Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: True Freedom

ladies and gentlemen at this time i would like to call upon our first speaker of the night when we think of a man who has single-handedly helped improve the shallow bodies of people around the world rabbi dr jay abraham j twersky is definitely one of the first people that come to mind he has spent decades of years lecturing around the world and as all their numerous best-selling books ladies and gentlemen let's all give a round of applause to rabbi abraham jay corsica [Applause] goodbye good evening everyone [Music] many of you and certain have already started planning for the great event that's going to happen in the next few weeks as we celebrate takamatsu as we celebrate pesach and it wouldn't surprise me that some of you have already begun with the work and preparing for pesa and we say that the season and the celebration of our freedom of our independence now i used to wonder if hanson is an independent celebration well we know how celebrate an independence day yeah you have a parade and firecrackers and speeches and picnics and then you go home whoever heard of celebrating an independence day for seven or eight days and not only a week's celebration but look what they have to go through with preparing for the face of two weeks in advance well okay is it maybe a little bit of an overkill then every friday night when we say kidus and when we put on the tiffin it's definitely and almost every one of the mitzvoth that we deal with is that sometimes i think it's a little bit too much too much of a good thing but i began to understand that a little better a few years ago when a person came to my institute in pittsburgh his father was a fan was yeshiva and unfortunately the young man got involved in drugs and he's been in drugs for many years and he came to pittsburgh and we were able to help him to get off of the drugs but i could not let him go back home to new york because i know as soon as he gets back home he will make contact with his buddies and he'll get back into the drugs so i kept him in pittsburgh for several months and then one day he said doctor i want to go to my father's home for pesach to say that okay and then he came back and he told me when my father started saying the haggadah and he started saying i interrupted him and i said abba can you ever say about yourself that you personally have been in heaven we say you know our ancestors thousands of years ago but personally you were never in heaven you don't know what it means to be in heaven and if you don't know what it means to me in heaven you can't appreciate it what it means to be a benefiting a free person and the young man said i can tell you what it means to be an avid but those 20 years that i was in drugs i was in heaven i was not a free person i did things that i was never capable of doing but i had no choice because the drugs made me do them and when he told me that i realized that is not a question of political independence a person could be a slave to paddle a person can be a slave to alcohol he can be a slave to drugs and just relate to gambling he can be a safety food a person can be a slave to anything if he loses control of his behavior and what pesach is telling us is that we have to be human beings and not animals what's the difference between a human being and animal yes human beings are more intelligent but animals do not have any choice animals are slaves to their own bodies whatever the animal wants to do it does it cannot resist the drive it cannot make a distinction between right and wrong that's the uniqueness of a human being that we have ability we have the theta we have the ability to choose to avoid what is wrong and to do what is right even though it may be unpleasant even though we may have to sacrifice for a sword and at that point i began to realize why you'd see a messiah that's so important because we should not be slaves to anything except allah hang we our sight as servants but we are not slaves to anything including ourselves a number of years ago nancy reagan first lady that time said just say no to drugs and she had a campaign to try to overcome the drug epidemic by just saying no to drugs and they asked some people what they thought about this program and one young woman 14 years old when they asked her what do you think about to say no to drugs she says why what else is there now the last week you may be aware there was a great deal of talk in washington was the president trying to do something more about the drug problem which has been around for decades and to spend billions if not trillions of dollars was no progress and i have said to them you will never make any progress in the battle against drugs until you give that 14 year old girl a reasonable answer that she can understand what else is there that there is something else in life other than getting high there is something else to life other than having pleasure there's something else to life other than convenience and comfort there's nothing wrong with pleasure there's nothing wrong with comfort there's nothing wrong with convenience but they can't become the goal of life just about 40 years ago there was a new philosophy that was launched in the united states and that is if it feels good do it can you imagine reasonable people making feeling good the goal of life and professor albert einstein said it so beautifully he said that idea that life is here purely for personal pleasure that is a goal of life for a herd of swine we have something else in life other than just looking for pleasure and this is where torah comes in and tells us that hashem created us not like other animals but he created us so that we should participate in our own growth in our own creation and become that which hashem wanted us to be said all living things that hashem created he created himself without asking any participation and when it came to create man hashem says let us make a man who who's the us and the mashem says that hashem was talking to man himself and he said to adam he said look i created you with a body and i created you with a potential and i created you with a nishama so that you should become something different than an animal that has no control of oneself and if we look through our history even in the current times we find that we have had people who by life of toe living with torah have elevated themselves far far far above the animal level no there's nothing wrong with having pleasure but when pleasure becomes a goal of life and you've degraded to an animal status i sometimes tell people go to the supermarket and go to the counter the aisle where they have the condensed milk and look at the can of carnation milk and you'll see it advertises our milk comes from contented cows and think for a moment why should you care whether the cow is happy or not and the answer is that the producer is trying to tell you that the quality of his milk is greatest is best why because he has the best cows and why are they the best cows because they're happier and if contentment is the goal of a human life i think then a human life becomes very similar to a cow and we can never allow that again there is nothing wrong with comfort nothing wrong with convenience years ago i remember back in the 1930s we did not have the conveniences that we have today and i think it's wonderful to have air conditioners and fax machines and jet flights and all of the wonderful things that science and technology has given us but by the same token science and technology cannot give us a reason for living it cannot give us a purpose in life we have a wonderful cipher written by moshe sato this a person should understand what his obligation is in the world the world is not an amusement park yes you can have fun yes you can have a good time yes you can have pleasure but what is your purpose of your existence the purpose of the existence is that the torah tells us that to serve hashem it's not that hashem is here to serve us but then we are here to serve him and that was the great innovation of and this is something that we have to instill within our homes within each of our families and to realize that there is a blessing in were anxious why do we not see this finna but let me tell you where you can find this queen now the town that says a husband and wife who live together in true harmony in true humanity the presence of hashem is there and he came home from yeshiva escorted by some of his salvini and he stopped in front of the door and he straightened out his hand right now brushed his coat and he said i am going to walk into the house where this is because he lived the kind of life that the presence hashem was there and where there will be a life by the presence of shamu there there will be true family unity there will truly be family happiness there will be respect of parents and there'll be love for children and there'll be a harmony and a love between husband and wife that is not possible through any other way other than through the torah principles ladies and gentlemen when i was a youngster this was not the world that we have today we had a decent world with morality yes there were problems but there was not the kind of total loss of decency that we find today and so the challenge that you have the challenge that you have as parents and as grandparents and as husbands and as wives and as teachers and in every role that you have is to see that we preserve a pattern and a goal in life that is dignified for human beings don't let science tell you that man is a human homo sapiens because homo sapiens is simply a latin word meaning a baboon with intelligence we are more than that yes intelligence is important but it's not the goal of life the goal of life is to take this animal that we were born with we came into the world of little animals and to convert it into a mala to convert it into a spiritual being and that's what place of tells us all about right you knew there were times where we were slaves to paddle and then after we got out of it some of us lost our freedom we lost our freedom to addiction addiction to alcohol to drugs to gambling to sex to the food but you can never afford to lose your sense of dignity never afford to lose your sense of being a unique human being not only intelligent and knowledgeable human being but a truly spiritual human being that lives for something greater than simply having the pleasure of getting high or any other physical pleasure and i think that this is what kazakh is trying to tell you and it takes strength for them strengthen yourself fortify yourself with energy because you're going into a new world at that time going to the world of conquering and unencountering else's soil we have a new world that we have to deal with it is not the same world of 80 years ago i can tell you that and in conquering this new world we have to say and what kazakh is doing with all of its efforts and its teaching is to the greatest thing that we can do to become true human beings to recommend true people that we are children of hashem and we are proud to be so and we will live the life of children to hashem us [Applause] [Music] ladies and gentlemen one more round of applause for rabbi doctor [Applause] [Music] thank you rabbit swordsby for the words of inspiration and all that you do for paul israel on behalf of the entire audience we want to wish much hatha and success as you make aaliyah to eretz israel may we all greet you there with the coming of mashiach