Pray Like Never Before -- How to Surrender and Go Into Flow: Michal Ashman & Rabbi YY Jacobson

the yeshiva.net. [Music] Hello everyone and good evening, good afternoon to everyone joining us for this very very um special webinar. My name is Mkhal Oshman and I couldn't be more honored and excited to have this conversation with you um Rabbi Jacobson. But before we start, I'd like to um mention that this special webinar is dedicated in memory of Mayor Khan Yakov Maher Benbinyamina Kohhen whose third yight is tonight. One of South Africa's greatest business leaders. He was also the long-standing chairman and later president of Kabad House of Johannesburg and Miracle Drive. long life to his beloved wife Lynette, daughters Deianne and Haley, their husbands Sha and Steven, and his beloved granddaughters Gemma and Georgia. This webinar is also in memory of baby Ravid Shemik demo and his beloved mother Ravid Leva. Ravid Leva was only a few hours today ago and he was only 15 years old. Let's hold the memory of these three beautiful souls as we learn today about the power of prayer. This webinar which is all about prayer couldn't be more timely. Before Shabbat and Shàuot, may Hashem hear our prayers and send his righteous MessiaCH. No more suffering, no more tears for the return of our 58 brothers and sisters to Israel from captivity and may all families be reunited. When I see who's hosting us today with Kabad of Johannesburg, I just realized that it's a bit misleading to think that Kabad Johannesburg is only in Johannesburg because as everyone that knows being part of if you want if you once visited of Johannesburg that's it. It's part of your DNA and I can speak for myself and one of the most incredible things that I or take part of um with this wonderful community is a Tuesday morning shore just in the morning before before we start the day having ladies joining from all over the world and I know as a fact that this session is not just viewed by people in South Africa. We have people from Ganana, from Yushalim, from London, from New York, from Jober, from all over the world. So please don't limit yourself and thinking that we're in one geography. We are across the world as always. It gives me a huge huge honor to welcome um Rabbi Jacum. And you really do not need my introduction because if I'll start reading all of your credentials, it's going to take a 10 15 minutes from our session. And that's not what we want. But I do want to share with you my personal experience of your teaching which I never got a chance to share with you till today. During co I was in Israel and I had this idea of writing a book. But where do I start and how will I know what to write about? And in the very beginning of co they gave people in Israel at least inia area like uh 20 or 30 minutes to walk outside of their homes for like a half kilometer. It was a very precious 30 minutes that people thought very hard how to use and I used it listening to you on on my phone without the kids 30 minutes inside and then going in cooking for the children. Not that I cook but that's a different story but typing the book. So thank you so much for taking a part and you that's the beautiful thing. You never know how you influence and how you affect a person's life. So that's how you affected um mine. The plan for tonight is to obviously have the honor to to listen to Rabbi Jacobson talking us through the power of prayer. But reason that we called it a webinar is because we want to leave a good 30 minutes for having an opportunity to ask questions and people already sent me questions in advance with I will mention them and read them out loud. So, please, when you're listening to this webinar, be active, be present, write down notes, and then you'll be able to ping me, message, ask, and we're going to have a conversation going deep into the power of prayer. So, over to you, Rabbi Jacobson. Wow. Thank you. Thank you so so much for your kind, illustrious, beautiful introductory remarks and invitation. And thank you for sharing about uh your corona experience in Herzia. It is really amazing I think for each and every one of us to learn that you know God manifests a certain light through every individual and nobody can take away anybody else's light. It's like I compare it always to the rays of the sun. You know the rays never compete with each other. Like one ray doesn't say get out of my way. I own you know that house. I own this neighborhood. Every ray has its its mission and the sun has enough light to go around for all the rays. And I think when we all realize, you know, that each of us is an indispensable ray of God's light manifesting a unique light and love and presence and regulation and and uh expansive consciousness through our bodies and through our hearts and through our souls. It's very very incredible and it comes back to us in so many different ways. So this was just one of those gifts that keeps on giving. So thank you M and thank you Hashem and thank you to Kabad of Johannesburg and thank you to all of you who have gathered here on this special evening just a few days before the momentous day when we celebrate our anniversary of becoming a people and trying still to change the world. We're still trying to change the world. It's been 3,337 years and we're going strong. We're not only surviving but thriving and coming together to learn, to study and uh it's really incredible. So, thank you for the invitation. Thank you for the opportunity. And let's jump into our uh theme this evening, which is the power of prayer. What is prayer? How do we cultivate prayer in our lives? the art of prayer, the meaning of prayer and mostly I want to talk about the experience of prayer. In other words, there are the rituals of prayer which are important, you know, how to open a prayer book, what we say, when we say, when we stand, when we sit, what we say in the weekdays, what we say on Shabbat, holidays, you know, Sunday, Monday, morning, afternoon, evening. And that's a very important factor because the prayers have been constructed over generations and there's a lot of interesting customs and rituals and meaning. And it's important. What I want to do though today is really address the backdrop of it, the the internal soul of prayer, the zeitgeist of prayer. I don't know if anybody uses that word, the inner the inner core of prayer and our experience of it. And then as Mk said, I'm going to speak for approximately 20 minutes and then we're going to go over to conversation with Mikall and anybody can ask any question which Mal will take and uh we'll discuss it and address it and please there's no taboos. You can ask whatever you want. I want to begin with a story. It's a very very moving story from another era but not completely from another era. It's a story that I heard many years ago and uh very very very touching, very moving and although most of us will not be able to relate to the depth of the tragedy of this era because we live in such different times but I think it's something to learn from. A number of years ago there was a very very famous Jew by the name of Simon Weisenthal. Simon Weiszenthal lived in Vienna. He was a Nazi hunter. He dedicated his life to find Nazis. He died just a number of years ago. I think he was close to a hundred. And Simon Weisenthal was honored a number of years ago by European rabbis. And at the banquet, I read about this. I read an article about this. At the banquet, they gave him a gift, a sided, a prayer book. And Simon Weisenthal, who was already a much older man, shared an amazing story. And he said that he was in the camps and he was liberated in 1945. I believe he was in Bergen Belin when he was liberated. A man, a rabbi from Cincinnati in America was a named Rabbi Eleazar Silver. Rabbi Silver was a worldrenowned rabbi. He was very very involved with the refugees after the war. He was generally a very active voice in the American Jewish community. He was European but he moved to America and Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio. And Rabbi Silver organized for the first time after the war a huge prayer service for all the prisoners of Bergen Belin. People would want to pray say kadesh. Nobody said kadesh for their loved ones and just connect and prayer. Of course, there was no such chance under the Nazi rule. And Rabbi Silver went over to Simon Weisenthal and he invited him to the prayer service in Bergen Belin. And Simon Weiszenthal told him, "No, I will never attend this service." Rabbi Silva said, "Why?" And he said, "I'll tell you why." There was a man, a Jew, who smuggled in his sidur, his prayer book to Bergam Belin. He managed to get it through the Nazi security. And he would offer people his prayer book to pray to God from it. But there was a price. You had to give him something in return. And people gave him a morsel of bread, a little soup, something they saved up as l as a wage for allowing them to use the prayer book. And Simon Weis Enthal said, "I got so disgusted with this religious man. Look what he's doing. He smuggles in a prayer book to the Nazi death camp Bergen Belin. And instead of offering it to his fellow inmates to be able to pray and connect and find some spiritual and emotional soloulless and comfort, he's selling it. He's using it. He is manipulating their religious weakness and vulnerability and dependability to get another piece of bread. Now he was starving like everybody else but to use prayer in such a way I was so disgusted. I will never go into a synagogue. I will never look at such a prayer book. Rabbi Silver listened to the story, turned around and started to speak to himself. And he says in Yiddish, "Hazar, aar, such a fool. Such a fool." And he's walking away. Such a fool. Such a fool. Simon Weisenthal was intrigued. What fool? He says, "Rabbi, why are you calling me a fool?" He says, "You're a fool. Why? Why am I a fool?" What am I going to explain to a fool why he's a fool? He said, he got me so curious. He's like, "Rabbi, tell me right now why you why am I a fool? This guy manipulated and exploited people in the name of prayer. Why am I a fool?" Rabbi Silver looked at him. He says, "I'll tell you why you're a fool." A fool never knows what to focus on. You're focusing on the wrong part of the story. You're focus on a crook or a selfish guy who used his sidur, his prayer book to man manipulate people in the camps to give him something he wanted. you're completely ignoring the real part of the story and that is all of the dozens and hundreds of people who were ready to give away something so precious like a piece of bread and began bells and to be able to pray. What does it tell you about the nobility, the royalty, the spirituality, the emotional depth, the faith, the trust, the soulfulness of these people living in the hell of hells and yet connecting to something so transcendental that they were ready to give up something so physical to hold on to something so spiritual. What does this tell you about all these people? you're focusing on one crook rather than on hundreds of people who can teach you what prayer is. That's what I call a fool. And Simon Weisenthal smiled and he said, "The rabbi got me. I attended the services. I went to pray." And that's why you rabbis will never know how meaningful this prayer book is for me. I share with you this story because it tells us so much about what Jews experienced when they heard the word davening or the word prayer. What does this mean for us today? What can it mean for us today? What could prayer look like? What is its power? The word for prayer. When you say in Hebrew, I'm going to pray. I'm going to dain. We say or would say the noun is means prayer means I'm going to go to pray. That's what people say. What does that word actually mean? It's interesting in Hebrew. In the Hebrew, I heard this once from Rabbi David Aaron, Rabbi, my friend Rabbi David Aaron in Israel. He said this beautifully. He said in Hebrew in Kumash, there is a word, a very powerful word pili. When Jacob meets Joseph after 22 years, he says, I did not imagine to see your face and now I see even your children. The word or is from the word pel which means surprise imagination like pili I never I never dreamt of such a thing I never imagined I never anticipated now the word is what it's something that's talking about the person themselves for example in Hebrew I'll say I'm going to get dressed if I'm going to get dressed my if I'm going to dress my children I'm going to is to dress myself is to take a to bathe myself. So pale is to surprise myself. Ple is surprise something I didn't expect. And liit pale is to surprise myself. What do I want to surprise myself with? I want to surprise myself with something. What is it? And I want to anticipate my life in the way that God anticipates it. And this requires the deep art of surrender. And I want to focus a few moments on what this looks like. One of the hardest things for us to do in life is to live in a regulated space of the frequency of surrender, which is similar to the frequency of love and the frequency of trust and the frequency of faith. You see, as we grow up in a world that Tanya teaches, we have two souls. We operate on two levels of consciousness. We have an animal soul that is basically focused on survival. Whatever will give me survival is good. Whatever threatens my survival is dangerous. And therefore, my entire life is built around survival. Survival. Survival. Very often, survival means control. The more I could control, the more I'm going to survive. So if you're coming into a room, I'm going to anticipate who are you? What should I say? What should I not say? My body language may become uptight or may not become uptight because my brain wants to predict everything. So I should be able to have control. When things are going my way, when I can plan them, when I can anticipate them, when I can control them, we feel much more safe. There's only one problem. That's not where life happens. Life is always about the present moment. Life is never about control. Life is about experiencing the heartbeat of the other person coming into the room in the most spontaneous way without any control. That is very very hard because my animal consciousness grows up in a world where it wants control. It wants safety. So maybe I'm going to be looking for anything in the world that gives me safety. Right? When I was younger, I'm still doing work on myself, but I knew there was a part of me, it's my trauma, that needed validation from people. I needed a lot of validation from people. I think you talk about this in your book, Mal. And when I needed that validation from people, I would do anything that would get me that validation that was coming from a place that didn't feel safe with myself. I always needed something. There is a void. There is a disregulation. And I always need somebody else to fill it. So the question is, how are people going to fill it? Like I've been lecturing for many years. There was a time in my life now I think it changed. I hope it changed. But like I would finish a lecture I was always waiting for the feedback. I needed the feedback because that feedback was filling a deep void in myself. The animal consciousness needs control. It needs to survive. And it tells us what survival is. For one person it's constant validation. For another person it's shutting down. It's being numb. It's being frozen. It's being angry. It's being jealous. It's being vengeful. It's being anxious. Anxiety is a major element of control. If I'm anxious, I'm going to be vigilant. If I'm going to be vigilant, I'm going to be able to prepare for the next moment. Social anxiety. Anxiety that we have with friends, with people, with ourselves, with God, with life. These are all protective methods. These are all survival skills. These are all mechanisms, literally survival mechanisms that come. They're coping mechanisms of our animal soul to control the challenges. That's not where life happens. Life happens in the divine soul. The divine soul is very regulated. It's spontaneous. It lives in a space of regulation, of calmness, of trust, of faith, of love. It doesn't have to prepare and be ready for every scenario because it trusts God. It trusts the rhythm of life. It's fully fully present. It's a very, very calm, energetic space. You know how we get it? If we get lucky to get it, it's a mother's gaze. That parental uh especially maternal gaze into that child. You could see it with animals by the way. That mother's gaze into the eyes of the child creating a co-regulated state in the nervous system where the child just feels I am okay. I'm good the way I am. There's no guilt. There's no shame. There's no self- sabotaging. There's no manipulation. There's no exploitation. There's a deep, deep acceptance of who I am. And my mother can only give it to me if somebody gave it to her. The reason so many of us don't have it in this generation is because after so many years of exile, so many of us are disassociated. We don't know how to give this to ourselves. We don't know how to give this to our children. We don't know how to give this to other people. Instead, we give ourselves and our loved ones templates of guilt, templates of shame, templates of anxiety, and then we use God to reinforce the anxiety and reinforce the guilt and reinforce the shame. And here we come to the gift of prayer. The real gift of prayer is letting go of everything. Prayer is not an easy thing, but it's the most liberating thing in the world. Prayer is where you let go of every expectation of what your life is supposed to look like. We think prayer is like God is a vending machine. You know, put in a few rands, a few hundred rands or a few thousand dollars, whatever it is, and hopefully God will send out some tuna sandwiches and some chocolate and maybe some sushi and maybe some uh uh wraps for like a vending machine. But that's a very very uh superficial perspective of prayer. Prayer is much much deeper. Prayer is alignment with your divine soul. So prayer is I literally let go of all my expectations. What my life is supposed to look like, what it's not supposed to look like. What I what I'm feeling stressed about and overwhelmed and pressure. Oh, this is going to fall apart. This is going to fall apart. I have a class. I have a lecture. I have a Zoom. I have this. I have this. I have this. I have this this. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm completely not in the space of trust and love and faith. I completely surrender everything. It's hard because the voices come in and say, "No, no, no, no, no. Don't surrender." And you know what we talk about prayer? Most of the prayer we don't talk about what we need. Most of the prayer we talk about God's infinity. Why? Because really prayer is tuning into the fact that you're in God's world. You're in God's bosom. You're being embraced by God. That every single moment is orchestrated by the divine. That you're exactly where you're supposed to be. You're in the best place possible. You're just a conduit for God's light at this moment. I don't have to control anything. In fact, in fact, you know, the other day somebody told me how tense they are and how anxious they are. And I said, I want to know, I want you to know something. How many millions of things have to happen right now in your body for you to stay alive? And the answer is millions and millions of things. But who's doing that? All not me. I don't even know what's happening. I don't even know that I have oxygen right in front of me that I'm inhaling and my digestive system and my urinary system and my circulatory system and my 100 billion neurons making decisions and my 60 trillion cells functioning in this perfect symmetry. It's all a miracle. God is running it all. There's only like three or four things that he asks me to take care of and be a partner and then I become stressed about that. There's like 22 million decisions being made right now for me to be alive and I don't know any of them. I know nothing of them. there's two or three things that I have to show up for and I'm overwhelmed and I'm stressed. It's not going to work out. When we could surrender all of that, literally surrender it all. And it doesn't mean to become irresponsible. It just means to be able to realize how humility is the name of the game to be humble to just to be present to be with an open heart. And then we do something called pal which is imagining ourselves the way God imagines us. Imagine you could see your own day and your own life but not the way your survival brain sees it but actually the way God conceives of my day. That's what prayer really wants to do. It wants to put me in, put us in to a space where the rest of the day I can experience myself the way God imagines my day meaning to be in flow to be in oneness just to be a conduit and every moment I continue that energy of the prayer and that's why the one who leads the prayer is called the word kazan comes from the word which means a vision what's the connection because the one who leads the prayer is really articulating A vision for the day. What vision? God's vision for me for today. God's vision for you for today. God has a vision for me every single day. He has a vision for me every single moment. If not, I wouldn't be alive. I'm not responsible for my life. I did not create myself. I didn't create my brain. I didn't create my mouth. I didn't create my body. I didn't create anything about me. I did not create the oxygen I'm inhaling now. There's nothing about me that I created. I'm just here. And I could be here with gratitude. and humility and fulfill that vision. Or I could be here with a sense of control and tension and anxiety and egotism. Ego is easing God out. So the idea of prayer is to be able to surrender everything every single day again and again. And we need this because naturally we go into a survival space. I wake up in the morning. I just need to survive. I take my phone, there's one email, there's another email, there's a text, there's a WhatsApp, there's a clip. And I could go from survival to survival to survival. And then I'm angry at you and then I'm anxious at this person and then I have to do this and then I'm stressed this and my child this and my wife this and my other child this and my other child this. Boom boom boom a few hours later and I'm overwhelmed. Prayer is really that idea of going in to the deepest space of oneness and intimacy with God where we could say you know what I'm open to your imagination pel to start experiencing again pel means imagine like Jacob said I didn't imagine I'm going to see you lit pale to experience your imagination from God's perspective to see your day from God's perspective. What does God have God having in planned for your life, it's much more interesting, much more exciting, much more powerful than what my ego has in planned for my life? Because whatever my ego has in planned for my life is going to be very short-lived. It's going to be very superficial. It's going to be very, very shallow. And it's constantly going to need something else. What God has in mind for my life is infinite. It's grand. It's eternal. It's awesome. It's full of security and love. It's very very powerful. You're a different person then. You're a you're a god. You're an ambassador of God's love and hope and healing and redemptive consciousness and truth and authenticity. And when when I really experience such a prayer, I come out of prayer a different person, a much more regulated person. Not a I don't become an angel. I'm not, you know, suddenly a person who's everything about his life or her life is different. But there's something energetically that can change with and through prayer. Because when we have that courage to surrender every single day again to God's plan for us to say, "God, I'm here to serve. I'm humble. I just want to be your partner. I'm not here to control. I'm going to show up. I'm going to show up the best I can. And I want to be able to live out my life from your perspective to help experience myself and feel your imagination of my life. pel and that's what the and the have that vision. So then in my relationships things are very different. I don't need to control my life my wife ever again. Do you know how liberating that is not to have to control your spouse? Not having to control your children. Not having to control your in-laws, your partners, your siblings, your friends, your neighbors, your partners. Not even having to control yourself. not even have to shame yourself. I'm this and I'm that and I'm that. You could just like let go and let God and and be really really open. And here it's really really a very meditative space when we go when we whether you davin in sh or you at home I encourage you all before you start saying words before you start saying words breathe in to a consciousness of surrender. There's going to be thoughts. You don't have time now. You don't have time. What are you, a meditative aesthetic where you have nothing to do? Who's paying the bills in South Africa? Or you going to sit and pray now? I get it. And then there's going to be more voices and more voices. And then there's going to be some guilt and then there's going to be some shame and then responsibility is going to come. You know, the responsible ones among us. What are you sitting doing? Nothing. You know, whatever the voices are, there's always the voices. And then there's voices about other people. And these are all voices of an animal soul that really want to take you away from a regulated deep relationship with your innermost energy. That's what it does. And it does it very very successful. And this is a very subtle subtle experience I'm talking about. I'm using words cuz that's what I do. Unfortunately, my wife always tells me too many words. But I'm not talking about something with words. I'm talking about an internal energetic experience of when you just have that serenity. You're just in flow. You don't feel your ego. You're not competing with anybody. You're not jealous of anybody. Nobody can take away anything from you. And you also can't take away anything from anybody. There's no drama. There's no exploitation. There's no lies. There's no uh there's no manipulation. There's nothing dishonest. You're just in a such a space of oneness with God. That's what real real prayer accomplishes. That's why all the mystics, all the sadikim, all the great people who really worked on themselves, they cherished the experience of prayer because prayer was really the time when they learned about themselves. Prayer was the time when they got in touch with themselves. Prayer was the time when they let go of all the external layers of who they are and they really got in touch with them. Like if I look at myself, my name is Jacobson. Call me Y Jacobson, right? I have a career. I speak. I lecture. I have my YouTube. I have my emails. I have my social media. Whatever it is. I have my writings. I have my stuff. I get my invitations. And that's, you know, it's a lot. It's a lot. Like, everybody has their own life and what they're involved in. But here's the real key. Where is my life? Where do I live? If all of that was taken away from me, everything was taken away from me. I mean, I hope not. But if all of that is taken away from me, what's left? what's left you know um I always thought about I grew up by the lab by the feet of the laberba what was always so interesting to me about the rebba was and I want to make I want to make this as a final point was and I sometimes tell this to people I said I looked at the rebba for many many years I watched him I prayed with him I studied with him I watched him dance I watched him I watched him cry I watched him meditate I watched him speak and his life was very very rich it was rich it was alive. It was it was spiritually animated. It was charismatic. It was intellectually enthralling. It was emotionally uplifting, etc. But you know what was the most interesting thing about the Reba? I knew and I felt it that his private life was far more interesting than his public life. As interesting as his public life was, you know, people coming from all over the world, prime ministers and presidents and Jews and non-Jews and rabbis and sages and writers and literary giants and essaists and politicians and CEOs and philanthropists and simple people and everybody coming and and learning and being, you know, guided and it was all amazing and fascinating. I'm not taking away from that. But I knew right away I I felt in my God that his private life was much more interesting than his public life. That's what prayer is. Prayer is make sure your private intimate life with God is much more interesting than any other part of your life. You know why? Because that's the only real real part of your life. Everything else is as valuable as it is a continuum of that part. If my intimate deepest part, my relationship with me and God is solid and powerful, then all my speeches will be a continuum of that. I told somebody this morning, either all of our work is a distraction from our core or all of our work is a continuum from our core. It's one of the two. Either I'm running away from myself and getting some accolade somewhere or I'm continuing the truth. Prayer is that time when we let go of everything. We don't have a career. We don't have fame. We don't have money. We don't have we don't even have problems. We're just a child. a child in the bosom of our creator with the most innocent purity, opening ourselves up to that light, taking it in and trying to live with it the rest of the day. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I made some points um that I'd like to kind of um ask you deeper and further questions on. So, just to anyone that joined us a bit later on, just to let you know that in the next um 30 minutes, a bit less, we're going to have an in conversation between Rea, Rabbi Jacobson, and myself. Thank you for the people that are actually sending me um questions. There's a few things that I want to mention. We have more than 300 people on this call, maybe more, but that's what I can look at again of the numbers. So there's a community of 300 people that were born in different homes, have experienced different um you know upbringing when it comes to prayer and and and Jewish life etc. So I want to acknowledge the fact that for some people prayer is something very new and they're just getting used to the words. They're getting used to even wanting to pray and for some people they have been brought up from a very young age with the world's words of the so we have a wide range. I'm in the first camp of of learning or trying to teach myself how to pray with uh much help with in the last 10 years. So only at the age of 40 have I started to learn about the power of prayer. And I'm very far from kind of understanding it in the deepest ways. and I'm on the journey as well as I'm sure many other people. So that was just a a kind of an opening comment. You said two things that I want to touch on. First of all, you said, "God forbid everything is taken from you. You're left with this." And we live in very special times. And we've heard from hostages that came back to Israel that when really everything was taken away from them, their safety, ability to eat, to to drink, to move, they found themselves wanting to pray even though they have never prayed mamash before. We've heard of hostages that tried to say they didn't know the second verse but but something inside of them gave them the signal that this is the time to pray. So I just want to mention this and maybe you'll touch. Do we carry some of our, you know, avo 3 3,000 years? That's the first question. That's the first question. And the second thing to mention, and maybe it will help um kind of complete this question. Only in the last four weeks, I've had three friends reaching out to me. a friend that I've yet to see them at or in different reaching out to me out of knowing and saying how do you exactly pray they're feeling whichever lives they're living wherever they are however they're raising their children there's there is this I don't want to use the word awakening which is overused but there is this something that I know is coming from way before that drives their soul to ask how can I pray so we would love to hear from you for someone that this is I know I have a good number of ladies that I invited to this call. Where do you even start? Excellent. Wow. Some powerful questions over there. I want to share with you an experience. A friend of mine shared this with me. He said that he was in a hospital room and his father was on his deathbed and he was there with his father. He's a religious Jew. He lives in uh California, Los Angeles, and his name is Gerson. And he told me there was another person, another patient in that room on the other side, also a Jewish fellow and surrounded by family, was also very sick. And that family was a very Jewish secular family. And this friend of mine told me, I looked out the window, the hospital room, and I saw that the sun is almost setting. And I did not pray the afternoon service because we have three prayers, the morning, the afternoon, and the evening. in the afternoon is called Mina. So I stood up by the window. I looked in the direction of the sun which heads west sets in the west. So I knew I have to turn to the east because we pray towards Jerusalem. So in America you pray facing Israel is the east. And I turned to the east and I started to I closed my eyes and I started to pray. And he said something very moving. He said when he finished the other family called him over and they said can you teach us what you just did and he looked at them a little puzzled like why you interested and they said to him they said we feel that this is a moment in our life where we need to pray but we don't know how to teach us how to pray. I feel that this is the moment in history for the Jewish people. So many Jews are failing. We need to know, we need to pray. But how do we pray? And I'll tell you that the the the the beauty of this is prayer is a vocabulary. What do I mean of vocabulary? I don't only mean the vocabulary of reading through the prayer book. Cuz there's prayer books today in Hebrew and in English and in Russian and in French and in Italian and in any other language. So you could take a prayer book in any language you know beginning with English or Hebrew and Yiddish and and reading it that but I'm talking about a different vocabulary. I'm talking about mastering the vocabulary of prayer. It's a vocabulary of the soul. It's a vocabulary of the heart. It's a certain language not just of words. It's an experience. It's allowing yourself to let go of the pressure of having to control life and allowing God to control your life. It's a different vocabulary. We in the West, at least a lot of us, are not used to this vocabulary. You know, we get things done. It's, you know, especially if you're Jewish, you got to be proactive. You got to take control of your life. And if you have a good coach, they say, "Make choices. Be strong and be and it's important. It's important to be proactive and make choices and not be a couch potato and not be afraid of what people are going to say." Prayer is a deeper vocabulary. Prayer is surrendering control not from a place of weakness, from a place of strength, from a place of knowing everything and then realizing that the ultimate knowledge is that we don't know. The ultimate experience of life is the experience of not knowing. It's the most liberating moment when I don't have to know. I don't have to figure things out. You know why? I can't figure things out. What I could figure out, I'm supposed to figure out like how to work my computer. I could try to figure that out. But the real big things of life, it's a new vocabulary. So that's the vocabulary we are all capable of mastering because as Mal just said, we have it in our DNA for thousands of years. And this is important. You know we speak in in psychology and in genetics about epigenetics. We have inherit today we know that trauma is inherited through the genes. That means I may be carrying insanity that has been bequeafd to me from generations ago. And that's what I'm dealing with. But let's think about this. If we have in our genes the trauma of our ancestors, we also have the faith, the prayers, the wisdom, the resilience, the idealism, the authenticity, the genes of the generation of Jews that left Egypt and stood at Sinai Sinai 3,337 years ago. You're carrying I'm carrying. It's not a joke. If we're carrying trauma, we're carrying also faith. We're carrying the experience of the Exodus. We're exper carrying the experience of Sinai. We're carrying the experience of Mori and Esther is praying with all the Jews of Shushan in the time of Purim in the time of Hmon. We're experiencing the Kashmanoyim praying during the time of Kaneka. We're experiencing the priest praying in the holy temple. We're experiencing Aaron praying in the high temple. Every Jew, every one of us, including the converts who convert to Judaism, have this literally in our cellular memory. We don't only have cellular trauma. We we have that too. But we also have in our cellular memory all these prayers. So this doesn't belong to orthodox or ultra orthodox oridic or kabad Jews. This belongs to every marash to every single Jewish soul and really every single person. Not only that our sages say that all the animals pray. If you wake up early in the morning 4 in the morning all the birds I live in my all the birds are praying and they do it for two hours. They chirp and sing and sing and sing. There's something called peric shira. It's a section of the Talmud that records what the songs of the elephants and the dogs and the cats and the snakes and the serpents and the beers and the lions and the gazels and the deer and the hyenos, the rhinoceros, the frogs, insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, everybody. They're all praying. They're all singing. The whole world is praying. Prayer is really the expression of the truth that we're part of a symphony. We're all part of an amazing symphony of love. And every one of us has our own unique instrument and our own unique vocal cords to manifest that symphony. By the way, all the trees know it. All the animals know it. The only ones who don't know it are people. You know, we think we have our big egos and we're extricated from the symphony. Everybody knows they're part of a symphony. The rain knows it and the oceans know it and the birds know it. So prayer is really just get into the symphony. Jo jo join join the symphony. I do want to say what you said about the hostages is one of the most I don't know heart steering truths that I think we are all meriting to see right now that there are people here as you said Mikl they were stripped literally from everything they don't even know if they're going to survive for another 24 hours all the security that we have in our life we have food we have water we have some basic security even if we're struggling but we have something to hold on to they literally had nothing you're talking about tunnels of the most despicable Nazis, the kamas murderers of our times, young men and women, and many of them grew up as atheists. They grew up as completely secular Jews. What happened there and what's happening and what we're seeing now, and I can't even use the word miraculous. It's beyond beyond logic that when everything was taken from them suddenly suddenly they felt a certain aspect of themselves that they may have never felt in their own life and that is literally the truest infinite part of your consciousness which is literally a a flow of divine infinite consciousness. Our bodies are containers of that but that lives on forever. It can't die. It never dies. It's like a when you unplug a refrigerator, the electricity doesn't die. We have an electricity inside of us. It's divine electricity. They touched on it. Sometimes when everything is taken, there's like nothing left. So there's nothing left in my life besides that. And that's what they suddenly felt. They experienced it and it's not logical. It's completely beyond logic. There's no words for it. There's no logic for it. And from this came such a deep sense of faith and trust. And even some of them describe a certain sense of joy and serenity and tranquility beyond. I was listening to Sapir Cohen talking about her in the tunnels of Gaza feeling herself. She used the words as she felt like she was a meaning a messenger, an ambassador, an agent from God sent into the darkest places on earth. Go figure. It's unfathomable. It's unimaginable. This only tells us what type of energy exists in us. What type of fuses we are capable of igniting and touching, what type of energy levels are so hidden inside of us. And sadly, we could live our entire lives not even touching those parts of ourselves. And it's very sad. It's very sad to think that I'm I could die and not know the deepest truths about who I am because my entire life I was just running from distraction to distraction, from one toy to another toy, from one fun thing to another fun thing, from one place where I'll get accolades to another place where I'll get accolades and never really touching the core core core self. And that's the vocabulary that all of prayer wants to uh help us uh cultivate. I have I have a couple of follow-up questions and I want to make sure that I cover most questions that I was asked that we were asked. So um for anyone that knows the Hebrew language, there's the word um which I think in a very way easy way to translate it is secular, but in Israeli is just kind of a way to define I'm I'm not I'm not religious. And I think I the last time I said the word was about 10 years ago when I sat with my um teacher in Ashure Rabbi Mendel Gordon and I told him I don't know any of this and you can imagine that his response really respond really um affected me what Rabbi Gordon told me that none of us the word comes with the word like daily right like every day like the days of the you know and Shabbat mundane. Mundane. Mundane. Thank you. Mundane. So, Rabbi, what Rabbi Gordon reminded me is that we're all holy. We're all kusha and end of a there isn't a thing like really being uh mundane as a Jew. We're all have a carry a godly soul in ourselves. Our body is here to hold the godly soul. And maybe I didn't get a chance to explore it in certain way, but there's no thing as being kind of we're all we're all holy. And I think that one of the things that we try to do when we dive in and I'll speak for myself is even for 13 and a half minutes and I'm pretty much like you. I I have a busy schedule. Not like you but I'm also busy like many. I kind of know how long it that takes to do birk shaka and shakar for me at home by myself. So it's like condensing. I have 15 minutes. I could have more but I know it's what takes me. And in those 15 minutes, I try to be holy. I try to remind myself why I'm there. But of course, I think that I did I drop her off at the right time. Of course, I'm going to think, did I send him with a sandwich? Of course, I'm looking at the garden saying the gardener left all the rubbish. It's not okay. I have to message him. What is the And we heard you very clear saying it's a let go. But I just asked Chachi PT and Chachi PT told me that every day in our minds on average go 60,000 thoughts. So I'm dealing with 60,000 and 4,000 an hour. So I'm I'm a human, right? I'm not a mala. I'm not an angel. And I I I draw and I think what I did before what is the one covenant one to be with intention because it's always the same words. I have so much respect for people that don their whole lives. They've been reading the same text again and again. I imagine that you get to such a level that the letters start floating that you get to a certain level. But many of us see the same words again and again. What kind of intention, what kind of kavanak can a simple person like me bring inject into those 15 minutes to to bring hashem nat to play my role in the symphony and to and and and to you know really let my soul shine. Wow. So first of all, welcome to the club. Um we all have uh 60,000 thoughts a day. Some of us 80,000 thoughts a day and some of us it feels like 150,000 thoughts a day. Um the Tanya gives a beautiful piece of advice for this. Sometimes we get frustrated with all these thoughts like leave me alone. Leave me alone. I don't want to think about the garden now. I don't want to think about lunch. I don't want to think about the laundry. I don't even want to think about the fact that the cleaning lady did not show up and how many guests are coming Friday night or Sunday night. and I didn't even go shopping, never mind start cooking or whatever. And it's important to be able not to go into a guilt trip with all these thoughts like get angry at them and get annoyed with ourselves. Rather, what I find to be the most helpful is compassion. Compassion is like, "Wow, my resistance is so afraid. My animal consciousness is so scared to let me go in to a place of surrender. She's really afraid of letting go. She just needs to be vigilant. She needs to be anxious. She needs to make sure that I am at edge 24/7 cuz if I open my art, who knows what's going to happen? Who knows who's going to stab me right here? Who knows who's going to take advantage of me? Who's going to hijack me? Who's going to exploit me? Who's going to manipulate me? Wow. Can I have compassion on all these protectors who are literally going crazy? And by the way, you'll notice mk that the deeper we go into prayer, deeper we go into serenally, suddenly they come to hijack us with more ferociousness, they somehow bring up an emotion that is so much more disturbing like maybe something somebody's mother said, I don't know, 25 years ago or somebody's sister or somebody's brother or somebody's spouse or, you know, brings up something really really deep from the from the gut to really hijack me. And it's important to constantly go back to the eye that's observing it all. That third eye, I as an I and I as an I, I as an E. That third eye that observes it all from a regulated space and could just watch it and say, "Wow, I'm sorry that you're feeling so much resistance." And you know what? Like we do with a little baby who's tantruming, like we hold that baby and we say, "You're fine. You're fine. Your mother is here. your father is here. You're really fine. And just go bring ourselves back to the space of regulation and serenity. The more we exercise this muscle, the more we become good at it like with all exercise. And slowly we learn to control this more and more. And we don't have to control it in an obsessive way. It's going to keep on coming. And by the way, the more work we do, right? It's like lifting weights. You know, the better you become at lifting weights, the higher the heavier the weights need to become. So sometimes we're given an opportunity to deal with deeper stuff, but that's generally I think a model that at least works for me a lot. Um, again going to the to the practical um level I just want to make sure and again I'm looking at messages that I'm getting. When we say prayer, we mean, we mean uh reading from the sid. Can you tell us when we say prayer? Cuz I have friends that love reading tahilim that they connect to it that every moment very busy business women, entrepreneurs, they'll have a tale and they'll read. I'm not there yet. And other ladies will connect to maybe praying in the morning. When we say prayer, what do we mean? Okay, so prayer means two things. First of all, there is the technical term for prayer. It's basically the part of Jewish literature that is about conversing with God. There's two parts of Judaism, Torah and prayer. The difference is is this is this Torah, God converses with us. Prayer, we converse with God. So if I'm reading the or I'm reading the Talmud or the Mishna or any other part of Torah like Tanya for example, it's God or God's or God's or God sent messengers conversing with us. That's what Torah is. Moses is talking to us. Aaron is talking to us. The Balshmp is talking to us. The Arizel is talking to us. Rabbi Aka is talking to us. Abraham is talking to us. Prayer is we're conversing with God. We bring ourselves to God. So that usually includes the book of psalms to him which was composed by David and 10 poets 10 of the greatest Jewish poets. It's not just king David. He gathered their poet tremendous poetry from the children of Korak and other great great poets in the 150 chapters of Tahilim. And of course we have the sided the prayer book which much of the sided is taken from the many parts of the prayer book are taken from the psalms but there's also more prayers especially the prayers that were instituted for the Jewish people to recite in the morning. Shakarit in the afternoon and in the evening and special prayers for Saturday for Shabbat and for holidays and for Shah and for Yum Kipper. And that's why the prayer book is pretty thick, pretty dense because it has a lot of prayers for a lot of different times of the year. And the idea of prayer is all of these compositions that address the human soul reaching out to God, conversing with God, connecting to God, intimately having a deep relationship with God, requesting from God. But I should just say prayer also includes any type of conversation in any language in which you reach out to God. So, I may sit down on my couch. I may close my eyes and I may talk to God about my marriage. I may talk to God about my addictions. I may talk to God about my need for validation. I may talk to God about my children. I may talk to God about my anxiety. I may talk to God about my inner doubt, my ambivalence, my confusion, my being overwhelmed. Those are my prayers. They're not from a book. They're not using a book. But mymonities writes that the mitzvah of prayer is that people talk to God about what they need in whatever language in whatever format. You can do that all the time. In fact, most people don't know that for the first thousand years of Jewish history, there was no composed prayer. The prayers were instituted only in the times of the second temple. All the blessings, what's called shona, amida, all of that comes later in Jewish history. So in the beginning of the first thousand years of Jewish history, what did prayer look like? Prayer was an instinctive spontaneous internal conversation of every soul with God. It had no structure. Organized religion was not organized yet. And in fact, we need to go back to some of that because sometimes prayer can become very mechanical and it's just going through the words. And people don't realize it's not about words. It's about an internal experience. The words are great and important but it's ultimately about an experience. It's like it's like intimacy of a husband and a wife. It's not about words. It's not like let's talk. The talking is a manifestation of the experience of the relationship. So I I I'm there's so much I want to condense and I know we have four minutes but I'll do my best and even if we stay a couple of minutes um a couple of minutes after. So we're just about to uh get we're we're in a very special period now. I believe also that today is a very special day when Israel we're told that we're going to receive the Torah. Today is the is is is incredibly special day. And my question to you uh ahead of um Shauvot even for people that don't have and by the way thanks to the this session I gifted myself with the new pink sided because I wanted to have something uh ahead of this ahead of this hug. um interpretating to what you do to the dayto-day if I am about to davin and I maybe don't know the meaning of all the words and I maybe not sure when to bow or maybe not but I have kavana I have intention to play my role in the symphony to connect to my brothers and sisters all around the world when I dive in I close my eyes and I try to think really really hard about our 58 brothers and sisters and wherever we are I I do my best to channel my energy And hopefully some of it is getting to them. What is your best sorry to use this word tip for anyone? This this might be their I mean obviously we have to be excited again even if this is your 52nd sh it's also we should celebrate it is our first time of what tip can you give someone to come to with knowing that you know this is the moment that defined us as a people. Yeah. So growing up by the lab always before he would always make a a suggestion and a request that every single Jew the world over should make every effort possible to bring themselves and their loved ones to hear the ten commandments shot in the morning in the synagogue. You would say even babies, even infants shortly after they were born, obviously if if the health allows it to be able to bring even little babies. I remember I had nephews and nieces, they were a few days old and their parents brought them to the synagogue. And the Reb said because when the Torah was given, no Jew was missing. No Jew was left behind. The Medish says that God says if there's even one Jew missing, I can't give the Torah. Everyone is an indispensable part of the symphony as you're calling it and it's an indispensable note in the symphony and if a note is missing everybody is missing. It's like a jigsaw puzzle. We're all part of this puzzle. So I think to come to us to realize that every single one of us plays an indispensable role in the cosmic symphony of God and is the day that we were chosen to play that role. So when you meditate on this, when you think about this, I would practically suggest that people tune in to their favorite teacher of Judaism online, whether live or online, and listen to a class or a few classes about Torah, about shas before. Choose your favorite teacher you're most blow today, but thank God everything is available virtually. Spend a few hours, spend an hour or two, maybe when you're exercising, take a jog, go on the treadmill, do some of your favorite cooking, and listen to some classes or read a favorite book of yours of a favorite author, what Judaism is, what Torah is, what the gift of Torah is. So when you come into Shabuos, you come in with consciousness. Yes. And when you pray to God on shoo, you're there with your soul. When you go to the synagogue to hear the ten commandments, you don't just bring your body. You bring your presence. You bring your kavana. You bring your spouse, your children, your grandchildren, maybe your great grandchildren. And even Jews who consider themselves, as you said, secular. By the way, I just have to tell you, I once saw a letter from somebody to the Reb that I'm secular. And the Reb said that from the day that God said that every Jew belongs to Kadosh we're all a kingdom of princes and a holy nation. No Jew ever is mundane. Every Jew is holy. And that message of God was said today the second day of Son. So it's an appropriate. So thank you for bringing that up because literally today it's called in in Talmud the day we got our the day that we all got our lineage. The day when you are no more just of simple stock and peasant lineage. The day that the creator of the world said you're holy forever. Like tough luck. You're just holy. You're you're better than you'll imagine. You're pureer than you imagine. You're more authentic than you imagine. You're just in touch with the cosmic energy. So uh yeah. So it's a very special time for if everybody could come to listen to the ten commandments that would be a very special gift to the Jewish people and to God and to his So building on what you said very important uh and I don't know if we'll be able to do it technically but I will ask Rabbi Masin if possible to try and maybe send the 300 and plus people that were on this webinar maybe some um ideas of what they could listen to or watch before um before shadot because like anything in life if we want to get the best result if we want to get something meaningful out of it, we should probably prepare. Uh, you know, I try not to rock up to an important session at work without preparing. I think it's worth preparing when you prepare for the biggest, you know, one of the biggest times um of the year when we celebrate the receiving of the Torah. Another thing that you touched on which is very interesting, I remember that I was very nervous when I published the book to use like the word chosen as if to suggest that we're better. And then I learned it's not about being better. It's just because we have a unique journey that we should a a unique task not better just different. And one of the things that many people are afraid to be is different. Today people are looking outside thinking that all a lot of the answers to who they should be it lies here. But actually what you're saying is all of the answers of who we should be and who we really are is looking back at the more than 3,000 years and looking inside and trusting that what we find is who we're supposed to be. But that's that's a journey and prayer helps us go on that journey. So if we surrender, if we let go, I really hope that every single person here would have a beautiful, meaningful shuot and Shabbat and that by then, please God, all of our brothers and sisters are back home with their families or brought to and made this sh that during this session, there were rockets sent on Israel. We all got alarms if we have children back, you know, in the that today we think about the baby that we use what we have we've been using for more than 3,000 years, our connection to Hashem and our love for each other. And that's what I'm taking from this session. Any final words from you, Rabbi Jacobson? Yeah, just I just will remark on the word chosen. I I've I've said to students before, I said the Jewish people were chosen to teach every human being on the planet that he or she is chosen. That's what we were chosen for. We were chosen to teach every person that they were chosen by God. That's what we were chosen for. And that's a very profound choice. Ellie Weisel used to make a joke. He said, "We were chosen, but not necessarily for benefits." Or in Fiddler on the Roof, it's like chosen, maybe you choose somebody else. But the real idea of chosen is that when you look at Jewish history, there's just such a mystery there. Such an inexplicable mystery. And you look till today how Jewish history is coming together with so much pain and yet so much joy, so many difficulties and challenges, so many tears and grief and yet so much resolve and resilience. And you see that 4,000 years later, the eyes of the world are still on Israel and the Jewish people. Like, can't we get out of the gaze of the world? Can't we just, you know, Israel is a little little tiny match on a football field. It's the size of New Jersey. I don't know. It's the size of Dallas International Airport. Like, why is Israel Why does Israel occupy, you know, the front lines, the headlines of of of newspapers constantly of websites? And and the truth is because the Jewish people were chosen to be the interlacing link between heaven and earth to really serve as moral beacons from the teachings of Sinai to the world. And the world is desperately craving. We don't have to be embarrassed. We don't have to be ashamed. The world is embarrassed. Rabbi Sax used to say the world is embarrassed by Jews who are embarrassed with Judaism. They respect Jews who respect their Judaism and their faith. I also just want to say and that is that if anybody wants I have probably a few dozen classes on Shvot especially on Ruth the book of Ruth and on on themes of Shv. If anybody wants, you can go to the yeshiva.net. That's my website, the thy shiva.net. The yeshiva.net. And over there, you'll see the shvot section and holidays. And you have like, I don't know, probably 50 or 100 classes on shvot. But really, I would encourage everybody to read, to learn, to find your favorite teacher and learn something. Mik, I just want to suggest maybe before we leave, we could take one minute and just pray. We're talking about prayer, so let's actually pray. So maybe we take one moment of silence, one minute and we could close our eyes and breathe and everybody could pray to God to our creator for anything uh they want for anything you want anything you need with a complete sense of inner regulation and safety and calmness. Okay, let's begin. And let us say amen to everybody's prayers. As I was praying, may they all be accepted. Talk about miracles. My eyes was just like, you know, focusing on what Rabbi Masenter gifted me a few years ago. Every moment is an opportunity or every moment can we can have the the most greatest miracle ever. Every single moment. So please God, we see great miracles. Mashiach a second half of the session will be in. And thank you so much for everyone for joining and staying with us the whole time even after. That's a good sign. Thank you everyone. Take care to everybody. God bless you all and sending my love and blessings and may all your prayers always be answered. Amen. Thank you everyone. This class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net. Please help us continue the classes. Make even a small contribution at ww.theshiva.net/donate.