Project Inspire Convention 2022 Rabbi Shlomo Farhi Finding Family

all of us when we embark on the mission of project inspire the next speaker to close the convention an outstanding speaker who's come many times to project inspire i want to thank you for coming no further ado finding family rabbi fargi [Applause] it's always a very scary moment when you stand up at a podium and realize i can't see my notes i think i know what hamovadia wore sunglasses i'm very grateful to robert yolovsky because now i know i don't have to try to be funny because however good i do i'm never going to do as good as that so i can just retire the sneakers and get on with what i'm supposed to say thank you so much for your wonderful words so inspiring so genuine so authentic oh my gosh not an ounce of condescension you are a master of your craft a tremendous tremendous educator and it was an honor to witness you coming of age and growing up very special i also had the side view so while everyone saw you from the front i think i was the only one that got the role model joke let's begin my grandfather used to love telling me interesting jokes almost always they were not so appropriate he was a survivor of the war they kicked his door down when he was only eight years old on kristallnacht in born in germany and when he came to america after having gone through the war effectively as a child on the run with his father through england and eventually to new york and eventually to south bend indiana the one thing he thought of to himself is the last thing i want to know or be identified with is from judaism he joined the reformed temple in south bend indiana and i think mostly that was a way of not being that identifiable thing that he was once hunted as as a child it was a remarkable journey in the last couple years of his life when he moved in he wasn't well with us to see someone finding yiddishkai for effectively the first time in his adult life going to shul in a wheelchair saying kaddish it was a tremendous honor to our family to have him with us for the last two years of his life but i don't know if he kind of got the gravitas of synagogue she would always tell me jokes that maybe we're not so shull friendly and always in jewel but i want to share with you a joke that i can't say at the project inspire convention because i see rabbi samson is very nervous right now someone tell him this is not the non-from weekend just have a note for you rabbi it's a joke that um he would tell me he told us growing up and i heard from my father as well there was a mashulich he came to somebody's house he needed a handout he needed some tadaka needed some help so he knocks on the man's door and the man says i'm not interested he says but sir please give me one minute i have to tell you my family my kids my wife the hospital the bills it's so difficult it's so difficult i'm not interested but if maybe you could just i can't but if you don't have any much you could do this sign that no today they've elevated it to an art status i don't know if you've ever got their jab in the ribs during davening and now they don't ask you for money because you say they hold out that credit card regime and it used to be like now it's uh nfc it's touch they just start touching your pockets it's amazing anyway so he the man says i'm really sorry i'm not interested thank you very much you know no thank you the fellow's name was mr man m-a-double n uh any connection to any uh characters that you know by the same name is purely coincidental i'm nervous about getting sued after that speech and the bashuloch this raw of you shall meet he says to him mr man i give you a broke that you should have the bloche of avrom un solo the guy he's about to slam the door now now he's curious he's never had that response before the bracha of avraham and sarah wow he says why he says he gave them hated the name he added it became avraham so i became sorrow i add you a hate to your name from man to hormone it's a tricky job this uh adding and subtracting lettuce to people's names but it seems to make uh a feature quite a few times in the torah and we just read one such example not avram not sorry not yoshua but we find uh in this last week's parsha an example of this subtraction of a letter the posix says you and the naseem brought their gift what did they bring they brought avne shaham they brought avni they brought the stones for the shoulders of the korean goddamn they brought the stones for the breastplate for the haitian that they would use with the urum the tomb that would guide claudius and what was remarkable about what was remarkable about this these nesium's gift is that the torah seems to look down on the gift and it's fascinating because in the list of all the things that you could have brought for the mishkan the most expensive things were the avni shoham and the avne maluim and the torah says i'm going to subtract the yud from your name and in the torah it's not written behind the scene with the units written sin alef mem they lose ayud rashi says why is it that they lost the ud omar ravanasana permit me to quote you arashi it's coming from the madrid marauder that thing where you see over and over and over again like robiolovski's videos that was remarkable by the way i actually know that i remember that first tape do you remember that first tape that you put out about shidduchim that was unbelievable it was like the very co all the bakaram dearest and now it's a stroll when i was in early stroll they had it on repeat they're like oh this is the part when you go it's amazing such fans again and again and again we hear about the gift of the neseum and they're the first bird people to come forward rashi says how come then they were first um they didn't come forward in the beginning they had a beautiful line yes not with zebra let everyone give what they give um we'll fill up the rest by the way every single fundraiser every single fundraiser in the history of time would love a donor like this look i want to build the mere yeshiva whatever you guys are missing at the end of the dinner tonight come to me that's my favorite guy but the tour doesn't see it that way kivan sheishlimut zebra sakol they had there was nothing they could give a liquidity they brought what they could do therefore they came first they didn't want it to happen again and since they were lazy in the beginning nexra ishmael a letter was missing from their name the hannes i asked this question on shabbos and ishir how come if you're going to miss a letter from their name it's only the yud but i see my son is saying over to my wife he's saying an answer i was like oh you know the answer yet say it out loud say it thinking i'm going to get nakas from this kid right now i only have one son so i need to milk nachas from the right i have lots of daughters i get knockouts from but i got the one boy right anyway so look at this kid which is very much out of his farting either way i look at this i look at this one kid and i'm like go ahead you have the answer tell them tell them he said if they took another letter you would just ask how come they took that letter i said he's going to be a rabbit he writes something unbelievable he says what is the main feature of judaism it is dependent on alacrity it's the only time we ever use that word that here and scrabble no alacrity yes okay because the icker the main element of judaism is zurizus an energy in excitement to do the will of akrush baruch and through their laziness that's the word that the madrishan rashi just said to us through their laziness they lost the yud and it occurred to me that perhaps the reason why we take a yud out of their name is because if what was missing from them is resource doing something quick the fastest letter to write is the letter you'd that's what was missing something that you do instantaneously on the spot with great devotion with great emotion you feel so excited to do something you jump you do amazing my friends this is frey moosa live it's amongst them and see moses says that's a strange thing to say that the reason why they did this was because of laziness because there was a reason why they did this they had a husband they would make up whatever was missing so what do you want from them they had a good reason what do we say no no no lazy why and i want to share with you an amazing story of richard salantar there was a question that came to mistral solanter they had a problem with the authorities and there was a big question and they came to bring the question to bistro solanta should they try and deal with the problem locally through their connections with the local government officials or should they make the very long journey all the way to st petersburg it's long it's far it's freezing etc etc dangerous maybe and if they walk in and they say we want to talk to bistrol solante about whether or not we should travel to say petersburg or we should try to deal with the issue locally if you salan says grabs his coat heels let's go they're like we haven't he goes let's go we're going okay i guess he made a decision they get on the train it's freezing it's a long arduous journey it takes them a long time they finally get to st petersburg they sit down in the first show they get next to the to the uh to the uh fire they're warming up a little bit after their long trip and if you saw still have to turn to the group and he says okay so what was the question again they're like the question was whether we come to saint petersburg i kind of feel it's hard to get angry with his role solanter i'm sure he didn't do that just my imagination they said the question was whether or not we come here the question was whether we should waste the time the energy the money to come here we're here now there is no question and stroll solante said to them something that i think is so beautiful and my friends i think this is one of the things that most people seem to forget in this study and in their practice of judaism almost always the torah is not talking about what it's talking about it's not about avraham or sarah it's about you and me wherever you throw solanto was talking to his students to these people not just about the question at hand but an orphan of understanding what a person's responsibility is always if you're sitting in kavanaugh trying to figure out if you have to make the journey of saint petersburg you know what you don't have an honest conversation because one side of the argument needs travel money freezing getting all the way there leaving your family behind so what do you do you figure out a million reasons why the other answer is the right answer review it's about the education of our children let's go now we're in saint petersburg now where laziness is not a factor travel money comfort now we're here now let's figure out if we deal with the problem in st petersburg or in kavanaugh what an unbelievable lesson what we're seeing over here is that it is true that the naseem had very good reasons why they should not give money in the beginning but says ghazal exposes the deepest darkest understandings emotions feelings that are going on in the human heart and while we would like to pretend that this is the reason says the torah no this is the reason it was atlas my friends it was only last week when i had a couple sitting at my shabbos table and it was a couple this young girl she did not grow up religious at all she'd never had shabbos growing up in her home and everyone at the table was sharing something that they were grateful to hakaris boroku for something that they were happy that they were great they had gratitude to hashem for and different people shared different things their business this person was promoted the wonderful this person out of shidduch and she said i'm grateful that i'm here i'm grateful after never having shabbos in my life that i'm at the table very nice beautiful it's so wonderful it's so uplifting and i couldn't help myself and i raised my glass and i said i want to share something with you it's not only that you're happy that you're at the table there's something else here i want you to imagine you live in borough park you live in lakewood for some of you that might not be so difficult to imagine i want you to imagine one of the kids in the family goes off to there may be a second maybe a third it's hard every week you see these empty chairs at the shabbos table four five khasholm right no one's marrying into this family six kids one off the derek eight kids nine kids is missing 9 out of 10 kids if there are roughly 15 million jews in the world and there's about one and a half million from jews maybe it's two now nine kids are missing who comes to the shabbos table shalom [Music] and who's there only one of his kids i said you were grateful to hashem that you were back at the shabbos table and hashem is grateful to you that you were back at the shava's table we have a lot of reasons why we don't do the things that we've been encouraged to do over the last 36 hours but if the torah was safe dayton are those reasons really the reasons why why aren't we acting why aren't we connecting what's going on here my friends i want to share with you this concept of finding family the driver of maisha feinstein once took him to a wedding and ramaisha told him when he arrived at the wedding he said look you know i'm going to be here for a while the driver was used to it much leaving right away he says you're going to be here for a while oh why why what's up he said oh it's a it's a car of mine it's a relative he said oh okay i'm surprised i didn't see it in the diary real which i'm not sure but she says don't worry we'll be here for a while then we'll go home he comes inside he's introducing himself shalom alaikum everyone wow maisha feinstein is here standing up they come over the meku the father-in-law the huss and wow ramaisha ramayana what are you doing here he says oh i came to him really unbelievable he says yeah there there she's a the cow is a curve of miner she's we're crying them you cry them we wish we knew before we would have given you siddha kedushin we would have had you under the hoop i can't believe it was so sorry no no it's fine i only had a very important meeting i came straight from the meeting and he dances with the huss and he dances with the father-in-law unbelievable before the end of the wedding he asks to be taken to the other side of the makita he goes to the corner and he says mazutov to the kala masala my kara of everyone's wow unbelievable ramosha feinstein they leave they get back in the car and the driver of romace's car closes the door very carefully because he also heard that story and he says my what was that ramosha says she wasn't really a carve and he says i know he says but the khala came to visit me rabbis i hear hear this and she told me that she is from a family in heritage row i think she was an armana she was a usaima my family is there to stroll we have no money i couldn't afford to even bring one member of my family they have money they have egos you know i'm getting married over here in a foreign country i have no friends i have no family and she says to ramosha i feel like i haven't contributed anything to the wedding i feel humiliated i feel like i'm a guest on my own i feel like they feel that i'm so lucky to marry into them but never they had to settle for someone like me he says i hear i hear he felt a pain he says what would you like me to do she says please could you come to the wedding and tell everyone that we're related could we just stop for one second hit pause how desperate is this girl that she's even making that ask of rahmaja ramayana says i'd love to help you but i've never told a lie in my life she looks at ramosa with big eyes and she says are you not a grandson of avraham are we not related this the nishtakar of miner almighty says you're right i i i am a grandson of mitsukake you are you are my cousin the driver said so why when you went in and told them that how can you ask to go speak to the go to the college side it's not something that a goddard would normally do you did what she asked you to do he said because since it was a firm wedding i didn't know if the kala would find out that i'd come and told everyone that you were my relative until the end of the night and i didn't want her to have one extra second at her wedding feeling the way she felt when she came to see me in the first place a car of mine and i'm feeling this especially today i'm feeling this especially today because i remember reading a story and it escapes me now who it was i think it might have been the son of surely diskin but it might be someone else don't hold me to it he was crying at the funeral of his father and someone said why are you crying your father accomplished so much he's going straight to galilen he could not have lived a better life and he says i'm not crying because of that i know my father's fine he said so why are you crying he says i'm crying because i lost my father and i feel what that feels like and all these years when someone else lost their father and i felt i was being mistatef bizarre with them i was with them i felt their pain i realized today i didn't feel a drop of their pain because now i know what it feels like and i never felt like this before i'm talking to myself here about a week and a half ago my cousin's son five-year-old boy yaakov israel ben jacob and tamara malka was run over by a car five years old he's still fighting for his life he's in a coma in the hospital the whole world is dominating for him how many times do we encourage people to darwin how many shurim did i dedicate to his refuge how many things did we ask people to be michael one another hundreds of people have put their fights to bed and been michael almanas that this kid should have a reformed shalema including the non-jewish nurse who could not believe what she was seeing as the texts were coming in i forgive i forgive i forgive i forgive what is this she says she walks out the room comes back and says i had a fight for such a long time i could never and i'm doing it also and i don't know if she knows how to say this but what i wouldn't do for my cousin's son and i who have led a career in working with him for claudia's role trying to feel and trying to understand and trying to call them a car of miner i realized this week that i'm an imposter because when it was my cousin what wouldn't know what didn't i do my friends i want to read you the words of rabbenu bache says on this passage of the naseem he says umi khan please put on your seatbelts um oinish i got goosebumps when i learned to survey from here we learned from here we see that if a person does a mitzvah but they don't do it right away they do it later there's an ornish for that i remember reading a piece in pachadit where if hudna asked this as a question it says and the gomorrah says on that you should guard don't just guard the masses that they shouldn't become comments gord the mitzvos and you read in yoshi like oh that's so cute let's see what he did there nice so convenient for that toyota that there's no nakutas in the torah it's it's cutesy is how are these two things related if you wait on the matzo what happens to it it becomes comets if you eat it you get chorus if you waited for a mitzvah you have the mitzvah you just don't have zurizus no says you had a mitzvah you didn't do it you did it later oinish what yeah the yud gets taken from the nasser then they see him that it was their job to raise up everyone around them that's where they're called to see him became the same word without a ud no and they were lifted by others claudius showed them how to be they weren't the leaders perhaps that they thought they were until they got the message you have spent the last 36 hours hearing all and sundry all the ways that you could change a person's life forever with an invitation to a shabbos meal with a mishloch going on a trip being on one of the retreats unbelievable talking to someone in the office there's so many different ways you've heard all the ways but my friends what are we doing now right here before we leave where you know what we'll come up with a million reasons why we can't and why we shouldn't and they'll all be firmer each reason will be firmer than the one that came before it so what do you do you jump when you hear it you think of that person and you commit you travel to saint petersburg and once you're already there you're comfortable being uncomfortable we need to get comfortable being uncomfortable it's not easy to go and invite this person for shabbos it's not easy to ask them if they want to learn you don't want them to look at you like that annoying religious person in the office travel to saint petersburg once you've taken that out of the equation then all of a sudden you realize i can i will i must i hope and i pray that we each and every one of us should be zaika to feel in our heart of hearts that yud that yid that's missing that doesn't have his connection he's our family he's our cousin what i wouldn't do for mine what you wouldn't do for yours to heal him groups all sorts of programs alice for that one nebucha yeah my cousin they have someone they are your cousin they are my cousin they are our acharias if we take this seriously and we jump we learn one other lesson from the mishkan and that is even if you don't know how even if you don't have any training even if you never went to a seminar you never took aisha's or or somehow or whoever's training seminars and how to be a key roof professional you're a key of amateur you have no idea what you're doing it doesn't matter klausra left egypt without a single skill and what did they find when they came to do the work they showed up to saint petersburg and suddenly matsu says the ramban they found that the answer was already there they knew what to do they knew what to say they knew how to act and they were able to bring a tiny bit of the amistral back to the table my friends moshiach is going to be the time when all of claudius roll is back at they'll run up to him and take a selfie poor guy is trying to get away but all he's got is a donkey some people will say oh i'm so glad you're here and some people will be able to come to moshiach and say i'm so glad you're here i'm one of the people that brought you thank you [Applause] okay ladies and gentlemen before we say goodbye i want to thank you all more than all the presenters and everyone every one of you who came here to be inspired to be part of this amazing shabbos i want to thank dr stewart and andrea hyman for making not only this possible but everything we do possible thank you so much mikhail and hashem should share with you with all the brachas in the world ladies and gentlemen michael will be taking place here right now if you'd like to exit exit quickly lunch is being served and again the takeaway trades will be after minha is complete thank you very very much for coming ashore