Neuropathways for Teshuva - Rebbetzin Dina Schoonmaker

good evening everyone my quandry tonight was what to speak about there's so many different angles of preparation for this time of year so I want to start with something which is a little bit different we're really right before Rashana and a lot of times we feel that the themes of the Yum Kipper davening are more relevant to us than the themes of the rashash Shad daving yon Kipper is really about introspection about think about your actions and you as an individual but rashishana really is a very metaphysical Global message if I have to summarize all of the rashash DAV in three words it would be Hashem he's the king and we say it again and again and again and again for two days straight and the question then becomes well who else why do I need to be convinced I know he's the king in fact in different stages of Jewish history we were sometimes theologically challenged by Christianity by Islam Today religion is not that powerful and most of us don't have all kinds of quandries about who the real God is so when I say Hashem who what actually am I trying to internalize that needs to be said in so many different ways so I was once thinking that the biggest contestant in competition to AEM in modern society is me I'm the king I want things to go my way and I find that we can talk about the fact that we are living in a very entitled Society where people like to get their way but I don't even look at it so much from that perspective I think that as Jewish women we hold a lot of control over our lives I once was talking to a secular psychologist family psychologist and he said to me all religious woman that he knows are control freaks he says and I forgive all of you because you have such so many pieces to your life that if you don't hold it all together very tightly it all falls apart so you become very controlling yeah we're going to keep that a secret um and therefore when we say Hashem there's this interesting dissonance that many things don't go our way in life and yet we still are convinced that we'll try to get things to go our way as much as possible so manipulate a little here use a little protexia there a little drama here a little here there I'll get it done and therefore when we say Hashem and Rashana we are internalizing the fact that he really is running the world in fact when we bow we're basically saying your way your first you're in the centor I'm a supporting actress one of the many and I don't write the script here when you God agree with what I had in mind then things will go my way but when you have a different plan things will actually go your way and my job is to be able to be curious as to why your way is better than mine and that's not always so easy for us so therefore for two days straight we say Hashem hasem to remind ourselves that not only is he omnipotent and he could do anything but he's also omniscient and he knows everything and I'm really neither I don't I can't do everything and I also don't know always what's best even though I think I know what's best so is a very strong exercise in subjugation to higher authority and to allow God to run his world and to try to get on board with his rat Zone whatever it would be in fact rev nanson says that you have a very basic question that I ask every year which is that the order of the madim seemed to be very mixed up if you had to choose if you had to unscramble between russan sh Yer and El you probably would say SRA goes first so first which is Chua yomer should come first then comes a now let's coronate the king in our clean clothing after we've done chuva and then the culmination of this process is an now me and God are very close but we come straight from our summer vacation into an then we coronate the king in our not yet clean clothing and we culminate the process with doing two fight doesn't seem to make sense so if nanel says that the only way to understand why rashash comes before yum Kipper is that there must be something about rashash that's a prerequisite for yum Kipper and will make Yumer more effective so he brings a Masha like this over the year there's accumulation of things that I've done wrong we'll talk about that a little later about having a good attitude towards those things we'll talk about that now I can either attack one thing at a time it's like a bit a building that I just take you know I knock down one brick lanara another brick shabas another brick or if you remove the foundation of the building then the bricks come tumbling down nanel says there must be something about rashash Shana that if we get it right on rashash Shana we actually remove the foundation of ha and all the sins come toppling down with that idea in mind hasem when you really internalize it and I thought I was going to get ahead by cheating a little bit and I thought that I was going to have a better you know more be more popular if I talk linara I thought I would manipulate to get my way if he runs the world then everything seems ridiculous because anything I do with my agenda has to fit with his and then it kind of makes the whole Yung Kipper gives a perspective okay by the way why El before rashash Shana so here are answers coming from Ram pinkas pinkas said that when you enter rashash Shana with all the things that you hope and ask for for the new year if you don't have a month of vanila DOI V DOI Le coming first it's like a relationship that a person has with a vending machine you come over to the Coca-Cola machine and you pick your you know drink of choice a Diet Coke you press the button the king the the the the the machine is asking you for 10 shekel so you feed it the money that's asking for then you press the button and you you wait for it to deliver the goods and if it doesn't deliver you'll kick a little here and hit a little here till you get what you want another mashal for this is when you as a parent have a child teenager maybe who's not so communicative and you wish you had a relationship with them but they don't seem so interested and one night they knock on your door and they say to you hi Mom can I come in can we talk you're like of course the moment I've been waiting for they sit down in your bed and say can I have the car keys so when we enter Rashana without an we're like asking Hashem for things not based on a relationship so is I am in a relationship with you Hashem you take care of me you see me you care about me and I want to show up and be the best person in this relationship therefore I'm going to ask you for a few things not as a hand over the car keys but rather I really believe that if I didn't have to deal with this health issue or this financial issue or this struggle with this family member I'd be so much more available to be the best version of myself in your new world and that's why I'm asking for those things it's a completely different attitude we say this in the ding starting in we say for your good for your good are we such angels that we don't want anything for ourselves so there is a he says when you say you don't mean that you don't want this for yourself as well you're a human being you'd like Health you'd like popularity you'd like success you'd like whatever you're asking for you have your own personal reasons and that's fine but is asking to evaluate on the Continuum between very selfish reasons for wanting something and very altruistic reasons for wanting something I want to pull myself off the Continuum a little bit and say Hashem I need this for myself but I also want to make your world a better place and I'll use that gift whatever I'm asking for to make your world a better place and that's when we say we're challenging ourselves if you were to give this to me Hashem how would I be able to use it to make your world better there is a masal that R salandra used to give for this you can ask for the same thing without this attitude or with this attitude but it totally changes the dialogue because let's say a person wants to buy a hammer because he needs a hammer so he goes into a hardware store and he says can I have a hammer please and they say sure that will be 25 shekel or whatever it costs he has the money he pays and then he owns the hammer if a person is in in someone's home and came to fix something that was broken in the home and says to the homeowner can I have a hammer please the homeowner doesn't say that will be 25 she he says sure he hands over the hammer because I came to use this to fix your house and who pays who at the end the home owner pays the worker the person who came to fix the home when we ask for things and we think of we're saying Hashem these are the things I'd like to use in my toolbox to make your world a better place it's not about buying it and purchasing it I don't have to pay for it he gives it to me for free and he gives me reward for using those things to fix his home his world and that's our in so this is why ell comes first I have to be in a relationship to care enough to think can care about his world want to help his people and after the year that we've been through there's a lot of things that we want to heal and if we use our gifts that God gave us to heal his world it's what we're here for and this is a very important aspect to think about dafa this year so much healing needs to take place and if you Hashem if you make this easier for me I'll I'll be more dedicated I'll be more able to focus on the needs of your children and your people and your land and that is our kavana so I want to add something to this when we say on rashash he is the king there's another way to look at this which is that this is an exclusive statement he is the king and not anyone else and the it's fascinating he says how do you go into those words and say them with good preparation he [Music] says which means getting rid of the imaginary partners of God what does that mean so I might feel like this God runs my life but so does my boss God God runs my life but so does my mother-in-law God runs my life but so does that child who's wreaking havoc in the house so Hashem hasim he has imaginary partners because he's not really only controlling my life it's something else that's controlling my life so ravanel says that if you prepare properly for Rashana you ask yourself is there anything that's sharing the throne with God that I'd like to remove because I want him to be the the king and not other things to dominate my life and there's a fine line between something influencing your life and something controlling your life and that's what we're trying to focus on you know some people are interested in food or interested in fashion or interested in technology and some people are dominated by food by fashion and technology so the question is do I have a is there something that's up there that doesn't really shouldn't be sharing the throne with God and when I say Hashem I want to ask myself this question so I want to share with you a method that I've been thinking about this year for preparing for as shashana so I'll give a little preamble to this story but how do you know if there's a sh if there's something that's controlling and how what do you do about it by the way there are people who have children in Chim and Chim can control your life or it can be a sugya in my life that doesn't dominate me sometimes there's even a friendship that is too powerful we have a concept called limerance which is relationship obsessiveness and some people have so much concern about what a certain friend thinks about them that that's up there controlling their life so there's a lot of different forms of what what the what the what this shitu could be I want to share with you um a thought that I had I said to myself how am I going to know if there's something controlling my life so some of you probably think already ah I know what's controlling my life and you have the idea sometimes it's not so obvious to us so I want to share with you a certain skill that I've been working on this year this is based in a story not story it's based on a little bit of a pre which is that I always feel a little bit guilty about something I have a weekly since October 7th I have a weekly um article in Bina Magazine on bahon now what bothers me about it this is the part that I feel guilty is that I don't write up those articles a very dear student friend of mine Leia hman who's very brilliant she writes up the Articles and I get the credit for them but she's absolutely brilliant and much more articulate than me and all I do really is that she listens to audio sh of mine from years ago she writes them up and then she sends them to me for approval and since she can articulate everything much better than I can she always gets my approval but as I'm getting older and I'm getting a little rusty sometimes my memory sometimes I'll open an article that she wrote based on a sheer from years ago I'm like did I say that I don't remember these ideas I forgot them already it's like new to me so I'm getting a new Shear as I'm reading what she writes up about what I had said so a bunch of weeks ago she sent me an article and I've had that response I'm like wow did I really say this I it's all new to me and that example I gave that example really is all new to me but what was interesting was that one of the examples that I brought from maybe 10 years ago was something that had actually happened to me in real life that week the week that she wrote that article and a few days after it happened she wrote it to me and it was an interesting um you know moment and it ties into our idea of hashm M the article was entitled thear in chabas shabas lad Alf says that after a person's life after me EST he goes up to Sham and he's asked many questions about his life and one of the questions that he's asked is K tah did you set time for Torah learning now the gamar doesn't say did you learn Torah but rather did you set time and I aidea that we're trying to develop here is that when you have a set time for something it reflects a certain level of a value you can try to catch a little Torah here a little Torah there but when when when somebody has their set Shear that they go to it shows something about their value system and it reflects something about them I think about somebody who goes to the office to make money and he stops the middle of the day for his daom so first of all he's showing that Torah learning is really important to him but also it's showing that he believes that since money comes from Hashem anyway then if I shut my office for an hour to go to air I'm not going to lose any money so really he's showing his how much he identifies with the principle but also how much God runs the world and the concept of of having a set thing that are important to you and I think that this can be conceptualized beyond the concept of just of Torah it's anything that I believe in that's a value that I have a set way that I do this and we don't realize how much not only are we strengthening our value but we're leaving a legacy for our loved ones as to how much this is important to us I read a really cute Story Once I saw a few versions of this but it was a cute uh demonstration of this there was a certain woman who writes that when she was a Kala when she was engaged her college teacher gave a very strong message about beauty and cosmetics and said to her that unfortunately in The Wider World a lot of people walk around feeling very slumpy in their house and then when they have to go out somewhere they take up their makeup and they put on these Nice Nice Clothing and the message is you guys don't matter to me so much when I go out I have to look really nice so the college teacher kind of said maybe we should think of how to give a different message so this young newly married girl started at a very early stage and she said I developed a that five minutes before my husband would walk into the house I would stop what I was doing take out my makeup bag and put on a little bit makeup freshen up for him then when I had children I would look at my sweatshirt and if the meatballs that the kids had thrown across the table had landed on my shirt I would go change and i' fresh it up with some makeup and she said I was strengthening a value for myself but what she didn't realize she she said is how much her children were affected by it until one day it was the afternoon she wasn't feeling so good and she fell asleep on her couch and five minutes before her husband came home the six-year-old says to the 5-year-old quick quick Alba's coming in five minutes they ran and brought her makeup bag and started making her up so she said my husband walked into a sleeping clown but I never realized how much I'd given a message over to my children and that's the concept of something that you do you could talk about Concepts but when a lot of times when someone is sitting shiva my mother always whatever my father always and then our question is how are they going to fill the blanks about us my mother always counted calories or my mother always greeted people with a smile when she ran into them and what's what always is going to be said about us and what does it reflect about our values so I was thinking that sometimes we ask ourselves what are the constants in my life and what are the variables and do they reflect my values so I will say that bunch of years ago when I gave that Shear I gave an example this is a hard one let's say you have a woman who does exercise for half hour a day on a treadmill and she's proud of it it's good it's h it's good for her health it's a good value but 20 minutes into her exercise routine the baby starts crying so the question is what's the constant and what's the variable if the constant is that I don't let a baby cry needlessly for a long time she may have to painfully pull herself off the treadmill before she finished her half hour in order to tend to the baby but if the constant is I need to get my half hour in no matter what and she might actually leave the baby crying for 10 minutes so that she could finish her half hour routine so sometimes we have conflicting values that we have to ask ourselves what's the constant here and what's the variable okay why is this important I brought that example many years ago and then I had an example like this that just happened but I want to give you another example that barash didn't make it to the article I myself went through a certain period of life where for five years I had no sugar and I was so proud of it it was really great to not have any involvement with sugar and I was something I was proud of I went to visit my aunt who at the time was probably around 95 years old and she says to me Dina I baked you cookies and I find myself saying to her oh I'm so sorry Anita but I don't e sugar and then I stopped myself I said what's wrong with you she's 95 years old she doesn't even see so well and she baked you cookies if you have one cookie it's not going to do something so terrible and what's the constant and what's the variable if the constant is I don't have sugar and the variable is hurting my great an's feelings then maybe there's something here that's a little mixed up maybe the constant has to be that I don't hurt somebody's feelings and the variable is I try not to eat sugar as much as possible but sometimes we have chances to ask ourselves these questions so the example of the treadmill with the you know baby crying after 20 minutes was an example that I brought many years ago and now I have a application that happened that same week earlier before Le hman sent me the article I in the beginning of the summer it was Midsummer it was at right after Tish I think I went on a little vacation with my husband to Kut Lai and um and the L when I when I had to pack up you know it often works out that the woman's swimming overlaps with like the checkout time so I quickly went to get my stuff together but by the time I made it down to the pool it was a half hour left to swimming now recently now that my youngest is Young I get a chance is older already I get a chance to do some things that I never got a chance to do and I got into swimming 40 minutes a day as many days a week as I can and I'm very proud of it it's good for my health it's good for emotional health physical health it's all good I like to get in 40 minutes a day so I went down to the pool and there was only half hour left to the swimming time by the time I got there I said okay you know what half hour is still good I get into the water and 22 minutes into my time the Lifeguard blows her whistle and says everyone out of the water now Israeli lifeguards have a certain dut she was this tall very you know you know she she had this very special look to her she's probably in her 70s she looked like she was around 20 and she's like this like strong you know is really a lifeguard and she blows her whistle everybody out of the water now I look around and nobody's getting out of the water she was not religious and the crowd of people in the water were religious my atahar says to me you know Dena you can get a few extra minutes of swimming because it's going to take her quite a while to get everyone out of the water right now you don't have to be the last one out but you don't have to be the first one out and get in an extra few minutes because she has to no one's listening to her and then similar to like the story with the great ant all a sudden I said to myself what's wrong with you 22 2 minutes plus KES Hashem is not going to do better for your health than 40 minutes or a half hour and who actually runs Health anyway Hashem he runs Health he runs finances he runs everything so I pulled myself out of the water at 22 minutes wasn't so easy for me I decided you know what I was so upset of myself I said you're going to be the first one out of the water so I got out first I guess Hashem wanted want it to be a defining moment for me because after I got dressed I went to the lobby and the lifeguard was there and she recognized me maybe I was the only person she didn't have to fight with that day and she started talking to me and around two minutes into our conversation she told me that she has a son who was murdered in Nova this year and the rest of our conversation was talking about everything she's been through this year and her family's been through and ends up we exchange contact information and we keep in contact with each other and just the other day I get a message to her Shalom Doos nobody calls me that she's the only one what are your thoughts about rashash what are you thinking about as you ENT as you're going to D in and we have an ongoing dialogue I think Hashem wanted me to know that sometimes you have to figure out what's your constant and what's your variable and why am I saying all this in the context of hashm because if you would have asked me in a vacuum do you believe in offending 95y old ladies who bake you cookies I would say never if you ask me would you believe that a a woman should have to fight with you to get out of the water and especially you know KES hasem that you know I'm a religious person I would say of course K is one of the biggest Mitzvah but all a sudden I realized that my exercise thing became up there it was dominating me too much because if I'm sacrificing principles that I believe in for my exercise that means that that is too has too much control over my life and I never would have realized it if it wasn't for that question what's the constant and what's the variable what's becoming variables are things that are my my priorities k m too those are my main priorities if something is making me compromise those priorities then that thing has too much contr control over me and sometimes I have students who tell me you know I feel so guilty I find that when I'm around a certain person I tend to be more cynical make fun of people and it's not like me I'm not the type so in my mind what goes down is that there's two things that control your life Hashem and that friend because if that friend is making you sacrifice your principles then that's too much control so if nitel says that our goal is to get rid of the imaginary partners of God and shamay and I think that this is a good exercise towards because for those of us who find the rashash daving sorry to be very abstract we want to think about how we could use this to clarify our goals and our values so that was my thought for this year and um it's interesting as I teach different groups I try to tweak the idea to wherever the struggle might be so I teach a group of very newly married young mostly Americans who come here for a year or two newly married and they're an intimidating group in a certain way because they all dress beautifully and look beautiful and some people tell me that they moved out of that share because it was intimidating to be with that group so they moved into a sh would never had such a perfect and I was thinking about the cot and thinking about the constants and variables so I said something that I think was hard because I saw they looked like they were sweating after I said it I said imagine that you're shopping online and you found the perfect color shirt to match the outfit and they even have it in your size except it's very low in stock and you're about to put through the order and your husband walks through the door sharisha newly married there's no AA to say to him wait one minute I'm putting through this order but I said to the girls I want to tell you from someone who's much older than you that if you can't stop to greet a loved one at the door this is only the beginning of your married life there's going to be a million reasons why you can't stop and greet so there's no halaha that says you have to do this I said will the shirt be available after you greet and talk to him for a few minutes the answer is as we say in Hebrew it might be and it might not be but I'm setting a that people deserve to be greeted an eye contact made and that's a top priority by me the variable is hopefully I'll get the shirt I even said to them you know Hashem is even in what's in your wardrobe because in the good old days when people used to stop in stores you'd walk into a store see a beautiful dress and ah they even have it in my size and sometimes it' be ah they don't have it in my size Hashem controls what makes it to your wardrobe so the same thing if it's low in stock it may be there in a few minutes it may not be there but we're setting a priority and a value when I speak to people in my stage of life I say shim can easily be because women tell me sometimes that when they are checking out sh for their kids it could become an obsession always on the phone always involved now the eight-year-old sweet little boy walks through the door at the end of his long day in school and those days are long days in school now what exactly did he do wrong that he has an a sister and him poor guy he's never gonna get his mother's attention ever again so if she can stop and make eye contact with him and ask him about his day she's reflect in that everybody here counts and that bonon sh one extra phone call now is not what's going to Make It or Break It for this sh so I can stop and smile and give a good feeling to everybody so there's so many places we can go with these ideas but basically I'll leave you with the idea that what's the constant and what's the variable and when we ask ourselves that question if the if something that should be a constant by me is turning into a variable then maybe something else is controlling me too much and that's a question which I think many people can say that about technology that you know I have my use of technology and then I have the fact that I'm sacrificing important principles because of technology so maybe up there next to Hashem is my smartphone which is getting me to compromise values that I believe in so it's controlling me so everybody has their own M says everybody knows their own story and where they need the work and it's a very very personal thing I want to share one more idea as we wind down for today why are we doing all this why sit there and think what's the constant what's the variable what do I want to change what do I want to strengthen there's something that's very beloved to Hashem and that's the concept ofes I often compare Nissan to El in Nissan when we have to clean our houses for pesak we cratch and cratch and cratch but then when you finally get to pesak and you gave away tons of stuff to a Gak and all the junk got thrown away you finally find the things that you were looking for all winter that you couldn't find and you know exactly what your sweaters are and they're organized you feel good and I always say to myself I wonder what people who don't actually keep PESA if they're not particularly cleanliness and neat oriented they could have 50 years of accumulation and never get it decluttered so El is a spiritual form of of of of Nissan it's the spiritual decluttering it's the making order and once a year Hashem gives us the gift of some kind of time period by which he wants us to be done because people who don't have those time periods go through 50 years of clutter and not understanding why they keep getting into trouble in this area or that area can't get along with this person they never sat and analyzed it so Hashem gives us the gift once a year of saying I'm gonna give you a time to actually sit and make some Seder in there and get to know yourself better this is very beloved to Hashem I'll end by saying a quick story that my husband told two weeks ago that really blew me away and it taught me some something about why we want to does this time the story goes and this is a true story about a rebi in a boy little boy School in a milary school where one of the little boys comes over to his Reby and says rebby somebody stole my watch and the rebby has to think how to deal with this so it's a story that was circulating that some people have heard the rabie says to the kids empty out the contents of your pockets and your tiim your bags and put it on your personal table and turn turn around and look at the wall so you won't see what people put on the table so the children do this and they're looking at the wall and the boy who stole the watch is sitting there waiting for the moment of public humiliation soon the Reb's going to come he's going to see the watch he had no choice he had to empty his pocket and the re's gonna find it and then I'm every everyone's going to know I'm a Rober he waits and waits for the moment to come he feels the Reby coming to his desk and then the Reby passes by his desk he didn't say anything and the child was pretty surprised by this point the rby already had the wallet in his the watch in his pocket finishes going through the class all the kids turn around and the rby says it looks like we have to keep looking implying that the robber was not one of the children in the class walks out of the classroom walks around a few classrooms in the school building comes back late and says I found we found the watch the child was so touched by the Reby not exposing him and not even implying him that it pierced his heart and he started learning much more seriously he started taking the Reb's messages very seriously he started working on himself it was the beginning of his upward trajectory many many years later as an adult he actually met the rebi somewhere and he says to the rebi I never told you this but when I was a young boy and you didn't expose me as the robber you saved my life because the direction I was going in before who knows where it would have gone and it totally turned me around and I went all the way up and the rebi said something amazing the Reby says to him I want you to know that up till this very moment I did not know that you were the robber because I wasn't looking as I collected the watches the the things from the table I myself didn't know which boy had taken it I was so moved by this story and I'll end with this Hashem says to us Hashem does not want to look at ouros but it's yadin he's making Law and Order in the world how do you make din without looking so the answer is The Magicians says if you do a on yourself then I don't need to look into your file and that rebi was communicating with the child not even knowing which child he was thinking that about I believe that if I don't get involved here you're going to own it and do your own process and hasem says if you do and you come to me with what you'd like to change doesn't have to be perfect but the fact that you owned it I want in in the world I want Law and Order I want seder I want decluttering I want spiritual Direction but I don't need to look and that is the message ofes that when we do the D down here doesn't have to do and that's what he wants even more so we should all take advantage of this beautiful time of year and this gift of introspection and Direction and Hal we should all bring many Yeshua to kille this year thank you [Applause] [Music]