go to sleep that body doesn't want to put effort out doesn't want to accomplish to a great degree once comfort doesn't want challenge you have it and that's the struggle that we have because we are a soul and a body and we're meant we're meant to overcome the impulses of the soul to not expend effort and energy to achieve our objectives and the question i have for us is we're a body and a soul right we're both so who are we are we the body or are we the soul i think if you ask everyone that question intuitively people realize that they are the soul they are the soul and i'll frame it for us a different way if god forbid you have to have a heart transplant and you get frank's heart do you think you become frank we all know that's preposterous the you is not frank that's part of now your new body perhaps but that's not the you the you is your soul that's the you and we spend our lives understanding and appreciating that we need to get the body to appreciate the desires of our soul and that is the beginning of understanding how we become free so i want to just understand start by talking about a clarity that we need to have and it's one of the biggest insights perhaps i've ever learned and the clarity can be brought forth with a question the question is what is the opposite of pain what is the opposite of pain and i want to suggest that 99 out of 100 people perhaps even 100 out of 100 perhaps would tell you that the opposite of pain is pleasure pleasure is the opposite of pain and i want to submit to us that pain pleasure is not the opposite of pain no pain or comfort is the opposite of pleasure in fact pleasures all the greatest pleasures in life the bigger pleasures that we have having children having a family having relationships a wife teaching leading changing they all require a great deal of effort effort is the price tag that we pay for higher and higher levels of pleasure and if we equate pleasure with comfort we're let down because really what we're doing is we're avoiding pain but the end result of avoiding pain is being stuck in a very low level of pleasure because the higher levels of pleasure require effort they require effort in life maturity generally speaking people understand that when they get older and they become less immature they realize they have to put effort for those things are important but if we want to have a clarity on this fight between the body and soul has a lot to do with going after comfort and recognizing who we are we're the soul we're the soul that doesn't want to not achieve in life doesn't want to expend effort when we understand the clarity on that we're able to perhaps better talk to our bodies deal with our bodies and utilize the clarity to live more in tune with what we want to achieve i'll also submit another insight which is many of us really live a life that we think is a spa i.e a life of comfort life of comfort in reality therefore when we have setbacks we have obstacles problems we can tend to resent those we can tend to feel down about them if we realize that life is a gym because life is here for us to grow and whenever we go into a gym we understand that if we want to grow muscles the way to grow muscles is with resistance resistance is what allows us to grow so too in life resistance allows us to grow and therefore if we have that attitude we won't be resentful but rather we'll see the challenges as life as ways as vehicles for us to achieve what we're meant to achieve here we will be able to grow very important understanding and that's the first step in freedom because going back to what we achieved in in passover if you and you all know we we spend seven days having matzah matzah is the essential food it's not the fluff it's not the distractions of this world you know it's very hard to live this life and live for the dictates of your soul there's so much comfort out there there's so much easy simple gratification out there that it's not always easy to navigate a course to choose what your soul desires or what your body desires therefore we have a seven day training course and that's called matza matza is the essential food we recognize that we're supposed to energize our bodies we're supposed to take vacation we're supposed to use the physical world but we're supposed to use it in an essential way to give our souls the energy to accomplish in life of course our bodies and souls together accomplished in life but our focus is not live to eat but eat to live and once we get that understanding in passover through our training wheels of the matzah we go into the next 49 countdown count up days and we try to live in an essential way whereby we're using the physical world to achieve spiritual pleasures and that is all the ultimate in holiness you should understand that whether it's in the bathroom whether it's in the bedroom whether it's in the dining room all opportunities to have physical pleasure that we do for the purpose of spiritual growth is being ultimately holy and that's what a jew is supposed to achieve in this world so if we one of the focuses that we want to have in this 49 days leading up to shavuot is try to choose the desires of our soul over the comforts of our body and that will lead us to tremendous a tremendous amount of holiness i want to go further because really we can now even come to the first definition of freedom because freedom is really being the master you the you the soul the chooser being the master and deciding that you want to identify with the desires and the focus and the objectives of your soul rather than your body and so therefore to be in control and to not be beholden to the appetite reflexes the the the desires for comfort the desire to quit the desire to avoid struggle and effort when you're the master of your destiny and you decide to overcome those influences you are free you are free of the body to do what your soul wants to do and in truth it's that's the first level but then it gets even better because that's what we our bodies are actually meant to do so give me two examples from my life your body actually can has taste buds and you can change those taste buds the soul can inform the body how it should behave i remember when i was playing football when i was a kid it was a 80 pound weight leak when i was 11 years old 10 and 11 and for the first time ever in my life i had to go on a diet i had to go on a diet so one of the things they give you when you're on a diet is cottage cheese and i hated it i hated the cottage cheese hated it but what happened was as people know your taste buds change it was good for me i had i started eating it i had yogurt i had granola your taste buds change it's the same thing with your body your body gets in a rhythm of doing what your soul wants and it changes give you another example of that we all who any of us who are athletes know that when you go out on your first jog your body says you're gonna die you're just gonna die the pain is difficult and if you don't give up and you keep going you keep going not only do you readily accept the pain for the pleasure of the run the pleasure of the becoming what you want to become athletically but you also realize that if you don't have the pain you don't even have the pleasure you don't even have the pleasure if you don't have the pain your body has a way of being able to go in the directions that your soul wants to go and so therefore that's the second level it's not just that we're the masters of our body like a horse and a rider you know if you let the horse go and the rider doesn't take charge you're going to be on the side of the road in the grass eating grass and hay but if the rider's in control and the powerful steed will take you so far toward your objectives but the writer has to be in control we are the writers so the first level of freedom is that the where the writer is choosing what we want to do understanding that we need to achieve in life and that requires effort requires effort secondly we want to also understand that the goal is not to fight and confront the body but rather over time to bring the body on your side to bring the body on your side it's extraordinary you know the body we're not the body man in judaism is called adam adam adam marisha why in the world if we are our soul not our body why are we called earth why are we called earth low chorus heavy course it's it why that's not us we're the soul we should be called nisha ma soul ruach whatever you want to call but not adam so it's an extraordinary idea right earth we know when you water it and you fertilize it can transform itself into life it has the ability to use a potential and be transformed that's what we're supposed to be our soul and our body together are supposed to transform our body transform our body like that cottage cheese love that run love the effort of success and achievement and that's what we're trying to achieve with our bodies and you know when i asked my rabbi rabbi nach weinberg assad the head of asia torah where much of my torah comes from i asked him why do we need the resurrection of the dead why is our bodies have to come up and merge with our souls we're souls we we know that what what's the body have to do with it myroshiva rabbi weinberg said all your growth is in your body your scorecard is your body how did you refine your body your soul wants 24 7 to do all the right thing it's your body that doesn't how did you refine your body unbelievable and lastly i'm sorry i don't have the mishna in front of me but i'll i'll try to say in english by heart the mr says grew up among the elders and he didn't know anything better for his goof than quiet than shtico there should be a glaring question on that when you understand that what he was getting at is when you're learning torah when you're trying to develop spiritual pursuits he was saying there's nothing better than quieting down your body and man you could grow and terror you can grow in spiritual development but the question is why didn't the mission stay there's nothing better for your soul then quiet of your body why does it say there's nothing better for your body and the startling answer which is the height of this discussion is that no the goal of your body is to do the bidding of your soul that's what gives your body ultimate pleasure that's what your body is after so just like that horse that you have to work in or you got to break that horse first and then that horse will be your loyal steed so too you have to break the body in but the goal the essence of the body is the body wants to be a partner of the soul and wants to take the soul the you where you want to go so that's the full understanding of our freedom on one level what we've said is that freedom from the impulses of the body to choose to be the writer on the horse to choose where you want to go to recognize that accomplishment takes effort and put your efforts where they should go in life that's true freedom and that in fact is how we as body and soul become holy vessels to do the objectives of the creator of the universe and achieve our potential which is to transform our body and have the pleasure the united pleasure body and soul of doing the will of the creator and reaching our potential that's freedom okay so with that understanding of freedom i want to come back to the next question that we had which is how is it how do you become free with the torah how do you become free with these rules and regulations which seem to deny our freedom deny our free choice perhaps make us less free so i want to suggest that when we understand that we want to do the they want to do the objectives of the soul that's what we want in life and to become free of our body to allow our souls to do what's in keeping with the almighty's objectives in life is what the torah prescribes for us the torah rather than being a rule book that denies us the opportunity to be who we are and who we want to be and fulfill our potential it allows us at the highest levels to achieve our potential it's very much like when you go to an amusement park and you realize if you think back on it all the rules and rags and safety precautions that the owners of the amusement park have a amount of people online how you do it how you get off how you get on how you have to buckle in etc those rules and eggs which you might think are confining you want to put your hands up you want to stand up on the roller coaster but you know what you might get really really hurt and so if you want to really get from what the amusement park has to offer to really enjoy what's going on you have to have rules to funnel your behavior in a way that's good for you so too the almighty puts in his torah rules and regulations which allow us to engage in this world in a safe and productive fashion if we understand those rules and regulations we can get the most out of what our souls want to do in this world that's the first reason why you need to have torah to actually give you the freedom that you want that you truly want says i have to be me right i've got to be me and so i've got to be me therefore i have to understand who am i where am i going what are my pitfalls and how am i going to get there first understanding of why you need terror second understanding as we've really just said is torah gives you tremendous self-awareness it gives you an understanding of who you are who you're not what are your pitfalls what are your blocks you have to be aware you have to have self-awareness to understand what are your challenges what are your pitfalls to get up you know that says that sadiq the righteous person is not someone who never makes a mistake but rather he's someone he or she is someone that falls seven times but gets up gets up that takes tremendous perseverance it takes a self-awareness an ability to grow and to achieve that's the second reason from my opinion why you need terror to be free to be truly free and the third reason that you need terror to be truly free i would submit to us i'm going to give it over in a little illustration let's say you have a poor person a homeless person i used to go through grand central station when i lived to live in the city and i walked my roommate who took a train out to go across to commute to connecticut and i would go up to my my office real early in the morning and i would see this homeless person i felt really bad i'd see this woman all the time so one time we had a party we had a bunch of bunch of um um a bunch of bagels in our apartment like and i put it in the bag and i gave it to i was so happy to give it to her and she was happy and it was great let's say a big philanthropist sees this woman day in day out and doesn't want her to live on the streets and wants to get an apartment and wants to he really wants to do a good kindness for her so he gives her a million dollars he takes a million dollars he puts it in her bag problem is she doesn't know it's there day in day out she's living just the same life she's living like a poor homeless person she doesn't know that she has the potential to live in an apartment and be clean and pay rent and go for food and go for education see a movie she doesn't know she doesn't know so i admit to all of us you can have the self-awareness to some degree and you can understand that life requires effort but if you don't know where you're going you don't know the purpose in life if you don't know how much potential you can you can harness how to harness it and you don't have the full keys to be truly free and to reach your potential and that's the the last of what i would call three reasons why you need torah why you need tarot let's now go to the third question that we've talked about which is if we're here for growth and that growth is freedom and we've said that what we want to do is we want to live the pursuits of our soul and ability to harness our efforts and focus on what's important to us and expend effort in the right direction and lead an essential life in terms of our approach to the physical world and eat to live mentality and we then take that and realize that if we have the insights of tara with regard to what's right and wrong for us how we're going to actualize our potential what is our sense of self what is our abilities and what are our pitfalls and then we understand our objectives in life we're going to get there so let's understand what is the reason why we count we progress through this dynamic of freedom by counting and counting something for the omer spherata let me tell you what the the offering of the omer was the second day of passover not the first second day of passover every passover the jewish people brought an agricultural offering called a corbin omer it was not an animal it was a it was a matzah offering and it allowed once you brought that offering it allowed to for the jews to eat the new crop of wheat until they brought that offering they couldn't do the new crop of we and so forevermore this anticipation of shavuot and our progression in freedom to receive the torah and fully be free to achieve the objectives of the almighty and ourselves to achieve our potential is identified with the corbyn omer now why would that be what's the significance of that so i heard a very beautiful idea on this the omer is really a volume measurement the first time you see the omer in the torah comes in the parsha of the month the portion of the special cracker the special food that came down directly from the almighty to the jewish people for 40 years in the desert i want to submit to you the following because i think it's just a beautiful understanding you know we knew very clearly coming out of mitzrayim in passover that the almighty was in charge of the whole universe he controlled the world he dismantled mitzrayim the superpower of the day he has a mission for the jewish people he loves the jewish people and he took us out of egypt to have a mission 50 days the terror and then we changed the world and that's great that's great but you know what you might have said to yourself he knows me like the ceo of the company like he knows me you know he he knows me how can that be jeff boaz knows me so this super power ceo right the almighty daily day in day out for 40 years brings your family a custom-made message every single day no matter how much you collected of the month a lot or a little what you got was the same omer per head of the entire family it was custom made for your family and says the midrashic literature if you wanted this cracker to taste like steak and you had the intention you want to have steak that day it tasted like steak if you wanted cereal it'd be silly you wanted pancakes be pancakes the almighty delivered exactly what you needed all the time every single day without a worry without a care exactly custom-made to what you wanted now that is what we are focusing on now understand that what we're focusing on now is day in day out gratitude to the almighty for what he gives us we're building our own personal relationship with the almighty because that's what the almighty did for the jews in the desert because it's not just about a national vision you know it's not the almighty loves us he loves us more than we love ourselves he wants us to achieve our objectives he wants us to have a relationship with him and so therefore he wants us day in day out to build a perspective on him of love and care and concern and that's the final reason why we want to learn torah we want to learn tara because that's the medium by which we can get in a relationship with the almighty each and every one of us and to the extent we work on gratitude day in and day out we're able as a departure point to receive and accept the torah on shavuous but with love and we understand that's the reason why we want torah because there's nothing else to want there's nothing else to want that a private audience with the creator of the universe day in day out and we understand when we learn this torah that when we have a felt presence of the almighty in our lives we can achieve so much we can achieve all there is in life for us to do without question so real heroes real freedom comes when we're able to have a felt presence of the almighty in our lives and that's the growth and that's the development that we do day in day out by counting the omer counting the omer we have one more week left to count the omer and i would submit that we all try in the last precious week that we have to count all our blessings see how much the almighty has given us recognize how much he cares about us that's just the beginning every year of your life every day of your life you'll be deepening this understanding awakening this understanding and you will be therefore able to receive the torah in a way that you were never able to receive before before i conclude and summarize i i just can't let the opportunity go by because i believe that this felt presence of the almighty in our lives and the life of the jewish people is never so important as it is now coming out of covid thinking we're out of covid having coveted in the rearview mirror for all of us we all had the tragedy to deal with marone and there's nothing i can say to those poor people who are suffering but you know what we're all suffering and we all have to have a way to understand it utilize it and appreciate it because we're marching toward harsini in seven days we're reliving the joy of that personal connection with the cottage baruch and yet we're in pain and as a jewish people we're in pain i want to share with you something that's helped me a story that i witnessed personally that rabbi weinberg again myrosha shiva told to us 28 years ago so i want to tell you that 28 years ago i want to say 1993 it's either 92 or 93 but i think it was 93. i was in the yeshiva torah and perhaps perhaps it was my second sukkah set ever maybe third but no more it was very very special and as you know sukkot is called zman the time of our happiness it's the pinnacle of your happiness if you're going to achieve the level of happiness that the almighty wants for you it should occur on sukkot it certainly should occur there and then be drawn into the year and they say that the simcha the simplest base of shueva which we danced out from the with from our with our shiva out to a square right near the yeshiva and had this beautiful party with the whole of the old city was occurring that night problem was the intifada started in the summer of that year and every single week without exception there were murders there were deaths there were bombings there were shootings every single week even on rosh hashanah even through yum kippur how are we possibly going to be happy on samantha no how are we going to go out and dance with our shiva never forget what the roshiva said he had us in the basement prior to going out and he recognized the heaviness of the time what was on people's minds and he told us the following story he said in the holocaust the germans made sport of the jews they come back broken from a hard day of work no energy skeletons living dead and they would get a group of them together and they would say to them dance dance i can't walk dance so they got together and trudged along and they would say sing sing sing so they had to sing so they mumbled some words what do they know after all say mum with a song called ashraenu matov kalkena umanayam gurulenu ashreinu how praiseworthy is my it my portion how pleasing is my lot with the almighty praiseworthy is my hey look in the almighty my personal element how pleasing is my fortune and they sang and they sang because they paid attention to the words and as they sang with gusto and as they danced with gusto the germans realized something was wrong they said stop stop and they wouldn't stop they sang and they danced and they were beaten to death by the germans and rabbi weinberg would say only a jew can hold simcha that simcha and the tragedy together and he would submit to us that that connection to the almighty that enduring unending loving connection to the almighty our father in heaven avarakaman our merciful father in heaven who never punishes for retribution but rather sometimes has to give a patch so that we can get back on track that we can somehow be better just like a loving father would do we might not understand it all the time but we know because that loving father has given us so much we know it's the case and we focus on the connection because there's nothing else that compares to that connection there's nothing else that compares to that connection i would submit that it's the same idea with our ramp up toward shavuot through working on gratitude for working on appreciation of just the connections each one of us has to the almighty it doesn't stop the pain it doesn't stop the hurt it doesn't stop our feelings of sadness for all the victims and their families but i would submit that if we do if we have a change if we embrace this goal of of us hashem through gratitude we see how important this connection is to us we counter all our blessings we do it with gusto in the next week and we do it partly for the merit of those victims you know i'll just share with you one last thought my roast receiver weinberg and my rob rabbi forrest said that when you're a survivor you have to have a response you're a survivor whether we're a survivor of covet or whether it's a survivor of maroon or of the holocaust the almighty has his plans but we survived and we have an obligation to do something to do something i want to end just by telling you that this period of time this 49 days is broken up by the rabbis into 32 days up to log ba omer the day that was supposed to be fully fully fully joyous for the jewish people and from logba omer to shavuot 17 days lave is the two words the two letters in the jewish language for 32 heart and tove is the period we're in now tov says the literature was the start of the illumination that would occur in lagba omer the banega sastra says the reason why we light bonfires online is because we are commemorating so to speak the light that's that's allowed in the in the world it was called an hidden light from creation that comes out starting like the omer and illuminates illuminates our path the hidden treasures of torah michele david melek says sorry in uh in tehillim david melek says vani kiras kirvas elokimli tov he defines for us tov and what does he say it's when we feel a closeness to the almighty we feel the connection to a cottage borough so i want to tell everyone in this class we've traveled a long way we i'm reading this out because i think it's an important message we understand that to truly be holy and to use our potential properly we're meant to harness this world for the pursuit of our soul and in so doing transform our entire self attaining freedom and control over bodily desires we moved on to understand that it's only through torah that we can utilize our soul's desires on the highest level and understand that torah frames for all of us the lofty objectives we should be living for finally through our counting of the omer and working into our bones a felt presence of the almighty to achieve through gratitude we are truly free and capable of reaching our potential hashem should give us all the strength to continue to march forward for freedom with the almighty our spiritual climb in the merit of those people who pass and the people who mourn for them should be a comfort for all of us all of clay israel and all of our mourners thank you you