My Light, My Salvation, and My Strength

the yeshiva.net [Music] good afternoon everybody it's been quite a while as they say i think our last live in person class was the tuesday before purim i dropped by radinski's shawl you remember it was getting packed here so i got permission to use that shoe we got to use it for one week and uh that was that the next week there was no uh live in person class i know many of you have been with us on zoom or the yeshiva.net but uh as they say maria liu they're seeing and they're seeing and even though gum zoom let's over but nonetheless we're good nonetheless it's uh grateful to be able to be back here physically not just virtually with all of you and uh oops thank you for thank you for gracing us with your presence physical presence that is you're welcome i know it's been a very long year and a half literally a year and a half and uh it's almost like bce you know bce before corona existed and then there's uh sea after corona emerged and it's really uh you know fascinating and interesting and and sad and tragic and insightful to uh learn how much everybody's life was upended and really transformed so dramatically in one form or another over a relatively short period of time with upheaval that affected the world globally and communities collectively and everybody and families individually so you know there were a few members of this year who have also passed away during the corona good one it fell off okay so first of all i want to begin by expressing you know comfort and condolences to all those who are here who have lost loved ones have lost family members who have lost close friends neighbors teachers mentors and i know it's true about every single one of us and it's really a very difficult and challenging era for so many but we're grateful also for all the lessons that we learned and all the memories that we retain and the resilience and the confidence and courage that we share with each other and with our loved ones to be able to be here back together the esses say so be series with more might vigor and stamina i also want to thank the shul knesses archim shiner and everybody involved for allowing this opportunity i want to thank mrs klein of course the other mrs klein as well for all the work and bringing us all together and again thank you for everybody being here and welcome everybody who's here physically everybody was here virtually and everybody was here on the zoom we had a lot of zoom people and they were very afraid that the zoom is going to stop so i put up the zoom as well so welcome to all the zoomers whoops don't tell me i just shouted by mistake oh i didn't and i want to thank torah anytime for streaming it live and rip david who's doing here the videos so thank you to all and let's begin the reason there was a time change is i also wanted it in the morning for more than one reason i still want it in the morning the challenge here is that over the last uh year and a half among all the other changes the shul has now approximately 5 000 people coming every morning to doubt 5 000 people approximately i'm not exaggerating i mean i don't know the exact number maybe a little less maybe maybe a little more it's just anecdotal i never did the count i'm not junior how many people come here but it starts at four in the morning in the morning and uh or two in the morning and it slowly fizzles out at this point it's still going strong yeah so literally every 15 minutes a minion and some of them are packed so it's it's literally a few thousand people every morning so it was just every centimeter of space is taken up in the morning and the parking lot is also pretty much impossible so this was the earliest time we managed to hijack so i know that it's it's inconvenient for many but i just thought the only other option was not to have it at the continuing zoom so after convening with some very wise women we decided let's uh you know let's experiment let's begin and the vaser champions bar we'll see how it goes so i know it's i know it's inconvenient i know it's challenging for me it's also not that convenient but i thought it's better than than the alternative i'll do that at the end okay because a few people will trickle in yeah okay thank you so everybody knows it feels a little awkward for me this experience i'm used to my screen i don't know if i didn't have to ask for a year and everything enough to ask anybody to turn off their cell phone you know that right i could just mute them i just muted them it was a machaya i'm not going to ask again today either you've heard it enough over the years okay during the month of ello the last month of the year everybody knows the famous custom that we uh say twice a day a special capital in tehillim special chapter from psalms chapter 27 capital zayin which begins with the words ladavid hashem ayuri vishimiya it's done in many communities not all but many communities during chakras during minha some even do it during myriad and the reasons are numerous one of them is because the says madrish to hillam on this passage that hashem o'er god is hashem is my light refers to rosh hashanah yeshi hashem is my salvation refers to him kippur later it says pineni basuka he refers to he hides me he protects me in a sukkah another explanation is because in this capital to him you have 13 times the name of hashem if you count ladavid hashem me 13 meters the 13 attributes of compassion which that result says are manifested throughout the entire month of elul another reason that's given is at the end he says between barrett's that without my faith and resilience and hope in you it would have been very hard to endure lula is the same letters like the month ello lula's which is the concept of the same letters as the month of elul it connects also to what yehuda told yaakov he said killulah mundo if we would have not tarried we could have returned twice the shavnozepamayim to bring binyamin and bring back shimon which is also lula hismamano during the month of el veshavan of the month of truva and there's other reasons given but what i want to focus today in this class is on the opening verses of this unique capital to hillam it's a very very moving chapter in tehillim and those who don't understand uh the prose the hebrew of tehran it's worthwhile to learn this chapter in english when you say it because it's extremely powerful it's very very comforting it's extremely uh poignant and also it provides a person with a lot of perspective and a lot of strength i would like to delve a little deeper into the actual words that says in this unique chapter the opening it begins with the words ladavid which means it's a psalm for david it's a poem that was written and sung by david it's a poem for david hashem is my light and my salvation from whom shall i fear hashem is the strength of my life from who should i be intimidated and petrified that's the opening verse so david says hashem is irie my light is light my uh from the word yeshua he is my salvation whom shall i be afraid of me me era and then he continues hashem is the stronghold of my life my strength he's the stronghold of my life and therefore me me effcut from whom should i be petrified or intimidated and then he continues the next verse and that is sorry when the oppressors come to me and they want to eat my flesh they stumble and fall imtakamalai even if a platoon descends on me and then i'm still not afraid even if they declare war against me in this i have confidence and trust and then the famous passage which became a song actually many songs this is what i plead for and that is to dwell to sit in the house of hashem all the days of my life to gaze at the pleasantness of hashem and to visit his sanctuary often when we read these we can sense the power the confidence the faith inside of them contained in these words but it's often easy to gloss over the nuanced depth and the intricate glory that is conveyed in the nuances and in the choice of words and in this sense and in the structure and syntax of the sentences of david so let's see he begins ladavid hashem hashem is my light and my salvation who should i be afraid of and then he continues hashem is the strength of my life who should i be petrified of so he has three different expressions about hashem first he says he's my light then he says ye is my salvation there must be a difference between the two he's my light he's my salvation and then he adds a third description the stronghold the strength of my life what is the difference between my light my salvation and the strength of my life but it goes more than this because if you tune in to the structure he separates the pasik into two sections and each time he mentions hashem's name again he says hashem ayrie hashem is my light and my salvation who should i be afraid of and then he begins again hashem is the strength of my life who should i be petrified of he could have done it all together he could have said hashem he doesn't do that he mentions hashem his name twice once before discussing irie and yishi and once before discussing hashem why so we want to know what the three descriptions mean but also why they get divided into two sections and the first time around he uses the word era the second time around he uses the word efhad now we usually translate them identically or almost identically era means afraid i'm afraid means i'm afraid i'm petrified i'm scared i'm intimidated i'm startled i'm overwhelmed i dread but all of these are connected to the idea of fear and dread and intimidation but david malek chooses different expressions for different descriptions so when he says hashem is my light and my salvation me me era who should i be afraid of who should i be scared of when he says hashem he now changes the description he says who should i be petrified of first year me me era and then me me one might say well this is how you write poetry which is true you don't you're not supposed to repeat you don't repeat i mean you could but you try to use a different word a different expression in the language or the mafirsham it's called melitza loss in melitza melitsa means pleasant a pleasant language to speak in eloquence one's verbiage and prose especially poetry wants to be eloquent that's how you capture a person's imagination you diversify the message you convey it in different words you do it in communication whether it's verbal communication certainly in writing but nonetheless we're dealing with the tanakh and especially the safer of tehillim so indeed the language is elegant elegant and eloquent the prose is certainly glorious and splendorous but it's also extremely meticulous and precise and the fact that he uses hear the word iran the word eff the fact that he repeats hashem's name a second time the fact that he has different expressions all really need to be understood and experienced viscerally what other hamlet is really sharing here from the depth of his own soul i want to focus on one more detail he continues and he says i ask for one thing from hashem this is what i beg for to dwell in the house of hashem all the days of my life laksas banayam to gaze at his pleasantness to visit his sanctuary on this the madras tahilam teaches a fascinating lesson it says that when hashem shared this with when when king david shared this with hashem hashem said excuse me you're contradicting yourself first you tell me yeah i need from you one thing so i'm expecting to hear one request so ask for one thing suddenly do you download on me a package of requests shift come on you know when somebody asks you for one favor right somebody asks i just need one thing but suddenly that one or one minute yes one minute you know the jew comes to god and he says god it says in tehran also a thousand years for you is one day which means that a million dollars for you is one dollar right so what is it for you to give me one dollar which is a million dollars god says wait a minute so asks for one thing he says it's not fear which before i get to the answer david responded okay well why didn't hashem get upset that didn't phrase it right he should have said i want to ask for ten things okay so he asked for one thing and then he asked for ten things but hashem is like this is not fair so what dubuna everybody learns a skill from somebody else they all have a mentor i learned this from you impartial tells the jewish people just a few weeks before he passes away israel jews what does hashem already ask from you ki him only one thing leeros hashem to have your shaman to fear god okay stop the sentence now then he starts and to love him and to do his mitzvahs and to connect to him she says you did the same thing to us quit brick wall you made it sound like you want one thing and then suddenly it's much more than one thing this is the exchange that the medrash records between which seems like a very strange exchange like god is upset that he's saying one thing so david says you're blaming me blame yourself look in the mirror you do the same thing right it looks like i'm giving you a finger and you want more and more and you say you know you give a finger you want asking for more and more what's the meaning of this how do we understand this so the market of ms rich says that mello wasn't contradicting himself sometimes one thing can have many details it's ah it's one but this akas has many proteins has many details it has many nuances so he says shift hashem but that then could be manifested in many different ways and many different has many different aspects that's why he goes into the details and the same is true with hashem hashem did the same thing i ask of you liris hashem to have your shamayim but that includes many aspects but then the question is could have just told that hashem i'm really asking for one thing but this one thing has many details what did he have to say i learned this from you there's also something else that seems enigmatic if you open up a madrid to hillam which is the basic madrish on tehillah on these words was really asking for royalty he was asking for the throne he was requesting monarchy and when you read this madrid and when i read it i'm wondering where did your baba get this information there's no intimation here for any request for the throne on the contrary he says the only thing i ask for is to sit and dwell in the house of hashem all the days of my life why would rib abba say he was asking for malchus for kingship where did he see it in the words the commentators are so perturbed by this that they go so far as to say that derived it from the fact that said i want to sit in the house of hashem because it's an interesting allah everybody stood the kyanim the priests who did the service they all stood in the basement she had to stand even the people who came to visit there was a zara the sections that people guests could come visit there were different sections where the cayenne could go in where the israelim went in section for men section for women but to all these sections people stood khazal saying yeshiva the only ones who could sit in the basement and certain parts of it were the kings of base david saying i want to sit i want to sit in the house of hashem this means malcolm he wants to be a king because only the kings of vais david could sit in dazar nonetheless it's a very difficult interpretation to understand because really this was the one request ah they gotta have one request in life that when everybody stands i should get a seat everybody in the way this will be standing i want to be able to sit and this is asking for when he's not a king yet he's asking to be a king he's going to be the first king of base david and he didn't even build the base amigners he prepared it he planned it he dreamed of it his son built the way some so to say that his whole ah was to sit i want to sit where everybody stands i want to make sure to have a seat in the base of ignis and that's his one request and that's how he knows malhot seems difficult to understand what did the sages mean when they said he was asking for malhouse as i mentioned earlier 13 hashem's name is mentioned here 13 times in this capital corresponding to the 13 attributes of compassion that are revealed in elo rosh hashanah and kippur which begin with the words hashem so the gemara answers khan rashi quotes in apartheid there is compassion before one's sins and his compassion after one's sins that's hashem hashem twice one is before the sin and one is after the sin ask the commentators the russian many commentators why does one need compassion before the sin i understand compassion after one sins after one transgresses there's a need for compassion but why do you need the hashem before the sin it's difficult the holy siddhi traitor once said that people who don't sin also need compassion because they could become arrogant it's the feeling of holier than thou in other words somebody who makes mistakes they're vulnerable they're you may they're human they're sensitive they know their incompleteness somebody who never sins he says they're there they have a special danger lurking it's the danger of hordiness is the danger of holier than thou syndrome it's the danger of judgmentalism i sit in the throne of judgment because i'm so perfect so the zida chavez says you really need me the sarah you really need to be able to have compassion compassion on yourself too so you can also have compassion on others it's the special compassion that perfect people need so to speak perfect people another perfection could sometimes be the worst imperfection because i become a judgmental dismissive uh non-empathetic person i simply can't relate to other people so it's an it's an inch it's an interesting torah why you need me this before you sin but i want to share another perspective because it opens us up to the two hashems in the opening of the david hashem those are the first two hashems that correspond you remember it 13 times so those are the first two that correspond to the hashem hashem and you'd give me the sarah one is before the mistake and one is after the mistake and it's here that we'll be able to appreciate what it means you're my light you're my salvation and you're the strength of my life there are two reasons i mean more than two but in a very general fashion we're talking about achas you know sometimes one can translate into many so there's two but these two i know could be subdivided into many but there's two general reasons why people why me why we why humans make mistakes and sometimes big mistakes one is because i'm clueless in very simple english and one is because i simply don't feel i have the strength to do anything else the first reason a person may make a mistake is because i'm simply clueless because i don't know better the gemara says that when somebody does a sin and repeats it us on an assist like a hater after doing something twice it already becomes permissible the first time it's like oh the second time okay not a big deal the cut schedule says what happens when you do it a third time so the third time it becomes a mitzvah sometimes people are so clueless that it's not it's not just i do the same thing over and over again it can even be a mitzvah in my mind when a person and it's not necessarily their fault it's not about judgment sometimes a person really does not have the intellectual iq or more importantly the emotional eq to be able to be sensitive to be able to appreciate the reality before them there are people who are very book smart they have a lot of information they have a lot of data but as somebody once said today people are reading more and more about less and less or some people know the price of everything and the value of nothing some people know the information but they don't have the emotional connection you see it sometimes especially with people dealing with children or with teenagers young men or young women or adults these people they may mean very well but they just don't have the ability to understand and ishmael from a person you know that mind thing in general is to connect to somebody's soul to understand who they really are if i have no understanding of pain if i have no understanding of trauma if i have no understanding of struggle i may have the best intentions in the world but i'm often clueless i'm simply i don't know how to communicate to the person and i don't know how to listen to the person there's again an expression in tehillim that we say during our series 130 capitals so s [Music] now grammatically should have said shema lick highly listen to my sound listen to my voice listen to my prayer so the baltimore says no shima bikkaili listen to what is inside my voice listen to what is inside my car it's very different like it says fortunate is the person who understands the poor person really you need to understand the poor person you need to give money to the poor person no ashrae moscow aldo a person could be saying one thing but you have to be masculine though i have to really understand what is being said what is our being articulated sometimes the cry is not something i can pick up with my physical ears the mitzvah says by shauffer we say the blessing on shayfer is to hear the sound of the shaffer why not litkaya to blow because the mitzvah's not to blow the mitzvah is to hear the sound and to hear the sound of the shaffer why are we not emitting the sound from our own body we don't so desire says because it's kalapanima the sometimes it's an inner sound that you can't hear you can't hear it you actually it's so primal you need the animal you need an animal instrument to be able to utter that sound that's how deep it is so very often i could make mistakes in life i could transgress i could make bad mistakes simply because i don't know i'm confused or i'm clueless and the worst type of cluelessness is when i think i know when somebody doesn't know and they know that they don't know nishka fella you'll be humble you'll ask somebody you'll deliberate before you open before i'll deliberate before i open my mouth but when somebody doesn't know and thinks that they know i give all of their stuff hit him because now not only am i ignorant i'm also arrogant ignorance together with arrogance is lethal ignorance is ignorance who's not ignorant but ignorance together with arrogance together with the inability to be reflective to be pensive to be open to listen to be introspective and to understand that maybe maybe there's certain levels of reality that i simply don't get they talk a lot about today about hsps highly sensitive people right who experience emotions that other people may not experience two people you know how the joke always works three people walk into a bar right the priest the minister and the rabbi okay so three people walk into akhasana three people we walk into a mitzvah two people walk out the way they walked in the other person walks out and for the next week they're dealing with stuff they don't even know what they're dealing with because these frequencies that are absorbed by certain brains that are observed by other brains just like there are sounds that dogs can hear that i can't hear there are colors that birds can see i can't see my retina simply doesn't have the calym the instruments to absorb these light frequencies so in my brain they don't exist it's not that they don't exist they don't exist in my world this is the humility that wisdom brings to people the more wisdom the more humility because the more wisdom one realizes the infinity of reality the endlessness of reality the depth of how much there is to grow to learn more so therefore i have a humility when i have a cluelessness and an arrogance it could become very dangerous so that's the first step the first reason why i'm capable of making mistakes whether it's in my marriage whether it's the way i raise my children whether it's the way i relate to myself whether it's the way i live my life navigate my life is simply because i don't know i don't understand we all sometimes do the best we can with the tools that we have what if my tools are so limited and what if my uh tool chest you know the difference right between a jewish home and a non-jewish home right an andrew which home there's usually a whole floor dedicated to tools at least a whole garage dedicated to tools at least a shed and it has every conceivable tool the jews in the kitchen sometimes have a drawer and if you're lucky you'll find three or four tools because he wants to hire somebody always you hire somebody to do it so the bottom line is how big is my tool chest sometimes my tools are very very limited i have a few tools they say that somebody who's a hammer right the whole world looks like a nails the whole world appears nails because i'm a hammer that's what i know i don't know anything else so everybody everything and everybody is a nail i'll sure you can't blame the hammer that's what the chemistry of the hammer dictates so based sometimes i'm doing the best i can with the tools that i have these tools may be limited sometimes in life hopefully i acquire better tools my tools evolve my awareness evolves but this is one issue that we struggle with there's another issue and that is sometimes i do know but i simply don't feel that i have control i'm not clueless i simply feel weak depleted depressed or really stuck i i know i know this is wrong you know sometimes a guy tells me he's a good person he's he has terrible terrible anger issues terrible anger issues and so people told him you have to learn more muscle so he learned more muscle and he knows he knows and he makes a resolution every day he makes a resolution that he's gonna be better and he means it he's not a hypocrite he's a genuine person he can't help himself and he doesn't know why he can't help himself the reason is the real reason is because there's trauma in him he's stuck he's triggered in a way that's beyond his control he's really stuck the moment he realizes how stuck he is and why he's stuck he can begin to transcend it but just like para hashem says he has no choice he's literally stuck covered life power his heart is stuck i cannot i cannot take responsibility for every trigger that triggers me some of these triggers may be deep reactions based on things that happened to me or things i learned or things i experienced my choices what do i do now with it the reactions are reactions sometimes you react a certain way and if you get angry at yourself and you judge yourself for it you're actually judging the wrong person because that it's a survival skill that i may have developed at a very young age in order to survive this is so important to understand if i can examine and be aware of what's going on i could finally say i want to choose another path i want to choose how not to be dictated and controlled by that trauma by that inhibition so sometimes i know exactly what i'm doing wrong and i say i i'm not in control you have an addict sometimes an addict an uh somebody who was serious into addiction he came to see me and and he told me he says you don't understand i know that i'm destroying my life but when i'm triggered when i'm aroused when i'm experiencing this addiction everything else does not matter everything else is insignificant that's the disease of addiction something it's very hard to understand for somebody who doesn't understand that was brilliant now it's very hard to understand for somebody who doesn't understand but it's actually true and how does a person even begin to deal with that the first thing is awareness that i really have no control even if i know it's wrong so these are two different things there's cluelessness and there's the fact that i feel too weak or i feel i am enslaved to my trauma to my addictions to my triggers and therefore i just go back to those familiar pathways you know how when you're driving every day to the office or wherever you drive to at some point you don't even have to look where you're going because your neural pathways already take you down this road because you've been doing it a long time it's also true about our emotions that's also true about our behaviors there are highways in our brain that are so familiar to us i don't have to think about it i get into my steering wheel in the morning right i check the first email boom that's the highway they're called today in neuroscience neural pathways they're literally pathways that our brain is accustomed to travel down because those are our familiar pathways it takes 60 times of changing my behavior to begin cultivating new neural pathways it's acts like 60 times of getting lost right you know six times getting lost and finally choosing to take another highway and then finally your brain is okay there's another option but in the beginning it's that struggle these are my neural pathways these are two very very different issues speaks and he says la david hashem the first hashem my light and my salvation what is my light light offers clarity when it's dark in the room or it's light in the room everything is the same the people sitting are the same and the tables the furniture the props but i can't see anything when i'm walking in the street and it's dark when i'm walking in the street and light it's the same street the same ditches the same pitfalls the same holes the same bumps but there's a difference i can't see it so hashem audi hashem is my light the first thing david malek says is i need you god to be my light to be able to allow me to perceive reality to be able to allow me to see things to allow me to open my eyes i could sometimes live through life with closed eyes what does it mean with closed eyes i'm not talking about physically physically i may see the reality around me but emotionally i may be completely blind i may be not in tuned to the music the ball shrimp gave a famous metaphor of a man who comes to the city marketplace and he sees everybody dancing everybody and he comes home and he tells his wife this is a place of meshigoim we can't live here it's a place of jesus what happened what happened was everybody in the middle of the street dancing one thing he didn't understand he was death and he couldn't hear that there was an incredible musician who was playing music and the music was so heart stirring that everybody was dancing so in his mind everybody was crazy that's what he registered he was not insane and he was not cruel he just simply did not have the tools to be able to absorb another energy the balsamic was saying this about life sometimes people hear the music of life so they're dancing says ashira la shembe there's a beautiful song on that too i don't know if it's the london boys uh london school of jewish music or perch you know those songs yeah yeah the oldies the oldies who's at the london school of jewish music one of them huh you're dating yourself i'm dating myself somebody that was historian he didn't like jews so much his name was toynbee he used to call the jews the fossils of history they've been around for a long time but somebody doesn't hear the music i'm deaf to the music so i say alas everybody's sugar besides me you know the mice right there was a 90 year old he was having a birthday so his wife said what can i get you for your birthday he says you know i never drove in my life maybe you can help me get a license and lisa carr she says with pleasure and she helps train him and he gets his license and his 90th birthday he goes on the highway he's on the palisades or on the fdr and his wife calls him and she says hi my ankle how is it going he says it's amazing what a birthday gift it's amazing it feels like i'm in a go-kart in an amusement park you know like the bumping cars it's gevaldic she says kai mjanko be very careful because i just turn on the radio i just turn on the radio then on the fdr literally there is one car going in the opposite direction tells his wife one car all the cars besides mine are going in the opposite direction so uh it really happened okay that i didn't know okay it was his 90th birthday present okay [Laughter] we all laugh but how often does this happen in life especially when it comes to one's internal emotional world a mother told me the other day that her child is struggling terribly as a teen and he and he told her something happened to me but i'm not going to tell you what happened to me so at some point she asked him and she has a good relationship with him why would you not tell me what happened and he said because i told you already because i told you already six years ago what happened i'm not going to say it again now this woman is beside herself because she's sensitive and she's loving and she's giving but she never heard it and i don't think he said it as they say birach explicitly she would have heard it he said it in a way that he thinks he said shema bhikkheili could you listen to what is inside of my kyle wishmeyer culture for this i need to pray every day for a light for uh for vision who was it who was blind and deaf but she was an amazing helen keller helen keller once said the only thing that's worse than not having eyesight is lacking vision and she i saw she writes that somebody told came into her and said communicated to however they communicated with her that he or she just went on a hike in the forest so helen keller asked this person what was your experience like she said nothing nothing very significant to report about and she said i'm astounded what do you mean nothing significant for tell me about the sounds that you heard tell me about the colors that you have seen tell me about the vegetation that you observed what do you mean nothing significant some people hear the music everywhere and they see the light everywhere they're open they're attuned to life they're alive now save me from my own cluelessness because the first prerequisite of light is to realize the fact that i need to realize to realize the fact that i need to listen to realize the fact that i need to open myself up to my own inner wisdom to others wisdom most supposedly to divine wisdom to authentic wisdom there's something else vishy my help my salvation my yeshua iri addresses those who make mistakes because of cluelessness i want to be able to have the vision to be able to see what is appropriate what is inappropriate what is right what is wrong to be able to see what is happening inside of me if he she is i may have clarity but i need help i need resilience i need strength i'm stuck i'm stuck in my cycle i'm stuck in my orbit i'm stuck in my blockages i'm stuck in my addictions i'm stuck in my habits i'm stuck in those same neural pathways vishy help me literally help me this is the first hashem this is kaidam this is before i make a mistake so there's oye addressing the ignorance the cluelessness i need you to be a light to clarify to crystallize to show me truth and vishy to help me when i simply don't feel i have control i feel i don't have control to be able to show me my own infinity to be able to show me that my posture is aligned with god's infinity then there's the second hashem i made mistakes i messed up what now there's a new hashem hashem a second hashem i mean there's a new name and that is the strength of my life the oys the resilience of my life the ability to be able to have the strength to pick myself up after a mistake and learn from it and create a new future this takes a tremendous sense of moist a tremendous strength of inner confidence and resilience and strength so the oily vishi is what precedes my mistake it helps me focus it helps me be in a position where i know i always have lights with me and i always have yishi with me but then there's hashem to be able to give me the noise to give me the strength the kaiser the ability that even if i fell and even if i stumbled and even if i made mistakes i can pick myself up i can recreate myself i can learn from my past to create a glorious future and to be the author of my future my biography this is hashem you're giving me a new strength in life because it's so easy when people have made mistakes willingly or unwillingly maybe inadvertently maybe because of a lack of clarity maybe because of lack of control it's so easy to end up in the new abyss called guilt what was was and it's destined to be like that for the rest of my life to be able to have the noise the inner resilience and eyes power it takes power hashem it's also one more thing and that is it gives your life a new strength a new power as khazal says there's nothing that could compare to the power of transformation a person who went through trials and tribulations who failed who stumbled and you emerge from that more sensitive more empathetic there's a certain strength about your life there's a certain inner light and confidence and clarity that exists only because of those experiences that i endured you simply can't compare it you can't give it at sadhaka is a govaldika thing but i'll say in brock island quotes in the laws of truth where about truth stands that santa can't stand why because when i descend into darkness and then i know how to take my darkness and transform it into light it's a different type of light it's just a different level your empathy is different your depth is different your conviction is different your clarity is different your leadership skills are different think about i had last night as a zoom with an organization called my team my team is an organization dedicated for girls and young women who suffer from chronic illnesses non-life threatening but chronic illnesses and these are basiaco girls girls from hasidic schools young women and they come together they come together so we had we had a zoom and they asked some very interesting and also challenging and tough questions but i shared with them something and it meant a lot to them but like i realized how true it is and how authentic it is and that is i told them you know the only people who really can change the world are people who know what pain looks like this is not an explanation or rationalization or justification we don't know the reasons for a lot of the pain in our world but one thing is clear you all know this in your life when you hear when you hear a class or a lecture or a you have a conversation with somebody who understands what you're talking about and what you're going through not from the books but from their guts from their from their soul from their neshama that's the only real advice we can listen to it's a whole different level of advice when you hear such people it resonates and it pierces through all the layers and it touches you in your gut right away why because you feel the authenticity of it and there's nothing that can replace that authenticity you know i love when there's these conversations about how to deal with your teenagers and you have these mothers or fathers who have been parents for like three months you know they're walking around barak hashem with a carriage mazel tov simmons and they'll give you brilliant advice about how to raise kids in 2021 and they have all the wisdom in the world because they heard sixty euro they went to a six-month seminar and you know the mothers and the bubba's looking like yeah you know call me back in 25 years and we'll have a conversation there's just nothing like life experience there's nothing like the authenticity that comes from life experience once said that there's an amazing thing was once uh he used to collect money for pidyn to liberate jews from prison and somebody once informed upon him and he ended up in prison and he was in prison he was so upset he says reporter shalom i dedicate my life to free your children from prison this is how you reward me as he's complaining and expressing himself and he was really really frustrated so there was this this cleaning lady in the prison who walks into the room and is sweeping and as she's sweeping she's covered up but she's sweeping this is a ukraine and she turns to men she says you seem upset he says yeah i'm upset about something maybe you want to tell me what he's not going to start sharing his conversations with god to ukrainian cleaning lady in the ukrainian prison but she's like you know he didn't even feel it was so appropriate was from the saddiquim of the generation he says to her i'm upset that i dedicate my life to liberate people from prison and this is where i end up in and i'm an innocent man so she says to him you forgot the pasta since when does this gentle ukrainian cleaning lady know who knows maybe she's a very from catholic greek orthodox woman who knows the bible backwards and forwards he said what are you talking about he said hashem tells him so rasheed says what's go for you it's for your benefit what was the benefit nakam says what so she says avraham avinu was the great magnus ira he was the great host of the world everybody knew his tent is open all four sides you get a hot warm meal you get an embrace and you get a real place where you can feel at home and comfortable a home away from home but can somebody be a real host if they don't know what it feels like to be a refugee you can be a real host i want you to become a refugee i want you to relocate i want you to be on the road so you'll understand what it means to be a guest and then you'll be able to be a host she says rebecca could you really do the mitzvah of pigeons shvm if you don't know what it is to sit in prison that's why you're sitting in prison she's like russia as i share here's the prison anyway she continues cleaning she walks out he gets out comes to the balsham walks through the balchemtev says tell me what does it feel like to hear a torah directly from sorry meno what is it to hear a torah directly from sarah tell me what it's like yeah but what does this really mean ashrei maskalal dal shmayabikal shayfer the moist hayai the real strength of life when i go through something and then i transform it when negative energy becomes a catalyst for positive energy there is no nuclear energy as powerful as intense as that and everybody needs to know when you're facing a trauma when you're facing an addiction when you're facing a real challenge in life at the surface it seems so so overwhelming and so on fear and so unjust and there's room for grief no question about it and sometimes many tears but know that inside that lay my is high i lay the key to the strength of your life to you or me becoming the person i was meant to become i could live my life weak not really flexing my muscles not really actualizing my strength never becoming the person miner shaman and my guff were supposed to become this is the path to really find the ultimate strength to be the ultimate strong powerful person to extract the deepest deepest light that can change the world so i told these girls i said i'm not explaining anything i just want you to know that it's people like you who will become our future leaders i just want you to know that i don't know that it comforts i don't know that it gives solas i don't it doesn't eliminate pain but i just want you to have perspective that it's people like you who become the blueprint who become the navigators who become the gps's god's positioning system and show us how to navigate our own ways that's why the first time he says era the second time he says rashid says in parishes akev is for something that's distant is something that's immediate you know you say there's like a lion comes into the room there's parka there's no urine your amygdala starts firing the head it's dangerous that's it's a media dredge right here yira is more it's more intellectual it's a fear you think about the future you think about things that could happen jews are good at that right it's called worrying worry i would say worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair it keeps you busy but it gets you nowhere but not much like a rocking chair but nonetheless we have year that's now you'll see the precision in his words hashem hashem odi the light and the salvation is before the mistake i don't have what to fear that in the future i'm going to ruin i'm going to destroy hashem sky is after i made the mistake now there's already a pocket it's already here it's vivid i messed up so he says but you're the strength of my life you're not only my light and my salvation you're my sky therefore me me ephrat therefore i don't look at mistakes as invitations for depression i look at mistakes sins transgressions available as catalysts for awareness as springboards for transformation it's the opportunity to transform and experience as sorry no or a cleaning ukrainian lady told your bank this is the experience you go through to be able to truly help people liberate themselves from their shackles if i never tasted those shackles can i understand what those shackles feel like and help you out how could i i can't if the iframa didn't know the feeling of the guest how can he really really appreciate it how can he really be that host if so now we come down down to the akkas hashem namely if you look at this whole capital in tehillim you'll see that david malik is not riding from a place of serenity and tranquility he's lying on a hammock on a beautiful august day drinking a nice drink reading a lovely book that's not what he's writing about be craving sorry people want to eat my flesh whoa there's a platoon that's descending on me later he'll speak about my father and mother abandoned me basham yasmini all the same capital to hillary this is a man struggling come over a day false witnesses have risen up to testify falsely about me the album says he's talking about the witnesses who came to his father-in-law's show and testified that he is engaged in treason so his father and mother abandoned him and then he finally gets married and his father-in-law the mightiest the king of israel wants to pursue him and kill him he goes to the prison and there he has to feign insanity to be able to escape the clutches of the piston because the king wants to kill him what does such a person usually ask for when a fugitive prays what do you ask for i would ask for to die a natural death i would ask for a roof over my head i would ask for maybe a clean set of garments maybe a morsel of bread and a cup of water to quench my thirst maybe somebody somewhere to live for a few weeks and months with tranquility without anybody pursuing me that's what we ask for basic survival what does david malach ask for i want to sit in the house of hashem all the days of my life how does that happen surab abba barakahana says let me teach you how royalty thinks let me teach you how aristocracy prays let me teach you how nobility navigates life at no moment in his life the david hamela ever believe he's a petty person he never allowed his circumstances to reduce him to a smaller person who just asks for basic requests not because he didn't need bread and didn't need a knife didn't need a roof over his head but because always had his eyes on his truest and deepest potential he had his eyes fixed on eternity he was a king inside even as a fugitive and refugee you couldn't eliminate from him you couldn't extricate from him his inner malhouse his inner dignity his inner nobility so even under these dire circumstances he says i ask for one thing i want to dwell in the house of hashem hashem to gaze at his glory lavacre to visit his sanctuary the one thing i want is intimacy with the divine he asks for many things many details but it all comes down to how does it come to achas hashem says you're asking for one are you asking for many david says this i learned from you that in life i could connect to achas i could connect to oneness and that all my desires and all my requests i see all as a derivative of one of oneness is teaching is not that he only wants one thing it's that really what everybody wants is only one thing if i could see and go down to the core of any request sometimes i don't understand it sometimes i'm confused about what i really want sometimes i don't even know what i really want but what i'm really looking for is akhas what is that i want to be attached i want to be connected i want to be one with the source of all life i want to be who i really am which is a manifestation of divine oneness of akhas this is this is something i need from you to be able to connect to that oneness in every situation to be able to see every experience of life not as fragmented and broken and separate but all part of that vacant all part of that intimacy with hashem with the reborn of shalom that's what he was a king even as a fugitive because kingship doesn't begin from the masses coronating you ado but him call you so nivera hashem was a king before there was anybody there there was nobody there malchus is inside sometimes there's a lot of people sometimes there's nobody sometimes is hiding in a cave he still thinks like a mellah and therefore even in this situation he says you're audi you're ishi you're you're you're you're mimi efrat i want to conclude with a story i heard it not long ago a friend of mine a special jew from his name is ripped moldova friedman authored the swarm of uh daffodil from gemara and he told me she heard this story from the person himself so this is not a story claire vik like hamishi the chief rabbi of antwerp for many years was a jew named chrisworth zach he was a student in yeshiva's before the war he survived he was a legendary talmud a great communicator great scholar great teacher in christ which and he said he had a visa to get out of eastern europe during the war and one day there was a jew who knew that soon the transports will begin and he came over to him who was then a young man a bach and he said i am going to be on the transport i don't think i'm going to come out alive years ago i have opened up a swiss bank account and i placed a huge amount of money into that account he says nobody knows the information for that account so i'm giving you all this is before the days of course of credit cards but i'm giving you all the information and passwords for the account so that you'll remember that and one day if you meet a relative of mine please pass him on this information so you can go to switzerland and claim this huge amount of money that laid there in the swiss bank and reprime cries where it said i remembered all the information he had to give aldi kasich i remembered all the information and i carried it in my brain i escaped i ended up in antwerp in belgium antwerpen and years years have passed you know the story lays somewhere in the back of my brain one day it's a quarter of a century later it's around 25 years later i'm finishing chakras and shul i'm folding up my talus rolling up my filling and there's a jew who comes into shul and he's collecting money as is the min higg in many shoals and i always give sadaka i look at this jew and i see he's not just poor he's literally in rags there's not a single garment that is complete he is literally in rags and he comes over to me stukka it's took a little charity so i give him siddhak and then i say shalom i didn't know him from who's it where are you from in antwerp and everybody speaks yiddish till today it's the only community in the world where you have eden today yiddish is khasidam speaking it's very hard to find a jew without a beard who speaks daily affluent yiddish and the whole community but an antwerp but still it's still a reality because that yiddish remained there today the community they all speak yiddish which is amazing and a great gift for the yiddish language but others is not and it used to be different but everybody speaks yiddish them and i was there a little while ago before corona was really interesting to see to hear actually anyway speaking mark different what was it he tells he tells you abraham cries with his name and you know an alarm goes off in the name the name i know this name it's the last name of the jew who was going to the death camps but understood that it was a huge sum of money is not just going to spill the beans so he says where do you come from who's your father who's yezeda which teto we're family where do you live now the jew says i have nowhere to live. i don't have a penny to my name he says who gave to us he said i don't know where my next meal is going to come from from this money that you gave me i am homeless i live day to day i have nothing if we're not cops i'm a really poor man i have nothing how long are you planning to be here he says i'm planning to be here two weeks until i get enough money to travel to the next place rebecca and crystal starts suspecting that this is family he says okay he begins doing research he has two weeks he begins doing research he sees in the next day he does some more questioning some more investigation after a few days he's convinced that he is the child of the jew who was murdered during the holocaust and after he finishes his investigation one day after chakras he comes for his sadaka and ibrahim cries which says i need to share something with you and he says what i want to share with you is that you are a multi-millionaire i'm telling you the truth you are a very very wealthy jew i should ask you fernando so we could renovate sure he says what are you talking about he says i have a story to tell you and he shares with him this story the conversation he had with his father days before he was sent to the death camps the information that he has he writes down all the information for him he says gay to the schweitz not far from belgium okay to the schweitz go to switzerland go to this in this bank and claim your money and the jew took the piece of paper he went to switzerland he claimed the money indeed he was transformed into a very very wealthy jew the brim cries with looks at moldova and he says and at that moment i realized you can have a person who is presently wealthy affluent powerful but they just don't know it in their mind they're impoverished they're broken they have nothing they're homeless they don't have a respectable attire garment to put on in reality they have all the money in the world that's what i learned at that moment and essentially this is what rabbit was saying this is what david malek was saying sometimes i could look in the mirror physically or psychologically and what do i feel like i feel who am i i'm a piece of trauma i'm a piece of depression i'm a piece of addiction i'm a mistake i'm a loser i'm a network case and i have proof look what i did yesterday look what i did last week look what am i going to do tomorrow look at this relationship of mine look at this issue look at this mess up look at this crisis if if if only this one was healthier my mother my father my brother my sister my rabbit the world the universe the community me my psyche but it's not that way even when physically he had nothing he knew he has everything because his kingship was internal hashem the most critical thing in life said was a person needs to know how wealthy you are how affluent you are how rich your spirit how glory is your soul how connected your brain your posture your posture is aligned with infinity it's a manifestation of hashem's light hashem salvation hashem strength the fact that there are voices in my brain that tell me that i'm in rags that i have nothing that i'm empty those are voices that come from blockages they're normal they're human i have to have compassion for them but one has to know who am i malchus shah have a wonderful week and thank you very much hashem we will continue this class next tuesday same time same place 12 45