Rabbi Bergstein Sefira Conf 2012

point basically our idea and knowledge of sinai is not only a voice avoi say no up the line but it's also actually presentable and knowable based on pure logic and evidence now i did it very big sir here because i have other things to say on a big way but that's why we never say apost hashem is not a matter of it's a matter of yadiya ato horeso says the poster you have been shown har sinai ladas to know ki hashem who ella kim i know there's a wall here with a thermostat it's not i don't believe it i believe there's a thermostat here i don't believe i know it har sinai is yadia so what's a moon again what's a munna a munna actually is a word that should be translated differently than we translated a lot of words end up taking on certain connotations over the years the word mitzvah what does it mean oh it's a mitzvah to cross the street and walk and give it's a mitzvah to give your clothing into that cleaning store he's a poor man it's a mitzvah is that one of the tayac mitzvahs it's a mitzvah to go across the old grandfather the street the word mitzvah is used like a good deed a nice thing to do but the actual word mitzvah is one of taya mitzvahs that's evil from hashem so word is used in a new way sometimes the word in muno also we use it as we believe we believe and munna actually is not belief the word emunah if you think it's belief you have problem every day foreign that's good hashem believes a lot so what does it mean the word it comes from the word dependability mordechai raised hadassah she depended upon him as a nursing mother carries a baby the nursing mother is called an i mean because the baby depends on the mother in davening we say um about hashem we say his kingdom and his emunah is eternal what does it mean hashem's belief he believes in us no his dependability his falsehood is eternal and that's what the rambam means i believe with complete belief is there such a thing as half belief there's no such thing belief is either yeah or not 23 hours a day you're going to say kill him in one hour you're going to bow down to the gachka so you're mostly believing it's a garnish so what does the ramen mean if you translate it instead of belief they've translated dependency depend upon now it makes sense i have a udea a knowledge that sinai is real and that shavuous is not just some kind of historical commemoration but it's an annual event of a matan torah and it's real and now if i have that idea what's my amuna the rambam says you know what your amunda should be your dependency should be your trust in that should be in action and full dependency and full trust let's put that in practical terms i'll use a man's example but the women will understand it too it's the winter time you have an interview for a job you haven't had a job in six months kalila you need desperately a job your interview is 5 p.m it's 3 minutes to 5. you're in the office in manhattan waiting for your interview to start it's your big chance and you now remember i didn't have men and it's almost chase we're not talking to shia even it almost says what do i do well i gotta have the interview it's because you know al-darwin two myravs or something you know let me quick say habineno or something like that or do i say hey listen an imam and i depend on the rabbi initial is actually the implementation of the idea we have the idea of we know it we're going to celebrate it with cheesecake now the question is anima do i actually put it into practice do i actually run my life with that idea translating into my action anima in i trust and i depend on hashem with full dependency and with full trust because we may have the idea the information that sinai is real but the question is do we translate it into our lives now i like to be very practical so how do you translate this into your life what what should we do we're here in kingsway shul today everybody's gathered they want to go home with something i'll try my best because hashem to make a few points and of things that i think we can do to be able to strengthen our immuno our dependency in hashem and have a his irus and and and and and information and ideas that we can take and put in practical terms to strengthen this and muno this trust and dependency and connection with hashem and i basically boiled it down to that a person has to not let events personalities and information slip by without using it that means everybody experiences things during their life good things things that are oira them things that inspire them some vote that somebody said some mice that they heard some person that they meet if we actually will take these things incidents that occur things that we hear and put it in our storage bank and keep it for us it can be useful for us as spiritual nourishment and it could be useful for us of our children our families and kiru for him also i give you example when i learn difference for him what i try to do with this forum is i try actually to when i find something interesting in this affair to actually write it down so i have a frame of reference of that spot that can be done with any safer with gemara with zoyah with navi with anything happens to be that i'll give you examples this here safer notebook is things i wrote down from zohar that i learned through the zoho are the best of my ability i wrote things that should give me a physique and an action event to be able to put judea into action i have a whole notebook full of it and i decided to just read one one that's me the zoya says if you say shmai israel you're supposed to have in mind all the cavanaugh is royal is is is a russia tabus of oil malchus russia and everyone knows that the iron of shema and the dalai large in the torah because it spells the word aid aid means a witness you say shmai in the morning and at night you are the witness two times a day to achtus hashem that hashem is real says to zayo what about the rest of the letters the word we're making aid out of that but we left off letters two letters in shema the shin and the men and two letters in if you switch the letters around and reformulate them it spells the word esmach aleph from the sin or shin and the mem from shema and the khas from spells the word esmach says anyone who thinks this kavanagh bashas kriyashma sim and your fellow and it's a school that he should be basement the whole day now i'm just bringing one example of something huh and if you're using the sulum it's ice tough tough iron i'm just bringing one example of the kind of idea of finding something in a safe air and writing it down or putting it away or putting it in your mind so that when the opportune time comes and you feel down one day you pull that out to be marry yourself you're sitting on a schwarz with your children and you're talking about shema israel or karbala or you're up to passion where it's my israel what a wonderful torah to say at the house it's one type of way of being able to reach a higher emunah connection with hashem the last two days i saw two myridiki beautiful little stickler in this safe air by rabbi shima swab on ishaya i'm not marketing for the arts girl right now i i never really learned yashaya properly you know my nose in the yoshi was so i decided when the saber came out i'm going to find out what is really going on and he learned to shia and i came to the haftarah in yashaya that we say one of the haptyrus of of um of the seven weeks of nakama after would a woman forget her little child i wouldn't forget you those a woman may forget her little child faster than i'm going to forget you what a wonderful puzzle brings down a madrish hashem says when you listened and you accepted that i'll never forget what am i ridic a little piece on this possum i haven't seen this last week i remember the latest things most you know hashem is saying to us a remiss through the meadows in the novi the ayla you said forget about it i'm looking away from that i'm pushing that away says hashem and what you said on when you answered you were with me on that that stays one more this was last night i saw this last night a few practicum later the the the the um from the haftaru on a tiny siber he says hashem's makshaba is way higher than ours we know hashem can make ye something from nothing hashem also has the power to make ayan from yeash to make something into nothing the other way and that's why we say hashem's maksha voice are not like our masha voice whatever his ability of thinking is which is beyond us can actually make something into nothing what's this something hashem can make that if you do chuva the sin no longer exists i'm quoting chuva is one of the greatest miracles imaginable it changes existence to non-existence it converts yeash to iron it doesn't exist if you do chuva it's not we push the sin under the rug we're ignoring it it ceases to exist just like the world came from yeah this becomes i and nothing from yesh and he translates based on that the gemara that says whoever says king david sinned is mistaken you know why because he did chuva and when he did chuva the sin ceases to exist as this if it is non-existent a person sometimes thinks they do chuva okay we did chuva we clapped al-qaeda we did this we did that but still did i really accomplish something look at that madras on the porsche you come out of your kipper mamish the sins are not forgiven they're non-existent in creation i mentioned these things as the kind of thing that people should be aware of when they're learning when they're looking as forum where they're reading something to find a piece and don't let it escape write it down or write it into the into your memory there's another thing you hear sometimes somebody says something it shouldn't go over our heads it should make an impression if it's something really solid it should make an impression i'll get personal when i was fifteen years old and i was in my second year in mesifta i was learning in uh i'm achieving queens my father oliver shalom was a rover in queens and i went to high school there and i learned by a rebbe whose name was rabbi david wiener schlitta in fact he was he is rabbi pinchas scheinberg's son-in-law he was a young man then obviously and i was a bakarov and he we came to the first day in class and rabbi weiner learned with us a piece of gemara you could verify this call him up he lives in queens he's still active in the yeshiva of hashem he's not a merciful muhammad anymore he's a mashiach from the base madrid today but we're talking about a couple of years ago when i was 15. two years three years a little more whatever and uh he said the first day we learned the gemara he said if you don't know this tysos then for your whole life you're missing a piece of torah that's you know motivational you know at least how the how important it is then the next day we learned mr brewer and rabbi wiener said if you miss out this halacha it's not like the tysonis the thai swiss you missed one piece okay you missed one piece but in the halacha if you miss it your whole life you may be doing something wrong what an impression it made on the boys in the class the importance of halakhah the next day we learned music and we learned a paragraph there with some kind of moosa concept and here rabbi wiener said to the boys if you miss the one halacha you may be doing something wrong your whole life but if you miss this piece of messily's yasharam your whole life may be wrong not doing something wrong your whole scoffer may be wrong now this is years decades and decades later it sticks in my mind on an everyday basis do you think he remembers what he said maybe do you think he knew at that time what an impression it made on me that i'm saying it over decades and decades later here but these kind of things are things that we should be looking for and grabbing at and trying to keep and internalize everybody knows that masses an acute mass and interesting massa is something which it motivates people you hear a mice write it down let it be it brought in to your life i'd say 30 masses now for us i want to say one an example of something that's me but there's a story a true story of a soldier in the czar's army a jew who showed up the first day of circus in his uniform in the basement of the first slan of murabi the base avraham the sergius central avatar the first founder essentially avoided and the slanted rebbe looked at him and the slanted mariby said wow your face is shining what did you do what happened and this soldier jewish soldier says i don't know the rebbe says tell me what happened in the last 24 hours so the soldier says to the rebel i'll tell you last night the first night of circus i was on guard duty at the perimeter of this town outside the wall of the town of sloanim here and it was nighttime and it was the first night of circus and i'm standing on guard duty and i can't move and i can't go anywhere and on the other side of the wall are some jewish houses and i hear eden sitting in their circus making kid their singings meeras and i'm stuck here and it's the first night circus and i want to have kidnash and i want to have i might see and say but but i'm on guard duty what should i do i'm stuck and i'm standing there hours and hours and it's almost midnight when it's still you know i can't it's too late to ready make to do the mitzvah day raisa and it's almost midnight and i notice about 10 to 12 there's nobody around no other soldiers no pedestrians nobody i quickly climbed over the wall into the town went to the nearest circle was right by there the people had long left and gone out back to the house going to sleep i took out the two bill kalak that were in my pocket i quickly made kiddish on the bill kalaki he had no wine he had to make kids on the bill on the little rolls and i made a leishi basuka and i ate it and i benched and i climbed back over the wall the rebbe looks at him and the rebbe says that that's not it that's not what's making your face shine that's not it what else happened nothing well when i came back to my spot i was so happy that i was able to do the mitzvah that nobody was around i danced in my own circle for hours so happy that did it said the rebbe that did it that's what makes your face shine and glow for the yanta that's where we're at that's where our connection to sinai is it's fine that we stood at muhammad hassanai but that's the kind voice of rakhim karlos of rakim is via a good vat or a madrish or a zoya that's mur that picks us up kyle's of rock him is remembering something we heard in a speech maybe decades later coiles of rockham is a master that touches us that we carry with us that we transmit to someone else i have to add though and i'm always a little wary of talking about personal things but i i think that the subject warrants that i actually talk about something personal what what is my uh obviously i'm not the person who has the biggest his iris in the world uh and without being with being truthful there are people who are more in this area than me and avoid this hashem but whatever i have where's it from so i'll tell you a little bit personal history and i think it's applicable for everybody i didn't grow up in bar park or in williamsburg actually the most faithful day in my life was a day in 1953 that my father saw something in the morgan janelle my father was a robin the bronx and the shule was a shwakashul and he was a malama and a few yeshivas and he wasn't making ends meet and there was an ad in the mortgage and now that a shul in queens is looking for a rabbi and my father applied for the position this is 1953 and they accepted him and we got in our car and we packed up and we went over the triborough bridge and we could have gone over not the triboro bridge but we could have gone over the atlantic ocean because the bronx in 1953 in our old neighborhood was a yiddish neighborhood and where we showed up in queens there were used car lots stray dogs and irish bars and the neighborhood was a schwaker neighborhood and this was my new existence in this neighborhood my parents are leia mashallah being very fine other eden the house was a yiddish house and shabbos was shabbos and yantev was young tiff but there was no support system in the street i used to go with my father as a little boy to shul and we'd come to the shul on friday nights in the winter certainly and we'd sit there waiting and waiting for the minion the shoe was a big shoe with 300 seats in the back was those shabbos clocks those old torque clocks that used to tick very loud the only thing you'd hear is the ticking of the court of the clocks and i'd be sitting there my father would be all of our solemn would be sitting there and no haiti will let sway die and we'd be waiting where's the minion and the benches are empty and sometimes we got a minion and sometimes we didn't get a minion and we'd walk home and on the way home we used to pass the lirr with the subway i used to think that myself the malachim that i'm a lover somebody home they must be scared to go with me and my father because we're going through these neighborhoods where the stores are open and the train is going and the buses are going in this either foreign and we're passing literally seven or eight bars on the way home by the way when we got home if we had a minion my mother would ask my father you had a minion my father would say sure and when there wasn't a minion and she'd ask him you had a minion he sort of didn't answer he didn't never he was always positive about it but this was the environment one time i eaten my father's shule i'm sitting there the first night circus and he takes a five dollar bill out of his pocket and he puts it on the bench and he says to me elio take it take it i was about seven eight years old your father is not looking your father father's not looking of course i laughed at him i wasn't taking the money i didn't what did i even need money for but i was i told my father afterwards he was quite angry but there's neither here nor there this was the environment i grew up in this was i mean i went to yeshiva which i traveled to forest hills to go to yeshiva you know where there was some yiddish guide but when it came shabbos shabbos was nothing and the kids i had to play with in the street used to throw my yamaga down the sewer what's this huck dumber for a dog thomas 4 that when i got to high school and i went into professional high school and i spent there one time the first year i spent in the yeshiva in kafitzkaim high school rosh hashanah and simcha's toilet and i saw as a 14 year old boy the bismadrich boys dancing with us toyra the picture is still in my mind it's a picture of his palos it's a picture of of of astonishment it's an event i will not forget i think the coyotes of rakhim is exactly that i had an experience of kailus of rakhim when i came in as a 14 year old boy to that yeshiva i think that kind of thing is what we need and we have to be aware of and we have to try and find those experiences even if you grew up in a from neighborhood there's places to go and things to do like to see a massage to be able to give us an experience of kindness of rakim two years later um three years later i was 17 years old it was the it was a week after the six day war i didn't know what i was going to do for the summer i got a call from somebody that they need counselors in camp deal in new jersey the camp had gone through a whole crisis and they needed counselors they didn't know where to schlep counselors from in the end i took the job as a counselor there and they had schlep counselors from all over the place they had a few you boys some lubavitchers some sacramento guys from williamsburg they had a crew of counselors that didn't match one the other zero just crazy land but it was great for me because i met for the first time see this show boys from crown heights and williamsburg and they invited me to come to crown heights and williamsburg for shabbasthe after the summer which i did and i'll just share one experience i went to williamsburg this is my first time in williamsburg other than in the weekdays when my father used to go there to buy bakery things in hall of easter oil and go right back to queens first shoppers in williamsburg we dabbed early in some shul and we went from shul to shul on a tour of williamsburg my friend took me i remember walking into salem i could tell you it happened in satmar or in klosenberg or pope it didn't it happened in a small school in salem on corner rodney and bedford i walked into the shul they were holding by kigavna right before my roof and the islam was saying kegavna with such a his iris and i was 17 years old and i'm eating it up every week when i say kid governor without fail i picture 1962 and 67 in williamsburg in that show everyone in this room has to find their picture of his iris their coyotes of rock him search your memory if you can't find it you gotta look for it and find it now and put it away and as best as you can transmit that to your children or better find a way to take your children to something to an event to a to a person to something to give them that his iris outside of school and outside of education one more i stayed in i moved i changed the shiva to tarvadas hashem wonderful yeshiva i stayed in the dorm on shabbos because i didn't want to go back to queens there was nothing there i used to go to burrow park and go into the different places to to do the bluegive and the china and the and and and the capacity i remember the first time i came into babuf the baba virus i walk in i never was in baba i never saw the baba varuv nothing i was 17. i walk into babuf and the baba guru was in the middle of saying shulam alaykum by the tish i never saw a yid say shulma like him like that and i saw some pretty good eden including my own father and my zeida but i never saw a yid say show me like him like that and i stayed for the whole tissue and i stayed in the for dancing and everything and in fact in those days it was such a small island there were only 30 40 people that as soon as the bubba group spotted episode i got a glass of beer instantly my father claims that the bubba the roof bought me off with one glass of beer call your mother used to say with one glass of beer but you can buy somebody with a glass of beer the point is it's a it's a yid who is into shabbos in a way that i never actually saw in a myriadic away these experiences are really important now there's a conglomerate of things that we've discussed and it's not one exact program but it's the idea of always having a his irus and i want to tell you something in my opinion what i'm saying is based on a po everything i said is based in my opinion on a possuk that talks about our era and on a gemara that defines it as our era the pasuk is the famous possuk every passage is made famous by somebody making a song out of the possum the person is the famous possibility hashem days are going to come says hashem the isla of baaretz and i will send a hunger in the land hunger to to hear hashem's words that's our time a hunger to hear hashem's words and people will travel from ocean to ocean umit so fine let me translate it and from north america vad mizrah to the middle east for yeshivas and seminaries ye to live they'll wander the world looking for the word of hashem believed so when they won't find it what's going on we're not going to find it we'll find plenty yeshivas and seminaries plenty of nice jewish houses burke hashem kenya but that element of dvar hashem that his palos that wonder that simcha that dracus in the rabbit shalom that's what we have to find that's what's missing says the navi and the based on this person the gemara in shabbos says that i see the torah israel that in the future the torah will be forgotten how could that be well let's say that it doesn't mean the torah exactly it means that his cyrus will be forgotten there'll be plenty of yiddish guide and everything will be khadash and everything will be glad kosher and colombia soil but are we into a hisi reduce a new person every spurs it's going to be forgotten but you know the bowel yard side of thursday rabbi shimon bar argues on that kimura and he says and everybody's going to look for something and they won't find it what about that poster so he says that pasuk that possibly means that people will look for halacha um they will look for clarity in only one place you won't be able to find clarity in one place you will need multiple places to find clarity using it the way i want to translate it is a person has to have multiple assaults on the eights or horror multiple sources of his irus the hisi resource may be a speech maybe advantara maybe a book in iklas maybe an incident that happened where you felt hashem the incident the torah the massa the event shouldn't go over our heads we should find it internalize it hold on to it each person their own each person in their own circumstances i'm over my time so i'm just going to wish everybody that this shavuous we should hear the cutlass of rocky internally they should be there for us we're doing great in yiddish kait barak hashem everything is there all we got to do is the little match to light the fire all the raw material is there he rocks and we should be saying it's a toyota with carlos rocking this thanks for coming good