Teshuva: Improvement or Transformation? Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

first of all a number of thank yous before I have the sacred task of introducing our beloved teacher Rabbi wre first all thank you to R to the entire k for opening your doors once again to us for this beautiful event and for partnering with us in bringing the Torah of the Orthodox Union to modim I want to thank our dear friends the fun family who have partnered with us in creating this entire series of community Torah Summits um creating these beautiful events that are now being replicated in communities throughout Israel and we thank them for dedicating once again dedicating this evening in all these programs for the continued merits of the Alat for their beloved parents David and Norma fund I want to particularly thank and acknowledge where our U Israel president pres Stewie hitz who's here with us this evening who really gives us every single one of us so much confidence and and empowers us to to bring what we can to put our hearts and soul into everything we do to inspire the Jewish people and we we learn from your example St so thank you for being here with us I also want to thank d as was already mentioned D Daniela halstein who is our on our o Israel board and was instrumental in bringing us here to Mo and we thank you Danielle for all your hard work I also want to thank my dear colleague and friend Rabbi David fine who you already heard from and Rabbi step Edinger who have also worked diligently to help bring these programs and the toor that of the OU to to modin so we thank you for your friendship and for all your assistance I I must take a minute of personal privilege and thank my incredible o ISO colleagues so many of you are here this evening and have put your heart and soul into as you always do but your heart and soul into bringing Torah to to communities across Israel and it's Aus to work with every single one of you just one year ago less than a year ago really we all many of us gathered here in this very same besset for an evening of inspiration and we were energized and left here flying ready for young Kipper and excited for the year ahead so much has changed over these past many months the world has been turned upside down but there's one thing we've learned throughout this experience is the incredible kak and capacity that am Amisa has to comfort one another Ru cook as a matter of fact when R cook in his magnum opus orot chuva he writes that one of the essential messages of these days of chuva is the capacity not only to transform ourselves but to heal one another through that transformation this evening I have the incredible honor to introduce our keynote speaker if there's anyone who is properly suited to guide us in the process of transformation and healing it's Marena verbu Rabbi Dr s wre Rabbi Wan's biography and I I get in trouble every time I try to to introduce him and he he always gets upset at me that I the accolades I throw his way Rabbi wer of course is the Beloved Executive Vice President ameritus of the Orthodox Union and he continues to be an incredible gift to us as as U Professionals in terms of his Sage advice his inspirational teaching and of course he's also renowned for his many many written works and prolific prolific speaking engagements but it's an honor for me and a for us all to introduce and welcome Marino verino Rabbi Dr SRE was okay this year thank you where I sure wasn't too bad this time there's a story told of aid who came to his Rabbi his RAB at this time of year and uh he was feeling kind of down if the ru he knew that many ways in this year he hadn't acted properly at least several times he was kind of entering into this season depressed so he came to the rebba for some advice so reab took out and turned to Capital kiml chapter 103 and he says what do you think this means go as far as as distant as East is from West so has has God distance from us our sins what do you make of this pule what does it mean to you east to west so the says oh RAB you made me more depressed because now I think that the distance between me and proper Chua proper self-improvement self- transformation is as distant as as far east to the Far West as distant as is from Mongolia to San Francisco I I can't how can I do chuva it's so far away from east to west so the rabbi answered him no you don't understand you know how far it is from east to west it's in Yiddish he would say a Dre one little term he's standing facing the East the West that's it it's not far at all but remember when you're changing and just turning a little bit just from degrees you're changing directions that's what Chua is all about changing your direction in life it's no small matter it's an easy thing to do it just turn around that's it but by doing so you can be facing the or kodes and then facing the wild west or you can be facing the wild west and facing the or and kodes there's a huge difference between the two but it's really a transformation that's doesn't take much effort on your parts this story for me kind of encapsulates the title of this particular talk which I've given in various various Gil gulim is chuva Improvement doing better or is chuva transformation is Tru truva personal change becoming a different person so I'd like to share with you several opinions on both sides of the coin and I'll begin with a a passage in the writings and there are very few writings from this very great teacher of mus the founder of the mus movement RAB is salant is salant lived in the middle to late 19th century and he created a movement the movement of studying musle works and living in a certain highly ethical um world and also in in being able to um emphasize getting along with other people there's a lot to be said about rabi is Sal and whatever reason he didn't leave us many writings but some of his brief writings are collected in a saer was put together by one of his and it's called or is and in this orus is translated by many people into English and other languages uh in letter letter number six he writes as follows the PK reads and this is a p that many of the basic texts of mus stress the Apostle reads if you search for it as you would search for silvero and if you search for it like would search for a hidden treasure fear of God the height of spirituality you have to look for it so he understands this P to mean say to imagine he's very much into Dion to imagine things imagine that you're a poor person and you have a small little business and you're just scraping by from month to month every the end of every month you look at your accounts and you see just how much money uh how much profit you made the past month and then in one month you see well this month I did a little bit worse than the previous several months so something's wrong I've got to fix it so the the person does is whatever he can some small thing he puts an air and Torah tidbits maybe you'll get more more uh uh customers just some small thing or suppose you wake up one morning and you're not feeling well not feeling well you have a headache kind of sore throat Etc you don't go running right away to get a CAT scan or MRI you take a couple of aspirins you know want drink some hot tea or chicken soup because that's all you need you know it's a small thing it's only a cold you do some small thing so you right this is the same thing with Chua you just got to do a very small thing you know a little turn little turn and he puts it this way person shouldn't despair at this time of year we think of how we should be better sometimes we just feel a sense of defeatism you know how can I really change if the r let's be honest myself I'm not able to really do this do that if you reflect upon your physical needs your medical needs your income so whatever is not quite right you do small things to to to change it you know you don't change careers in midc without much thought you do some small things just make things better you don't rush to the you know the best specialist in gastro anology if you have a belly a you you take some medicine appropriate medicine and that usually works Small Things the same thing is true with juuva this approach of self-improvement small steps is echoed again and again or is actually preceded again and again by a man who lived generation or really two Generations before that was the Von Theon in his commentary on mishle has a a um a trend in all of his comments I would say it's about he does this about six or seven times in his commentary on the whole safer of mishle of Proverbs and just I'll just uh sake of time just mention one quote he writes in in in sa from mle you got to go slow in lifeo from step to step imates suppose a person jumps daroa there a ladder stairwell and he jumps from the floor to the 10th step he bid off more than he can chew but no felo is likely to fall and then when he falls he's really going to give up I tried to do chuva I dumped dou up to the 10th step and I fell down forget about it I'm not doing chuva anymore but you decide enough of this trying to get better it's too hard so don't do 10 steps at a time do one step at a time settle in on step one see how it works and try step two it's to be done slowly again the emphasis is upon small steps Improvement do a little bit better and there are many others who take that point of view there's one person and this is a person who's very hard to argue with especially with his the power of his pen uh and that is rambam rambam has a lot to say about chuva one of the things he says is as follows listen carefully to what how the rambam understands chuva compared to sh salant the VNA gon small steps small steps take it easy don't get frightened by the Ram's prescription for what Chua involves this is H the r m toric b Dar doesn't just mean the act of chuva the act of chuva for the ramb at least is VI to confess to God I'm no longer going to do XYZ won't do it again I'm going to try my best I regret what I've done I look forward to a better future that's the essence of chuva but then there's something more than that the the personality that you have to become if you're really going to do Chu number one it's to cry out to God with tears and with begging with entreaties asking God pleading with God it's a type of filler that uh sometimes we get into the mood of doing un fortunately we've had plenty of occasions in past months to pray to God soake with a loud voice of protest and woe and trouble and hope all mixed together with tears and with begging God number one and to do as much sta as possible sta means writing checks and putting money in a pushka but sta also means smiling at people giving greeting them sta means a lot more than just charity in the narrow sense of the term we all have more than we think to performa it doesn't have to be a lot of money it has to be personal relationships greeting people complimenting people making people feel better giving people good ideas Etc and distance oneself far from whatever sin you were doing whatever the sin was if was not being careful enough about Kut so be careful to avoid any questions about kashu do better there if your if your sins involve malicious gossip you know try to stay away from company that uh encourages malicious gossip m distance yourself and [Music] then change your name k as if to say and here's the key words I am now a different person I'm not just someone who's climbed One Step Up the Ladder I'm walking up a different ladder I'm somewhere else I'm a different person it's total total change writes the r I am another person a different person I'm no longer the person I was yesterday or last year or last month who's done AB BC D XYZ I'm no longer that person anymore you change everything you do for the better of course you stopped doing whatever sins you were guilty of but you're also doing a lot of other things better taking care of yourself physically better you're taking care of your health you're more sensitive to your wife your husband your children your parents whatever it happens to be so it's a generalization you're not just walking up the steps of a ladder you're changing everything about you of course these are ideals and they're powerful ideas ideals but this is the rambam's way of saying that it's not about Improvement in the sense of doing something something definite something specific better that's of course not to be uh dismissed but it means something much more total much more all-encompassing it means transformation becoming a different person and that's what the ram wants for the person who wants to follow the the ways of CHA not just the the basic doing chuva sham God go Alo it's more than that it's a whole change of Personality change of character to jump forward about I guess 800 900 years to another person who's written about this who uh did not die very long ago many of us have read his Works written in English Pon has um series of books about him called him the the preacher or the maged of that was RA Shalom who lived in sh and died some years ago and he writes a he wrote a precious little safer on this whole topic it's a long safer an interesting one it's one of the best sellers in the stores at least in y it's this title of the book is cold o and it's all about this time of year and he writes as follows there are those of us who have gone through he's addressing let say a Yeshiva or a seminary and saying you you've been doing all kinds of things you're doing better you're waking up early foros you're listening to the Chau for you're saying and you're considering various ways and you can do better very nice but all of that still H God's still demands more of you more of what you've been doing all the past 20 21 days of el he wants something more of you all the all the Improvement that you've been going through and you've been serious about it it's all it's all very important but still is a demand upon you the demand upon you from the ribon shal to change you're doing a lot of things differently wonderful but we're looking for something more I heard RAB Shan many times speak and he often would speak in Yiddish and often speak in irit when he spoke in yish he would say CH is is Chua is not to become better it's to become different the not and he says in just one powerful sentence it's not enough with a little bit of improvement here you know the kitchen is a mess okay I'll take that stain off the wall with a piece of a swipe of the brush that's that's an improvement a little Improvement here a little Improvement there a person who's doing this he she are doing these improvements the small improvements little patches that are being repaired that person itself there's more demanded of him or her there's more than that demanded if you have enough INSP inspiration inside of you to begin to paint the the stains on the wall of the kitchen then you have the power and the ability to redo the whole kitchen and that's what Reb wants from us God wants more God is kind of demanding how you can do it if you could do this little bit if you can do one step at a time two steps at a time well you can change you can accelerate and do it 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 and be on 10 the 10th rung in in in seconds this is the attitude R I'm a different person now andad this is what God demands of us in this time of year so so how does a person change you know it's not so easy obviously change in a transformational sense ramam gives us an example fascinating example in his commentary on P aot Ram's first work which he wrote as a teenager in Arabic was his commentary on M Nas P mishna his commentary on the entire mishas was written by the ram as a youngster truly a teenager um and and I said in in the language uh of the Muslim environment in which he grew up and which he lived and he comments on this passage it's a statement of rabi AKA toward the end of the Third peric ofos both important topics about the future about knowing the future Etc but then he says and this is the topic for tonight it's not what you do it's how many times you do it that's how he interprets it's a unique interpretation it all depends upon how much you work how hard you work alamasa it doesn't make a difference what your work is your work could be a a brain surgeon or you work in be uh sanitation department wiping up the streets and it depends on not so much how you do it but how many times you do it how much energy you put into it Etc and the ramam uses as an example fascinating example I think we all come upon this in our in our own Sedaka giving everyone here I have no doubt about it gives Seda and gives it probably more than you can afford especially in these times of year this time these These Years this year that we're going through right now we've all given a lot of sta many ways but the ran writes this is a Hebrew translation of the ranat of the Yesa and he translates it a follows by the way ramam says here starts off his explanation I'm about to explain this missioner because only RAB AKA could have said this Mission this you needed a really really special person to say this and it's rabi AA to say that that's what the ramama writes here and he goes on to say suppose I have $1,000 my discretionary fund and I want my own personal discretionary fund and I want to give it to stalker so I could write a check for $1,000 put it in the mail to some good cause or some needy family and I've done a wonderful mitzah but I can also do something else I can go to the bank check in the $1,000 for 1,000 single dollar bills and go and distribute a dollar to a thousand needy people or needy causes what's the better thing to do so as far as the basics of the Mitzvah you know what's the difference I gave Seda to a good cause a worthy cause $1,000 what's the difference if I give it all in one place or distribute it to a thousand different needy causes so the ramam says depends what you want to do do you want to follow the path of self-improvement good you get credit for a, Mitzvah but if you want to change your whole attitude toward charity if you want to meet a thousand needy people and get a smile from each and one of them and a thank you and relate personally to a thousand different people giving them each a dollar that's not just a Mitzvah of giving a$ thousand dollar that causes you to have a Kenyan which Rabbi shilat who's the translator here says that the Arabic word for Kenyan which was in the original text of the ramban when he wrote it in Arabic doesn't mean to acquire Kyan means kinan a a soul Kenyan so it's a Kenyan in your soul there not a Kenyon in your bank account or even in your credit account of Good Deeds it's a it's it becomes a characteristic of the person if you give a one shot deal or put a check in the mail it's not going to change your character wonderful person very generous fine but if you don't about a thousand different causes and make sure each one of it is deserving and give it in the proper way sometimes it's not proper to give it directly to a poor person because you embarrass the poor person that's a whole other subject n but nevertheless it's going to change you which can you going change your it's going to change your character this is the the rambam's approach so we have two approaches these two approaches among the GD Isel over the generations went over a lot of generations here the 20th century radon the 21st century lived and um going all the way back in this case to the rambam himself in the history of psychology there have been many many methodologies invented to this very day of how do you do Psychotherapy Psychotherapy means a person comes to you with some type of Behavioral problem and wants a change so there are two approaches two broad approaches and under each approach there are countless sub approaches one approach is what general used to be called in my days in graduate school behavior modification meaning the person comes to you a client and he complains about whatever he or she is bothered by what you do is you isolate a behavior or two that the person is doing you know overs sleeping okay so tomorrow tomorrow morning set the alarm clock for 5 minutes earlier than you usually wake up or even for two minutes earlier go slow go slow it's following a troll salanta one step at a time not five steps up the ladder one step up at a time and slowly slowly you modify the behavior until one minute becomes two minutes and two minutes becomes 10 minutes and pretty soon the person was waking up at D and you know going to to the early Minion or to learn DFI or whatever um that's a behavior modification thing obviously I'm oversimplifying it but it's all about Improvement but then there's an entirely different school of thought usually traced back to the the psychoanalytic movement and that is transformation what we're really trying to do is make a change in the character structure of the person it's not a matter of moving the clock back one minute two minute and then you're you're an early riser it's changing your entire attitude to life your emotions your moods your preferences the songs you sing the books you read Etc it's it's it's it's depth it's something deep so we have behavior modification versus what used to be called depth not death d a but depth D pth depth psychology Sal was very very aware of depth psychology the truth is at this time of year and certainly during aera beginning next week we all should be kind of reverberating to the term depth because we say shiral usually Amel has chosen two and [Music] 130 God I call upon you from the depths so salvic um in various of his writings collected writings but the origin of this in a called No the wonderful things that salic said so he focuses on the P fact that it's customary to recite the chapter God I call upon you from the depths now immediately just that phrase depths is a powerful words I'm not calling upon you from something superficial you know I'm calling upon you something from the depths of my soul from deep inside of me but he says notice it doesn't say I'm calling upon you from something deep inside of me it's in the plural maim the depths in the plural there have have salv quotes a Zohar which was a little unusual for him to do but he says that the zoa writes that there exists 10 maim in each of us we each have a depth and below that depth there's another depth and deeper down is still deeper and deeper and deeper till there are 10 depths 10 depths of Despair and 10 depths of spiritual power might call it 10 negative depths there 10 aspects of ourselves that pull us down that tell us ah you can never do it that make us despair and the r here MRA quoted bre I went to a not to AA let's call it a l although the rab did not Wear Ties as I recall um but the point is that they one of my teachers he uh learned and typical Lithuanian yeshivas and preh Holocaust years baranovich konets Etc but he only shared with us one saying whole I learned with him for entire year and that wasman BR used to shout from the rooftops in [Music] yish all right Jews Jews don't despair don't give up Yos is this is just going to drag you down so salic is telling us that the Z says there's 10 levels of Despair 10 levels you go deeper and deeper and pretty soon you're you're paralyzed you get down in the eighth ninth level of Despair you can't move you can't wake up in the morning you can't smile you can't think you can't react you can't do anything positive but the good news is that there are 10 depths of spirituality 10 depths of renewal 10 depths of potential and toward the end of this particular essay of his he writes the solution to all these depths is this prayer I'm praying to you me from the depths whatever my circumstances are and again these days we're all in we can't help but go down to some some depth it's only natural only right but the solution to being stuck in the depths is this I'm calling you from these depths I want to come up or go to the other channel of depths which give me potential and power and kak and energy and creativity to do good to do better so that the sinner it's not just the sinner who approaches God but rather in these words of the same within man reaches out to him with a capital H The Incorruptible core of the human soul submerged within the inner recesses and mysterious dimensions of the human personality and unknown even to the sinner himself has never been estranged from God the primor primordial pristine nucleus contained within each person's maim within the depth of each of us approaches god with confidence with security R is supposed to have a and some even argue there Mitzvah Sim to some extent it's not a day to be gloomy and desperate it's a day to realize the The Depths within you that have the potential to do so much better the phrase continues get get down to these depths I need your help I need your I can't do it myself I can't do it with the best psychotherapist in the world or the great spiritual greatest spiritual adviser in the world I need you I'm calling upon you because I want The Incorruptible and inextinguishable Spark which God ignited in the Subterranean recesses of each man's personality this is the eloquence ofic at the dawn of creation is permitted to address God The Sinner continues in the same cap god listen to my voice may your ears listen to my to my prayers to my begging of you please God listen to my true and genuine inner voice and not to the voice of my sinful pseudo personality listen solely to the authentic me to those depths of goodness of Tove and not to the voice of my sinful pseudo personality listen slowly to the authentic ey do not heed the voice of the other portions of my depraved personality so this is from salic and it's all about change MIM from the depths it's not just one step at a time will go slow but it's rather a transformation a transformation there are there are many other ways to to bring about a transformation and many of them have to do with the way we act toward others in our in our families in our uh social groups and the way we react to each other because each of us has the power each of us no matter what our condition is intellectually physically and healthwise Etc we have a certain power and the power can be phrase in simple English as as opposed to our salvic English in simple English it's giving aash at simple English to the other guy to the other person the there are various stories I can use to support this but one is told about Isaac they use the call Isaac aler who was the founding rashash Shiva of theiva slabodka in B he was from slabodka in Lithuania he escaped the Holocaust because he was on a fundraising mission in Switzerland and then as soon as he could he came to Erol and founded the Yeshiva which exists today NE BR a continuation in some ways of this laot Yeshiva in preh Holocaust times so he was the mashak in theiva and he was part of the job of a good Mash he walks around the base medish to make sure that the BM are learning you know they're not talking about you know sports or the weather or who they're going out with on a shik date none of these things they're talking about the gamor so he walks around and he sees these Two Fellas who are obviously not discussing the gamorra that they're supposed to be discussing but they're talking to each other so he goes over to them and says what's happening what are you talking about oh we're talking about something very important we're each talking about suppose I had all the wealth of you name it Rothchild all right I have all the wealth of Rothchild and what would I do with it with this money would I do would I build a hospital for the for the ill would I build a Yeshiva to learn Torah would I build a would I what would I get what I find some uh very very poor people who need Bish bread on the table and when I give the money there where would I give all these millions and millions of dollars where would I do it and my friend says my Kus says oh I would do it this and that and the other one says I would do it no I'd have priorities here how would we spend R's money so they said so we're not really talking about you know the shid date that we're going to have this weekend and we're not talking about sports talk about something very important you know what would be our priorities if we were millionaires so he said to them and I once heard one of the Bim who was then much older tell this story he says rash came over to us and he said to us after hearing what we were talking about he says but you do have millions you do have millions and the difference between you and Rothchild is that if Rothchild gives away his millions he has nothing left but the millions that you have don't cost you anything and they don't diminish because you've given them a way so they looked at him like what do you mean he said you have the ability to give cavod to another person you have the ability to tell a person who Le the Torah sha good job you have the ability to tell any one of the teachers you're going to hear later this evening afterwards very good thank you very much good job right you have the ability to tell other people how nicely they look how much when eny their company etc etc you can give honor respect to everybody it doesn't cost you a penny in terms of time it might cost you five seconds sa smile at the other person Etc rash is a concept ofas poor stealing something from a poor person so Rashi is bothered How Can you steal from a poor person he doesn't have anything to steal if you steal his dignity that's gazalas that's Gaz that's stealing from he has nothing to steal he's he's he's dirt poor but if you don't treat him with proper dignity with proper respect with Dr kot he it Elohim he's he's a a fellow Jew or or Tello Kim a fellow human being if you take away his dignity in any way you ignore him you call him a funny name or whatever no good no good that's I tell this story I find referred to me because we're old friends as Rabbi hesi Andi W so there's a story behind my name heshi some of you from Baltimore may know the story um I had this teacher who was remains my favorite teacher had a lot of teachers over the years in Yeshiva and graduate school and all sorts of circumstances U who's my favorite teacher so I have run one onewe candidate his name was rabish D rabik I had him when I was 19 years old late teenage years we came into his C he was just really this is the early 1950s and he had just come been saved from the Holocaust where he lost his entire family and most of his friends and he was spared because he fled with Amir Yeshiva to Shanghai and then from Shanghai they made their way and he was in the United States and he was a reaban the shivi went to rjj re of yose then on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and we came into his class the first day and he he ask us our names he writes them down in his little book and then over a couple of days he sees how we interact to each other so we interact each other by calling each other by our nicknames in my class there was a fellow named Pepsi there was fell named Rocky there was a fellow we most of my friends were Brooklyn Dodger fans if you remember that far back when Dodgers were in Brooklyn so they had a Duke we had a Duke in the class Duke Snider we had a Peewee in the class peew Reese and these are the names I was kind of lucky because they just called me hhi and Hashi is also kind of a nickname it's a diminutive of T so he here's as we're talking to each other so one day was a Friday I remember he he bangs on the table and says look there something bothering me and I have to talk to you about it what's bothering you Reby he says I look around the room and I see peps you're calling each other Pepsi Rocky do peewee I look at my you know book of who's in my class I don't see those names I see an aloho I see an aan Fishel I see a I see a David I don't see these names what are these names all about you know so we all started bursting out laughing and whatever and he says this is no this is no slight matter this is a very serious matter and he turns to each of the of us there were about 20 fellas in the clear went one by one he gave each one a little little Zinger the Zinger he gave me was this on on of course in yish he's sitting here and you're all calling him hesi one day he will be a great Rabbi all right that's what he said this is I was 19 I wasn't even thinking about being a good great Rabbi I was more concerned with making the basketball team but the the he said imagine he's going to be a rabbi and people are going to call him hesy all right and he had this way of saying R the letter r with a like a gutural sound so he would say all right that's what you have to call it but the interesting thing is that it it changed our Behavior it was Improvement we all tried at least in his presence not to call each other Peewee and Duke and heshi but it made it it it changed our self-concept we started to think of ourselves not as duke and PE and Jew Etc we began to think of ourselves as an important person even were 19 year old 19 year olds don't think that way you were surely but he gave us that self-image you are you are an aort person and imagine you're going to be whatever you're going to be and you're going to be called Pepsi until you're 90 you know one of my friends still is called Pepsi and he's approaching 90 but uh it had this effect of changing the personality that's what RF Sher meant you we have the ability to change a person by the way we relate to the person we relate to him as a kak as a gav as a person with talents and something to offer the world then the person becomes talented and becomes someone who offers to the world what we do for Chua at this particular year and coming up in a few days so do we just try to improve or do we TR try to change I gave this a lot of thought I've been giving a lot of thought I may not have come to my final conclusion but I I I think I have an approach that I'd like to share with you um and this will at least come close to a concl I usion for this evening and that isas speaks about something that in our circles you don't hear too much about and that is the proper way to dress when you D proper way to dress when you do the gamorra insists that you have to dress in a special way one way is to have a belt a GLE and that's the sour of the some to wear a g belt when they when they pray when they stop at least when they but the gar also talks about people who wore a special cloak when they doen about people who wore a certain type of those days they walk Barefoot but a certain type of stockings that would at least cover the bottom of their feet when they D theor speaks about these details and some details look it up at but the G also says the following rash Saidi was one of the last of the Amur of the latest rabbis mentioned in the talmud and he observed a much older RAB rafah he observed him raash was a young and he saw rafah and he wanted to know how is raana dress when he doens so it depended not upon the weather but depended depended upon what was going on in the world when there was pain in the world all right right now there's pain in the world shum he had a royal cloak but when he DAV he cast off the cloak cast off his beautiful capot whatever he was wearing cast it off because it was too gy it was too too shiny too too too arrogant to wear when the whole world is in when our soldiers are fighting anti-Semitism and on and on I don't have to go on on with all the SAR that we have now so he would dve in a different garment sh he cast off his his cloak and he would hold his hands like this in front of him with fingers fingers and clasp together in front of him this posture and then he would DAV and he would say I'm daving now without my beautiful cloak and with my hands in in a a position of of of loneliness of serian and and because right now I'm like a slave before God the world is in just chus I can't wear this fancy garment I can't I I have to D humbly humbly and kind of degrade myself before God but Sho when there was shalom in the world and everything is hunky dory then laish he would take his cloak put it on and wear it proudly and he would wrap himself in his Talis over his head and in that position and he would say I'm not praying to God as a as a servile s servant I'm I'm I'm praying to God he prepare yourself for for is so obviously that's just one little passage from that whole Su but it's telling us that in prayer we have to change and we change by the clothes that we wear right clothes make the men I don't know who said that but clothes have a lot to do with who we are and when we doing hopefully we're a little different than we are when we're you know playing touch football so we dress differently and and and depending upon what's happening in the world around us if there's SAR that SAR is going to be affected even in the way I dress when i d and if the shalom in the world tomorrow we would somehow find Shalom all around so then it's time to really dress up fancy and you know the custom and special stal Etc to look Royal Etc that's when there's shom so it occurs to me that the same thing is true with chuva you can do chuva in two ways as we've been saying tonight you can do Chua step by step it's a legitimate way but maybe that's the way to do it when things are quote normal and okay so we have problems obviously we will have problems in parosa and health and this and that but basically you know we're okay so we can do Chua step at a time but when we're in the type of a Sor that we are in Now a type of a Sor that for sure hasn't come close to anything we experienced since the Holocaust and some would say it's it certainly isn't aor and it's a difficult time it's an a it's and it's you know but maybe then that's that's the time when we have to do the more difficult but much more transformative type of thing and that works in two ways it works if sh the battles and the wars and the losses Etc continue and continue and continue with no end in sight that certainly requires us to change to change in a better way change in a different way to change in how we react how we visit the soldiers and how we visit the graves of the soldiers who are buried and how hurs or whatever they are and the time to do it is this time of year when people go to the graves of loved ones or even people they don't know when they ask them for Aila because we didn't treat them properly who can say very few people can say I've treated the soldiers properly all right we've all you know we we have a way to go we have to change so many ways the way we treat each other where we treat treat the widows and the orphans the people who are evacuated from from close to 100,000 people Etc what what are we doing in a way that's not just merely taking one step toward them which would be fine in ordinary times to help other people out but now it's much more drastic and the changes that are required and our simple Behavior are more demanding and require transformation that that that that that would be my proposal I want to conclude with a passage from of all places the p with the commentary of raia said an interesting thing he said he's writing just after the uh scuds back in the early 1990s so there were rackets falling South OFA andu and um difficult times the Rockets were fooling who knows where where things would go and then suddenly there was Shalom at least relative Shalom the Rockets stop Flying the scuds scuds did very little damage and hardly any serious in injuries so he says when we came out out of the dark rooms the safe rooms the mtim ETC there were there were two attitudes that we had one was from the and then so that's something so he said what BR should we make at this time we're coming out of the dark rooms he called them the dark rooms safe rooms we come out into the light and into relative safety into relatively long-term safety as it turned out this goes back to I think 1991 so he said there's four Sons three of them get it the and the and at some level they each get it is a the Tom is a simpleton but you get through to him too with a proper teaching the sh is a boy walks around saying duh what what what you know you teach him something then there's the Russia the Russia Among Us within each of us doesn't really give it done it's not impressed by anything so we who are coming out of the mik we are coming Mish to a real true lasting Shalom we're going to have to make a and the BR can be promised us Etc we have something but some of us don't get it there's one Russia one quarter of the four member family who just doesn't get it and he just doesn't get it and for him we say is a kind of a phrase that you refer to to God but God is kind of far away and we ask I amavo where is he where is he he's somewhere but he's far away that's the r the rest of us are hopefully or at least and we should be able to recite together thank you [Music]