PIC 2024 R' Orlofsky Bitachon for an Upside Down World!

Thank you very much and a good night and first and foremost there's 20 minutes left to the men's swim. I don't know why you're here. The women Mrs. Schumacher is speaking in Greenwich. So I don't know why you're here. Anybody who wasn't planning on to those other two things, why don't you getting ready for Shabbos? I have no idea why you people are here. Yeah? I was so hoping to come here and find nobody here and go, "Well, what can I do? You know, I'll have to I'll have to go back to my room and take a shower and lie in my bed and relax reading the Kichels, which is Thank you very much. The only part of the Mishpacha that I read along with the recipe section so that I can laugh. Anyway, I wonder if anybody actually makes these things. But that's what I do. My wife gets all the all of the Jewish publications and I turn right away to all the cooking sections and I say, "What is wrong with these people? Why would Why would they think anyone would do this?" But anyway, it is a privilege to be here. It really is. We're here obviously for the inspiration. How do I know that? Cuz there's no Coke Zero. That was the first thing I looked for. There's no Coke Zero and instead they have Fresca. I I don't even know what to say. I'm I'm at a loss for words. So we obviously didn't come for the gashmius. Anyway, no Coke Zero. What am I supposed to do? But um uh really a tremendous asher koach to everybody. I I said this when I was here 2 years ago and I repeat it that in my opinion this is the single most important event in Klal Yisrael that we have today. And the the truth is there are other places that have gatherings that are a pale imitation of what we're doing here. Because you mamish have the lineup of some of the I say some because I know they they've had others in the past some of the greatest Mashpi'im and Machanchim and Marbitzei Torah in all of Klal Yisrael gathered together to be able to provide us with a weekend of inspiration. I'm going to tell you something that the convention does not want you to know. Yeah? First of all, there were cameras in your room, but that's not it. Just kidding. I'm just kidding about that. Anyway, they're they're only in the showers. But um But the the fact is that we are here to inspire us to go out and save Klal Yisrael. Because it's after the 11th hour. When I say it's after the 11th hour, I mean that 5 years ago, a friend of mine told me he took his talmidim to see Rav Chaim Kanievsky. And one of them said, "Is Mashiach coming?" He says, "He's not coming. He's outside the door knocking." That's how close we are. So it's mamash now at the end that we're going to decide who the Chazal say in the end, just like when we came out of Mitzrayim, chamushim all ubnei Yisrael me'eretz Mitzrayim, only 20%. It's going to be the same thing with Mashiach. Only 20% of Klal Yisrael is going to come out. And who's going to have that zechus is going to be totally on us. I mean, at minimum of 20%. But it means that everybody that we touch I have to tell you, I have been in the field of chinuch now for about years and um Someone just came up to me now and I'm I'm so moved by this, you know, said, "I was in your Discover seminar, you know, in Eretz Yisrael you know, decades ago, and I became frum and I'm here now." And I I thought to myself, you know, it's mamash this is it. Everybody has this ability. That's why they want you to be here. That's not why I want you to be here. I want you to be here because when I was running NCSY in Long Island, uh and um Matt Trop, by the way, was a legend in New Jersey NCSY. So, I was I also did some work in Long Island. But, um uh when I was there, I used to have advisor training. The people who are helping out. So, uh we had uh we had a discussion once about the role of day school kids in NCSY. Now, I'm not talking about Yeshiva and Bais Yaakov girls. I'm talking about people who went to co-ed high schools who would also come. Yeah? And uh we had the principals of three of the schools on a panel. And they all said the same thing. They said uh "Listen, if they're coming because they want to help out, because they want to be much beer, then maybe there's a reason, you know, maybe this." And two kids raised their hand right away and they said, "Rabbi, you're wrong. We never came to give. We came to get. Because there's nothing more inspiring than watching the Here, I've been benching since I was five. You know, and the average teenager is sick of benching. Very hard for them to really bench. Parents know this. You say to your teenager, you know, "Did you bench?" Cuz yeah. "Can I go?" "You didn't bench. I'll do it again." "Can I go?" Because since they're five, you know, they've been singing, which let's face it, it's an unbelievably annoying tune. Oh, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day one, hate day You have to sing at the top of your lungs or your bunk won't win a watermelon. You know what I mean? So, the average teenager is sick of it already, you know? So, uh uh uh people want to bench. He goes, "I'm sitting there watching some kid with a ponytail and an earring with a transliterated bench cracking his teeth to be able to bench, and I realized then what I have." So, I say this, and like I say, that's not really the purpose of this Shabbos, but between me and you, we're not here just to give, we're here to get. Because this is I can tell you this is my fourth convention. Um there was another one, but I was only there for the closing, but my fourth that I'm actually at the whole thing, which is much better than the Agudah convention, cuz the Agudah convention only had me once. I remember they called me up, they said, "We'd like to invite you to the Agudah convention." And this was a lot of years ago. And and I said, "Aren't you afraid that I might say something controversial?" And they said, "Yeah, we discussed this in committee. So, we're going to give you the women's fellow shooters, cuz none of the roshei yeshiva come to that. And we'll give you the closing Sunday morning, cuz everyone leave all the gedolim leave Saturday night." I said, "I was kidding. I didn't realize there was an actual meeting. How can we invite Orlovsky and minimize the damage?" But anyway, that was the last time I was ever invited. But um the I think they found out I killed this story. But um um I know for myself how incredibly inspired I am. And listen, we are the cream de la cream of the frum community who's here. That's why they have attracted us, but that's not why we came. We came because our hearts are just a little bigger, we just care a little bit more, and we take a look at the mitzvah, and we're going to walk away from this Shabbos and mitzvah Hashem ourselves inspired. If we help out some un-frum people, that's also nice, but but for ourselves, I'll tell you a terrible story. Um I have a lot of them. Anyway, when I used to teach in seminary, one of the girls coined the term the horror files. You know, it goes, "Oh, no, he's going to the horror files." You know, so, um, uh, there's a show in Monsey. Uh, I actually mean a show in in Flatbush. I don't know if the Rav wants me to mention the name or not, so I will. It's Rabbi Zilka. And, um, because the rule is don't tell me anything in confidence, okay? I have no filters. Anyway, someone said to me once, "I feel like when you're speaking, every now and then you stop to consider whether or not you should say this, and then you say it anyway, so I don't even know why you waste your time, but anyway, he said to me, he says, "I got a call from the Agudah. They want to do a lecture series about Kedushas Habayis." Rabbi Zilka says this to me. He goes, "And I said to them, 'What are you wasting your time for?'" He says, "You think that's what Klal Yisrael needs?" He says, "Bring in a lot to you to do his Why Be Jewish that everybody understands why we're doing this. You know? That's what you need to focus on." I said, "What happened?" Cuz I never heard from them again. Anyway, but, uh, but the the fact is that we ourselves are desperate. We're desperate for inspiration. I was giving a shiur every other Motzei Shabbos in Har Nof, and I wanted to stop it because I had a lot of things going on. Once upon a time, I had a lot of jobs. Now, I, uh, I lost them all through my wit and personality. And, uh, now I basically sit around and reminisce, you know? All I'm missing is one of those sweaters, you know? I remember when I was younger, we used to go out to And my mother, all of a sudden, would always say to me, "Why do you think when you get old you get a Yiddish accent?" I said, "I don't know." Everyone who's old has a Yiddish accent. Anyway, so, um, so, uh, um, you know, when I I was running around, I had too many things to do. So, I wanted to cut out this year. And, uh, my friend Rabbi Nissan Rotter on me and took me to Rabbi Moshe, Rabbi Moshe Shapiro, and he said to me, "You're right, you're too busy. You'll have to cut out something else." Yeah? So, I, uh, I got rid of a couple of my kids. But, um, um R' Zeira, I I said, "But, I don't have time." And he says to me, "If you can do anything that gives chizuk to people today, you're mechuyav to do it. Cuz we are a dor that needs chizuk." And I thought, "What?" And And the older I get, the more I realize how wise R' Moshe was in so many different ways. But, but we need chizuk. We are a dor that needs chizuk. And there is nothing that gives more chizuk than this this convention. So, this is my erev Shabbos introduction, where I say to you, you are surrounded by some of the biggest lunatics in klal Yisrael. How do I know? Because I did a panel 2 years ago, which was started at 12:15 in the morning, and the room was packed. I was there cuz I'm being paid. Otherwise, I would have been in bed by 10:00. I don't understand why frum people would do this to themselves. You people are obviously crazy. That's why it's erev Pesach erev Shabbos, you know? It's what else are you going to do? Even more than that, there's food out there. This is the most assimilated group I've ever seen. Anyway, that's all my introduction. Oh, we out of time? Anyway. So, um So, these are not my the titles are not my titles. You know? I I always come up with my own titles. And um um it's uh I I when I used to give the shiur in in Har Nof, I had to publicize the title beforehand. And uh and very often, we would people who would just like try to learn shot in the title to see if they could figure out what I was going to talk about, you know? But, um the I have a friend of mine uh who runs this organization uh called uh Torah Live, Dan Roth. Uh some of your kids might be familiar with me as Rabbi Sitter. I'm the I I'm an animated character. Frankly, if there was anyone who was ever meant to be an animated character, it's me. And a lot of kids watch this. It's It's called Dude, it's all It's all my shiurim from you know, that I gave for years, but it's just animated. So, it's a lot of fun. So, so Dan Roth, originally, how did I get into this? Because he was writing a book on Pirkei Avot, and he asked me to make up titles for every one of the chapters, and then to come up with a title for the book. So, he liked my titles, so he invited me in to to start doing these recordings, and that's that's how it got started. I didn't make up the titles for this for this convention. So, today is called Bitachon in difficult times. I really don't understand what's shot in the title. As soon as I saw it, I've been trying to learn shot in it. And uh basically, when are you supposed to have Bitachon in not difficult times? What's the trick to having Bitachon when there's not difficult times? That's not doesn't take that much Bitachon, does it? So, I realized maybe that's what it means. There was a famous story about this businessman who his ship sunk. He had a whole lot of merchandise coming in, and his ship sunk. And they were trying to figure out how to break it to him. So, the rav comes to him and says, "Listen, you know, you're a businessman, and you know, business has its ups and downs. You know? As Jackie Mason says, no Jewish businessman has had a good year ever. Anytime you ask him, "How are you doing?" "All right, could be better, it's not so bad, you know? You know, so it's always it's always rough." I said, "You're a businessman, it has its ups and downs. It must be you must rely on a lot of Bitachon. Yeah? To be able to I'll try to sway over here because I know some people are being blocked by the pole, anyway. So, you must have a lot you know, a lot of Bitachon. I wanted you to give a shiur in the community of Bitachon." He said, "Sure." He says, "But are you really about Bitachon?" He says, "Of course, Rev." He says, "So, what if you lost your wallet? Would you still be talking to Rev?" He goes, "Yeah." He says, "Yeah." Yeah. "What if What if your your warehouse burnt down?" "What if your warehouse burnt down? Would you still be talking?" Thought about it and he says, "Yeah." He says, "You could give a share." He says, "Yeah." "Well, what if that boat that's coming with all of your merchandise sank? Could you Could you accept it with equanimity and and and give a share and be talking?" Thinks about it and he says, "It would be hard, but yes, Rev. I could do it." He says, "Good, cuz your boat just sank." He says, "What? Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?" What does he say? What's he going to say? He says, "I thought you had be talking." He goes, "That was to tell other people, not for me." It's very easy to give other people speeches about be talking, but when it You know, there's always a certain disconnect that we have. I have a friend of mine whose brother, when he went to medical school, the guy who was teaching about lung cancer was a chain smoker. And he's holding up the x-ray. You can see here the the diseased lungs and this lung has been a thing, you know. Okay, you know. But But that that that that may give you a certain technical level of expertise, but it doesn't It doesn't help you when it comes to MS. Not when it comes to Tyra, because people can see through in a second. My son I I have kids who are smart, I have kids who are geniuses, and then I have kids who are sick geniuses. So, my oldest son is one of my sick geniuses, and he had a very hard time in Yeshiva because he saw through everything. Really everything. He would always make fun of me. Say, "Abba, you're just a you know, a dumb baal teshuvah. You believe whatever they tell you. You're so naive. You know, he says, 'I'm on the inside. I see everything, you know.'" And he did. It was It's It's sad. But anyway, but um um but he would see this Rev that. So, he would say, "You know, the Rev says you have to come on time. He goes, he doesn't come late. I see him come late here. I see him this. I see him run outside and talk on his phone, you know, taking care of stuff in the middle of class. Don't talk to me. But he had a rebbe in eighth grade. This guy never missed. You know, if he was supposed to be in the classroom at 8:00, he was there at 5:00 to 8:00 every single day. And my son was in this spoil that he actually got with the program, you know, in eighth grade. He did everything he was supposed to do. Cuz he says I I I can't catch this guy. Mittleman. Yeah, it was it was a messer. And and one night his daughter's getting married. So, he says, uh-huh, I'll get him. Tomorrow he's going to come late because he was up all night at the hazana. 5:00 to 8:00 he was in the classroom. And my son says, okay, I got nothing to say. This guy is real. This This guy has consistency. Yeah? Bertrand Russell, the mathematician and philosopher, uh was being hired to teach ethics in NYU. And it came out that he was a very unethical person in his behavior and different things. So, they said, Professor Russell, how are you going to teach ethics? You're not an ethical person. He said, when I taught mathematics, nobody demanded that I be a circle, a square, or a triangle. I can teach it even though I it's not a part of me. And by Torah it doesn't work that way. It's got to be real. So, when people say bitachon in difficult times, that means it's easy to have bitachon when you don't need it. Yeah? Before the the real estate market crashed, a lot of people had bitachon. Yeah? Yeah, of course. Cuz they were buying things, they were this. I'll give you the shiva pose on that. You can use that on my use that on my card if you want. I want to give my give you I'll give you the inspirational speaker pose. Anyway. Delete. So, listen. Listen. What's great at this point is I have no reputation to protect, you know? I am what I am, as Popeye would say. Anyway, so um uh so uh so the people I'll be talking when they don't need to be talking. Right? It reminds me Mark Twain once said, and he says a um a banker is someone who lends you his umbrella and asks for it back when it starts to rain, you know? So, they'll be talking when I don't need it. But when when times get tough, when things get hard, we've all had hard times in our lives. Everyone does. You know? And that neighbor that you always look at who has the perfect family and the perfect kids and the perfect marriage and everything is great and everything is terrific, you know? Sometimes we see that things, you know, are not as wonderful as they appear. And not that we wish it on anybody, but the um I say everybody has hard times and challenges in this world. It's just a reality. And sometimes you find out and sometimes you don't find out and and you you know, suddenly you you find a I I had a fellow in my school when I was growing up, you know? I I meet his uh daughter here in our cell. And I said, "How's your father doing?" He goes, "Much better since the transplant." I said, "What is that?" "His kidneys failed years ago. He's been on dialysis." I said, "I didn't know." He says, "He didn't want anyone to know." He was a doctor. And when he would go on his rounds in the hospital, he would he would do his his dialysis. Didn't want anyone to know. You know? You find people have financial problems. You find people who have health problems. People have problems with their family. So many difficulties that we we don't even know about. Everybody has hard times. So, I remember there was one time I had a particularly difficult time. I was in the middle of a particularly difficult I remember one time I said to to my shishiguru, you know? He said to me, "No, David, you know, how you doing?" I go, "Hashem no sin you have koach." He said to me, "I will rock me I gave my mash." You have to really be spent. I said, he got the I got there. That's where I am. You know, so I was going through a tough time. I had a Jewish friend and he sees me and he could just see it on my face, you know, I try I try not to if you saw the says your face is a problem. You have to really work hard to to you know, to become a call them and save upon them your face. You know, yeah, you know, people people should know. I always get a kick out of it because people, you know, say to me they they all Rabbi Alansky, you one of those naturally happy people. I said no, I'm one of those naturally depressed people. I suffered from depression for most of my life. If I was a kid today, they'd have me on on a whole bunch of meds, but they didn't have them back then so they just said cheer up. But uh which is harder than you imagine when you're suffering from a chemical depression, but okay. But uh eventually I managed to deal with it, you know, and so people say, "Oh, you one of those naturally happy." I said, "No, I work hard to stay positive. I work hard to do that because I know that it's important." And so you see somebody with Moshe Shapiro, I did not know him before he lost his daughter. But everyone says he was a different person after that. I met him afterwards, you know, but I say before that he was much much and much more of a brand. He was much more fiery, you know. And they say he was broken. His mom's broken. He's coming back from the levaya. Coming back from the from the funeral. He just buried his daughter. And he'd been storming the gates of heaven to try to save her life. And he's coming back and he's bent and he's broken and he sees someone in the background. And he walks over and he smiles and he says a few words and then he gets back into the car. And everybody was shocked cuz what was that? He said he's a chassan and he's getting married tonight. I didn't want him to think I wasn't happy for him. You know? So, okay, so I'm not on that madrega, but you know, but but you have to you have to put it forward. So, yeah, it's so he sees me and he sees things are going through a hard time and he tells me the following story, which was a life-changing moment for me. He says, "Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev was walking with his chassidim and he stops. And he says, 'If I was the Kodesh Baruch Hu, you know what I would do?'" I said, "What, Rebbe?" He says, "Just what he's doing now. Why you think I'm smarter than him?" I burst out laughing and I said, "That's it. That's it. That's the source of everything. We all think we're smarter than God." "Kodesh Baruch Hu, I know you created heaven and earth. I know mechadesh betuvo bechol yom tamid ma'aseh bereishis, but this time you dropped the ball." And so, you know, I don't have to tell you. I don't know what you were thinking up there. What were you thinking? You know? And that's what I I I mean, that was changing for me, because I realized, you know, every one of us, deep down, we think we're smarter than God. And then I said, "That's that's the problem. That's the problem is that I um I think to myself, you know, if I was the Kodesh Baruch Hu, what would I do?" "First thing, death penalty for double parking. I I worked that one out right away. That's the first thing I would institute if they ever put me in charge. But, uh I then realized, I I don't want that job. Lo ya'numu v'lo yishanu. I don't like the hours. You know what I'm saying? I don't want the responsibility. I don't know everything. I'm not, you know, You have you have to understand. So, um Reb Reb Baruch Horovitz, one of Reb Zalman's sons during the week of his daughter's Sheva Brachas was in a crosswalk. An Egged bus ran him over and killed him. It's It's like a tragedy of biblical proportions, you know? And uh the whole family's sitting shiva. And the old Rosh Yeshiva of of Etz Chaim comes in with his cane, sits down. Everyone's wondering, what is he going to say? And he sits there quietly for about a minute and then he goes, "Nu? About 6,000 years the Aibishter fed the world." About 6,000 years God's running the world. I'm like, "We're not going to understand this whole shiva until he leaves." So all try to figure out, what was he saying? And then one of the brothers said, "This is a big kasha. But it's not the first kasha in 6,000 years. And there are other kashas. And there are things we look at and we don't understand it. We don't know why Hakadosh Baruch Hu does what he does all the time, but I don't want his job. I have to assume that he knows what he's doing, which is by the way the inside of bitachon." Um I'm not going to get now into the relationship between bitachon and emunah, but um there was a famous story where Reb Shach came to the Brisker Rav and he says, "Emunah? Well, what do you need What do you need emunah? Anybody who's intelligent and honest can figure out there's a God who gave the Torah. I mean, the evidence is overwhelming. You know, when you when you talk to atheists and try to get their evidence, it's almost impossible. There's no evidence for the non-existence of God, you know? Whereas Dr. Schroeder, who I was teaching with in Discovery, who has uh who has uh two PhDs, one in oceanography and one in nuclear physics. Very smart fellow. Yeah. When my brother-in-law was working in Discovery, um like all geniuses, you know, he didn't know how to use the copy machine. So, it's my brother-in-law, he says, "How do you work this thing?" He says, "I've waited my whole life to say this. It doesn't take a nuclear physicist to figure it out." But he said something as brilliant, he says, "You can still be an atheist today, but it takes a lot of faith." You know, so this is what the shochet said to the Brisker Rav. He says, "You know, it's so hard to believe to believe, to understand that these things are emes." And the Brisker Rav said something very sharp. He says, "You're right. Emunah starts when it doesn't make any sense." Uh when it's easy, it's easy. Before the Before the real estate market collapses and everybody's making money, after we was in Chicago telling me about some lawyer who was making $250,000 a year, you know, scraping by. And uh now he lives on Tomchei Shabbos packages. Somebody lent me a bungalow for the summer. I'd never been in a bungalow. Uh full disclosure, you know, I I didn't grow up in uh and uh from home, and so we used to go to Grossinger's. People used to go to bungalows, we went to Grossinger's. Uh my parents could not understand why people who live in nice houses would pay money to live like a refugee. You know. Sleep in the kitchen. I don't know, I don't get the whole thing. Anyway, so they let me a bungalow cuz my wife went to a bungalow and she wanted to relive her her her youth, you know. Uh it was it was uh it was brutal. You know. I called up my brother, he goes, "Where are you?" I said, "I'm in a bungalow." He goes, "Oh my gosh, what are you doing?" I said, "Sitting on the porch listening to myself sweat." You know. I don't know, I have an air conditioner hours back in the city. I don't know why I'm here, you know? And my wife, I mean, I got off easy. My wife all the women are forced to sit in the circle, you know what I mean? You're allowed out to swim and then you have to come back, you know what I mean? And they all just sit all day in the circle. It's like It's like uh you know, you're being punished or something. I don't know what it is, you know? You know you're in a bad place when the big excitement is going to Walmart, you know what I mean? Like you know, that's when you know that you've really maxed out all of your life potential. Anyway, you're sitting at Walmart at 2:00 in the morning, you know, 800 from people and one cashier, and you're just standing there re-examining all of your life decisions that brought you to this moment, you know? But uh um so uh uh so why in the world am I telling this story? I I was in a bungalow and Bungalow? Yeah, why? Why was I telling the bungalow story? Oh, that's it. So, we go to the bungalow and the the bungalow next to us, there's a guy who's fixing, you know, the the this and making repairs. And so, I said, "Oh, listen, could you maybe take a look at my screen door?" He says, "I'm not a fixer man." I said, "What are you?" He goes, "I'm a real estate developer." I said, "What?" He goes, "I had a piece of land in New Jersey. I was building condominiums. I had a whole thing going there. And then the market collapsed. I lost everything." So, now I'm trying to pay back all of the investors anyway I can. So, the guy who owns this bungalow had lent me money. So, I'm coming to fix up his bungalow to try to to get back his money, you know? So, beforehand? Beforehand? Be talking's always easy, you know? My My wife said something to me. My daughter came in uh with us. That that is just amazing. Just amazing. There was this concert. Oh, that's why. Cuz she plugged in the music into my into my car. And uh and Mo- Mordechai Shapiro and uh uh um Avraham Fried's nephew, uh Benny Friedman, are singing together. So, they start reminiscing. They went to a concert in Beit Shemesh where they were where they were uh singing together. And they realized this was like Erev Simchas Torah. And they said you looked at the world at that moment and everything was perfect. Couldn't ask for better. And then 2 days later, the entire world turned upside down. I mean, horror that you can't imagine. I have never seen the film of the atrocities. You know? I I The the little bit I've heard is more than enough for me. I I I I can't handle these things. I'm I'm I'm very sensitive. But um but the horror of what people experienced it's it's it's beyond belief. To to try to be able to wrap your head around it. And the whole world turned upside down. And Israel turned upside down. I I have a friend of mine who's in an organization where they just have people all day making tzitzis. Cuz there are all these non-frum soldiers, they want to be in tzitzis. For the first time in their life. People who never would have considered something like this. Can you understand it? So, I don't know if anybody else does this. Yeah? Um One of the things I do, since I have no jobs is um I I play this little fantasy game in my head. What would happen if I go to sleep and wake up, I'll be 5 years old with all the memories I have now. I could go over my life again and make different decisions. So, I'm sure I would eat differently to prevent my type 2 diabetes. Or not, I don't know. Certainly, I I'd have different things to say, different things I would do and experience, you know. It would be uh uh So, I said, "What if I woke up and I was 30?" You know, what if I woke up at this point in my life and I could look at forward? Here's the problem with this worthless game. You can only go too far before you don't recognize yourself anymore. Cuz you're the sum total of all the decisions you've made. And sometimes I think about history. I live in Har Nof. And you remember it wasn't that long ago that the shul up the street from me, while we were davening Shacharis, these Arab terrorists came in shooting and stabbing neighbors of mine. Neighbors of mine. They were all on my street. I remember when they were paying the shiva call. You know, they were all four of them lived on my street. You just saw the crowds going up and down the street, back and forth, back and forth, you know. And uh uh It was a rough thing. I thought to myself, "What if I could put myself back just before it happened and warn the people?" And then I thought to myself, "Would they thank me?" I don't know. They died al Kiddush Hashem. They went straight to the highest levels of shamayim that you possibly could imagine. You know? I I don't know. Would they thank me if I stopped that? And if I did, would something worse come down the the the the the path? Did this accomplish something? That means, if you're not a Kiddush Hashem and you have to start making these cheshbonos, very hard. We're talking in difficult times comes down to saying, "Do I know more than God or not? So, if I was to make these choices, there are many choices that I would make differently based on my understanding, but I don't know what's going on. I had a guy in my share and our Samir who is an uh entomologist as a an entomologist as opposed to an etymologist, right? An entomologist studies bugs, an etymologist studies words. And uh he was talking about how people don't realize when they introduce foreign um organisms into an environment, how it messes things up. So, he says the Australian dung beetle uh project was one that worked out well. What happened? They brought When the British came to Australia, they brought cows and sheep, but there are no ungulates, almost no mammals in Australia. There's mostly marsupials. And therefore the bacteria that's used to disintegrate uh their uh their manure did not exist. So, entire fields were just covered with manure. So, they know what to do. So, the scientists decided to uh bring in the African dung beetle to Australia, which would then uh eat up the manure. The cow choir. And he says, "That's the example where it worked out. Sometimes it doesn't." Cuz for example, they brought rabbits to hunt. But the rabbits had no natural predators. And rabbits, as the expression go, breed like rabbits. So, they were destroying all the all the you know, the grasslands and the and the plants and everything were eating them up. So, what did they do? They brought in a stoat, which is is animal that hunts rabbits. But the stoats realized that it was much harder to catch rabbits than all of the little native marsupials who ate the who lived there, so they ate them instead. So now they have these stoats and the the rabbits eating all the vegetation and the stoats eating all the little things. So then they they brought in a horse. She died, of course. Anyway, but um but you don't realize sometimes when you start varying things. I tell people all the time, you know, the Torah is like a fitted sheet. It's not a flat sheet. It's a fitted sheet. You can only pull so much on one side before the other side pops up. So we look at situations and we think, "Oh, okay. I would have changed this." Uh people people who learn Gemara know that um before the make a takana, it's a very difficult process. And sometimes they make a takana and they realize that what they thought would be a benefit is in fact a chissaron and they move out of the the takana cuz they realize it was a mistake. That means when they make something, they've really put a lot of thought into it. And in the words once again of Dr. Schroeder, there's a reason they're called sages, he says. They're very very smart. And so it it's easy to, you know, to second-guess and say, you know, "Well, you I would do this. I would do that." But do you understand the consequences? What's going to happen if you do that? But we don't we don't always understand where things are going to go. So sees the big picture. We don't. Needless to say, I I'm sure if we could have sent the message to to the government about what was going to happen on some and we could have gotten somebody to listen to us because there were these women who were monitoring the wall and everything that was going on and they warned everything that was going on, and they were ignored. They saw what was happening. They had the evidence. It was ignored. But what if we had that information, and we could get somebody to listen to us, and we would prevent it? Would it be better? Sure, if you assume that God doesn't know what he's doing. So, we talking comes down to a very simple you say. Cuz God knows what he's doing. And we don't. And we look at our lives and and we look at the world and we look at so many things, and we think to ourselves I would do it differently. But of course, I don't take everything into account. For those of you history buffs, then you know that the largest battle ever fought in North America was the Battle of Gettysburg during the American Civil War. And there were 50,000 casualties killed and wounded in that in that battle. And this was the high water mark of the Confederacy. They made it all the way up into Pennsylvania and to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. And it was this tremendous war going back and forth, and he had gone through a whole bunch of generals. He went through McClellan twice, and he went through, you know, Hooker, and he went through went through all these different generals, and he finally had this guy Meade. And Meade managed to fight Lee to a defeat, first defeat he really ever had. July 1st to 3rd. And then Lee realized he lost, and he started retreating. And it started raining. And the Potomac River was flooded, and he couldn't get across. If Meade had rallied his troops and pursued Lee, he would have defeated the army of the Confederacy, and that would have been the end of the Civil War in July of 1863 instead of August of 1865. He would have saved tens of thousands of lives. Abraham Lincoln was furious. And he penned an extremely angry letter to General Meade. And uh And history does not record Meade's response. Cuz General Meade never got the letter. Cuz Abraham Lincoln had a shita that whenever he wrote a letter, he would put in his drawer for a week before he sent it. I do that with my bills. But that was his That was his shita. And over that week he thought to himself, I wasn't there. I didn't have as many casualties as he had. I don't know what kind of state the army was in. I don't know what he was feeling. It's easy for me sitting in Washington to second-guess what's happening on the battlefield. And he didn't send it. It's easy for us to second-guess a Kodesh Baruchu. If I was a Kodesh Baruchu, you know what I would do? And that's why we say in davening, You know, it's it's it was one of Reb Mendel Weinbach's fam- favorite stories. It wasn't his story, but he loved to tell it. This guy falls off a cliff and he's falling to his death and he grabs onto a branch. He's holding onto the branch and the branch is starting to crack. And he cries out. He says, "If anyone's up there, please save me. If anyone's up there." And a voice comes out and says, "I'm there. I will save you. But first you have to show your faith. Let go of the branch." And he says, "Is there anyone else up there?" There's nobody else up there. And that's what we say in davening, "Kaveh el Hashem." And if that doesn't work, "Chazak ve'ematz libecha vekaveh el Hashem." Cuz there's nobody else up there. And the Kodesh Baruchu knows what he's doing. And at the end of the day, we understand that at least we know we don't know. Ish bar lo yada, an empty person doesn't know. Uksil lo yavin etzot, and a fool doesn't even get that. So, in my experience, I'm not around that long, God knows what he's doing. And there are times when I look and I just shake my head and I say, I can't figure this out for the life of me. But, Hakadosh Baruch Hu has it all worked out, and it'll all work out for the best. Whatever's involved in that and however it works. It may not be the ending that we want. Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, he had this quote, and someone used to make it his tagline on his email, that's how I know it. He said, "I don't know if I went everywhere I was supposed to be, but I think I ended up where I was supposed to go." So, I say the same thing. Hakadosh Baruch Hu has everything that is leading us to a conclusion, and I'm sure Hashem, we have to chazak v'yametz libecha v'kaveh el Hashem, and know that Hakadosh Baruch Hu will take us where we're supposed to go. A good night, Shabbos. Amen.