Rabbi Akiva Rutenberg | CHAZAQ Tisha B'Av Marathon

Thank you, TorahAnytime, Big Gavriel, Chazak, for making this possible every year. I hope as Hashem this will be the last Tisha B'Av, Shimon, in the midst of everything that TorahAnytime is doing, and all the Torah and chessed that's going on throughout the world. As Hashem we should see Mashiach, and this should be our final Tisha B'Av. I want to share a message. And I'm going to give you the theme of the speech before I give the speech. And the theme of the message is don't run away from your darkness, but rather choose to chase the light. And I'll explain to you what this is about. There's a lot of darkness in the world, and Tisha B'Av, in a certain sense, is the day where we choose to focus on the darkness. And it can be a very depressing day. The same time, we know that Tisha B'Av is the day that Mashiach is born. Tisha B'Av is the day that's called a moed in some ways. Tisha B'Av is darkness, and it's also the seed of light. And how do we understand these two things? And what is a Jewish view in general? What is the Torah view of darkness? How are we supposed to look at the darkness in our lives, the darkness around us? We have such an emphasis in Judaism and in Torah on simcha. Ivdu Hashem b'simcha. Do things with joy. Joy, joy, joy. So, if we're supposed to be joyous, so why should we focus on the darkness? What's going to be accomplished from focusing on the darkness. >> [clears throat] >> And I think at the core the answer to this is that darkness by definition is where we can grow the most. The darkest parts of our self and the darkest parts of life are actually the moments where we have the greatest potential for growth. It's brought down that the darkest moment of the night is right before uh sunrise. That's the darkest part of the night. And I think many of us have experienced this in our own lives that sometimes the darkest moments, the moments where you feel the most stuck, the moments where you feel like giving up, like like like I can't do this anymore are the moments where you can have the greatest growth. There's a beautiful idea that I've heard from my father. I've seen it in the Sfas Emes. The Ishbitzer talks about this idea as well. And others say the sim- similar idea. And they bring it out on the mitzvah of tzitzit. If you look at the mitzvah of tzitzit the mitzvah is given to us right at the end of parshas Shlach right before parshas right before parshas Korach. And in this in between parshas Shlach and Korach, in between in in the mitzvah of tzitzit we are told that on a corner of a four-cornered garment we put the white strings and we also have the blue strings, the techeiles. Recently many people feel that they found the original techeiles. I started wearing techeiles myself thanks to my father. And many people I know were starting to wear the techeiles. Um according to the the the current view it comes from a snail. But, regardless if the original tzitzit were supposed to have white and blue. And there's a very famous Gemara, the Talmud says that what is the purpose of the blue? The contrast between the white and the blue by looking at the blue, it'll remind you of the ocean, which will remind you of the sky, which will remind you of God's throne. Somehow in our neshama, we know what God's throne looks like. And by looking at that blue, we'll be reminded of Hashem. It's interesting if you go in the in Tzfat on the gravesites of the Mekubalim, they covered it with blue. There's a It's like a very like interesting blue color that a lot of the graves are covered in. And there seems to be a mystical connection to this color blue. So, the Sfas Emes and others ask, why on the corner? Why on the corner of the tzitzit do we have a mitzvah of tzitzit a mitzvah to put this tekhelet? And he says because the tzitzit symbolize the corner. Remember the mitzvah of tzitzit is only on a garment that has corners. If it's rounded, there's no mitzvah. And on a corner symbolizes the parts of our life where we feel the most stuck, where we feel like there's nowhere to go. Where we feel the most finite, the most limited. And if you think about it, the tzitzit itself symbolizes like our whole life. It's It covers us. It's like our whole experience, every part of our self. And each of us have these corners, have these parts where we feel the most stuck. And he says go to those corners and realize that at that corner you are never stuck. You are connected to the Ein Sof. You are connected to the infinite. You are connected to Hashem. You have an infinite You have a piece of a chelek Hashem inside of yourself. You have a piece of God inside yourself that's infinite. And therefore, you are infinite. There's a part of you that's infinite. Don't feel stuck. You can reach tremendous heights. And where can you reach those heights? At the moments where you feel the most stuck. So, don't run away from your darkness. Almost like lean into the darkness and see where you can grow in ways that you never thought were possible. And by doing so, we realize the infinity that lives inside of ourself. We realize that we're connected to Hashem and that we're never really stuck. If you look at the mitzvah of tzitzit, it says, "V'lo sasuru acharei l'vavchem v'acharei eineichem." You look at the tzitzit and you won't come to sin. Doesn't say this by any other mitzvah in the Torah. It says, "You won't come to sin." And I think the reason for this is because one of the reasons that people end up sinning is because they feel deflated, because they feel lost, because they feel like I'm a lost cause. What's the point anyways? But, when you realize how special you are, when you realize how connected you are, it'll take you away from sinning. And it's interesting that the mitzvah of tzitzit is given right between parshas Shlach and Korach because there's a common denominator of those two parshiyot, that in parshas Shlach, where the Jews Jews felt this limiting belief about themselves. Somehow, even after coming out of Mitzrayim and seeing all the miracles God did for them, they were afraid to go into the land of Israel. They were afraid to go into Eretz Yisrael. And the very famous Kotzker Rav, the Kotzker Rebbe says, that on the on the verse, he says, "We saw ourself like grasshoppers." The spies said, "We saw ourself like chagavim. We saw ourself like grasshoppers, and they saw us like grasshoppers. We saw ourself in a limiting way. We didn't believe in ourself." And this is the theme of parshas Shlach. And then you look at parshas Korach, and what happens in parshas Korach? Korach is Korach is the is is is a cousin of Moshe Rabbeinu. Korah has everything going for him. Korah is a prophet. And yet somehow Korah chooses to focus on what he's lacking. And he's and his limiting view, it would seem, of himself caused him to create one of the greatest tragedies where these great rabbis, great leaders, ended up following him and we lost all those people in this tragic tragic way. And it also comes from a limiting belief. And right in the middle between Parshas Shlach and Parshas Korah, we have the mitzvah of tzitzis. You'll see many sources in the Torah that say that darkness is not something we we should we should be we should be scared of. I'm I'm going to share with you a a few of the sources now. Um there's there's a Zohar. The Zohar that says that um It says less nehora ela hu denafik migo chashucha. There's no true light except that which emerges directly from within the darkness. And what does this mean? I think by definition what it means is don't be afraid of the darkness. There's a very big tendency that we all have to run away from the darkness. Whether we go through addictions to keep us away from feeling that darkness, whether we do other unhealthy things, whether we just try to distract ourselves with our phones, which is also an addiction, not to feel that darkness. But the reality is is that in the darkness we can actually find a tremendous tremendous amount of growth. >> There's a possuk in in Micha says, "Im b'choshech ani yoshev, Hashem orli." Though I sit in darkness, Hashem is my light. And again, what does this mean? It means that the darkness is not something to be scared of, it's not something to be afraid of, but it's actually something to lean it to lean into. At the same time, what should we be focusing on? So, I started off, I said, "Don't run away from your darkness, but choose to chase light." And I think that one of the things we have to strive for or work on in our lives is to look at the light in our lives. Is to focus to choose what we want to focus on. And there is so much good around us, even in the darkness, there's so much good. Even in the tragedy, the the possuk it says, "Afilu b'astara." Even in the tragedy, we look at the last 3 years since October 7th, and within all the tragedy, there's so much light that came out of it. And if we were to choose to focus even more on the light, we could see even a lot more light. The chesed that people did for each other, the way people looked out for each other, tremendous a tremendous amount of of light even in within the within the darkness. There's There's the Hebrew word for gratitude is what word? Is the word hakaras hatov. And normally people translate this word as gratitude. But in reality, if you look at the Hebrew word, it doesn't mean gratitude. It means hakarat hatov. It means recognizing the good. Which the way I understand it means choosing to focus on the good. We can look at a situation and see the good or we can see the bad in that situation. And I think that part of our jobs in life, like I said before, is not to run away from our darkness, but instead lean into your darkness and choose to focus on the light. Choose to focus on the things that are going right. Choose to focus on the good in your relationships. Choose build build on the right on the things that are good. And if you do that, you'll see tremendous tremendous growth in your life and you'll feel so much more connected. So often we go to daven, we go to pray, and we don't feel connected. But if we can choose to focus, it says the in in in in Mishnah Berachot it says the great the great rabbis used to meditate for 1 hour before they prayed. And then they prayed for an hour and then they meditated afterwards for an hour. And what were they meditating on for an hour? So the Piazetzna Rebbe and many others say they were focused on connecting themselves. They were focused on feeling the the Hashem inside themselves. And then when they davened, the tefillah was on such a higher level. Sometimes we go into tefillah, myself included, and we're just in a dark place and we're just like confused and stressed and we're being pulled in so many different directions. But our job is to try to focus on the good. Our job is to be makir tov. Our job is to The Arizal says every morning a person should get up and say, "Veahavta lere'akha kamokha. I love every Jew." Why? Why should you say I love every Jew before you even talk to Hashem? Cuz by talking about the love we have with each other, it brings up connection. It makes us feel closer. When you feel that closeness, it makes you want to connect to Hashem. When you look at the tefillot, one of the beautiful prayers I I always try to focus on this in the Shabbos tefillah, we ask Hashem, we say we we we we we we literally we we the the words are um v'taher libenu l'ovdecha b'emes, purify my heart so I could serve you with truth. Kadshenu b'mitzvosecha, make us holy with your mitzvos. Seinchakenu b'sorasecha, give me a a part of your Torah. What is What's the message here? And it's interesting cuz on Shabbat we don't usually ask for bakashos. We don't usually ask for requests on Shabbat. So, what are we asking for? In a sense, we're not asking for anything. You hear this? We're not asking for anything. What are we doing on Shabbat? We're just saying, "Hashem, let me recognize the blessings I already have." Like this famous saying, it's not having what you want, it's wanting what you have. We live in a world that's constantly chasing, chasing, chasing, chasing, always chasing something. We chase a chaser. We're constantly chasing. What do we want to We want the next happiness, the next vacation, the next trip, the next this, the next that. We we we can't wait till our kids, you know, till we have kids, till the kids leave, till they come back, till they go, till they We're constantly living We're not living today. We're living tomorrow, living yesterday. We're looking at pictures of yesterday, and we're dreaming about tomorrow. When we're on vacation, we're thinking about where we're going to be tomorrow. We can't appreciate the blessings we have right in front of us. You know, last week we couldn't breathe cuz the the air was like from the smoke smoke in in in Canada. I asked myself a question. I said, "How can I use this as a way to give gratitude?" And I said, "You know, cuz yesterday I could breathe." Like some people live in climates like this where they never can breathe. They they they This is their the norm for for them. You know, and and and I think that the message the message is is yes, there's a lot of darkness in our world, and don't run away from the darkness. Don't go to addictions. Don't go to unhealthy things. Allow yourself to to that darkness, because in the darkness, you can have your greatest growth. I do quite a bit of relationship work in my work at Amudim so many different people who have grown so much who have inspired me, and so many times I see the same theme. It was a difficult moment. It was a situation that where where where I felt stuck, where I felt like there there there was no there was nowhere I could go. And and and from from that moment, from that moment I I was able to capitalize on that. I was able to use that. I acted in a way, you know how often I hear people telling me this? I acted out of character. Something happened in this relationship that made me talk to my wife, talk to somebody else. I was It wasn't me. Right? So, what's the easy thing to do in that situation? You blame other people, you even blame your yourself. You say, "I was too tired. I did this." But if a person really leans into that and says, "You know what? That's not me. And I don't want to be that person. And I want to let that darkness, like that positive I just described, I want to make that darkness into my source of light. I want to take that negative experience that I had, and I want to say, "I'm not that person. I'm not that person who talks that way to my spouse. I'm not that person who acts that way. I don't want to be that person." So, then I use the corner of the tzitzit, and I say, "You know what? I'm stuck. How do I deal when I'm stuck? How can I connect to something higher? How can I realize my greatness inside of myself that I should not be that that that stuck again?" And again, I believe that it's a combination of these two ideas of not being afraid of the darkness, lean into the darkness, grow from the darkness, which is what Tisha B'Av is about. Tisha B'Av is about grow from the darkness. The darkness is like the Chassidic thought is they say like Hashem's Hashem is hidden in the darkness. Like there's a concept called Or HaGanuz. Like Hashem's light is hidden inside that darkness. Don't be afraid of the darkness. But at the same time, focus on the light. Be makir tov. Focus on the good that's going on in your relationships. Focus on the good in yourself. Focus on the good in others. Focus on the good. Decide to focus on the good. I gave someone an example recently. And this is a little bit you have to use a little imagination for this, but picture this for a moment, okay? Picture that I I made for you it's a beautiful day like today, but I I made for you uh binoculars or like some something that focuses your eyes. And it's a beautiful day, but these glasses, these things that I put on you, force you to focus on one little dark spot on the floor. And all you see is the dark spot. Do you get the metaphor? Sometimes in life that's what we're doing. Sometimes in life we're we're literally choosing to focus on the darkness. We literally we're literally choosing to focus on the one person that doesn't like us. On the one post that somebody posted that we think might have been referring to us. And that person was going through it and and I'm going to choose to focus on that instead of all the blessings and beauty uh around me. But instead of doing that, if we do the opposite, and we say, "You know what? I'm going to choose to focus on the positive. I'm going to choose to focus on the good." We can build from that. We can feel the connection in that. I always mention that right before my I think my favorite prayer, my favorite tfilah, is the is the avah rabba. Is the is the words avah rabba or at night we call it avot olam. And I I really recommend that people read this in a language that they understand. And what do we say in the words avah rabba? We literally it's right before the Shema. right before the prayer of Shema where we accept God's reign and we talk about our our probably the most important prayer of the day, maybe the only prayer that's really d'oraita, is the Shema. And right before the Shema, what do we say? Avat Olam, Ahavah Rabbah. And we talk about God's love for us. We decide to choose to focus on the tremendous love that Hashem has for us before we even try to talk about our love for Hashem. And this is a secret for relationships, this is a secret for happiness in life. If we choose to focus on what's good, it doesn't mean we're delusional, it doesn't mean we don't realize we still have to take care of those other things. But if we choose to focus on what's good, we will see so much good around us. We say in the tfilah of Shabbat, Mizmor Shir L'Yom HaShabbat, tov l'hodot l'Hashem, it is good to give gratitude to Hashem u'l'zamer l'Elohim Elyon, to sing Hashem's praises. And then it says, l'hagid baboker chasdecha, ve'emunatcha baleylot. We should speak out God's praises baboker, ve'emunatcha baleylot, and we will have faith at night. And I saw a beautiful explanation of these words. If I will l'hagid baboker chasdecha, if I speak God's praises when things are good, baboker is when things are good, if I practice gratitude when things are good, emunatcha baleylot, I will able to be able to have faith even baleylot, even when things are difficult, when things are challenging. If I choose to focus on the good, I'll be able to see good even in those challenging moments. So basically, in summary, I think what we can learn from Tisha B'Av is that darkness is part of our reality and the Jewish people have had a lot of darkness. But darkness is not bad. I'm going to emphasize that word and stay on that word for a minute. Darkness is not bad. If we get into our mind that darkness is bad, we're already in big trouble. Big, big trouble. Darkness is not bad. Darkness is part of reality. It's part of life. There's a madras that says that when Adam Rishon had the first season and he saw that nights getting shorter, he thought it was because of his sin and he thought the sun was going away. But the reality is that that's part of the cycle of life. There is darkness in our lives. There's darkness in the world. Darkness is not bad. But specifically the darkness we're focusing on at Tisha B'Av is a darkness that begging us to learn from it, to grow from it. It's begging us to say, "Don't let those tragedies go for waste. Learn from those strategy tragedies. Build from those tragedies. Allow those tragedies to make us stronger in some way. Allow those tragedies to become to appreciate more of the light that we have around us right now. Lean into the Lean into the pain, so to speak. Don't be afraid of of the darkness. And at the same time, chase the light. Chase the meaning. Chase purpose. There's so much negativity around us. You could just go online at any moment and it's just constant bombardment of of negative news and negative things and negative negativity from all around us. And you know, we live in a in a in a tight community here in Queens. And a lot of people are related to each other. And what ends up happening in a community like this? We hear about tragedies. And when there's one tra- And in a way it's beautiful. It's like we all care that someone someone had a crisis and all of Kallah loves and cares about each other. But there's a very big danger in that also. Because we hear about a tragedy that happened across the ocean, but we're not celebrating a simcha that happened down the block. Do Do see the problem with this? So, and something about our brains, I'm not exactly sure why, there's a tendency to focus more on negative. Some some reason. I John Gottman, the very famous psychologist, he says that we'll remember a negative comment four times more than a positive comment. He says in a relationship you have to do five to one positive to negative. So, there's so much negativity arou- around us that brings us down. And we're not celebrating enough the positive. We're not celebrating enough the Torah, what the the the the hashem, the good things that are going on. And it's a very delicate balance cuz we're not trying to to ignore the negative, and there's a lot of negative. We try to learn from the negative, but I also think at the same time we have to choose, and I'm talking to myself, we have to choose to focus on the positive. We have to choose to be makir tov. We have to choose to live a life of hakarat tov of gratitude, of of choosing to focus of choosing to focus on on on what's good. And I think if we can find, so to speak, the harmony between these things, and I think Tisha B'Av in a way is that harmony. Because Tisha B'Av is saying it's the saddest day of the year, but in that sadness is going to be Mashiach. The Jew never gives up. The Jew never says, "We lost." But somehow is able to say, "I'm going to find meaning in this." Right? So, one way to look at this is is chase meaning. Don't be afraid of problems, chase meaning. And the more the more we can do this, the more we can do this, the more we can can chase meaning, the more we can accomplish. I want to end off with a final thought, something I spoke about here a few years ago, and it's something that I think is a necessary prerequisite to accomplish what I'm talking about today, which is to control these devices that are trying to control us. Because if we don't set very, very strong controls on them, we don't have a chance. We don't have a chance. Not because we're a bad person, but because we're human, and these devices were made to be very, very addictive. And the news that are coming through and the feeds and the click it constantly is pulling us away from menuchas hanefesh, from calmness, from centeredness. And it it's almost like we beat we beat ourselves up for allowing these devices to control us, but I don't think we really have a shot unless we do one thing. And this is something that I personally have worked on myself over the last 6 years on this. So, I'm speaking from personal experience. And that is you must set rules for yourself and publicize them like I'm doing right now. Because if you do that, you have a shot at not letting these devices control you. One of the things that I personally did, I did this Pesach 2 and 1/2 years ago. Pesach 2 years and 3 months ago. I found myself getting very stuck in the news cycles, especially after October 7. Because then it became religious to look at the news, you know, I care about cloud yourself. So, I have to read the Drudge Report six times to see if if the rocket took off from Lebanon and maybe you see the news change has a different opinion than the and somehow and it's so distracting and so stressful. And I made a kabbalah on myself that I'm not going to use my phone for news. And I'm just sharing this because I think each person could do something maybe similar for themselves in some way. I made a kabbalah on myself. I am not going to use my phone for news. I can look at news on a computer if I want. I can go to a newspaper. I can go to my wife's phone. I didn't say it's I can't see news. I just said I'm not going to use this device that's in my pocket that I'm using for Torah, for connecting with people, for helping people, for emet. I'm not going to use this device for news. And I want to tell you and I did it right before Pesach cuz Pesach is a time of freedom. So, I said this is a good time to become free from this. And I want to tell you that I'm not saying I'm 100% perfect. Sometimes a news breaks, something happens, I get a a WhatsApp story, and I will break it sometimes. But my entire news intake went down by over 95%. Entire news intake. Cuz when it's not so accessible, we just don't do it. And this is a metaphor for many other things in our life. You could use this as a metaphor regarding setting up learning opportunities and different things that And the concept is and I believe this is aligned with Rabbi Rabbi um I believe this is aligned with um with uh Strive for Truth, with Rabbi Dessler's approach to free will. That often the free will decision is not at the moment itself. The free will decision is the environment that you put yourself into that will make it easier to make the right decisions. And uh there's an author uh um by name of Ben Hardy who wrote a book called Willpower Doesn't Work. And on the surface it sounds like it's totally against the Torah. But I think if you read the book you'll see it's not a contradiction to the Torah. Because what he actually does believe in free will. But what he's saying is if I rely on my willpower, like if I allow myself to have that device, and I'm going to only see one article, but I'm not going to get pulled into 16 different articles and different things, it's probably not going to work. So, set proper guidelines for these things. Don't rely on your free on your willpower at the at those moments. Choose to focus on the good in your life. Choose to focus on the light. And don't be afraid of the darkness because the darkness is like the tzitzi symbolizes. The darkness is the moments where we can grow the most. The darkness is not bad. Says in the in the same we bless God for bad. What? Bless God for bad? Because bad is is just another way to get to something even greater. So this will be our last our last Tisha B'Av. All of us should come together. And we should see you all. Don't be afraid of the darkness. Chase the light and set proper guidelines so you're not being a a product of the consumer, you know, the all this technology that that's been designed to make us into little uh little depressed robots. Okay.