Pekudei : Shipwrecks and Spiritual Suicide

[Music] I recently gave a class in Princeton University about the intricacies of a Jewish Nish and part of the class had me talking about suicide and after I pointed out that suicide is up 37% since the year 2000 I asked the following four very enlightening and slightly counterintuitive questions about the statistics of suicide I turned to the class and I asked them which age group do you think suffers from suicide the most is it kids teenagers 30-year olds 70y olds 90y olds which group statistically has the most suicides so they looked at me and basically all said of course it must be teenagers or people in their low 20s you know people who have to deal with school and friends and hormones who have zero Financial Freedom they suffer the most so I looked at them and said incorrect according to the Center for Disease Control the age group that commits suicide the most are people between the ages of 55 and 65 the question is why is that wouldn't you think retired people have the calmest most tranquil life then I asked them which ethnicity or group of people commit suicide the most and their knee-jerk reaction was well of course it's poor people or immigrants you know the janitors the dishwash washers the people stressed about life and making money I said completely wrong compared to the 4900 Hispanic suicides that took place last year and the 1379 Asian suicides and the 3692 African-American suicides upper class wealthy white people had 36,6 181 suicides wealthier white Americans commit suicide close to 800% more frequently than any other ethnic group why is that wouldn't you think the group that has the most Financial stability the group that has the easiest time navigating this country should commit suicide the least then I asked them which states in America would you say commit suicide the most and they immediately blurred it out of it's obviously New York and New Jersey and California and Massachusetts and Illinois and I said again completely wrong the state with the highest rate of suicide is Wyoming with 32.3 suicide Ides for every 100,000 people and then came Montana Alaska New Mexico South Dakota and Colorado the three states with the lowest suicide in the entire United States Believe It or Not were New Jersey New York and California huh how do you explain that shouldn't the states with the most pressure and the most craziness and Wall Street and Broadway and big busy stressful businesses have the most suicide and finally I asked them which month of the year would you say people commit suicide the most in and immediately they said okay this one we got it's for sure December or November cold months you know people cooped up inside people with no Outlet no sunshine just rain and snow I told them wrong yet again the month that people commit suicide the most is the month of August why in the world is that isn't that so counterintuitive shouldn't the month with the most sunshine and the most vacation and the most time off be precisely the month with the least suicide the answer to these questions is fairly simple inside each and every one of us is a Nish a soul that is starving for meeting and it is forever asking us for something real but the soul can be suppressed it can be distracted it can be shoved to the bottom of our heart the soul needs a certain degree of mental and emotional space to insert itself into the tangible conscious of man people who are still figuring things out financially or teenagers still trying to navigate life or immigrants who every single day need to go out and work just to survive or people who live in cities that are forever fast-paced and distracted and people in the middle of the winter busy with their jobs or their semester or staying warm have no mental space to give the soul there's no room in the schedule for soul searching but when One retires or when one some someone is no longer under Financial stress or when you live in a place like Wyoming where life is very slow or when you're on vacation in the middle of August suddenly there's room for the soul to ask the million dooll question why in the world do I wake up in the morning why have I not been fed in 40 years and to some people that question is too powerful to handle Americans spend over 630 Million Dollar on golf balls every year because people who aren't busy are desperately looking for something to do to run away from the nagging soul that is asking and begging and pleading to be fed the Jews in the desert were tempted to do the same thing the yiden could have looked at M who just instructed them to build the mishan and say listen we're going to the land of ER in a few days and in a few days we're going to build the bis mikd let's just throw some poles together we'll have a little tarp on top and that will be our Michigan for now while we're busy moving into ER and then after a few days when we settle in and make a Mikvah campaign and figure out where we're sending our kids to daycare then we'll build a base on mikush and we can build it with all the gold and silver you want right now we're busy we're worried about which plot of land we're going to get and which neighbors we're going to live next to and if we're going to live in Taria or Bersa the Jews could have acted this way but they didn't they looked at the mishkon as an immense opportunity to nourish their soul even if it was only originally transient and meant to last only for a few weeks it was the ultimate relationship with Hashem I don't care how fleeting and fugacious it will be I don't care how short it was supposed to last we aren't throwing together some po and a tarp we are doing it with gold and silver because the yid in the midb realized that every moment in life is a moment rich in potential for Spiritual greatness to push off feeding the soul would be wasting Precious Moments in life to push off feeding the soul in exchange of being busy now is only pushing off the inevitable confrontation with one's Nisha which always almost never ends well these Jews realize that life is about the soul not the body and for the soul every second counts so you better believe they poured out their heart and soul into the Michigan they didn't care how short it was supposed to last points out rabak of lions that much like how at our children's kasas we don't just put out some sponge cake and some Herring and a few roses and call it a day we spend thousands of dollars on mounds of food and intricate bouquet of flowers and fancy lighting despite the fact that the whole thing only lasts 3 hours because any good parent knows that those aren't any old 3 hours they are the magical start to your kid's life so to every stage in life one can say that it's just a small stage I'm just in eth grade it's only a year whatever 12th grade it's only a year whatever learning b m it's only a few years elmon is just a month Shar sh is just a year the summer is just a few weeks why bother setting up kusas SP is almost over why bother learning about it PES is almost over why open up a safer that gives meaning to it this attitude is a Titanic mistake because life is short if we don't hop now we may never and before we know it we're in our old age kicking ourselves for not doing more with our spiritual lives while we still could sometimes we await a time in our life where we'll find calm and we tell ourselves I'll start being more spiritual then when I get older when I retire when the kids are out of the house when I don't have to cook so much for shops when life is slower besides for losing out the decades leading up to those years sadly sometimes those years never actually come can you imagine if the yiden wouldn't have taken the Michigan seriously relying on the fact that they would build the base of mish in a few weeks well those weeks turned to months which turned to years which turned to decades which turned into centuries they would have had to wait 480 years all while relying on a Michigan made of some poles and a tarp sometimes we rely so heavily on life caling down for us but it never does better to learn the art of injecting Rus in the Here and Now better to master the ability to hear your Soul's plea for something meaningful now now on a Thursday in March now in the middle of the winter now when the kids are screaming now when you have three million other things you'd rather be doing now because later might not be what you think it is not long ago there was a boat in the Pacific Ocean that due to an engine which blew up it sank into the shark-infested Waters of the mid Pacific and out of everyone on on the boat there was only one Survivor one man managed to grab a piece of wood and hold on for dear life as he floated in the middle of the ocean scorching hot and dying of thirst this guy drifted In and Out Of Consciousness until he saw the blurry outline of an island in front of him and he washed up to this island and was seen by a native of that Island who ran over to hear the man croak out that he needs water desperately and the natives gave him some water and he immediately passed out and he woke up hours later to find that his body was all patched up from the wounds and cuts that he got while battling the sinking ship in the salty water and he sees that his torn clothes were removed from him and were drying on the side and he was wearing Royal Robes of silk and he looked down and he saw that he was sitting on a throne and he looks to his left and he sees that there's a servant standing right next to him and he asks the servant what happened to me I don't remember anything and the native responded that you are our King and your wish is our Command so the guy says wow and he tests it out he asks for some bread and butter and right away three natives ran off fetching him some warm bread and then he asks for some meat and a salad and they speed off to fulfill his command and he spends the whole rest of the day enjoying his Newfound kingship after a few weeks of this he pulls over his personal servant and he asks him okay what in the world is going on so the servant says I'm not really supposed to tell you but no one has ever asked me this so I guess I can say on this island the ocean is our God and we have a custom that any person who is sent by the ocean to our island is a sign from our God that he must rule over us he will be our King but we believe that it's only for 12 months at the end of the 12 months we will remove your Royal clothes and we're going to replace them with your tattered and torn clothes that you came with and we will beat you up to give you the exact same scars and scrapes that you had when you arrived here and we will send you off again into the ocean with the same plank of wood that you came with so the guy looks at him what are you nuts I'm going to die out there and the servant just looks at him and says yeah you'll probably die but listen that's our tradition so he looks nervously at the serve and he says okay so what should I do well if you want my honest advice I would spend the next 11 months Gathering all the servants and build a boat that can withstand wind and sharks and storms and I would fill it up with as much food as he can and as much water as he can and that way when the day comes that you're kicked off this island you'll be ready for whatever comes next this says is a mush for life can you imagine if this guy would just lean back and say oh I'll just live like a king while I can how foolish how shortsighted how shallow aren't we slightly the same way this world lasts a millisecond where we'll dwell for the next billion years we are on this Earth for 5 minutes only as a layover to pick up Mitzvah why waste precious moments on comparatively Petty Pursuits how foolish to push off spirituality because we are simply too busy chasing them mundane all of us came into this world as a baby weak and frail we were then treated like kings in a world where Delicacies grow on trees and the air is pure and plentiful and we have the entire natural world as our servants here to fulfill our wishes yet all of us will leave this world weak and frail some of us will leave with nothing to show for ourselves but some of us us will lead this world with millions of small magical spiritual moments moments that were too precious to pass by moments that no amount of busyness or stress or craziness was able to Rob us of the spirituality buried under those moments the Tyra spends close to five entire parus discussing the mishan 449 sukim talk about it because it set the tone for all of Jewish history when it comes to spiritual ity don't waste even a moment [Music]