The Meaning of Vidui - Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller Gottlieb

okay so we're approaching rashash Shana and often times people approach rashash and Y with a great deal of trepidation and there's a reason for it so let me ask you last year rashash could you have imagined what this year held I don't think anybody could have so the trepidation in terms of this that everything is unpredictable nothing could be known beforehand is real however this is a huge however whatever has to happen has to happen not because of Rashana and yam Kipper whatever has to happen has to happen because of the lives we're lead we're leading so let's understand this better we're all drawn to light when you ask a young child what do you want to be when you grow up what do they say what do a little girl a little boy what do they say what do you want to be your for years old you're big you go to gun what do you want to do when you're big when what do they say fireman policeman Soldier nurse doctor teacher right they want to do something big and important and positive so the reason that's so is that Hashem implanted something of himself in us and that part of us is drawn to light so the need for light is there for every person non-jews as well as Jews societies as well as people and when you look at individually when you look at societies what they sell in their ideology is that they're light Bringers however we also have the possibility of blocking light we do things as individuals as a society in the world where the light doesn't change but we do things that block it so on hashem's side he does make judgments once a year okay what's the Judgment the Judgment isn't aha there was by the way a Protestant preacher who used to really I was reading his listening to someone reading his speech just today 200 years ago a proder you're like little bugs in the hands of the Lord he's going to throw you into the fire because of okay that's not what we're saying in case but we are saying is that the worst thing that could happen is a person is so blocked or a society is so blocked that there's nothing they could do further so challenge is what unblocks us and we've seen this in this war have we seen people who Rose to enormous Heights because of the challenges that they faced we've seen this we've seen this in the level of self-sacrifice the level of caring the we've seen this again and again and again and again okay so I'll just share one thing with you and then I'm going to tell you why we're going to be learning the V so there's a young man in our neighborhood who aleno lost both legs and part of one arm in the war and uh from the very beginning he was saying as long as I have my head it's okay I I'm still a person and one of the important R of our time some of you may have heard of Asher we okay he went to visit him and the young man said I have a question for you now you be thereof what do you think the question would be why does this happen to me I'm not a terrible person it's not what he said he said what am I supposed to do about that was his question that's what looking for light means that's what it is and we could rise to this and people have asked questions similarly with less drama throughout the whole year who should I be in this situation so returning to the higher self is what Chua means so as you're familiar with there three basic steps in Chua the first one is saying where I am now is not where I want to be I want more that's what the first step which is called Kata regret is about so Mar goes as far as saying the higher you are the higher you are the stronger your ability to say I don't want only this I I want more will be a person who's all the way down think of somebody who's let's say a real low life the kind of guy you read about in the paper every SN man found grabbing purses from elderly women you know that him he's not ashamed because he has no expectations from himself so step one is to believe in yourself enough to have expectations step two which is the step we're going to speak about is being able to say but there are blockages we have to be honest with ourselves but there are blockages then we say but you Hashem can get rid of them you could unblock where we've created blockages and this is what Chua is about the problem we have is we don't always believe in it intellectually you believe in it but emotionally the past is real what do you mean you'll unblock it let's say I humiliated someone publicly can I UNH humiliate them let's say in a bad moment I ripped somebody off in um in a real estate deal I can't undo that so what's what's truth about the past is the past so the truth is you can't undo the past you could be a person who has no further relationship to doing what you did in the past so this is called disassociation and Hashem regards you as the person you become not the person who you were the damage is real and sometimes you could alleviate the damage and sometimes you can't you're supposed to try to obviously but what this step which is V is about is being able to say this isn't this isn't oh this is who I am no this is who I don't want to be so it's a statement of affirmation and a will for light so with this I want to take you through the VY you have the pages okay so the first one you'll see is the word there are different words for sin in Hebrew it's so Jewish isn't there in English you say sin one word in Hebrew you like welcome to the religion with whatever okay literally means missing the mark even in modern Hebrew if somebody misses the Mark it's like so this means there's something we did that missed the Mark we don't want this this isn't where we we're headed so the first one is but onus onus means but through no fault of mine I was forced into this now if you're forced into something you're if you're really forced into something you're not accountable so I want to give you an example you're standing on top of the uh 18th floor by the window you're just looking at the birds thinking wow there chps whatever and uh somebody else two people are having a fight one of them pushes you out the window you land on a third person they die you live okay okay so you can say it's not my fault and it's true it's not your fault so this is not what we're talking about we're not talking about genuine onus we're talking when a person says I had no choice and it really means I had no choice whereby I could do exactly what I want to do and still get what I want but okay so I'll give you an example if I had no choice um even in minor things a minor one okay you're in yam the way to get on the bus is with the ROV you can't pay to get on the bus it's not possible you left your ROV home said look I have no choice odds are the inspector won't get on okay and you know you did have a choice what was your choice go home walk ask embarrass yourself and ask someone who you don't know on the bus do me a favor punch me and I'll give you some change you had choices none of them were comfortable none of them were the choices that you like and let you say to the inspector I had no choice like I couldn't go home it's too far what am I supposed to okay but you did have a choice it just wasn't a comfortable choice so when you say that ideally you're looking back at the Times where you made choices that were cowardly so you're going to there's going to be a whole list you could see it's it's not a thousand page list we've all nobody here is like eight years old that we could have little lists with only a few things it's two pages but the idea of these two pages is try to get the root of the traits that we have that we want to refine okay the next one okay the next one that goes with b and some is and I wanted to do it here's one that's very relevant to everyone believe that I didn't know is it my fault that I didn't know maybe it is and maybe It Isn't So want you're all familiar with the famous case in the T of the Tino shisha you know the Tino so here's the Tino shishah there was a kid he was kid up by the Babylonians and taken to Santa Monica so he grew up in Santa Monica went to public school and then went to the babyon the Babylonian University of California UCL laa so he doesn't so he doesn't really know that much about um observing mitzvos until um there's some kind of Discovery weekend and before you know it the guy in a convinces him to come to Israel and okay that is he accountable for all of the tra shabas something he broke no because he had no choice but to not know okay that's what he's called a Tino just like a baby has no choice but to not know okay now let's look at me I'll give you an example a negative example let's say I'm saying and I don't remember if I said maybe I it was such a profound religious experience I don't remember if it happened or not okay so so let's say now let's say this isn't the third time this happened in the course of my years it happened before but I still don't know do you say it over don't you say it okay that means I chose not to know okay so you have to examine whether you have a hidden agenda hidden from who from yourself to not know okay let's go a little bit further the next one isal and in things that are revealed and things that are hidden okay so there are two extremes here are there people who their home life and their business life are totally disconnected in their business life they're affable Pleasant reliable when they get at home it's what they feel at home okay so all the bad midot come out all of the anger all of the frustrations are there people like this there are is that the opposite also sometimes true yeah there are people who when it's when they're at home they care about their family they'll do anything for their family but when they get out to the world they're a barracuda either way isn't good why do people sometimes live two lives the home life and the other life where does it come from so usually it comes from depersonalizing whoever your victim is so if it's at home that you could allow yourself to be explosive and angry and whatever it's because they're supposed to tolerate you they're there okay and if it's the opposite they're supposed to watch out because you're there it's uncaring so taking this to um okay to what it should be here's the ideal I will give you an illustration again with myself of something that would not happen to Yakov ainu okay so I used to have an answering machine on my phone okay so the answer this is why children were teenagers so the answer so I'd like a very plain answer are like you've reached the hellers leave a message okay but my kids like things are exciting and different you know like Metropolitan Opera you know things like that or giving the police's number that you're not supposed to have you know things like this okay so when you how many of you remember having teenagers you have to choose your battles right so this is I decide I'm not going to make a big deal over this I listen to these ridicul ulous messages so I'll erase them and put in a a more standard message and then they would hear my standard message and okay do theirs yeah yeah okay so whatever so this was going on for a long time okay came the day I erased their message but I got involved with something else so the little tape recorder in the phone was recording what was going on in the house okay so so you know how people when you do something really dumb they're embarrassed to tell you what you've done okay so I don't know I never found out how long this was on my machine but when people would call and I didn't answer they would get Z if you worked for a living you would okay this would not happen to Yakov ainu he would speak the same way at home as he would speak to other people so you have to ask yourself some questions okay next one with forethought and with deception so the gr points out as does the barel there are few there are few sins that we do with actual forethought I want to do the wrong thing lying is one of them no one tells a lie and doesn't know they told a lie I'm 25 what okay 25 what okay Stone okay so so so that's uh so why do people lie so I want we're not going to finish the whole okay I could see this but let's try to get whatever we get think about how many of you could say you didn't tell a lie in the last year see I knew you were honest okay okay okay thank thank you okay six months how many of you could say you for sure didn't tell a lie in the last 6 months look how honest you are okay okay think tell me why people lie everybody lies why do people lie embarassment okay to save yourself embarrassment that's one reason what it's a safe face sometimes not to hurt somebody else in which case sometimes it's actually permitted according to what else to Face Reality oh so it has all the different kinds of Lies come down to one thing I don't like reality I want my own version of reality and I want other people to buy my version of reality I'm not fond of reality so the problem is is that reality is hashem's signal ring so that means he's the author of reality when you create your alternative reality you're in denial of hashem's will of his wisdom and of the reality he created so I want you to picture this again I keep giving myself as negative examples but I'll leave you okay so when I was in um early high school there was a teacher I hold on to your chairs I know this is inconceivable we didn't like her okay so so later I found out she had a very difficult life but that's a different story she was very tough and she demanded that we buy a specific textbook that the school didn't Supply then she gave us an assignment in the textbook that she told us to buy come in the next day the girls got together dur he says we're not going to buy it okay whatever okay now I was taller than I am now cuz I've gotten shorter I was I was taller than I am now when I was was in late Elementary School I was very tall I was always in the back row and in those days as some of you may recall they used to have the shorter girls in the front and the taller girls in the back so she points to the girl in the front row and says okay did you do your assignment and the girl says no so she says why not so she so she made oh we got to the store I thought that they stay open till 700 but really they closed at 5: okay and we got to I think so wait a minute I had it a minute ago okay and there was um I got to the store like my father gave me his card but they only take cash okay now by the time they get to me out in Alaska like they heard 35 excuses it was it was getting pretty pretty awful so she said did you do your homework and I said no so she said why not and I said because I didn't want to I really didn't buy the book so if this was in uh like one of these heartwarming stories that you see in Mish the and then the answer oh the teacher was so moved and this was a turning point no this was the old days like so the teacher had me go to the principal like and like in those days getting a note home to your parents was not good it was it's not like today where the parents like well what happened how did you feel no for this I pay tuition for this okay whatever so it doesn't have a happy end [Music] but I learned that you could survive it so part of not lying is learning to take the heat if you do something you did it and if it's uncomfortable it's uncomfortable you have to learn to take the heat when you do you stay in reality and you draw closer to Hashem who reality's author okay next next one is be thoughts of our heart in a general sense we're not considered All That accountable to God for thoughts of our heart but in terms of ourselves and we're talking about wanting to get rid of the blockages to good to light what are some thoughts that block goodness Envy okay what anger anger so you have to say like even if it doesn't go anywhere okay the most the part of myself that I own most authentically is my mind do I like what's going on in my mind is this where I want to be so could you picture somebody does something that offends you and maybe it was fairly serious staying up a whole night just reviewing it and I should have said that but she said could you picture this the tennis game going back and forth and back and forth is that where you want to be so you have choices you don't your mind is where you are and you could choose where you want to be didn't you read Natan shirky's autobiography if you did you'll recall he decided where he wanted to be he was in prison when he was finally released you did any of you see do you remember seeing the news clip of his release so he was released as you recall in in East Germany and he had to go over a little pedestrian bridge to West Germany and who's waiting him on the other side the press and his wife who gets him first the press or his wife of course the Press they're much more aggressive okay so so one of them said how does it feel to be free do you remember his answer I was always free that's who we want to be we don't want to be tied down to other people's bad choices and review them and eat them up and vomit them out and redefine and psychoanalyze don't forget that it's because of okay whatever okay next Vare false confessions so the word vi is related to the worda which means thankfulness they both mean this is how it is so sometimes when talking to Hashem or to other people we'll admit guilt but we don't really believe what we're saying so with people you see this all the time I'm so sorry okay but like what could I have done do did you ever ask could you ever apologize to someone end up blaming them okay I'm really sorry but like under the circumstances I really don't know what you thought I could have done okay you I'm really very very sorry okay don't go there okay next Bon through plotting okay means putting events on the ground okay so I'm going to give you again another negative example with me okay you make things happen and the other person has no choice as to the outcome I'll give you an example and you'll understand it through the example many moons ago I bought a stroller that should tell you how long this was okay I bought a stroller from a certain store when I got it home and I unpacked it from its wrappings I saw that the the wheels were malaligned so I went back to the store and the man told me well I really can't give you cash back it has to go back to the manufacturer this may take several weeks and I'm not going to give you a different one because then I still have you still have to wait the okay whatever so I got really upset with this so I thought I was doing something smart so I stood there with the with the the carriage and um people came into the store they said I bought this here look at the wheels is that how you want what you buy to be he's not giving me my money back he won't give me another stroller this is what I bought in this store okay how long did it take him to decide it was worth him to give to give my money back 15 minutes maybe okay and I thought I was very smart okay I was so pleased I could have broken my arm slapping my back I was so pleased with myself okay and then I I made but at the time felt like a mistake I mentioned my to um to my husband and he said why do you think that's M said well he and he said well if you have he may first of all there are always two sides to a story you go to ask a question you ask a shil you go to a r you go take him to take okay I found out I was wrong because I did ask okay his claim that he has to get money back from the manufacturer might be a valid claim and certainly wrecking his reputation because who knows how far that's going to go you can't control words once they're out so this customer didn't buy but what about her cousin okay what about her friend who works in Aliah and puts a being wary of okay you don't know where it's going to go so you have to question sometimes whether when you create facts on the ground it's right another a fairly common example do any of you work in real estate good so I won't offend anybody too badly in real estate this happens all the time you want your client wants to sell an apartment and you have a buyer and you negotiate the price with both of them and the buyer really didn't want to spend that much money so you tell them a strategy you go to the signing let's say you're buying the apartment for $250,000 and you'd say you know what give me $260,000 and will sign today okay are you allowed to do that most of the time most of the time this is going to work I hope I didn't ruin your lives you Chang the price at the last minute either you agree to pay less or you demand more and usually if it went that far you'll get away with it okay you allowed to do that no do people do this every day all the time okay um another one you rented an apartment and you're dissatisfied with the landlord's level of responsibility things broke he didn't fix it so you inform him that you're leaving in May and you leave in April and he you've already used up the security check and he's stuck okay clear people do this all the the time and not just in real estate so if a person feels Justified they'll create facts on the ground without noticing not with without hearing that there are two sides to a story final example in Israel it's extremely difficult to evict someone very very difficult so given that that's a fact okay if people don't pay their rent you can't get them out of your apartment and I actually heard this recently the tenant who wasn't leaving says to me look I really don't have money and my land lady she's not losing anything she's okay she's fixed so she'll get you know so what so I didn't pay her okay to next okay t means impure lips so this includes all of the sins of blocking the light with your lips so the L is the obvious one but what else what else blocks light what else could you say insults insults negativity all sorts of negativity okay okay and false positivity lack of positivity and lack of positivity you could have said something encouraging and inspiring okay so all you would have to do is say to a soldier once how do you know you won't be back there next year then you could have done such damage could see this okay next beara she say of course Yahara who else is that getting me to do this awful stuff you know but here's the trick your yahar doesn't identify himself you don't hear like do you remember cartoons where the you had the bad angel on your shoulder and the good Angel it doesn't work that way the Yahara doesn't feel like your Yahara it feels like your lawyer okay you need this oh yeah what will Happ okay you have to express yourself you have to tell you like people or you have to think of you if you don't nurture yourself okay got this can you see but it all sounds like it's your Yater to okay next be knowing and not knowing so you're obligated one of hashem's M says you know soon you'll be saying you're obligated to know what the other person is and what they need saying I didn't know isn't good enough so you may have seen this in the news there was a terrible case I don't know where the truth is here I only what I read in the news of a child who was put in by the other children you read about this children could be very cruel okay so the child was in no one allowed to talk to him this child was not well physically and he ended up again depending on Whose story is true I have no idea either he wouldn't enter the class because he was so humiliated or he went out to get a breath of air whatever it is he literally died he literally died okay so children are cruel sometimes but there were people who might have known about this you can't act like you don't know okay so the teachers the staff members the better children in the class somebody didn't know and could have known okay next the next one is a hard one is denying something which it's clear because of means disappointing what kind of disappointing disappointing in this sense means you made a commitment to do a and you were you were serious when you made it you weren't lying this isn't lying you're going to do it now you changed your mind and you left somebody else holding the bag so could be something simple let's go let's go to Mal let's go to big there and then you know it's hard it's called you decide not to go and the person made their whole calendar work around your commitment that's Kaz of that's small though but people people do things that are much much bigger than that so again it's at the time you said it you meant it and then later things came up and you just don't want to do it anymore okay most marriage difficulties involve huz nobody marches down the aisle to the HOA thinking Come See Come sir you know it's a good dress it fits you know nobody like people want it to work people want it to work and then things happen so you have to question how much accountability you have okay next Lush and hura we're all familiar with Lush and are we all familiar with Lush and hura how how did you get for so whatever so I want to give you a brief rundown lenar is anything that you say that's harmful or negative either way is that relative or objective what do you think harmful or negative do you think those are relative terms or objective terms totally relative so if you're talking about somebody um who let's say doesn't care at all about her appearance saying to another person she gained a lot of weight may not be either harmful or humiliating but for somebody who who cares it's terrible so you have to put yourself in the social reality that people live in it isn't good to say but it would be the difference between one case and another is real okay what's the exception though so the exceptions are rules I want to make myself clear either you have to say the negative or harmful information or you're not allowed to there's really no middle space where somebody will be harmed if they don't know the negative or harmful information you're obligated to say it okay there's not much middle space either you're not allowed to say it or you obligated to say it when are you obligated so as I said when somebody will be harmed either the person to whom you're speaking or the person about whom you're speaking sometimes they need to be spoken about so here's some examples okay um let's say there's somebody who tells you that that they're being treated by Dr Cohen and your exper like you he does have a good reputation but there are conditions before you say anything else how do you know his what you heard about him is true is it current okay in addition to that you would have to ask more questions okay did the person who told me this information about Dr Dr Cohen is that somebody we trust like two sworn Witnesses is the person really going to go to Dr Cohen or is he just is she just flapping the name around is there a way that I could discourage her from this without actually blackening his name just like saying I really don't rep I don't recommend this okay but if all of the conditions are filled you have to tell them okay not you could tell them you have to tell them so here's where people go wrong in the times you have to help somebody by giving them the truth that's where people become very firm and don't speak le H okay random scandals okay so this is especially true when somebody has been introduced to somebody else and they may marry them if you knew information that could harm married life not just you don't like the person and the information you heard came from from somebody who's very reliable or you know it personally and you tell the person discreetly and you don't say more than you have to do say or exaggerate it and there's no other way around it than you have to tell them what happens when you don't you make victims we actually had something this this happened in a years ago there was a sh that looked perfect she was 35 she's a physician and somebody made a sh between a a relatively young man he's 40 also a doctor a surgeon in fact very Charming lots of money both of them really from sounds good no okay now they had both been divorced and she knew it and he knew it they forgot to mention to her that he would had been divorced four times she only knew about the most current divorce so what do you think the end of the story is fifth divorce okay but you know Hashem is always in the picture the real end of the story for her is that after that she was devastated by the divorce as you could imagine someone suggested to her a she otherwise would not have considered a rabbi in The Old City who was widowed who has lots of little children she married him the kids regard her the way the dwarfs viewed Snow White everything she does is good everything you they love her he loves her she's very happy so you could see things have there are patterns we don't see but we have to bece that we're on the side of the angels and we have to give information we have to be honest okay clear okay speaking random Lush and Har which has no purpose because you think everyone should do you know everyone you're familiar with everyone they're first cousins with anyone like there anyone knows this and but everyone okay telling negative things about people because everyone should know is never a good idea that make sense to you okay next just see where we're holding we're okay you're still alive you're still awake okay so we're up to Maris aan Maris a means giving bad appearance okay so you could say look why shouldn't people judge me favorably so what if I give a bad appearance by doing something unseemly what's Mars a here it is on shabas let's say and you um you have to be M shabas for a permitted reason okay so if for instance it's a medical thing so it's okay to go you should go but in terms of talking about it randomly you wouldn't believe the view from the from the hills and like in K I was just there on Shabbat it was like really amazing what does the person think they think that you think be breaking shabas is nothing so you have to be careful with Mar not giving a b impression why so I want to digress for a moment and talk to you about Collective Consciousness okay women in general like to learn psychology how many of you have learned psychology like psychology are therapists okay well there are some of you who are not I'm shock or whatever okay so you might remember Yung remember Yung so he would among the things he would talk about is collective Consciousness that means if you see something many times it becomes your normal so I want to illustrate this to you you might remember there was a man his name was damer I think his last name was who was a cannibal do you remember him dmer okay meaning that he didn't murder his victims he found them wherever you know in the morgs whatever but they discovered in his freezer like you know not leg of lamb but leg of individuals okay clear he was a cannibal how many of you find this unbelievably horrific okay now think which does more harm eaing the limb of a person who in any case is dead or speaking lashan Hera speaking lash andar is much more harmful but it's part of our normal it's what in physics you would call The Event Horizon it's in it's our normal so when you do something that seems wrong you contribute to the negativity of the social climate in which you live so things that should scandalize don't scandalize I so this is what's wrong with marit that makes sense to you okay moving on okay discussions of our lips okay so Ram talks about you're all familiar with this and V it says silence good it's a virtue silence is a virtue okay I should get more silent we're ending okay so I'm going to end with silence as our last topic okay so people say things and L to regret it silence is a virtue that's what it says in P vot so R when he talks about and when should you speak so he gives us a few examples of when talking is good first one information somebody says how do you get from here to don't say okay you know use words and enough words and you to make yourself clear however with teaching as opposed to specific information you're supposed to be concise so you don't pause your students to die of boredom okay did you ever see student death or any of you teach here's the paid with the Doodles okay so don't bore your students be quieter next and here are the last two that I'll talk about one is what I'll you use the modern word filler that's when you you feel awkward if there's silence you just fill it ask a girl of 16 whether she thinks black sneakers are going to make white sneakers a thing of the past okay could you answer they will right okay okay so could for a certain kind of girl could you get a half hour worth of answer like white looks like so cool but you know like black is like so much okay so that's filler why do people use filler so his thesis is to avoid real communication filler is an escape from communication because people often don't want to say what they're really thinking and feeling and the last kind is communication that's inspiring or positive which you should use liberally okay so that's it for now look what you have you've done you got halfway through the V do okay by next year we'll do okay will all be perfect okay [Music]