Pre-Shavuos Panel with Rabbi Nachi Klein Rabbi Chanan Gordon,Rabbi Dovid Horowitz &Rabbi Pini Dunner

hello everyone welcome to this amazing very special program tonight uh we have four tremendous panelists um we're at judicial level in a second um and uh we uh this is we have a very special topic tonight uh we're we are we're speaking about uh right we're right before us this is amazing coming up where we're talking about celebrating the great gift uh the clash of the jewish people of uh hopefully um 2021. so we have four tremendous panels we're gonna just introduce each one of them gordon um who is um is a tremendous speaker and author and uh your administrative jewish leader so i'm only family gordon how are you doing tonight always doing well it's a great honor and pleasure as always robbie and uh always up our best to hazak for hosting this once again okay amazing in there and um welcome to are we done with horowitz i think this is your second um part of the second um panel event for you next time i look forward okay amazing and all right i'm also gonna the the rub of the beverly hills synagogue my fat rabbit rabbit dunner i think it's already um i think you've already at least three times i think you already changed your middle name to hazak so uh how are you doing tonight i'm i'm ready for a month okay amazing and doesn't really have a great heart to hear from rabbinaki klein the rob of youngest general northridge welcome the first many times how you doing grab by klein thank you very much great to be here especially with these great rub on them as well okay amazing but just to give um a short um word about the tonight we're going to be hearing opening remarks from from our different panelists from our different rabbis tonight and then we will uh open it up for um uh uh a few questions afterwards that which each of the distinguished panelists will um address tonight um and uh this is presented by the kazakh organization if anyone doesn't know about the great work of kazakh with the queue um because i usually organize events in shul's literally throughout but schulz community centers but but now i'm saying that has been spearheading been one of the leaders in the jewish people um leading organizing amazing panel events on a lot of different amazing topics um and just for just for one example everyone can if anyone if anyone is interested tomorrow night like a very special program uh with uh um called united in pain coping with unspeakable heartbreak in mayron with rabbi feiner and uh by dr david fox who have what gordon uh introduced us to um he was on one of the panels and he's they were speaking about a support topic that is tomorrow night this monday night may 3rd 8 30 p.m on the same website tourneytimes.com live and um because zack's main mission to have jewish public school students transfer shiva last three and a half years along kazakhstan transfer for one thousand children from public school yeshiva so if anyone knows anyone who has chosen public schools transfers she reached out to the great organization org and it's our great heart to hear opening remarks for rebecca and gordon take it away bobby as always i want to thank you uh thank you the founder of hazak for the terrific work hey you do i just have one one question before we start and that is who gave rabbi donna permission to remove his jacket i'm very uncomfortable so here is my thoughts we are we just commemorated we well on our way in counting spherous armor towards the beautiful yamchav of shivers so i thought just to hopefully open up put this in context uh a couple of thoughts about spherus armor and then of course shivers itself which will be the zenith the combination of spherous eye mirror so firstly two comments perhaps on counting spherology so perhaps many of you have heard or might have even seen on february the 18th of this year historical event certain certainly from nasa's perspective when we saw a robo a a little mobile uh type of drone descended down and made history when it landed on mars now the way nasa works is that over the years they open up to school kids to have the naming rights for each mission and similarly this this particular mission to mars they opened up to 28 000 school kids and the the kid that actually was chosen to have the naming rights alexander mata from springfield virginia and they got the the right to name this particular mission to mars perseverance so i was looking in preparation for this evening's a discussion and it dawned on me that as we ascend up the ladder so to speak towards the greatest single event in history the beautiful the greatest gift the jewish people have ever and will ever receive and that's the instructions for living on mutton tara there's a it's important that we understand that just like we go to gym to to work out to have the kind of body that i have similarly in order to be actualized our potential from a spiritual perspective it also takes tremendous persistence and the the goal for us of course is not to reach mars but to get as close as we can to our kadish baruch himself and so over the years i've had the tremendous source of uh speaking for hasak and other organizations working for a lot of folks who reevaluating their commitment to judaism and so often i hear rabbi you know i i made the leap i realized that the western world the secular world in which i grew up in is is seems very shallow seems to have values that are not going to ensure that my family and my spiritual life is going to be be healthy and yet here i am years and years later still not feeling comfortable to navigate through the sea of the talmud the folks out there that still feel that saying kiddish on friday night is is is not something that comes naturally so i think the one the first point that i want to impart is the word is perseverance it's there's no way in the world that one by definition can build a physical muscle without perseverance without the pain and without in fact breaking the sinews of one's muscle but the same token in the journey of growing spiritually it takes perseverance the the growth is obviously a product of the perseverance and surmounting a lot of the obstacles along the way so we stay on the topic of spirit salomer as some of you know from conventions and conferences and i've had the pleasure of meeting many of you is while i've had the tremendous honor of speaking of many events my so-called day job results to me representing many professional athletes some of whom are affiliated to the nba so one thing that dawned on me probably today in the nba the person who's mastered the art of the so-called three-point shot is steph curry i looked a little bit about to steph curry's background and looked into his coach alan klein and alan klein looking into the beginning of steph curry who today is certainly one of the best-known basketball players in the world underscored the following fact how did steph curry become the master of the three-point shot every single day as his coach points out he was there on the court first thing day in and day out until it reached the point of complete muscle memory where the ball is thrown to steph curry it's not it's a reflex reaction and it's in the net so the daily the daily ascending of the ladder in spherical on there similarly i thought it's important for us to develop spiritual works out workouts on a daily basis so it becomes part of our spiritual muscle memory i can say on a personal level i never used to be a early morning kind of guy very much a nocturnal person took me about 25 years to get rid of the jet lag from south africa and what it took was every single day pulling back 10 minutes 10 minutes until i found myself being a person who can wake up very early and get a tremendous amount done so i think in the same theme of the omer it's a daily thing and i think one of the things that we can take into a uh maybe a lesson we can take home is think of one little thing even between now and the end of our counting of this particular spiritual emir of something you can do to flex your spiritual muscle it as long as it's the same thing every single day the almighty created in the spiritual dna of our body and our soul the concept of muscle memory and just like it becomes reflexive in the the physical world that allah steph curry is so in the spiritual it'll become easier and one will find oneself as setting up spiritual gravity so the two concepts of counting the omer we touched on perseverance we touched on the fact that something we can do daily let's talk about shivers itself the thing that i think is terrific to the folks that are listening it's a very tough generation to be to be living in for many many reasons but the distractions that we have through the proliferation of technology and social media is very pernicious and one of the things that we celebrate on chavers is something that is as real and as authentic as it comes and that is why we are while we're in this world our our purpose and the understanding that this is an anti-chamber to the spiritual holding for the next world chamus my friends is a time to remember that notwithstanding the fact that the average american i just saw a statistic spends 2 hours and 12 minutes on some form of technology i want to give kudos to people that are listening that are part of the kazakh extended family because what we celebrate when we are celebrating shivers of mutton torah we're celebrating that we want to be part of reality the blueprints of why we in this world and notwithstanding the the flashing distractions it's something that you should give yourself kudos for is that what you are embracing is the instructions for living which is the most real and the most authentic gift that we the jewish people have ever been given i want to touch on one thing that i've seen and experienced in my journey in many years involved in in teaching and in the world of kirif is that i find that a lot of people say you know rabbi i don't think i'm going to be perfect you know you're talking about a setting up to the 50th level and it's the antithesis of the 49th level i am no angel so let's dispel something from the get-go in terms of what we are celebrating on shivers the the almighty that we are that guides our life loves each and every one of you in a way that we possibly cannot fathom but it's an unconditional love the the notion that you have to be perfect or or not the zero-sum game is a complete myth and it's a tremendous trick of the so-called situation the forces of the other side every single step that you take as just like we count closer towards getting a mutton tara is a tremendous achievement and will be rewarded and naturally you yourself will feel certain changes within yourself so the idea of the that obtaining the torah means you have to wait until you're perfect is clearly antithetical to a torah perspective we're in this world not to be perfect we're in this world to be the best people we can possibly possibly be and know that when we that when you indulge in the cheesecake friends that the instructions were imparted by the most altruistic the most benevolent loving god that we cannot fathom who adores you who loves you and who is directing your life for the ultimate ultimate good and so i i'd like to yield my time to the next speaker and say just the following because it would be conspicuous in its absence if we don't uh and perhaps we'll have time later on it would be insensitive in this kind of discussion and not to make mention of the tremendous tragedy that we experienced in israel with the uh the loss of 45 innocent and beautiful souls forbid for me you need a person with a lot bigger shoulders than mine to try and understand these tragedies but for sure one thing which ties into chives and we can we can certainly uh take to our hearts and souls is that it's that every single day is a gift that there's nothing that's coming to us and that every single day should be sacrosanct and perhaps more important than counting the days of the omer my friends we should make sure that the days of the homo count i thank you for your time i yield my time to the next speaker beautiful message i actually have been right in front of me to have like this like i don't even know there's like a rock type of thing and i was thinking like that that that like you're saying that the consistency is key that like but how it like like grabbed your keema how is it that you're gonna penetrate the rock it's only by the consistency beautiful and uh my next speakers are by david howard uh would be a great honor to have please suggestions thank you very much robbie thank you for having me back again and to all the speakers a pleasure to be here with you there is a world famous maharao on my mirage sinai when the torah was given by harsinai everybody knows the world famous marathi explains the mountain being hung over our heads but there is a question that morale asks on the entire story which is less known and the answer is something that is quite fascinating we know that came to all the nations of the world and he said i want to give you the torah but every single one asks maxibe what does it say inside so every day nation a mitzvah that he knew would be very difficult for them and they all said not for us he comes to claudia after 70 nations and they say emphatically massive initial we will do and we will hear afterwards to understand everything that's inside and hashem reward some of the torah but not so fast because i'll tell us that as a standing sahara by the foot of the mountain suddenly the mountain lifts up gigi is like a barrel and a koresboro says to them to kabul satoru you accept the toy now muthaf it's very good all the bronchus that comes along with the torah is going to go to you in law but if not if you decide not to take the torah so shama take for us from over there is going to be your burial and the morale asks they already said nashma they said they're ready to accept it upon themselves so much so they said before we even understand what it says we want it in our lives you don't have to force a person into something if they already said they will do it so why the mountain over hands so the morale famously answers that is giving them a very strong message and the message was the following you came to rc9 you saw the other nations said we don't want it and so you think that you are willingly accepting the torah upon yourself by saying nasiv we want it it's nice thing the jewish people are on top of the world right now let's take the torah but it's not so simple the torah is not is not a choice the torah is not a nice thing that we take upon ourselves the torah is it is a necessity as the lungs ingest the oxygen of this world to breathe and the body takes in the water and the nutrients of basic food products so to the synergies itself through the beautiful words of torah and the the soul and the shame itself it thrives and it gets all of its nourishment from the torah cloud yourself cannot live with al torah and hashem was telling them that maybe there will come a time in history where you'll think it's not so easy to be a jew they'll be inquisitions there'll be a bias there'll be holocaust rahman so many terrible things the jewish people say to hashem listen when we were standing by our c9 we were on top of the world it was good to be here we wanted the torah but you know what it was a choice that we made so now we don't want to take it back it says hashem you can't take it back because it's a necessity that every single yiddish in the shaman needs in order to survive in this world throughout all the thick and the thin trials tribulations the highlights the good the simchas the torah is the driving force behind everything and that's what makes us who we are ask them the following question if at the end of the day hakodeshwara is going to hang the mountain over a head and drive home this point that you are not making a choice but rather the torah is a necessity that you must take upon yourself so he asks so then why go through the whole charade go to all the nations ask them if they want it come to cloud yourself would you like it yes nasa and ishmael we're so excited we want it at the end of the day massive ishmael is irrelevant because at the end of the day all that wants us to know is it's not a choice it's something that we are obligated to accept upon ourselves so why did hashem go through this entire process over here when in the end we have to accept it whether we like it or not says the morale that's exactly the answer and his words are because when it came to accept the torah upon ourselves lee his cowbell biracial we had to do it with a desire with an acceptance with a love with a symbol with a joy you cannot accept her in one's life when you're feeling that you're forced into you have no choice the only way to get to the ultimate kabbalah satire when we accept it is when your heart and your mind and your soul is in that acceptance when you realize how beautiful and how glorious and magnificent torah is that there is nothing greater in the entire universe besides the jew that has turned his life so that even though yes mitzvahs are not always easy sometimes they cost a lot of money sometimes they take a lot of time they require a lot of work all that is true but when a person gets a geshemak out of tire they have an enjoyment and a pleasure out of torah then they're willing to work all that much harder that's right we had a review his name was rob kolevsky he was one of the good of them here in america i think it was probably a god in the entire world and parents used to bring their children in very often and they used to ask for a barakah and they said rabbi give my son a brochure and she would say i can't give him a broccoli to become a tamil if he learns a lot of torah he'll become atomic but i'll give him the following and that is he should get a smack out of tairu he should get an enjoyment out of her when you go to the ice cream store nobody has to tell you to enjoy a a chocolate ice cream when you go to the steak house over there and you have a 24 ribeye 20 bars ribeye steak and the juices are still juicing that nobody tells you that you know enjoy it you know what it tastes like the geshmak of terry is when you know what the taste of toys and sometimes like fine wine it takes time to acquire the taste and to develop that taste for yourself but when you enjoy it when there's a pleasure that's in it then no matter how many hours you have to spend no matter how much you have to shift your life around how many things you have to dedicate yourself to every single step is a pleasure in and of itself and as we come to shivoyas so perhaps we live in a world as rabbi gordon pointed out there are so many things that are pulling our attention and our desires in other directions there's so many things that give us pleasure they give us a shock in this world but it's the illusionary pleasure it's not reality the reality is the pleasure of a jew that is connected to torah because through that we are connected through that we are connected to hashem if we'll work on these days and we'll work on shabbos itself to be able to appreciate this tremendous gift that hashem has given us to see the beauty and the glory and the pleasure that is in torah then there's nothing that is daunting in the up and coming here with our acceptance there's nothing that is out of our sights little by little by little by little you can't eat a scoop of ice cream or a sundae in one bite it takes 10 bites 20 bites 30 bites we have a whole lifetime base hashem to enjoy the geshemak of torah and through that hashem will connect to ourselves and through our self-connection in our shamans will connect to the reminder beautiful beautiful message i think is the the dovetails right recording step by step we all we all want to learn if someone the our next speaker by donner um without the furniture if you can please adjust this thank you so much robbie and when rabbi gordon called me up to ask if i would contribute to this important evening kazakh he said there's one one question he really wants me to answer and if i could just spend the focus of my opening remarks addressing this question he would be very happy and that is why do we eat cheesecake on shivers [Laughter] see what happens when you have an englishman on the on the panel robbie that's just let's be honest i mean we're all looking forward to schwooz kabbalah hair cheesecake right that one piece isn't good enough you've got to have at least two you start with one and then you have two so what's the onion of cheesecake my indian cheesecake eight-search voice it's an important question we're going to get back to this question i want to talk about something which relates to svera saumer and also relates to schwarz and we're going to build up to the cheesecake indian as i talk about it you know that uh we're counting something at the moment it's called spherus mere what's the second word there sphere ass ha i mere what's imer anyone know what emery is ima is actually a carbon we bring a carbon either when do you bring the carbon ion did you bring a carbon eye medicine i don't think you did we don't bring it anymore but it's still called spherocytoma do you know why because on the second day of pesach there's a carbon called carbon either they took the barley because the barley harvest began apparently on the second day of pesach every year that was the formal launch of the barley harvest like in america you have something called groundhog day right so we know the winter's over and the spring starts we have our own groundhog day it's called immers when we bring the carbon eimer the barley harvest was first and the wheat harvest was second up when does the wheat harvest begin you don't have to be a genius to work it out exactly 50 days after the carbon oimer the barley harvest began that's when you start the wheat harvest conveniently it also happens to be the first day of shavus hopefully i taught you something today that you didn't know two carbonus carbon number one is carbon either carbon number two is called stem do you know anything about they brought two uh fantastic loaves of bread in the basamik dosh and they would bring them as a carbon and that was on the first day of shabbos after i've encountered the 49 days it was a countdown i always say it's not a countdown it's a count up you know that rabbi gordon mentioned nasa so if you know anything about nasa whenever they launch anything from cape canaveral they start the countdown the numbers start going down right 59 58 57 56 10 9 8 everyone says it together six that's not the way we do it when we count we count up we always go up we always elevate ourselves we increase our level of kadusha of spirituality we don't decrease we always we start at number one number two number three all the way through to 49. after the 49th day has been counted what do we bring i want to ask you a very important question do you know anything about carbonus in the base hamikdash i'm not expecting you to be a big expert but do you know that you're not allowed to bring any carbon in the basement which is homage are you aware of that you can never allow to bring achomates carbon if you brought carbon monoxide for example when you brought carbon tommy do you have to bring carbon mineral as well the carbon minerals what's it made from made from flour are you allowed to bring homage to the base amigos you're not allowed to have any homage to always had to be non-homage carbon ice every carbon minha that was brought in the basa mitosis was non-chromates you know that there's besides for mata bakeries and anything that obviously has been made for pesach there's only one facility kosher facility that throughout the year is kosher for pesach do you know what it is it's where they make wine all wine or kosher wine is kosher for pesach if you look at the bottle you'll see it's always kosher pesach i want to ask the head of the herzog restaurant here in in uh it's here in southern california not far from where we are and i asked him you know i want to take this loaf of bread and because when i do the tour of the wine facility i want to take the loaf of bread no no you can't take the loaf of bread i was just kidding with him you're not about to take the loaf of bread it's all kosher for pesach the base hamikdash the whole year round didn't make it could have been pesach it could have been schwarz it could have been sukas could have been any day of the week of the month of the year made no difference it was always kosher for pesach if you went through the door to shake off your crumbs like you were walking to a pesach kitchen because no hermit is allowed into the basement there was one exception do you know what that exception was the carbon the two loaves that they brought after counting up from the carbon aimer that they brought the bali which by the way wasn't comments the barley offering which they brought on pesach you bring this on shabbos it wasn't non hamate it was homemade it was bread like we have bread what what's going on how can you bring ahmed's carbon in a base amigos and on chavuz there must be some significance it's a good question right rabbi gordon outstanding wrong accent great question okay i thought i'd just ask you the question see if you have an answer i'll leave it to you then okay no i'll i'll give another one so the alechem which is is intimately connected with the idea of schwerz you know the gemara says in brachas ammar rabelik sanji alexandria said that there is a specific significance to chromates chromates corresponds with something called the yate sahara the evil inclination tell me you've heard this vault for sure on pesach what's homage what's the difference between comets and mata it's the same ingredients it's flour and water what happens to mata it stays flat it's dry what happens to bread it's full of air puffs up but it's exactly the same the same amount of flour and the same amount of water something it creates a rising agent creates the air in the dough so that when it bakes it looks bigger that's the yate sahara says rebel alexandri it's khame shaba issa that creates an image an illusion of something which is bigger greater than the sum of its parts it's the same as matzah matzah is a representation of something spiritual devoid of materialism chromates bread is something which is totally infused with the yetzer sahara you have to avoid the eight zara why do you have to avoid the yatahara most the base hamikdash the bay samitos was the purest place on the planet that's where they brought carbonus that's where the shrine resided in the kurdish kardashian that's where they would have uh um all the the menorah was lit there all the carbonus on them is bay they had the uh they had the incense the kohanim worked there they had to be in complete purity everything that went on there was in total kudus you can't have hamates in such a place you can't have a yates a horror in such a place in fact we know we read a few weeks ago in the parasha what happened when the sons of aranakone went in to bring whatever they brought ash zara what was the age zara somehow crept in not that they brought home it something wasn't quite right these two tzaddikim 99 was okay but that one percent ruined everything and they were gone do you know why because the bass amiktosh is the ultimate paradigm of purity and of spirituality you can't have comics in a place like that obviously now ordinary day-to-day lives we have to eat comments we have to eat all the things that we eat but in the basement has to be completely pure devoid of any comments as mentioned by rev alexandri in the gemara in bronchus there's one exception to that rule do you know what it is shabbos do you know why because barasi ate sahara barasi torah tavlin god says to the jewish people i created the atahara you can't get away from it you were born you have a yates a horror you were born you have an inclination that's drifting you away constantly guiding you away from god but i created a torah i created the torah that is going to be the antidote to the yate sahara it's going to prevent you from falling into the trap of the yate sahara shavuas is the day that we receive the torah that's it you know when we start counting we just bring the bali offering its pesach we just got out of mid shrine and slowly we're counting one two five ten twenty thirty threes like we slowly getting there and eventually we get to 49 hashem it's time for kabbalah i'm going to receive the torah i'm going to have the torah now it's fantastic one second one second don't you know there's a yates or horror don't you know that there's sometimes things in your life that's going to distract you from keeping the toyota properly borussia zohara i created the yetzahara says hashem that yatesahara is represented by the carbon that we bring on schwarz the only time in the calendar year that muhammad is allowed into the vais amigdas i need you to see the yatahora right in front of you so that you understand what kabbalah satora is my friends there you have your answer why do you have cheesecake what bigger yatahora is there in human life then cheesecake do you know why you need to have a good yate sahara on schwarz so that you can be makable the torah 100 this is my yate zahara this is what can happen if i don't allow myself to be completely consumed by the torah i'm going to get consumed by the yate sahara i'm not saying by the way it's a bit of a a luxonous answer but i want to make my point which is that when we count up towards chavos we're counting up towards shedding all those material aspects of our lives which hold us back which create a barrier between us and being what we need to be in order to carry out our duties and carry out our mission for hashemis barach and the only way we can do that is by each day progressing another stage another level getting further up the ladder until barack hashem we managed to count i didn't miss i said with the bracha every day i'm now i'm at 49 i'm ready for kabala satora i'm ready to bring this nothing is going to distract me even in the base of mikdash i can bring this and i'm going to accept the torah i'm going to say nasa nishma and i'm going to mean it so if there's a message in this period of time in the lead up to schwarz it's this just remember something very very important that your job in this world is not to give in to the aid sahara your job in this world is to be there at matan torah and to be there and experience kabbalah satora and to make sure that torah really is something that is infused and part and parcel of your life in everything that you do i'll now pass back to robbie i'm sure he'll have something to say especially about cheesecake and then we'll take it beautiful we we all consume that message they're so unbelievable and when everybody's having their they're ashamed when they're having their cheesecake and uh i i'm sure if when you when you're having it obviously not what you obviously don't speak while you're having the cheesecake when you when you're when you're sitting over at your at your young dip table you're gonna blow away the your your crowd and everyone's gonna be for the rest of schmooze for all time everyone's gonna remember this amazing message thank you so much um leave a message um and that's our um last but not least before we get to some questions now by thank you very much robbie and hanan thank you very much for inviting me to this um it's a it's a big deal for me to be with two people with foreign accents that i rarely understand it was actually really clear it was great uh and especially yours was really something special that it was hard to hard to understand in the past but you did great i really i commend it um so i want to take a different approach a little bit different approach than other people over here really fantastic ideas that you've all shared um and i want to take a different approach and that is really like what is shabbos about if i if i needed one word to this to define what shabbos is actually about so i'm going to start with um i'm going to start with the story a story happened about i would say it's probably about eight years ago maybe 10 years ago someone came to shul very nice guy he was in his mid mid to late 20s came to show and he found the seat and he was dabbing there and week after week he was dabbing in shul and we're a nice guy we would we you know schmooze after dominant uh he would come to the kid if she was very very special um and then at some point uh you know i told the guy you know you should give him an aliyah see he he asked him he says no he doesn't want to leah and maybe have to ask him a few times he doesn't want to leave no problem okay so this went on for uh this went on for a while he would come and not only that did he come in daven beautifully but he would come after after davening after the drosha after adam zamiros he would come up and asked me questions on the drusha and i was listening like wow these are fantastic questions he has really amazing questions and you know some i had answers for some i gave him answers the next week and there was uh you know just a really special guy let's call him michael okay so one time michael comes up this is probably after a few weeks maybe a few months he comes up and he asks me a question and we're we're in like log boomer time and he asked me a question and the question they asked was so tell me something why is it that um when it comes to shavuous you have two days of shruis so waiting for him to continue the question he said you know because you're counting spherous homer and you don't count spherometer in doubt there's no suffix when you count the sphere's home or you don't say today is 33 or 34 you just count today and you have to be you have to have total clarity on the day that you're actually counting so if we know what pesach was and you know exactly what day sierra's homer is then why would it be that we're going to have two days of schwa it should really only be one day we know exactly what the issue is going to be it's coming right after that 49th day that's when truth is going to be so it's a famous question that's asked the number of answers given so at the time was off the cuff and i said you know one of the reasons that uh that we don't do it is because of a low plug a low plug means that you know all the other yum token that we celebrate they're going to be today so therefore for shibuyas we don't create any halacha confusion with anybody therefore we keep two days and as our donor pointed out extra day of cheesecake you have to be mahmur in certain areas very very important so so this is the answer i told him so and obviously there are many other answers that are given about shibuyas and in this concept the fact that that it's not gemara what day the torah was given but that was the answer that i've given him and at the time i had said to him i said tell me something michael speaking about shabbos what are you doing for sure maybe you'll join us for our all-night learning program so he said to me he said that's so sweet of you thank you so much but i'm actually going to be with my parents on sunday so i said it's okay shabbos is on tuesday and wednesday this year so he said no but not for us and that's when i froze oh boy i said not not for us what do you mean what do you mean not for us so he said certainly deadpan of course but he said we're karaites so shabbos for us is on sunday and i felt like i went into a time machine you know i'm back 500 years carrots wow i don't know if the other rabbis here have had carrots oven with them um this guy was a gem but he was a carrot so i was just like i don't i know how to respond you know history was my worst subject and you know when i studied i'm like i wish i really you know beefed up on my jewish history back then so he says he's a cairo i said wow you know that's remarkable but he's following everything he said he asked a shiloh to an orthodox rabbi who said that you know he's considered jewish for many different reasons but that he can rely on the fact that he's jewish i was amazed i have a carrion in front of me how many carrots do you know right like it's a remarkable experience to be able to have a carry i come into shul david with you for three weeks so i said where you from so he said oh he's from you know probably about 30 miles out from uh from from where our school is i was just amazed i i understand so then another show member happened to have been there and had a hot whole conversation about how can you actually be a character today like don't you see what's what's going on we think you know i don't even know what the ism of it would be cara ism and uh you know we got into conversation about certain things so the other member of the show asked him what about villain no this villain's an allegory for us we don't actually put on villain so i said to him let me ask you a question let me ask you one question and i opened up a whole mission i said to him you know it says it says in the torah explicitly when talking about the malachites of shabbos so most of the molecules of shabbos are actually not explicit in the torah that you need an oral torah for but it does say that you're not lost beyond shabbos you'll not let a light of fire and shabbos i said to him it says you're not allowed to fire here so i understand you have your own interpretation of the oral law but here's an explicit line that says you're not allowed to fire tell me something how did you actually how did you get here how did you get insulin shabbos so he said to me well i drove so i i said but but it says right here in the torah that you're not letting light on fire so his response to me just left me with a smile and he said listen my parents are not so religious amazing you know you're a karaoke and you're not so religious i didn't know there was were there concepts of reform or conservative carrots out there like how did you do it but he was so straight with it it was a sweetheart of a guy but but you know he said like my parents aren't so religious and that's why i was able to drive on shops to me it was a telling telling story over here because you know we're looking for certain answers about certain things in life we want to understand life always better we want to have a a better understanding of what we're supposed to why we're supposed to actually do it and this is what i think shabbos is actually all about um i'll tell you i was watching one of robert kellerman's uh rabbi lay by the lawrence kellerman's uh videos that he had on the proof of the torah so if anyone has ever watched any of these so they have them on a torah so on h they showed one of the things he has one of those two videos um about the proof that uh the torah is god-given the proof that the jewish people are the chosen nation so but at the end of the video you scroll down all the way at the bottom you have all the footnotes of everybody who's uh who who's commenting on the video and many of the people that are watching this video were non-jews and and and they wrote i'm christian i'm this and that beautiful thing amazing clarity wow i couldn't believe it like what what do you do if you're a non-junior and you watch a video like this and you feel like this guy gave you total clarity of what is the true religion so a few of the people comment and they said you know this is really an eye-opening video really remarkable but i'm actually as much as i believe it to be true i'm still going to stick to my religion i'm still going to stick to christianity or whatever religion they actually said and the obvious question is is there is a cognitive dissonance that we have over here what happened that you saw what in your world you called the truth in your eyes you saw as a truth but at the end of the day you still stuck to what you were doing similarly um we have many people that they they understand what truth is all about but they're kind of stuck in certain areas that they're not really able to budge so with that i'm going to i'm going to enter into the concept of what i believe is an important aspect of what shibuya is actually all about when we look at sea night and the revelation that we had our sinai so oftentimes you know we understand it that it's a fundamentally different uh different revelation than all other quote-unquote religions that exist out there all of the religions they have you know they they always quote they have a small number of people and it's not verifiable so we we talk about chabois and the revelation as that this is this is how judaism is a true religion and it's it's the ultimate thing this is what it's all about there's nothing else but about judaism but there has to be something else there because we who grew up with this we who know what it means to be a torah fear a torah god fearing jew we don't we don't need to use it in order to prove against other religions not to know what issue was for ourselves i'm not celebrating that i'm not like another religion i want to know what what is it about what's it for me so there's one aspect i'd like to share and that is i saw a quote in the name of jacob he explains the idea he says when the jewish people in the idiom were enslaved in mitzrayim they were sitting there in egypt it wasn't just simply a physical enslavement that they had it wasn't just simply the backbreaking labor that they went to experience that physical slavery they had had created for them a spiritual enslavement that did not allow the jews to actually experience godliness within their life they could not experience holiness they couldn't understand what god was actually about and riyakumir quotes and explains that egypt was the paradigm of enslavement of the mind enslavement of the mind what we think is physical it's actually enslavement of the mind the mind became incapable of having a consciousness about god it did not have godly awareness they you know we can talk about amuna but they didn't have the mind capable of understanding this idea in today's terminology we say like you know our minds are numb our minds are mush we just we you know you can't think about it you know when we're harried when we're taken apart by different things that exist in our lives someone says hey you want to go study each other like i just i don't have i don't have the head for it i just i don't even have to be able to focus on this so he says this is why the redemption the the gula that we had from exile took place with a total awareness of hashem that's what all the moccos are all about that's what kris yams is all about god's presence in all aspects of the world this is what it's really all about so if that's true if the if the exodus is this entire concept and all of the makos are there in order to give us a sense of clarity so what's so so shavuous and the revelation of shabbos what it does is it takes a jew and not only did we have divine providence where we saw all the makos that we had we saw total control of teva of nature but it brings us actually to a new dimension that harsinai something shifted within us it wasn't just simply saw hashem control everything and now hashem loves me and he's taking care of me at our sea night we enabled our minds our da's to reach the pinnacle of ultimate da'as of knowledge of a kardashian that's total divine knowledge that's what she was about because i'll tell us that we know in harsinai the gemara and shabbos discussed the idea that they were able to see they were able to see the sounds and hear the sights all of our senses became intermingled or co-mingled to be able to experience something on a level that we never had before so when the jewish people experienced harsinai and they received that torah what they actually had at that moment is total clarity they understood why everything existed within the world total clarity what it was all about was what it was all about and that's why hazal tells us that it was a tikkun of there was no more death anymore and now beneath harcina were able to fix everything because ultimately what they had was total clarity there was no confusion they saw it all they had every single experience it was remarkable for every single jew to be able to have that that clarity can only come with the giving of the torah whether hashem law giving that's the only way anybody can attain that level of clarity and certainly that is the way that the jewish people attain that clarity so in chavus we're not simply celebrating what the giving of the torah issue we received it we're reminding ourselves that total clarity of what happens in the world is actually attainable through the study of torah itself and that's our focus with all the cheesecaking all the celebrations and all feel us that we have we are reminded that what shavuot brings to us is total clarity that torah gives us that amazing aspect of what clarity is all about and that's how we get that actually through shivus itself so just to give everyone a thought when it comes to your shivoist we're all looking for answers to different things that happen in our life whether it's this terrible tragedy that we all experience we all want answers we all want some sort of clarity but going to shavu is asking the question take a verbal moment to ask that question hashem i'd like clarity on something and when i go and study that torah shivers night and the days leading up to shabbos and beyond hashem open up my eyes open up my heart so i can actually have that clarity to be able to understand you better to understand the world better because that's ultimately what it's all about is being able to get that clarity and so with all the confusion it doesn't matter where you're standing in your religious observance create that sense of clarity study hashem's torah and then this way we'll all be able to be bonded together as one nation be able to understand the world better be able to have a sim with the torah itself beautiful message opening remarks i think we could all the messages i think they have they have the same thing about we take one step at a time and then we're gonna we're gonna take one step at a time and we're gonna get that get schmack and then we're gonna get that clarity and it's hashem um and uh so so to start off on our rapid um uh as time is uh is waiting on us that we'll we'll try to at least hit uh maybe one or two questions um so we we call this uh time uh rapid fire questions there's no there's no extra time clock but let's just say we put uh short to the point answers on these questions um that'll be amazing so the uh remember gordon first question um and if it's for all our panels um so so as we know as as there were as a few other bottom they were mentioning but we know that the the tremendous uh tragedy uh the 45 tremendous that the shamans were were they were uh we were killed in this tragedy and we made us we also david for there was there was there was many who also would neither are for shalema um so so we know about this this horrible tragedy so okay what what are your thoughts on on on this tragedy maybe give us some words of physics some words of encouragement as we approach uh schweris gordon thank you robbie so i want to pick up where robert klein left off uh where he the governor went over to someone and asked how you called up so i had a similar experience once when i uh went over to one of the folks at one of our seminars and said how are you you know how you called up he looked me straight in the face and he said sarah ben moshe so obviously i i i figured immediately as rabbi kline alluded to that it's my accent whatever i said how do you you know how you called up he said sarah ben moshe and i said well no we're getting called up satori said rabbi you obviously realize everything that's going on in my company my attorney told me to put everything in my wife's name now as much as we kid around about these about these things i think the message whether you're man woman where you identify as a man and woman is as follows there's a big difference between love and respect far be it for me to try and understand things which are clearly we cannot fathom but i want to share two thoughts which are hopefully will resonate we know that one of the things that we are commemorating is the demise of 24 000 students of rabbi akiba the tragedy of the demise of the 24 000 students of rabbi kiva ended on the 32nd day it's interesting if you look at it from a gematria perspective 32 meaning lay meaning hot there's a difference between love and respect in the torah we are told that there's nothing that says that we should love our parents but we should respect our parents understand that ravi akiva was personified the concept of love your neighbor but it would seem that the flourishing talk about that the fact that we had this tragedy of 24 000 students is there was a lack of respect between the students and it seems to be a big differentiation between love and respect so one of the lessons i think we should learn from a a tragedy that is hard to even put our arms around is that there seems to be such divisiveness in the jewish people today the almighty chose badafka on the of to hand pick your hand pick 40 45 kadeishim to be returned to a kaddish barracuda perhaps the idea that the the finger pointing if the person has a pastry guy it should be we have to understand that this event that we're talking about today about traverse is it was the highest form of actus of the jewish people that was the time the almighty chose to give us the torah so perhaps we can take to heart the fact that the idea of love is a beautiful thing it's something that has become somewhat cliched but it's a more profound emotion when you respect someone someone not with standing out differences notwithstanding the fact that they might have different guardian a different nusa and i think that that's an important thing to take home when you when you realize that the almighty chosen to take back these neshamas on like by omer and that we are ascending up to shivers which is the time of complete it also is a time hazal teach us of complete silence before the the drum roll of mountain toyo there was complete silence there was another time in the torah when there was complete silence and that was when aaron heard about the demise of his sons there was complete science why because he understood with perfect pizzaga that while it's inexplicable while it's painful while it's like a raw knife going through the almighty has a heisman so far be it for me to say more than what i can see at face value and what my robe have taught me but i think we can take to heart to the fact that perhaps it's a lesson for all of us to respect every single yid notwithstanding their background not withstanding the extreme signias and number two is to also realize that if we really want to each of us be a brick in the next base of mikdash we need to have actors we need to have unbridled love and respect and but as was hashem we'll take these things to heart this is a tragedy beyond what words can say but it's even more of a tragedy if we don't take a lesson and a muslim from this amazing rest amazing message um and um rabbi howard said um if you could also address this question about um um some thoughts some uh some physique that you can give us about about this uh tragedy that happened in their own and maybe how it connects also to schwarz or whatever your thoughts are many years ago when i was a younger man learning in kyle i had a very good friend who was his wife was ex expecting their first child she was in the ninth month of pregnancy and we got together with them and my wife noticed that something didn't look right about this young woman the way she was carrying the baby my wife asked are you feeling all right she said i don't know she said if i would either go to the doctor something doesn't look right the young woman runs to the doctor the doctor doesn't like what he sees he takes her into an emergency c-section and the baby rahman al-islam was born brain dead and fought for its life for about a week and then the baby passed away after they finished remember the shiva however everything worked out over there suddenly their car broke down and it was a tremendous amount of money that they had to spend in order to fix that car after they took care of the car then their computer which was a faithful computer it just died it stopped working all together so the husband said to himself first we lost the child then our car broke down and now the computer is dead as well what is that trying to say to us what does hashem want so he went to arabia and see berkowitz in their israel and he asked him what is the message so rebbe told them the question is not why the question is what why who does all the things that he does that's the hashem and nobody will ever be privy to understand exactly what kurdish who does what he does until pastor will get into the uh come and all of the all of the darkness will be revealed to us but he said when a person goes through tragedy and a person goes through you surim is talking to them and the question is what is my reaction going to be so he told this man who had just gone through a lot lost their first child he told them you and your wife you will sit with each other and you'll examine your life and you'll see areas an area in your life that you feel you can be mistaken you can become better in it belongs to you and to nobody else and if you work on that and you'll make that better that'll be a tick and that'll be a lesson that'll be a growth that you'll take from such a tragic situation we're not in the vm we're not the name we have no idea why where he had a talmud who was on his deathbed and the ramban came to him shortly before he passed away and he told him i understand everything that does in this world three cautious i have on hashem i don't understand why he did what he did to claudius i'm writing them down on a paper i'm burying them together with you in your cave in your grave and i want you to bring them before the keystone covenant ask how why did he do what he did to claude israel come back to me in a dream and let me know to sure enough the next day the talmud passed away ramban put the paper inside of the cave of the grave together with him and a few days into shiva this talmud this student came back to the ramban in a dream and he was shining and he was glowing and rabban said no tell me what did answer and he said my dear rebbe and my master the ramban he said i'm not privy to tell you the answers that we see here in the islamic in the world of truth but one thing i can tell you when you will get here you will see that everything makes sense who knows exactly what he's doing so we don't have any answers we don't have any reasons but the what is how we'll respond everybody will take a different message everybody will learn something new and everybody will look inside of themselves to decide what can i take upon myself to try to fill the void of these 45 sadiqan who are no longer in this world the serva of the sparrow powerful message um and um carrying on the momentum um rabbi dunner what are your uh what are your thoughts on this subject thank you robbie i have a kasha for you and i'm not going to answer it right away but i have a kasha the cash is this the beginning of parsha's mi we have just read pasha's mi we have all the different restrictions relating to kohanim and their association with corpses with dead people and rashi comments quoting a hazal obviously it's a major rabbi which by the way is unusual because in vayikra rashi rarely quotes major shrabba but he quotes major shrubber and the magistrate says that arana khan was had such a close relationship with hashem that hashem gave him as a gift all the halachus which relates to kahanim not having anything to do with corpses not just for aaron akain aran his sons his grandsons and for all time his descendants don't have to be metaphor with mason in fact not don't have to cannot they're forbidden to be metabolizing except obviously close family members and a mace mitzvah so the obvious question that arises from this is aaron is such a eurasia mayan he's such a fantastic servant of god and god wants to give him a special gift in recognition of the fact that he is such a close and faithful person and he says to him do you know what i'm going to make sure that you and your descendants after you will never have to be undertakers imagine i were to tell you i love you so much robbie i think you're the best in the world you and your family and your descendants they'll never have to collect garbage that's i'm just telling you that's what i'm going to give you what exactly is the great covered what is the great honor about being chosen not to have to do with dead people i understand that there's restrictions and with purity and all that but the measure makes out as if it's an incredible thing i want to park that question i want to tell you something that on thursday morning i got a phone call from my son i have a son called mayor he's in the uh idf he's in the haredi unit of the tanhanim he called me so i've got my day off usually on their day off the soldiers go to sleep because they're very very tired he told me no i'm i'm going you know where i'm going i'm going to miron and he's driving to miran and he called me from the from the bus i'm on my way with my friend we're going to miran i'm so excited it's fantastic you're going to miron i was there 12 years ago it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life i'm so excited for you and he's on his way to miron anyway at about 3 45 la time the news filtered through that something had happened in miron we didn't yet know what it was and i texted my wife have you heard from mayor she texts me back what do you mean i said have you heard from me have you been in touch with him she says no i said would you try now to get in touch with him she tries can't reach him phone is off not answering sadly the news is beginning to filter through this collapse people have died so she calls my cousin who's together with him in the army but wasn't with him in miron can you reach mayor anyway one way or another they managed to get through to the friend who was with him but he wasn't with him right then he said i saw mayor five minutes ago that's not good enough right for more than an hour we didn't know where mayor was finally we managed to do a three-way conversation with my cousin in israel and mayor comes on the call and he says mao you wouldn't speak to me spoke to my wife mommy he said i am a first responder i'm helping i can't speak tell daddy i'm okay puts the phone down and that's where he was for the next four hours carrying dead bodies and the injured he said he's never physically worked so hard in his life went on a bus back to your shalom for shabbos and i'm thinking to myself there's got to be some message here because onlineman we celebrate as we heard from rabbi gordon the fact that rebecca's tummy didn't stop dying but on lag by me this year we had 45 people who died the highest quality people bene yeshiva bene torah people who are shematura mitzvahs the highest level they could be tamidima verb akiva and they died and by the way this didn't happen in some random year this is a year where thousands and thousands of people have died in fact many people in our own communities have died it's been a year of increased death in our lives we've been surrounded by it and we thought that's it it's all over it's done covert is is finished we're going to mirand everything's gonna be okay we come to miron we're celebrating and we're dancing and we're singing and suddenly we're being the tapa with mason is being told you don't have to be metaphor with mason not you and your children your great grandchildren your descendants for all time why because of your closeness to hashem when you're that close to hashem you know you know why we have mason we have masim to remind us of our yom hamisha that's what we say on rosh hashanah seriously we keep on talking about life and death and the fact that life is valuable life is precious want to live and when we and and during ello we have the minute to go to the base islam we go to the um clarion of of relatives so we can get some sense of our own mortality but if you're sadik if you're close to hashem you don't have to have a sense of your own mortality you don't have to have any idea that there's death in the world because you're attack you live in a bubble where you don't have to be multiple with mason you are nakayam somehow after a full year of and more than a year of being so closely associated with this horrific virus that has killed so many somehow hashem seems to be sending us a message and i don't want to use these corbonas as the vehicle for the message i want to speak more broadly i want to just say that we're not yet arunachalen and of course aaron akain had he been in miran he would also like mayor being the topper with the mason because they were mace mitzvah right these were mason who were mace mitzvah you had to be metaphor with them you had no choice but we should aspire to be the type of jews who are like aranakain to be people of faith who are so close to hashem that we get this special gift that is mentioned in madras the madrid tells us that was such eurasia maim had such a sensitivity to his own mortality at all times being the topper with mason was irrelevant to him and we need this bracha in our lives we need to be able to be in a situation where close association with masim is not something that we have to deal with on a regular basis we're not quite there yet and maybe this in this countdown to shabbos and it's so sad that it happened on like in this countdown to us in this year's kabbalah satora we should really take upon ourselves this lesson that perhaps we haven't learned as well as we should have over the past many months should take this lesson to heart life is valuable let's do everything we can to protect life to defend life to perpetuate life and even though it's not to ello and it's not as serious hashem should make sure that we have this sensitivity to the life that he holds so precious that's why he gave it to us and that we too need to hold precious and uppermost in our minds at all times it's a very very moving message and rabbi klein if you could just uh if you leave us with uh with some closing remarks uh um sorry for tonight thank you very much uh it's very hard to follow with rabbi donna's beautiful words and very moving story as well thank you rabbi dinner um i'll tell you the truth um i had i had one thought um and then later earlier today i would say someone gave me another thought to share um but i was apprehensive about that thought but i'll share it with you the one thought that i really felt is that as much as we'd like friezak during this time and we all need physics especially when we go through tragedy some of the greatest frieza is really silence and we don't know how to answer questions um and if we come up with you know different ways to answer the question there's always someone who's going to be left with more questions and if you think about what happened as the as many of the panelists already mentioned about aaron hakoen think about when arun stood there watching and finding out about his two sons who died suddenly does say vayi dom aaron he was silent moshe robin is the one who comes by to console to give some words of i thought it was going to be us it turns out that they're the holy ones but after that you don't actually see moshe benu having a discussion with claudius phil mosher ubena doesn't say anything to kaiser about what happened over here we have laws that come by where she tells us about what we're learning from these experiences but we don't actually see the consolation and i think the message is telling that for those that are very distant from the actual event and don't have a relative for us we just need to have introspection be silent there's not much that we can actually say it's only moshe rabbenu who speaks to arun but to the rest of klaus we don't actually have that full communication and for us silence is when you go to a shiva house and you don't open your mouth and you sit there in silence that is a powerful experience that's a powerful level of immuno the level of acceptance that we have because we're always looking for answers we're always looking to find another reason to to explain why something happened but that's just noise it's just noise that gets in the way of us being able to just sit there with tragedy and be able to feel that pain the pain of the other hidden so we don't need to know exactly what happened who how many what age this and that you need to know those things so you can mourn more you need to know those things so you can cry with the families whether you're with them or not but to come up with answers is actually very difficult for us and it's just noise that takes us away from the essence of the morning itself and so therefore for us i think our own is an important lesson to just sit there in a state of silence you know for me i went on to some of the new sites just to look at the pictures of these young fathers young boys all these things and just to read the quick excerpts so i can just sit there close my eyes and just feel the pain of what the families are going through because we cannot fathom what it's like when when a parent loses two children at that same day there were two sets of brothers who died in that horrific accident and we don't have answers so we shouldn't try to the physique that we have is that our kashbro who's running the world and we're going to stay silent that i think is a great physique for us i mentioned to you i wasn't going to share but i will share it because someone shared with me feeling that this was very important to share with other people um and what they had shared with me is that you know during corona the jews lost a lot of lives and the whole world lost a lot of lives and even though israel is on the forefront of the vaccine and now everything's finally opened up again because of all the hardships that they went through being part of claustro means we have to know that there's still pain that actually goes on in the world that we can't sit idly by when there's pain that's actually going on in the world so even at moments when we want to celebrate sometimes we have to realize there are people that are still in tremendous pain if you look at india today thousands upon thousands of deaths in india it's rising by the numbers they say yeah somewhere three and a half thousand deaths today and in the last month they probably lost i don't even know what the numbers are in last week probably lost 10 000 people now most of us have really no connection to india but there is a telling moment for us and that is yes we've lost so many but the virus is still going on and people are still dying from it is it a time for us to be out there and celebrate as if nothing else exists within the world as claudius so we have to be the ones who are the light into the nations and perhaps we have to have us general muted rejoicing in the things that we do knowing that there's still people actually suffering and that perhaps is a message that we can also gain from is that whatever we're doing everybody is actually looking at us at claudius saying you are our leaders you are guiding light please show us how we should actually live our lives so these perhaps the two messages for me it's the silence that we can take to walk with a kardasha not understand and just be able to mourn with others and perhaps we can look at how it can be alighted to other nations and recognize that others are still in pain and the things that they're going through as well oh yeah mr cox very special message this was all every all the message very special tonight we want to thank all the distinguished panelists thinking from their tremendous busy is to address it tonight by gordon up the heart which will be done or up by client and we want to uh everyone they should just before you end this press end zoom on your on your phone or computer or you're calling into this if you don't um but but before you do that as as all the panels are saying soak in the messages as every client was saying by edward think about contemplate and as all the other panelists is just so good or whatever messages in one small way try to apply to your life and we will hopefully be uplifted for it and prepare for us and thank everyone for joining us tonight