R' Simcha Barnett Rav Noach Weinberg zt”l Project Inspire Convention 2023

Weinberg lets out he's really he's the founder of Asia Torah really I think you know besides the Bubba cherubby probably the founder of of kirov in America uh in the 19 early 1960s and his he has an enduring Mark A shatora a prize inspire all comes out of momentum the women's Jewish Renaissance project it all comes out of the of Robin weinberg's that sell and he had a brilliance in terms of communicating Torah and foundations of Torah that were truly life-changing now I remember when I heard them for the first time Jeremy you also remember I thought for a while for many years that it was quote unquote beginner's Torah and then I realized it really wasn't the case everything he said was a you say the foundation that if any Jew or from Jew no matter where you are on the Spectrum would live by it your life would be changed but they were so self-evident and true that obviously they would make sense to a beginner as much as to an advanced person right so it took me 20 30 years to really Circle back and realize that some of the things taught us truly foundational if we live with them the world will be different so I want to share with you some of that but I want to start with a story the first thing is is how everybody Weinberg got involved with keriff to begin with and it really went back to his father he comes from the line of sloanum they were the royalty a Hasidic Dynasty and he comes to he comes from a very hush of a very important very learned family he didn't he wasn't about chuva he wasn't someone he didn't know anything they were steeped in yiddishkite right steeped brilliant family steeping yiddishkite and he he tells a story they lived on the Lower East Side and his father was a talmouth very big tourist scholar but he also was a businessman he worked he made money he made a good living and but he was very into helping the Jewish people so he would collect money often on his off time for various causes for the Jewish people and they lived in in the East Side in these tenements you know these different buildings so you go from door to door and collecting money so he tells the story that he was at one door knocking on a door and having interchange with somebody and a guy a Jew comes from the other everywhere he's Jewish there right a Jew comes up and and says why don't you come to me you think I'm a guy that's basically what he said to him so Rabbi Weinberg because they said I don't think you're a guy I didn't know I didn't know you were Jewish I'd love to come in and take your money right so he comes in he sits down and he has a glass of water whatever he offers him and they'd start talking and he said you know I was a Sharma Shabbos in Europe and I came to America and I I couldn't get a job I couldn't I couldn't make it and I had to I had to be Mikhail Shabbos so Ray Weinberg said to him he said to him let me ask you something do you think maybe that you before you go to work on Saturday and Shabbat you could get up before diving make a kiddish for you and your wife have a little little masonous little suit or whatever small and then go to work so he looked at him like a deer in the headlights puzzled he said you really you could do that you really could do that he said why not why not and the man said sure I can do that he started diving before Shabbat making Kish for him his wife and The Story Goes within one year he became Chavez now it's a very striking lesson which became one of the foundational aspects of nuts philosophy and something which is like at the epicenter of cure of Outreach and that was it's not all or nothing or if Noah from this experience and his father teaching them realized and said to this man if the man thinks I should do everything it's too big a mountain to climb the eight Sahara puts too much difficulty in front of you to be able to like it's running it's like running a marathon day one but if you say no he says listen there's a Torah and everything you do is great and every Mission you do is a rung on that ladder and the idea is to go up the ladder that's the essence of cure this is a tremendously foundational principle for any time you're working not only with Bali chuva but even yourself because the eight zahar is telling you the same thing I learned later on the Yates Sahara works with us and saying to us all the time it's All or Nothing have you ever remember the voice I have a problem you know with the trying to keep the weight off so the voice that says you know um you you know either you pig out you do you eat the whole thing or you go abstinent right does that voice ever really tell you eat a little bit and you'll be okay later no it it's all or nothing it gets you and it gets you all or nothing I realize that's a human yet Sahara the yatesahara says uh don't anything good they don't want you doesn't want you to get too involved because you might do it so it says don't do anything because you might not finish you might never make the marathon so don't start running 100 yards don't run a mile don't run a quarter mile don't run a mile and we all know that isn't a religious thing that's a human thing's father uncovered that and that's probably one of the Essences one of the the the the foundational principles of strategy with working with with people that are trying to come from it's not all or nothing I just want to broaden that for a second because I think it's very important um in in before 1850 there were just Jews they were just Jews everybody was quote unquote Orthodox but you know where the word orthodox came from in 1820 was anybody referred to as an orthodox Jew no what would they refer to as Jews what happened about 1830 40 in that area 50 in Germany the reform movement came along and because they broke from the Torah they coined the word orthodox which if you look in the dictionary is just doctrinaire to the original principles of any religion is orthodox you just said doctrinaire principles of the original tradition so they coined this term Orthodox and that's been a tragedy for the Jewish people because people who are not religious who are less than quote unquote Orthodox they understand what they're not Radley I'm not Orthodox I'm not orthodox but they don't know what they are but the fact that they Define themselves by what they're not keeps them from doing anything you hear that because they can't they can't fathom be quoting quote unquote this thing called orthodox I could be me you know as the song says but anyway sorry about that so um but that was a big tragedy for the Jewish people because what we try to do and I think is very healthy is to say no no no no don't freeze frame yourself in a box which is orthodox a box which is conservative a box which is reform because that means you never get out of the box try to talk to people we're all Jews there's Jews there's a Torah the same Torah that's in the Ark in this reformed synagogue the conservative synagogue the Orthodox synagogue delivery construction synagogue it's the same exact Torah and the issue is there's mitzvos there's ways to get close to Hashem no one does all the mitzvos every Orthodox Jew could be doing better could be doing more many minutes as we can't do because we're not in every Trail it's not a base I make this right none of us are doing everything none of us are doing nothing I often tell non-observant they think they're not observing I said you're not non-observant you're religious I said do you give charity they said chorus I said well that's a Mitzvah you're a religious person do you go and visit your mother call your mother call your father they said yeah of course I do you're religious keep it out of aim your Israeli you and I are both religious we're just maybe on different parts of that latter as I was saying before and the most important thing is to climb the ladder I have to climb the ladder you have to climb land that's a trip if you can get a person to understand that this is not just this isn't salesmanship this is Ms if if a person can understand that it opens up their whole life to be able to grow and not be afraid of what they're not but rather start getting into what they might become what they might be so that's one you say number one very very important came out of New York's father's first foray into the world of kiris which started this incredible Revolution that we have now okay I just want to tell you a little bit about me just for a second because it it plays into the next important you cite so I grew up on uh Long Island you know that long place outside of Brooklyn you know go all the way to uh to The Hamptons so I grew up on an island in wanta I was an All-American boy so to speak knew nothing about Judaism was was bar mitzvahed reform but I really didn't know much my favorite part of the Hebrew school was the the Israeli dancing but that was fun I saw very pretty girls on the wall tanned and everything I thought that was a lot of fun but I wasn't interested at all because it wasn't very relevant at all I was a tennis player I was very athletic I went off to Dartmouth College I played in the tennis team and then I went into Investment Banking after that and I have a twin brother who pretty it's identical and has some someone we have identical story he also played tennis also went to Dartmouth also went to banking okay two of us so um so when I went got to Israel I always wanted to go to Israel always wanted to I figured when I was in when I was in the the Israeli dance class in the basement of the earth they performed synagogue I said you know this is not relevant we're learning here this is really not relevant maybe the real Jews in Israel maybe that's where they are from the back of my mind that was like 13 14 years old I thought you know one day I'm gonna go there I want to go there so I ended up going there I was about 26 years old had worked in invest in bank for about four or five years my brother as well we both went trip around the world got to got to Jerusalem and bumped into a chateur in the old city of Jerusalem and for the I'm sure most of you or all of you probably have been to been to obviously ever swelling The Old City so to me air the old city was like a religious Disney World that's what it was like to me it was like this Disney World of of of oh awesome opportunity and talks excitement spirituality it was like large it was like a larger than life type of thing and I went to this seminar called Discovery and then from Discovery I went to a class and I heard Robert Weinberg speak for the first time and his um his really famous class which he led with was called the five levels of pleasure okay he was talking about Ram Hal it steeped in you know Torah wisdom but the idea is that Judaism and Hashem created a world for our pleasure that he created that God created the world not to take from us not to exact the pound of Flesh which I thought yum Kipper you know we have to do our Penance he created a world to give to Children he loved you know that was the premise about Allah's Torah was based on that prep that premise Hashem is a god of love unlike a parent wants to give to his children he talked about it he said God could have created the world that we multiplied many different ways we could have hatched out of eggs we could have split as amoebas there are many different ways we could have created parents to children but he did it with a parent-child relationship which you have to care for this child maybe sometimes 30 years right and you would have a love and a bond and you would understand the way Hashem loves us bless you by the way your parent loves the child he said there was no accident that that just went on I remember a story from a rabbi Eric Cooper Smith Eric Cooper Smith was a little bit older than me and he was a long time CEO of Asia Torah but about probably in the mid 80s he was um playing professional hockey in Europe he was trying to get into the NHL the National Hockey League and he was that good and he was on this team they had a vacation and he went over Israel to Israel on the vacation so he gets to this class there's five levels of pleasure I'm talking about Robbie Weinberg and he sees Rabbi Warner if he ever saw a picture of Warren break you know black suit Fedora a Long White Beard and he's talking about how Judaism is about pleasure and a God wants to have pleasure in life and Eric said he was transfixed by this lecture and why was he so taken because he said I've been I've gone to Hebrew school and I've heard rabbis and the first time in my life this Rabbi is speaking my language I'm into pleasure 24 7. the only problem here is one of us is insane either him or I because his version of pleasure can't be the the pleasure the version of pleasure that I'm involved with but he was so intrigued because he understood for the first time a rabbi was saying no life is about pleasure and he said okay let me understand why do you think this is the way to get pleasure why do you think that's the way to get pleasure and I tell you when I got to when I got to Israel and I started hearing Jewish wisdom the beauty of it the sweetness of it blew me away I I don't know if you guys remember but there was a commercial in the 90s from Chevrolet it was like this isn't my grandfather's old Chevrolet like the new model this wasn't my grandfather's old Chevrolet and that's all I can think about this wasn't my old grandfather's Judaism that I was being exposed to in Jerusalem for the first time in my life so I was all ears and very excited I take this discovery course and they make a case that there's a God and the Torah is true and wow and after three days it's like exhilarating imagine imagine you are a Jewish kid and I had anti-Semitism against me in in junior high in high school very cold shoulder by the non-jews in my town and I I didn't I was like why are they why are they bothering us why do they not like me I'm just like them I eat the same food I go to the same classes I play the same Sports where dating the same people why do they not like me I couldn't I couldn't wrap my my head around it right so I only saw the negative about Judaism but I never saw any of the positive right so here all of a sudden I'm like oh my gosh we have the truth we are one quarter of one percent of the world's population rounded off to the nearest integer that is zero my friends zero and we have the truth and the whole world's got to go through us you know what that means that is like hitting the New York Lottery a thousand days in a row that's what it means we have the truth we're the only people in the world is the truth we're statistically insignificant and everything to bring this world to its fulfillment is going to go through Jewish people I don't know if you guys ever think about that but that's what it means to be a Jew it means that we're in the cusp of transforming the world now it hasn't happened yet but that's what it means to be a Jew so when I took this seminar I got I got inkling that that could be true I was ecstatic I was like I felt a little like listen come on if you guys hit the lottery to you eat the lottery over Shabbos on Friday how would you feel now you got a text on your phone or a what's up in your phone you hit the lottery would you be jumping out of your skin you'd be counting all the ways you're gonna spend your money be ecstatic so I was ecstatic for about three days and then all of a sudden I got depressed and I thought to myself Steve that was my slave name I said Steve why are you depressed you just hit the lottery you hit the lottery how come you're depressed and I you know what I said I said you know what my life's over I can't eat what I want I can't date who I want I can't do what I want on Saturday I can't this I can't that oh I can't I can't I can't I can't I can't that was my emotional reality right intellectually you hit the lottery emotionally I was very far from that then I calmed down I said wait a second this God who loves you this God that really created the world for our pleasure and our benefit it can't be that he wanted to kill me by giving me these mitzvot it must be that I just don't know I'm not yet in touch with the pleasure of the mitzvote it's sort of like a wine kind of remember the first time you had alcohol wine or alcohol you probably like like most people most normal people except my children they liked it the first time they did it but most normal people they hate it that's terrible they want soda pop they don't want wine but it's acquired taste you learn how to enjoy a wine in the nose and the body and their connoisseurs and courses right so I just I realized you know what I was not a connoisseur yet of the pleasure of Yiddish kite but I had faith that I if I just stuck to it I would be able to get that pleasure and okay so if Noah would say and he led with this God created a world for our pleasure right and you know where this is from Rashi says it now you should point to this because if you ever have people this is this is an Outreach we're talking about how to talk to people in terms of Outreach the first Mitzvah the first Jew who's the first mitzvah first time God spoke to Jew who's the first Jew huh I always debate about this let's say avram right so what was the first time Hashem spoke to avram he said right he said go go Lake lacha go from your land from your country in the birthplace to a land that I'm going to show you and the famous Rashi over there everybody's bothered because it should have just said it doesn't it says it says like go you like go you I think when you use the imperative form go you don't have to say you but the Torah says so Rashi says famously for your benefit for your pleasure don't think I'm telling you to go I'm going to give you many Commandments in the Torah right so you as you like many other people think if I'm giving you a commandment who for whose benefit am I giving you that commandment usually it's the commander if I say get me a cup of water right whose benefit is that for is it for your benefit or for my benefit it's for me right it's for the commander right but the right but God's saying no my children when I give you a command it's not from my benefit it's for your benefit go for yourself you're going to think when I tell you to do something it's for me but when I give you a commandment this is the Paradigm for all Commandments in the Torah every commandment it's not for me and rashiva would say remember would say and so do all the mafarshim does God need your mitzvos does God need anything God's infinite and so he's like a parent isn't needed but he wants it for you that's why the muscle for the parent is such a very very important and very good muscle sort of Noah would say that the world was created for your pleasure you remember there was a famous president 1960s named President Kennedy right now he had a very famous comment he tried started the Peace Corps and he said he said don't ask what your country can do for you but rather what you could do for your country right you heard that famous quote we've no changed that quote he said don't ask what you can do for God rather ask what will you allow God to do for you that's where I've known how he changed President Kennedy's words he was saying Hashem wants to give Hashem wants to give us the greatest pleasure in the world the only thing standing in the way is us how much would allow him to give to us you know like you ever have a situation I'm sure some of you are parents over here I have certainly had a situation where my kids did something I didn't like we got into a fight we got into whatever and I took a stand and I had to withhold something from them now but I didn't really want to withhold it from them you know what I'm saying and I was just trying I was just waiting for them to say Abba I'm sorry Abba something I just wanted even to say Abba like sometimes right it wasn't even what they said I was dying for them to allow me to give to them and sometimes I was able to and sometimes I wasn't able to and that's about who works with us so that's ravnok said the first your sight of cure of is all about that religion and Judaism without pleasure you have to realize I don't know how many of you are ffbs here raise your hand and how many balichuva how many people knew okay a few of us okay so when I was a kid so I don't know about you when I was a kid we never had any happy occasions associated with Judaism it was always like Yom Kippur was the one I remember right fasting maybe Rosh Hashanah they threw in which is also pretty austere every once in a while I remember we had a little a pace lock a few times with my cousins but for the most part it was very Christian orientation like dark and Penance and that type of thing I never had a Purim I never had a Shabbos I never learned anything they never talked about God in my Hebrew school I mean I don't know if this Rings true to any of you but this is what I the Judaism I had so why would anybody think that this is something enticing for anybody you know I didn't know you know I might go to show once a year to go to Yom KIPP because I felt it's important to do Penance or whatever it was repentance but I wasn't going to do that 364 days the rest of the calendar opened up a whole world of know is for your pleasure that's why the first commandment of kiriv I think you show people the pleasure to share the pleasure of your life and the misters that you do and the shabasam and the simchas and Erich Israel and the sweetness of learning Torah that is the greatest Outreach anybody could ever do show it's like you know they used to say show me the money show me the money show me the pleasure because that's what it is now a corollary of this is and this is what I always say this isn't it's a little tough it's a little tough but I'll say it is that the happier you are as a from Jew and the more pleasure you get out of your life and your mitzvote that to that extent you'll be able to share that with the people so that's why it's actually a beautiful Mitzvah Ravena thought it was the Silver Bullet because you would say like in other words if you get if you work on getting pleasure out of mitzvot if you work on really having a true relationship with God that you're happy and you have a happy home I have happy children then it just exudes like a dollar cup that just spills over so I I get I'm not there I'm a work in progress we're all works in progress like Robert Kayla show I love he said the other day I was listening to a class of it you said you know what we have to accept ourselves we really have to accept ourselves now most people say you have to love yourself but I realized what he said it was so something so deep because it's very hard to love oneself if they don't think they're there they really arrived and he didn't say love he said accept that means with your flaws that means we did good qualities that means with your less good qualities and he said you know something I don't know who is karov close right from person you say we usually say kirif crow them which is curve amongst from Jews like getting them closer here which is people who are not religious he said you know what I don't know who's karov and who's Rojo I have parts of me that are very curved and I have parts of me that are very raw hook that are very far away and I work with kids that might not even be Sharma Shabbos and they have a better relationship to Hashem than I do I have one kid who wrote a month of letters to Hashem imagine writing one letter tashem he wrote 30 days of letters to Hashem he said I'll be your son Shabbos you be my harusa on how to have relationship with Hashem so he said this it blew me away because he says you know we're all Harvard and rock hope it's like an orthodox no we're not orthost and he says each other we all can do better but you got to accept yourself if you accept yourself and what you are you're not most sure being hopefully you'll get there one time but if you accept yourself where you are then you can see someone truly for who they are and hopefully you can then grow together and I have to tell you whenever you reach out to someone less Affiliated it always affects the front person more than the other person now they never think they think they're doing it because they're doing a Mitzvah they're just doing their Mitzi trying to help someone which is good it's a good thing to do but all Mrs like that whenever you do something for someone else you think you're doing it for them and you end up getting the most out of it to anyone else they say sadaka is more for the person giving us than the person getting sadaka okay so this is the really the aside between behind the pleasure and I tell you it's it's the greatest thing you can do is show people pleasure because also you're being Godlike that's what Hashem does Hashem run you know I I when I remember you know this idea of avram you know the ultimate Josh I'm talking about avram finding Hashem he found him in the world and how do you find him because he saw that this world was like a Hospitality Inn a beautiful hospitality and with the bed spread made and the chocolate on the the mint on the on the bed spread and the the coffee maker over there that's this world it's a hospitality been made for us beautiful and made for us so when you show people pleasure you're you're being like Hashem you're showing a person in real time what a color sparkle is all about right so that's the first idea that's the first life-changing idea that I think of Noah gave all of us is that pleasure is what Hashem wants if you never do care of one day in your life if you realize pleasure is what Hashem wants for you because he loves you and you strive to see that love on a daily basis your life will be transformed if your life's transformed you concurrence from other people's lives that's piece of wisdom number one okay number two was very into definitions he didn't leave things hazy he gave definitions of very very important things it's not just Judaism does that and that was one of the things that that moved me about Judaism when I came to it later in life but there were definitions for complicated things now give an example love how many books how many movies how many plays songs are about love or a theme of love I mean thousands right thousands upon thousands upon thousands it's so ephemeral it's so hard to Define can anybody Define love who defines love you know it's funny even though I used to always joke about Cupid the whole Greek notion of love that that you know how do you know you're in love while you're walking along along the way and then Cupid shoots you with the arrow and you fall you fall in love you don't know why it's this Cosmic joke he used to say usually when you fall and you hit the ground it hurts usually usually it's a problem here Cupid you know shoots you with the arrow and then like you fall out of love with this wife and shoots you in again with another arrow and you're like but his point was it there's no Rhyme or Reason so rashiva said that's nonsense because Hashem is a Mitzvah to love God there's a mystery to love other Jews how can you do that if you don't know what love is so rashiva the definition I'll tell you where it comes from in the minute he didn't make it up this was his definition mind blowing definition he said love is the emotional pleasure that a person has when he sees virtue in another human being and Associates them with that virtue loves the emotional pleasure you will have when you look at another person and you see virtue in that person and you associate them with that virtue now let me just do a test over here think of someone you love anybody think everybody think of someone you love right now so if I ask you why do you anybody want to volunteer why I ask you anybody anybody living tell me the name just I ask you why do you love that person anybody like to volunteer and tell me Ben don't tell me who it is just tell me why you love that person this person is detail s that's what that's that's very that's very philosophical she has a I know who it is but there's a virtue that she brings to us closer is this person kind okay is this person sensitive see I'm doing this I'm trying to tell him what he has to do over here what tell me the virtues right she cares that's why she reaches out to people right how many you tick off The Virtue and that's why you love the person because you associate them with that virtue so I asked Benjamin I won't put him on the spotter but I ask him does that person you love have any like you know non-virtues like any vices any like things that are not so great and he's probably safe he thought about it yeah but he would say you know what but that's the Schmutz that's just like Schmutz on the clothing that's not the essence of who this person is you see we could work on that we could work on that it's not that people don't have negative qualities and positive qualities it's just that those you love you see the virtue right and you don't associate them necessarily with the negative now take a person you know a person you don't like typically it's the opposite you see that person as the negative qualities they're impatient they're arrogant they're short-tempered they're insensitive right they're not kind that now if you ask them they have a wife they have a mother and you say does the wife love the person what happened the wife loves the person right because you know what they also have good qualities but you who don't like them you're associating them seeing them for the negative qualities and not the positive quality so this is the key by the way to loving other Jews it was a Mist For the Love of the Jews but Hashem had to give us a Mitzvah that we were able to do if we weren't able to do the mitzvi couldn't have given us the Mitzvah So based upon the definition that I'm giving you when a person has positive qualities and a person that has negative qualities how can I love another Jew like that what is the operative approach what do I have to do anybody what do I have to do what is the midst of loving another Jew is it something an emotion or is it an action and the Russia would say you know what it is all I have to do is to be committed to seeing another person's virtue I have to be committed so when you think about it when a husband and a wife get married when they first get married do they don't they naturally do this you're seeing each other's virtue we can get married to them now the problem is sometimes that stops along the way because it's not an inborn thing with your children though Hashem gives you a freebie Hashem gives parents a freebie with their children they are wired they're hotwired to see their virtue you might ask you know you're gonna have a kid you ask a mother are you going to love that kid hey there's a silly you laugh it's a silly question how can you ask a mother she's gonna love her kid well well he might turn out obnoxious like the Cohen kid down the block don't you think you should give the kid a test run for a month or two a year or two and see if really you like him he's a keeper or not a keeper that's ridiculous why is he ridiculous it's only ridiculous because a parent is given a freebie by Hashem Hashem is teaching us through our children how to love all Jews why is that because by our kids we have inborn commitment to love them we don't by our spouses that's why people end up sometimes with divorces later on so the key to staying married and staying in love is commitment to seeing this The Virtue in your in your spouse and try to help nurture that virtue okay that's a biggie sight people don't realize that but this is the definition of love now it comes from the rom-bomb and it comes from the midst of loving Hashem in the rambam I'm not sure it's just Surya Torah or else Deus but but what he says there is that that if you love hashems avraham called the ohavid my lover my love is directly proportional to knowledge of Hashem the more knowledge you have of Hashem the more love you have Hashem this is the rambam straight out now that's this where this Rabbi gets the definition because by Hashem why is that the case why is knowledge of Hashem equal love of Hashem why is that a mathematical equation based on what I say anybody hap why is that is that the equation knowledge of Hashem equals love of Hashem more you know the more you love yeah because he has only he has only virtues that's why he has only virtues there's no Vice so the more you know of Hashem the more you will love Hashem because he's the definition of virtue he's the essence in the core of all virtue so from there Rabbi Weinberg got his definition you want to love a human being who is part virtue part Vice all you have to do is be committed to seeing their virtue brilliant brilliant definition of Love A commandment to love Hashem a commandment to love your fellow Jews it's about being committed to seeing virtue and that's something we all can do that's life-changing piece of wisdom number two number three was the Russia shiva's definition or take on free will now if I would ask you you mean as a human being what is our essential power I think if we got down to it once we asked questions back and forth we'd say our essential power which really allows us to be great is our free will right we have an ability to choose right to choose wrong to do good to achieve that's who we are that's at some who we are we have free will and that is the power pack for greatness so the Russia had a beautiful beautiful understanding of free will and you have to realize it goes back where does free-fuel come from you read Derek Hashem and other of the classic philosophers Free Will is only by human beings okay why is that because you know you have an angel and you have an animal there's angels have the angels have free will no angels are God's holy yes men they all they do is I I sir I I sir they're just spiritual and all they do is what God wants to do the animals have free will animals also don't have free will animals have instincts to be able to get their food what they like what they don't like an animal doesn't have free will and an angel doesn't have free will a human being is a combination of an Angel and an animal in one body and the fact that you have an angel that wants to do God's will and you have an animal that wants to really be a physical entity this Dynamic combination gives us the ability to have free will gives us the ability to earn our greatness earn our Perfection God has Perfection but how does a human being have Perfection and because you know what the the answer is is that a human being is able to overcome its base animalistic Natures to be Godlike to go after his nishama and this interplay between the Angel and the rock is really what allows us to be great Derek Hashem says to transform the animal to make it holy everything about the physical is Holy if you transform it so rosheva had a beautiful um practical definition which I think is one of his greatest contributions to Torah Torah thinking this is what it was he said and he goes back to the Parsha in midsummim that suddenly is the partial in the end that defines free will it says I'm going to place before you today I'm going to place good and life and good death and evil it goes a few lines and it says choose life so you will live and your children will live right so Rasheed would say what are you talking about choose life you have to choose Life to Live Now the Kash is very Stark when you've said in order to live you have to choose not to commit suicide you don't have to choose life if you just don't kill yourself aren't you going to be alive so it's giving you a very deep understanding of what it means it says no no no no life is not just being able to move your arms and your legs and to eat McDonald's and you know go and you know do whatever you want life is about living it's about living for something more elevated more important greater than that so he says unless you choose life you choose really to live in a elevated higher way then other than that you're you're dead meaning you could be alive for 80 years going to work eating doing this and you get up to shemaim they say you know how long you live sir and the angel says six months why'd you live six months because you know you did a little Charity a little of this a little of that the Torah is saying the Battle of Free Will is the battle between life and death and in our terms what does that mean what is it about are you thinking right now you're going to end life you're going to take the Final Exit no very few amongst us ever think of that God for goodness that we're going to take our own lives but you know we do we commit suicide in installments all the time ever space out every year of the of the vegging space out dead drunk I'm going to be a zombie I'm just going to chill out a little while right I'm just gonna gonna sleep because I don't wanna deal with my life right so we often we don't commit suicide but we ever ever say I'm gonna kill some time hear that expression kill time you know times life so if you're killing time what you're doing you're killing life so we don't commit suicide with bloodlet Salon but we do it all the time in installments and what the Torah is saying is that the essence of free will is that 24 7 you have an ability to grow or to give in to achieve or to relax to be better or to be worse they say in sports unless you're getting better you're getting worse because you know like I'll give you a muscle on my own it's not very wired but I think it's a good muscle life I say is a down escalator it's going down and you're you so in order for you to to get anywhere what are you gonna do got to go up you got to go up or you're automatically the spiritual gravity of life is going to bring you down and that's the essence of free will but hard to become so Rishi would say Free Will is a struggle between doing what you want to do and what you feel like doing say it again between you want to do what you feel like doing now you might think that's semantic right let me let me give you an analogy a kid is in college he wants to be a doctor there's a party Saturday night he could he feels like going to the party enjoying himself letting off some steam he wants to get into medical school I feel like today I felt like eating the chocolate cake they served me on dessert I want to be healthy and to lose weight I feel like snapping at my mom when she asked me the thousands time about the stock she wants me to help her with and I I but I I want to be patient and do the midst of Kevin you hear me is that every one of us every single one of us has essential Free Will struggles mine might be about I get my eating or about this getting angry and patient every one of us has a different free will struggle but you can break it down into what you feel like doing which is short run visceral Yates Sahara at the door crouching ready to get you versus what you want to do intellectual long run what Hashem wants for you over the Long Haul and the great person that Sadiq the exceptional person is only the person who does what they want to do more often than what they feel like doing seven times you fall and you get up one time so it's not the person who never makes a mistake it's not mushroom it's not the Sadiq the great person in life is the person who does what they want to do a little bit more than what they feel like doing now to me this was a revolution it's a revolutionary take on free will because I think it's on the spot if you all look at your own struggles you could you could see it breaking down to what I feel like what I want and he would say the essence of Free Will is to know what those struggles are before they Ambush you because if you don't know what they're they are what they feel like and the want is you're going to be ambushed Time After Time After Time so that to me this was a life change this is a life changing proposition identify your free will struggles know what they are don't be ambushed by them and if you just can do get the fortitude and the strength and with hashem's help to do them what you want more often than you feel like you will become a great person this is mind-blowing I'm telling you this is not a beginner's Torah this is just like you ever heard such a practical definition of free will unbelievable Robbie Weinberg okay I want to give you two quick ones two more quick beautiful ideas very warm it was very into the Shea schmitzvahs Shay Smith's a six constant Mitzvahs that uh the beer halacha and the first you know first doff of of Mr Brewer over there there are six constant mitzvos and they're all mixtures of God Consciousness okay so the the second one first was the second one is don't have any other gods before me that's that's constant Mitzvah number two so the roshiva would say just so beautifully he would say obviously for the Mitzvah to be constant it's got to be constantly getting to you it's got to be constantly in play has the Mitzvah of idol worship constantly in play I mean you you know any of us have a constant temptation to bow down to the chair they bow down to anything in this in in this hotel so he would say obviously we're not in the times of stones and altars and things that we would actually worship in that way but the essence of idol worship are powers that you understand have have power other than Hashem things that you give power to that you give Credence to other than Hashem is it money is it uh is it people what is it that you give power to and not that's now he would say and we're going further with this he would say that idol worship even goes to the stent okay great most of us could understand this definition don't give power to money don't get power to covered right those are our modern we're Idols that we worship don't give power to societies fads whatever they are that's pretty easy for us to understand he would take it a step deeper he would say that saying I can't is I to worship he would say this saying I can't do something that's out of worship why do you think he would say that why is I can't idol worship so people would say you know understand that's obvious right I can't either worship because with hashem's help there's nothing I can't do so if I say I can't do something it means that I don't really believe in Hashem because if I believe in Hashem I would never say I can't and we Pat ourselves in the back and he would say it's a little deeper than that he would say the real problem with saying I can't listen to this it's stunning he would say the real problem with saying I can't is that that means there are some things you decided you can't do but there are some things you decided you can do in other words I had a worship is not just saying I can't it's saying I can you hear that why is I can idol worship you're choosing yeah let me ask you a question when I I'm gonna I'm gonna raise my hand right now can I do that really I can I can't do that what can I do I had I had a free will decision I'm going to raise my hand right now how'd I raise my hand baraku helped me raise my hand there's in other words it's deeper than that it's not just I can't it's that really that that thing I can means I have an independent power in my shoes from Hashem it's mind-blowing so he would say he would say that if you decide there are things you can do in your things you can't do then you'll never do more than you think you can do right if you've broken this dichotomy in life between I can I can't you know what that means it means I'm in control some things are Beyond me for whatever reason some things are not Beyond me and he would say no no no you can't do anything and if you have this attitude that nothing is really besides the Free Will free will you can that's your that's your power but the ability to carry it out you know man proposes God disposes the ability to carry it out if you know that's just from Hashem then the Practical uh consequence of this is that there's nothing that you won't undertake to do if you think it's the right thing to do because Hashem has to help you do it it's not up to your ability to do it your capability comes from your taking one responsibility it's not that my capability comes to my ability it comes from responsibility which is a mind-blowing idea because what you're saying is Hashem is the power the I call it the jet stream of life and that's why we can do anything and this undergirded rev weinberg's success in everything that he did he said I can't run Yeshiva I don't know how to fundraise I can't create a balchuva movement but I'm not doing it see he didn't say I can or I can't he said who wants this to be done this is what I think he wants me to do I have no independent power but you know what he had this muscle that Hashem was like you know those cranes and Eric Cicero with that that would that take the loads the pallets and puts them you know swings them and puts them on the construction site he said well a little kid watching one of these pallets come in with thousands of pounds on them he's like Samson shimshanaki board these guys are so strong because he doesn't realize there's a crane there and he said I have no power Hashem is the crane all I'm doing is putting my hands guiding the palate into place I'm a guy like going to the casino and someone you know pulls the lever down for the slot machines and I'm gonna I'm the everybody else is running away I'm gonna put my hands underneath with a Coinstar coming out because I believe in the cottage barcode now if you have this understanding imagine how freeing that is to be able to accomplish to be able to try to do what's right in this world it frees you up to do anything and everything and that's why he was successful and that's what he taught his talmudum there's nothing you can't do Sarah schneera was a seamstress without much of an education and she started a revolution because Hashem wants it to happen that was his fourth piece of wisdom and I'll say the I'll say the last one but I always thought it was just beautiful he would have young men and women come into his office all the time mostly young men and they would be traveling around the world they would come in and he would say to them he was trying to show them they were responsible for the whole world and he would say to them what are you doing about the famine in Ethiopia whatever the crisis was at the time and that would be the war in Ukraine the opiate opioid crisis in America whatever the crisis was you know the day what are you doing to solve the this Ethiopian famine that's what he did in those days and they would say what do you mean I I there's nothing I could do about it in other words I I'm not a president I'm not a prime minister what can I do about it and he said from there nobody ever said none of these young men or young women ever said what do you mean it's not my problem none of them ever told him it's not my problem they said what can I do about it who am I yeah isn't that amazing he said from there you learn everyone knows bishfili never island everyone knows the world was created for me everyone knows they're responsible for changing the entire world they don't say to them what can I do they don't say it's not my problem they say what can I do now he would then go on with the same vert right is that if Hashem gave you the ability and he gave you the tools is there anything you can't do is there anything you can do with a color Sparkles help so his philosophy was incredibly empowering and Incredibly liberating I think it's tal medium Rabbi Samson who started prize Inspire he was a talmud and he just basically followed that approach was this is what Hashem wants I'm going to try I don't know if I'm going to be successful but I can't Define what I can and can't accomplish by my abilities because my abilities have nothing to do with it I could change the world Rabbi Weimer would say it's not up to me it's up to all of you every single person that's why project Inspire Aisha Torah we always try to create Partners most creative organizations it's rabbis and people you know out there being affected a star is very different it's we promote people to help us in the fight why because we understand that every one of you every one of us every Jew has the ability to change the entire world every single person and we've been taught and we've grown up and we've failed and we've been in a society which doesn't say this and doesn't value this and and that's not Jewish Society Jewish Society rev North would go to the some of the good daily and they would say they would go to the other side of the street rather than talk to them because he would say what are you doing for the Jewish people I remember he went to the guadalador of November you said one of the godoli head door what are you doing for the Jewish people as if he wasn't doing anything and he said you never have no made me uncomfortable because he believed we could do anything we could change the entire world so it was a big source for me a big mirror for me to have a rebbe like this but I think some of these lessons that I've been giving over in his name are very practical and they're also things that you can you can impart to people as you meet them about pleasure about love about what life's about about what you can be and who you can become so a big get a gratitude for our rebbe and he made a lot of more lessons but these to me were very life-changing Mr Shem we sure live with these lessons and we should all really help bring about the Renaissance of the Jewish people the behavior being made or on Main foreign