Rabbi Chanan Gordon,Rabbi Yisroel Majeski,RabbiDr. Dovid Fox&Rabbi Pinni Dunner: 2020 HindsightPanel

um and we want to thank everyone for joining us we have a very very special event i don't know maybe they're always will tell us but i don't know if it's i don't know if their app has ever been on a panel together but for me it's and uh just because they have such tremendous leaders um on one panel it's amazing um and we're gonna be um we're gonna be talking about 2020 in hindsight so we know that this this year has been a very eventful um year and we're gonna be uh looking back and alert and trying to try to see what what happened this year and maybe some lessons and some um um what we could learn from this past year that that to help us uh moving forward um our four distinguished panelists tonight gordon by penny dunner by dr devin fox and rabbi strom majeski um um just a short word about each of our distinguished panelists but is a tremendous renowned speaker he spoke he speaks for so many tremendous organizations and um he's he's he's a tremendous uh community leader he's he's he's been the chairman of the ghost of so many conventions just to name a few um uh go to sioux trail a job and then it goes on and on and uh he's really been a really uh spearheaded fazak's with a cute effort on the l on in the west coast and i really appreciate it regarding not only for this event but almost so much just for kazakh and in general just for a kaiser and uh penny dunner um is um he is a tremendous leader and and and force for the jewish people uh he's originally from the uk he did such tremendous work in the uk area and right now he lives in um in california and he's uh he's a senior rabbi over there and he does a tremendous work it's a great honor to have him tonight um and we also have her by dr david fox um who is um who is the director of intervention and community education with project high and he's one of the he's one of the is one of the one of the leaders of nephesh which is the international association of orthodox mental health professionals and he receives michael from finding that style and he's a tremendous um leader and uh clarissa turns them for for guidance on so many areas and uh our last panelist robert is jealous who is um majeski is a tremendous leader and speaker and you've seen uh his videos and his short clips all around and um he's um he he educates all all all segments of class of all ages he's during the summaries that he's he's one of the hectic counselors of campbell gooda and yeah and he's and he's a rosh cola and he's a rob he does so much for jewish people and what happened in front of you you didn't turn it you didn't tune in because you wanted to hear the introductions you tuned in because you wanted to hear from the amazing panelists so we will start off uh with our first question but we want to um uh we're starting off with some questions that people submitted in but if anyone wants to submit a question you can email your question uh your email your questions to events.org that's spelled e v e n t s at c h a z a q dot or g events dot org and um we will get started so uh we're gonna ask uh my first question to rabbi rabbi gordon um and um gordon as someone who's one of the most active lecturers who's looking for so many jewish organizations and gear organizations and you speak to so many college students on a regular basis what is your sense of how the coronavirus pandemic has impacted primarily younger people that maybe are less affiliated to the traditional torah lifestyle thank you robbie just before i respond i want to thank hazak for the tremendous work that you guys do uh and we've stuck we're sort of extending your flag here to the west coast and to my esteemed uh colleagues uh who each have contributed in their own way tremendously over the years it's a it's actually a relief for once to be on a kazakh panel with someone else with a british accent so it's wonderful to have probably done it uh with me um so here's my here is my observation we live in the uh the internet social media world most of the folks that i speak to seminars campuses have been filled for years with a sensory overload with a stimulation overload with distraction and suddenly akaddish barachu imposed this mageifa in the world and one of the things that i've seen is that it's forced people to to stop pause do some introspection do some soul searching we live in a world where it's very easy to be reactive uh to be somewhat zombie-like and what i see in the younger generation these the folks that i'm exposed to is what the quarantine has done is caused them to do some soul-searching suddenly there's less noise i've seen folks sort of for the first time really peeling back the onion if you will um and and doing some introspection which is very which is very different to what you know the the whole momentum that i've seen over the years specifically amongst the millennial generation and the questions uh that you know that we can throw about that certainly would like to forget myself my esteemed palace input is you know rabbi why is this happening now the innuendo attached to that is that this is not happening by accident so even the most disenfranchised and secular folks that i've exposure to on some intuitive level realize that it's impossible for the entire world to suddenly be placed on pause by by by happenstance and again even disenfranchised jews are already got some intuitive almost a primitive sense of there's something that's going on here and there's something that i have to learn so i think the best way i can respond is that it's caused people to stop and pause it's caused some soul-searching it's caused people to to really want to recalibrate and think about their lives and if nothing else i think that um it's caused people at least in my experience and the folks that i'm largely exposed to to be a lot more receptive uh to the voice inside of them and to you know the journey and what what this is about so from a if you are from igniting a pinterest perspective from an outreach perspective paradoxically this has been um you know at a time where we've seen a higher level of receptivity uh which which is uh a will if you want to say there's a silver lining to this very tough and challenging year that may well be it segues uh very nicely so it's a uh rabbi donner so so as we know you're you're rough of uh of of ashore in in the los angeles community so so gordon was talking about maybe the the the the the young millennial the the the the college age and maybe maybe uh college outreach what would you say that that maybe the pandemic has affected uh maybe uh whether it's your show particularly or just your communion general um the pandemic what would you say i must preface my remarks by saying that um i speak here in many senses as a lay person i'm not like uh dr fox um involved in psychiatry psychology i'm not a doctor um you know i'm not an epidemiologist i'm not a virologist i'm not any of the things that you might imagine i am so i don't speak as an expert i simply speak as a rabbi of a community with experience dealing with communal matters and with individuals and families who are part of my community both in terms of being in my school out of the wider community and so i just want to preface my remarks by saying that so that in any i'm not in any way giving professional advice i'm making observations as a rabbi and as a rabbi the community i can tell you that um everybody is profoundly affected it doesn't matter if you're young or old it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor it doesn't matter if you come from los angeles or new york or israel or anywhere because this pandemic has affected every single person on the planet everybody has been affected and so it doesn't matter if you live in a big beautiful house you still can't see your children and your grandchildren if you're in quarantine that has an effect on you and it doesn't matter if you're living um in a community in los angeles or new york and you're used to going to shul on a regular basis whether it's daily or twice a day or three times a day or just once a week or once a month suddenly you can't go to school you can't socialize you can't spend the time with your community with your friends with your family that you're used to doing which is so important it's such an integral part of what it means to be a jew so many mitzvahs that we do require other people or at least contact with other people in order to get those mitzvahs done and we can't do them at the moment so now we have to find mitzvahs that we can do and ways of being jewish that we can participate in which don't involve us uh mixing with others or necessarily seeing our family we have to do for example if you're a child of a parent who's on their own kibbut of at this time is very very different than it was a year ago or if you are somebody who has children and your of you are obligated in their education your obligations in their education have changed dramatically since last march but you've got to make sure that you educate them jewishly so that when we emerge into the light at the end of this quite long tunnel that they're going to be as jewish as you'd like them to be in terms of all the things that you would have educated them in had we not had the covet pandemic that is so important and i've seen people adapt and that's the one the thing i'm going to end my answer with i have seen the strength of the human spirit i've really seen how human the human capacity to adapt in difficult situations is incredible and we know from our history you know the jews are the great chameleons i speak with a british accent that's something which uh that rabbi gordon noted earlier on i don't speak with a british accent because my family's british for many generations all because i came across from normandy with william the conqueror or my family i speak english because with an english accent because my parents were holocaust survivors and one of them was from germany the other one was from holland and they ended up living in england so i was born in england and i adapted to the english environment and yes i may have ended up liking monty python and knowing who the beatles were but that wasn't my focus my focus was to be a good jew in the british environment in which i was brought up that is the adaptability of the human spirit and it's something which we jews have excelled in and once again our community has shown incredible fortitude and incredible strength of spirit with open air mignon in the snow in new york and you know making sure that people are fed across the community when they can't get out because they are in quarantine and frightened that they may catch covet because of underlying health conditions etc etc etc we have done everything that we can and i think that that is something that we should all complement ourselves for but of course we need to be doing as much more of it as we can in order to get through this sound of heart sound of spirit and sound of mind very nice and definitely adapted it's definitely a tremendous uh um lesson and things like that that's a definitely um a principle that's come out of uh that we can learn from uh everybody rabbi dr w fox what would you say about so we talked about um from a communal level from uh from a young professional level what would you say in um in your expertise of in the mental health um area what would you say that that as we know that in 2020 there's been increased levels of stress and pain fears uh so what would you say about i mean the mental health area how is the pandemic affected in your expertise i think dr fox could be on mute he it probably helps to unmute doesn't it um so thank you again for including me in this important panel i'll respond with a little glimpse of a davar torah not a lecture but we have a familiar pasuk that we say many times during the week in sheer hamalos so when david hamelech is portraying for us the spirit of the people as they emerge from hard times so he describes this as hayinu kukhomin will be like dreamers when the mageifa the pandemic is healed god willing when exile is over when the oppression ceases will be like dreamers and that's a very difficult phrase because it's the vision we'll be like dreamers but in technical hebrew byuno means we were like dreamers it's past tense so we have a great argument between two of the great commentaries we have on the one hand ibn ezra and radak who were spanish rishonim and then we have the iri who was from provence so on the one hand we have the spanish school of interpretation that hainu kokomin so what that means is when this is finally over and the vaccine works and we're better we're back to whatever we're going to be back to so life will no longer be taken advantage taken for granted that this will feel like a dream that we can breathe we can talk we can walk around without masks we don't have to be so uptight we can be more carefree and that will be dreamlike it's a wonderful optimistic vision yet meiri down in provence says it's written in past tense and what's going to hit people when this is all over is that it's been a nightmare and we can't lose sight of that hyena we're going to realize this was a bad dream and you're asking from a clinical vantage point what do we see i see the bad dream because we're dealing now with all ages adults down to little children who on the one hand as rabbi dunner identified they've been virtually deprived sometimes for months at a time from normal socialization and so much of healthy development being means being around healthy friends whether you're an adult or a child and that's missing and it's really created a whole not just in the spirit but in the mental hygiene of so many people that this essential part of life of being able to get together and to talk to commiserate with to support so unless you do it by text or phone which is so artificial this is a missing part of our mental hygiene part of the essential foundation for being a wholesome person and this is what we're looking back at and we're feeling the pain of lost opportunities to bond with others and there's another major plague psychological plague that's been part of this pandemic and that is particularly children to a lesser degree adults we haven't been able to go to school we haven't been able to continue education and not just the socialization on the playground or the camaraderie of the classroom but the whole part of our mental health that's contingent on being intellectually productive and learning new things and developing perspective that's been shut down that's been locked down and for the adults as well as for the children the decrease in synagogue attendance for weeks or months of their time not being able to participate in ritual the ritual that involves a minion a group of like-minded people so with the closing of the synagogue and the closing of the school across the continent across the jewish world so we have major wounds to our mental health and what do we see clinically because on our hotline in high lifeline where we have a 24 hour a day crisis line for people to call for teachers to call for parents to call so what are we hearing we're hearing depression we're hearing emotional and social withdrawal we're hearing escalated fears and worries and anxieties and obsessions about getting sick and it's not baseless it's not without a real basis and for those who were shut in domestically during lockdown and quarantine unfortunately there's been an increase in increase in anger and aggression in the homes not because we're wicked people of cruel people but this is what happens when you coop up a group of persons in a family who really make care for each other but whether they live in a one room apartment or in a mansion knowing you can't go out and knowing it's just you day after day and seeing the same people even without the food shortage and the supplies and material difficulties but we're seeing an implosion and we're seeing anger we're seeing frustration and we're seeing irritability and god forbid we're seeing abuse too sometimes so looking back at 2020 this is 10 almost 11 months our young people have not been able to socialize and that's a wound and they haven't been able to get classical education because we've learned time and again that going online for schooling doesn't work it's not a substitute for being in a classroom and being real with real people and the diminution of our synagogue life of just being able to observe and celebrate being jewish with other people it's another wound to people and we're seeing anxiety and we're seeing depression and we're seeing aggression and we're seeing social withdrawal and those are just the normal population i'm not even addressing that segment of the jewish world who suffers psychiatrically who suffers psychologically talking about regular people regular people and there is a major uptick uptick in our ability to adjust psychologically and socially so that's the bad news that's the hyena cochonim that's looking back at the nightmare this has been and we're struggling for solutions hopefully before this evening is over we'll get to the other hyena kokomin we'll be able to talk about the pleasant dreams that are waiting for us wow thank you for those very insightful words and uh just just um to uh finish off on this theme um you you you wear so many different hats whether it's during the summer at camp pagoda whether whether is there being a rosh color or rav a rebbe whatever it may be what would you say that um that you've seen uh maybe uh difficulties positivities what have you what have you seen that uh from the over the last number of months during the pandemic why do i have to go after rabbi fox there's no fear can you like uh i don't know i don't know uh so i mean i'll tell you the truth i you know i i i am i am a rebbe in a high school as well um as well as you know a revolution and just being around different uh different age groups i think i think there's two sides of the coin on one hand you know we say by no after he was ish he was he was uh he was it he said sadiq and then the puzzle says and rashi says either you know it would have been by avraham he would have been even greater or he would have been nothing and the sperm say that really that's how noah looked at himself he had two sides of the coin on one hand he said if i wouldn't buy abram i would have been a nothing on the other hand he said imagine who i would have been um i think it's important to look at both sides of the coin here on one hand you know look at what clyo cereal did look what everyone's saying look at the tested that came out look at um how so many people stepped up in organizations and and mothers turned into principles and and teachers and it's is just beyond uh on the other hand you know i must say that i think you really it really you really had to dig very very deep you know i know just i speak to a bunch of abundant regarding going back to schule i'm sure uh robbie dunder mary fox could attest how many people just didn't get back into the swing of things yet just because you know for four months you didn't go just to get back into habit of going back to minion or shiorim and there's a difference between going to share on zoom and and going in person and i know people started giving daffy on me again and and it's just very hard i think it's very very hard for people to get back into things um but you know on the other hand this is really you know when you can really see what you're made of it's an it's an opportunity it's a it's like any designer tells us that you know the bring out who he nacionals was i think you're really able to bring out parts about yourself um that you weren't able to do in you know so to speak normal pre-mask the pre-mask era um i think that's something everyone has to realize this is a this is an opportunity i had a rebbe i remember when i was in yeshiva and it was baina's mana and he would say i don't know i don't you have to tell me exactly where you're going to go benezema so do me one favor when you dominique monastery in your hotel room don't let it be that short you know when you're dabbing in yeshiva so which one yesterday could be a good four or five minutes when that's right what's your spell necessary like you know when no one's watching that that's the real sense of yours from an estuary so you know what what's it like when we when we do have excuses and maybe you know there isn't such a great kiddush now uh and you know things aren't as exciting you know so to speak you know the sony is part we have to dig deep to see who we really are and and what we're really made of and it's a tremendous opportunity uh for growth i know a lot of couples who uh who grew tremendously during this time i know a lot of boys uh in yeshiva who stayed during this time they were able to push themselves and you know go into outdoor many other things they wouldn't have done beforehand so it's really an opportunity but it's a double-edged sword there are people that are suffering but uh it's our job first of all as as parents and and rabbi milham to do whatever we could to pick those up we need because there are a lot of people who need it but for everyone out there who's listening you know we can use this as a good you know barometer of where we're holding and what and and how and how true our yiddish guide is uh when we're not just going with the flow and you know we're not just you know doing things by road so to speak so to speak but here's a chance to see what are we doing when you know the tough really get going and i think claudia's thrilled to respond uh responded in a major way and i think as you feed them individuals we all could take a good look at ourselves to see where are we holding and what could i be doing more uh on a personal level and you know even behind closed doors how could my torah might feel my own said uh where was i pre-corona where am i now and you know at the end of the day hashtag wanted something from us that's the bottom line you know that's the bottom line and we you know as someone told me i told this i said it a bunch of times on probably almost every speech i gave in corona and i'll end with this for my little segment is that um i asked someone i said you know what do you think hashem wants from us what does hashem want from us and he looked at me he said i don't know what hashem wants from you i know what he wants from me i know it was a great line what do you want from us everyone has an individual take of what they what hashem wants from them was hashem one from your marriage and what does hashem want from your tv and you're learning and you as a parent and you know it's not tough having you know five six seven kids three kids home and clothes and then closed uh quarters but you can grow from that uh you could you can really strike and work on your meadows in a way that you never had before that's the voda that's the challenge yeah thank you for your insightful words um and just before we get on to the next segment which one i remind everyone is as dr fox was mentioning about i'm saying we were talking about the the people went through different stress and difficulties so obviously um if anyone uh needs help or whether they're going through stress or depression or whatever it may be hopefully you should reach out to a tremendous resource it's just a name like a few project high of high life one is rabbit doctor fox is part of and and a mood him and etc tremendous resources out there um and um moving forward to the um to the to the next part of the segment and also just um just to maybe uh look at the silver linings of the positives here um so so uh by gordon um numerous of your of your lectures you mentioned about yeah you have uh you have lemons you have to make them you have to turn them into lemonade so um so we know 20 20 was it was difficult stressful for for a lot of people maybe people they lost they lost loved ones or or or they went through financial difficulties whatever it's a lot of different difficulties how do we see the the the positivities the silver linings from this year so it's a great question firstly i want to just give a general kudos to hazak and to my esteemed uh panelists because i think as you mentioned robbie uh for the last 20 25 years i i've had the the honor and privilege i've been involved in a lot of different initiatives and i think that the cockpit started to get a little bit lumpy uh you know for everything that we brushed under it and it's it's thanks to people like rabbi dr fox and others who've helped uh destigmatize certain things uh in the jewish world uh that is that that is is are things that we need to address and i uh i wanted to uh just make that point so i i think that i want to focus on the demographic that i've spent a large part of my outreach involving which is a millennial generation younger people i've found and maybe um maybe it's because i don't hail from america but it's it's um i've seen a culture a pop culture develop over over weeks months and years which is a mile wide and a half inches and part of it is a product of of social media part of it is you know keeping up keeping up with folks that um the how many likes you've got how many sponsors you got but you know going to this pandemic people were sort of speaking in little acronyms you know lol am i going to see in shul jfk and it just for kiddish and i think that what happened in the last year or so is that i think people really hashem put the world on pause and here's my observation of some silver lining firstly i think that people have learned to appreciate the owner emotional resilience their capacities for grit i think i've seen people that have didn't didn't realize they had the intestinal fortitude to go through and manage certain things that were out of their comfort zone they've been forced out of their comfort zone and it started to flex muscles that were either completely atrophied or didn't exist and i think that it's that it's done well for a lot of people in terms of their own self-esteem they've been pushed out of their natural comfort zone i've spoken to a lot of people who realize that they had to cut that they made a binary decision the decision was almost made for them as to whether they should be victims or how do i become a victor and it's i think it's helped people realize uh that life doesn't owe them anything that that that uh and i've seen people really the entitlement uh sort of thesis that is so ubiquitous in pop culture being turned upside down in many of the discussions that i've had with college students um i've seen people recalibrate pivots um they've always wanted to perhaps take a different direction be it vocationally i've seen folks in dysfunctional relationships that as a result of this sort of sort of pressing pause um have really stopped um when the music stops um and they're forced to look inwards and think think through you know think things through i think that that's definitely been another part of the silver lining and you know as we just come out of we're coming up in a few weeks to clashes and pasha's yesterday and that we talk about uh you know to have a parasha in the torah named after you is an enormous thing why are you there obviously what was the goddess of easter and amongst other things the before him talk about the fact that at the time of martin taylor the greatest national revelation in the history of the world as we teach in discovery and other outreach seminars people don't realize that these the noise the so-called imparting of the of uh of of the words of the almighty were heard across the world and the minimum fortune talk about the nations of the world obviously were privy to this billam who's supposedly you know the one of the the greatest prophets of the uh the the other generations they realized this is the the these are the words of the lord and he's giving instructions and notwithstanding that they sort of uh said you know but let's kind of keep going this pandemic i think has forced people to realize um that the person who wins a rat race is still a rat um we've had many we've had many discussions with college kids where we asked the question and then and then after you undergraduated and then and people realized that one second we all know the very final destination i haven't had an opportunity here to look at my gps and instead of living and learning let's learn and then go out and live and instead of doing we'll have to recalculate less and i think that i've never seen at least my 20 plus years involving outreach um this level of introspection this level of people uh who are there's generally a tremendous amount of liberty a whole style of teaching has been sound bites has been entertainment with a bit of content but i think there's a feel that people realize that this is very serious as dr fox and uh rabbi all speakers mentioned this has been this has impacted everyone um so the silver lining is i think the people have really uh have really dug deep and i'll end by saying the following at least in my opinion uh the the greatest commencement speech ever given uh and this is a personal opinion of course was given uh several years ago uh it was given to my alma mater the the keynote speaker centered up the stage uh at harvard university and came to the podium and basically said the following i had failed absolutely miserably i was a product of a broken marriage i i was as poor as a church mouse but i had a dream and a typewriter and let's say jk rowling started her speech and she started the the the thesis that she had which i think is germaine to our discussion is that when everything's ripped away and it's you and your raw emotions and a lot of the exogenous things um you know i looked away from you i think that people are forced to focus substance then form and i think that there's been a tremendous growth experience for a lot of people uh and while i'm not bulleting the pain and has been tremendous you know there's unfortunately been uh there's been fatalities in our in our community and people have really not been well if you talk about silver lining i think that that is if anything um the redeeming feature of having gone through this the last uh this last year so so continuing on the theme um by so so um um we know that we all lose have to face whatever difficulties and challenges with the moon and be talking with faith so so um and we've gone through as we outlined um um extensively tonight about uh about the different stresses and difficulties and challenges that the 2020 has brought up what would you say in in um in your in your community when you're in your experience from this year would you say that that people would you get a sense that people um are because the that people are realizing that maybe there's more of an awareness that that maybe there's a higher power that there's a god there's a hashem maybe that's that that we have that they get maybe realign any of their priorities maybe uh they realign their priorities or are people just set in their ways and even though maybe there's difficulties and and uh that people are just setting they're so stuck in their ways that they can't they can't maybe come to that realization well firstly before i answer the question i i just want to reiterate what the others have said which is thank you so much to kazakh for organizing this very important panel and i think it's important for us to be able to participate in this panel and also for the many people who are watching this live stream to be able to listen to some of the things that we're saying perhaps all of them but in answer to your question i want to speak a little bit more in general terms not just about my community and i want to do through do so through the medium of a story that i heard from rabbi grayden who's a fellow great living in los angeles and he watched my eulogy my tribute my husband for a former chief rabbi lord jonathan sachs i gave a few days after roy sachs died and he called me up and he said i watched your eulogy and i want to tell you something that you ought to have said but of course you didn't know it because i didn't tell it to you and he said it's a mitzvah of our same we should tell people this because it can act as an incredible motivator as something to encourage people particularly in this difficult time as we all know um rabbi sax those of you have read up about him or watched eulogies um about him since he passed away tragically from his sickness he was just 72 years old that he was very inspired he went on a trip during his college years he spent some time with the late la babbitt and as a result of that meeting he decided to dedicate himself to a jewish pursuits in a way that he hadn't thought about earlier even though he came from a traditional jewish home but of course nobody knew that at the time because he wasn't yet a public figure at that time he was a philosophy major at cambridge university i want to tell you rabbi grading said to me it is well known in philosophy circles that rabbi sacks as jonathan sachs a cambridge philosophy student got the best grade of any philosophy major ever since the second world war we're talking about the 1970s so some 30 years or whatever it was had passed he had a career ahead of him as one of the top uh philosophy professors at any of the top universities in the world that every door was open to him anyway but you know they kind of lost touch with each other they're roughly the same age but they lost touch with each other one day rabbi graden hears that rabbi sax had become the rabbi of golda's green synagogue now i know gold is green synagogue very well because i lived up the road from coldest green synagogue it's a united synagogue a very common garden variety um synagogue of you know orthodox nominally orthodox but you know certainly many people there were not shema shabbos and rabbi sax had become the rabbi of gold's green synagogue and rabbi grayden said it's not something that you'll read in a eulogy he said i take my hat off to the man this man could have been the most profoundly respected philosophy professor and he gave up his career to decide which type of herring to have at a kiddish and what you should say to people at a shiver and to make sure he was on time for mahev and what time mario should be that really that's what he did that's unbelievable now of course at that stage he had no idea that one day he was going to be the chief rabbi and the world acclaimed jewish thinker and writer and a member of the house of lords he'd given up everything just because he believed in what the laboratory ever had told him and that he had a duty to devote himself to ordinary folk and to doing ordinary things with ordinary people what an incredible lesson this is in he only became the chief rabbi in 1991 many years later i want to tell you what's happened during the past year you've got ceos and you've got great rabbis and you've got people enormously successful as doctors and lawyers and whatever it is their profession is and suddenly they're cooking dinner and suddenly they're sweeping up their homes and suddenly they have to engage with people around them in a way that they've never engaged before i want to tell you that's a great test for many of these people who used to having help at home and having people do things for them or certainly not have to get involved in domestic chores or social interactions that are very basic but that is our duty as husbands as parents as friends as rabbis i'm a rabbi you know i pick up the phone to people and i'm speaking to people usually i would meet them in school we'd have a bit of a schmooze during the kiddish suddenly i'm going to call people make sure that when it's their birthday give them a call i could say to myself really that's my job as the rabbi i should call people when it's their birthday of course it's my job because i've got to make sure that people are positive and upbeat and good spirits at a time when everything militates that and if you're asking the question what spiritual lesson we can learn during this time let's take our cube from rabbi sacks don't imagine that it's you know the the length of your shimano astray and i don't say that the length of your shoulder is not important of course it's important but it's the wing with the people around around you your diligence in terms of the way you behave at home and the way that you behave towards others in a time of profound challenge and your dedication to the things that you think perhaps are a little bit below your dignity that is something that separates the men from the boys that is a lesson i thought that with and i i say it in rabbi grayden's name hopefully maybe to satan his name but it's a story about rabbi sax and his true greatness was not that he was a great philosopher or great you know rabbi a great community of course he was all of those things but he was a mensch and that he was willing to forgo the greatness that his education had promised him in order to dedicate himself to jewish leadership and to inspiring others even though he perhaps might have thought himself i could do better than this wow beautiful story and you see greatness personify while unbelievable um and definitely um this um should this entire panel this everyone learning together should be a great aliyah for his inshallah um and um moving on to rabbit doctor fox um um i found the same theme of of a muna and bitterslam for having faith and um and trust um can you um elaborate up upon the connection of of having a muna as we know we have to have a muna but on on the other hand um the people that they feel overwhelmed they have anxiety on the other hand so how do you how do you balance that people very frequently in our religious world get stuck on that and we have an extraordinarily unreachable ideal in our minds of thinking that our faith and our trust demand that we have no questions that we have no doubts the reality of dealing with catastrophic trauma such as this plague this worldwide pandemic is that it's normal to have anxiety it's normal to have fear it's not normal for a person to feel nothing it's not normal to have no emotional reaction when there's illness when there's death when there's loss it's not normal for the human being not to be sad when dealing with the stresses and the realities of this pandemic so for a person of faith there's an ongoing process of placing our trust in god knowing what it is that a jew believes practicing the elements of being an observant jew in order to develop a sense of closeness to god turning to him speaking to him praying to him asking him for things expressing gratitude to him which is what praise is and this is what fosters a feeling of connection of closeness of devegus and that's a lifelong challenge and of course that's a goal we work and we work at but that no way precludes a reality that people are fearful these are scary times this is a nightmare for us and a healthy person person a a god person or son is one who's going to acknowledge her or his stress and distress during this time healthy people and that includes pious righteous good god-fearing persons are people who are honest with themselves and what that means is that if life events around me are frightening and i'm scared i acknowledge it to myself and if life events around me have brought misery and sadness and loss so i acknowledge that to myself i'm sad i'm hurt i'm bereft i'm grieving and honesty for a god-fearing jewish person also means that in addition to acknowledging my reality my internal world that i turn to someone whether it's assaila and you go to your rabbi or your robertson or to a teacher that you trust or to a parent if there's one that you're close to or to some other trusted adult or sometimes a confidant who's a friend and a peer but turning to someone and being able to say i need to talk this through i need to vent i need to express i've got to process what's going on inside of me so self-awareness during this time of course involves the wish and the hope and the yearning to find a way to feel closer to god that's our obligation as jews to put god into the framework to see his hand to acknowledge that it's him it's not us but even for those of us who strive to be bali to have steadfast faith in hashem we've only to look at our patriarchs throughout the torah and what the torah tells us that yaakov was afraid no one said to him you're not supposed to be afraid and when we're told that avraham grieved no one said to him stop crying already so there is a humanness and a wonderfulness about a person being able to feel because this is how we're wired we're wired to think to wonder to ask questions we're wired to react when times are rough and to acknowledge that pain is pain and hurt is hurt and sadness and sadness and so much of our challenge during a time like this is to listen to all sides of ourselves and the things that we can't handle on our own there's no stigma there's no shame of turning to someone who may be wiser who may be more experienced who may care about us and can help us reconnect with our ability to feel compassion to feel trust but there is no conflict for a religious person to say that i trust god i have faith in him i believe in him and i'm struggling right now the talmud the roshami says that something we try to avoid as being someone who's called the va eight be assuring the vai api surim literally means someone who kicks at suffering and one of the statements in the talmud how do we define how do we quantify a person who kicks its suffering so the talmud says it's a person who works with the illusion he tries to convince herself or himself he works with the illusion that the things that hurt don't really hurt the things that i feel i don't really feel so we never deprive ourselves we never disallow ourselves to have emotional reactions this is the whole concept of yes surimusurim the challenge of dealing with hard times is hashem wants us to be shaken up hashem wants us to be feeling something but not just leave it at that not just stay stuck on the sadness and the pain and the fear but do something productive with that work on introspection work on self-expression work on creative ways to channel some of that angst and that existential struggle into something that you can help yourself and you can help others those people who came through this interval of the pandemic in a way that was self-healing are those people who engaged in making an effort to heal others those who express gratitude those who extended themselves those who showered others with understanding and with compassion so those are the healthier persons among us who've made it through but in order to be able to reach out to others and not foist your unhealthy agenda on them do something with your unhealthy stuff do something with the struggles that you're having don't stick with the anxiety don't stick with the fear don't stick with the obsessions don't get ensnared in the compulsions don't get enveloped in the addictions whether it's substances or other toxic behaviors don't stay stuck in the depression and the misery and the pain and the sadness acknowledge it self-aware identify it give it a voice find words for it and then turn to someone else who can give you the support help you develop perspective and then turn to other people who are struggling and offer them the golden nuggets that you've discovered but that is my long answer to a brief question how do we balance our faith with our pain right now and the answer is that we acknowledge that both of them are important right now would you say from uh from a therap from a therapist standpoint that um it would be wrong for someone to try to solve some of those let's say he acknowledges the anxiety he acknowledges what's going through um would it be wrong to try and solve some of those on a batakin type of level or can that be part of the process or could that be uh could that be almost uh damaging meaning is there there is is there the truth of a person acknowledges that anxiety now he says wait this is all from hashem using that as uh a calming and a real trust or and is that is that too dangerous and he and he should only go through a therapy um a therapeutic way okay well i i don't see this as a two optional member that it's either the token or its therapy there are plenty of people who do well without being in therapy and as i said it's a process of self-awareness finding a confidante it doesn't have to be a therapist but finding a person to help you process what you're going through so again the option is not either you're a person of faith or you're a patient of therapy those are not the two options but what i would say about your first option in terms of the leap into faith and to trust so in my experience and in my understanding of the torah that we live by and the hashkaf the worldview that is for our generation and this is something that we see in the writings of muhammad and the nephi shahin and many of the others for him that for our generation there is that element of real-life mortal histodus that accompanies our leap and to be taken into faith that the majority of people living in our generation cannot successfully throw themselves fully into faith and not make an effort if a person's bleeding they're not going to say i'm not putting a bandage on it if a person costs a showroom god forbid has an infection they're not going to say this according to almost every one of contemporary postgame they're not going to say i refuse to get the prescription filled i'm going to trust that i'll recover if i'm supposed to recover this might have been part of life at a certain era in our history the majority of us are not there and so what i believe and what i understand hashem wants of us is to exercise our faith and to develop our faith but at the same time if there are steps that we can take to make this better we have to discover those steps and we have to take them thank you okay and i think there's uh definitely more to be discussed maybe robert jessica you could just um end off for us tonight about uh maybe um um maybe just just ending off on this topic of a moon and be tough on and and maybe if you could just maybe maybe um questions maybe maybe some of your students have come with come to you maybe how you've addressed them or maybe if they haven't asked the questions but maybe what would you say to that maybe the silent question would be that people haven't maybe didn't have this it was the wow so so i would i mean i i would say it's funny coming after uh just ruby fox said that the others the other side of the coin as we're saying um i i i think and you know and if you're listening to a lot of just what rabona mcdoleum and people are saying throughout the entire pandemic i think so much of this comes down to hashem teaching us one vital lesson over and over again and that is hashem kimba shamayim that hashem is the one only in control uh the a knight there's no one else there's no one else but him you know the vaccine is coming out which hashem should be a big refuara but you know we have to be careful that we don't we don't talk about this that we take the vaccine but we understand that the vaccine is coming through hashem that the the this was a massive massive show of the entire world um of on every level economics airlines sports everything shut down of hashem showing that you know i i am in control over the entire world and we all have to come to to a level of understanding that uh each you wherever we're holding each one where they're holding you have to come to that understanding that hashem is in control uh that's the name of the game and i read in the book that uh there was a a woman who was married to a governor and um they were driving by and they stopped off by a gas station and he sees that his wife the governor sees his wife is staring at the guy putting in gas and he says is everything okay why are you staring at him she goes yeah i just can't believe it you know that's tom i dated him for a year in high school and the governor looks at his wife and says well you know imagine where you had been today if you would have married him and she says yeah that's right today he would have been the governor uh and you know to to me that's like you know we can't do anything with that hashem there's nothing that we can do without hashem being there right behind us and unfortunately we can always fall into that trap of kokhibo samyadi i was mutually asking i made those deals and i did this and i gave that to duck and i gave the good russia and you know i have the fanciest english accent i'll be done remember gordon could fight that out and you know i have this and i have and all the eyes and it's so easy and hashem comes along with his little bacteria and says okay everyone let's remember who is in control and who runs the entire world and um that that to me is is what this whole thing you know was it was really about and on the practical muscle side i must say is that for for me personally you know i think it was two weeks into the pandemic and i was insider conduction by a wedding in the backyard and i think it was the nicest wedding i've ever been in my life there were 10 people there uh we had a minion and the father was under the chupa on his porch crying and he gave a whole speech others his dream to walk his son down to the wedding and then he company came inside for the first course and there was some sugar sushi there it was great rolls don't get me wrong you can't go wrong with sugar sushi ever and that was the first course and i think uh the second course was that was some uh with some lava and some shawarma we danced and that was the wedding it was so beautiful you know part of this whole thing i think is just the the simplicity the simplicity everyone was home for pesach and we have to remember that message that hashem was showing us you know we can run after luxuries i'm talking to myself uh especially as we have you know four panelists from la over here we got the palm trees uh i know it was about miami now miami has the fake palm trees la if you really want the real palm trees you come over here and we'll show you a robbery if you ever get to la what it's all about but you know it's so easy just to get caught up let's face it you know i get caught up not these other customers and corona really showed us you know keep your eyes on the prize remember what we're here for is back to basics we got to appreciate our tila we gotta appreciate dominating appreciate our families appreciate our jobs appreciate everything hashem gives us uh and and you know if we take if we take that message with us as we go further we make sure we're going to remember what life is about remember the hashem is in control uh we're going to be okay and then if you have any problems you call me fox and and and they'll help you out but we have to remember that hashem is in control of the talk and uh you know merced next time this panel gets together uh we're discussing the different ways of you know what we need to do to get ready for machia you know should we how much of our belongings should we pack should we uh should we sell our houses over here in america do we want to keep them for a summer home we're going to have a whole discussion on on on getting ready for the big day because if we get the message if we all wake up if majestic he wakes up and realizes what hashem wants from him and we're able to dig deep which client shows so so holy i'm gonna leave you with something that happened tonight i was on my i went out with my wife earlier to a restaurant and there was a table next to me with a group of boys a group of sparty boys and none of them were wearing none of them were wearing yarmulkes and uh we were supposing you know like we were and at the end it came time for the bill and the guy gave him the bill and the guy the kid signed it was like eight kids signed the receipt and then i looked 30 seconds later the kid took out his phone to bench he didn't have a yamaga so he took the receipt and he put it on his head and he was pinching his battery i was just watching him for just five minutes you know and like the spartans know how to do it [Music] he gave like a homie over there and it was the nicest thing i went over to him i said this is so beautiful he goes yeah there's the 300 yarmulke but it was like hashem look look at your kindle look at what they do they want a bench you don't have a yamaha put to the receipt that's how much he loves you caillou charles so cavaldin is so amazing with so much good there's so much look how much amazing things came out and whatever we you know we could do to just to just fix those little things that we have to do to look deeper hashem wants us to change that's why he does this the rambam says something happens in the world you have to look you have to change um and then uh that's it i think with that with that message we would we would you know we would do ourselves in the world uh tremendous good if we if we could take these two messages uh once again thank you for everyone for playing this together every fox probably doner i don't know if i ever got to actually meet one person i know this counts i guess nowadays this is considered as close as we can get uh and reverend gordon you know thank you so much again once again maybe someone else wants to leave us with some final words um i appreciate it i want to know what i just want to know what referral p robert majesk is getting from the new patients throughout our fox oh actually we have a big deal going on but also i get free therapy for every five patients oh boy i do want to share one thing which i saw today which i think is absolutely inspiring it'll take me a minute but i think it would it would be it would be a wonderful closing story it's a 20th yard site of rabbi gifter ramadra giftos or and there's a talmud who's written i'm on don't ask me why i'm on a tells whatsapp group i never went to tells i've never been cleveland and i met rabbi gifter one time in 1988 at a gooder camp so i'm not quite sure why i'm on the list but this is he's published a 64-page booklet which is a reflection it was a time of gifter he tells the following story and it's in if anybody wants the book i'm very happy to share it they sent it out today just email me pennydunner gmail.com um rabbi uh gifter went to tells he went 1932 he was 16 years old he took the burn and garrier steamship which was a pride of the cunard fleet and he took it to europe and included many entertainment options on board and at the outset of the voyage the ship was suddenly struck by a severe storm in a very short period of time the party atmosphere was replaced with enormous fear for about 15 minutes the ship was buffeted by the storm struggled to retain an even keel then suddenly the storm was over and ahmad gifter this he tells over the story he expected the sense of solemnity to continue to rain on the ship and he was shocked to see that almost immediately the passengers returned to their party we would tell this story very often when he got older and he he went to ask the rashashiva when he got to tells the russia shiva rav ramit blach who was killed by the nazis rav gifter went to ask him how should i respond to this they were about to die and then the moment they weren't dying they went back to partying how's it possible that they didn't stop even for a moment afterwards and their shiva explained to her of gifter the young mantra gifted explained him that the nature of a human is such that true change is never achieved by momentary inspiration but only after serious effort i think it's a very powerful muscle for the covered situation that we're going to get out of it there's a moment when the storm is going to stop are we just going to go back to partying or will we have learnt our lesson beautiful that's a powerful story on the twentieth yard site of rav gifter thank you thank you rabbi gordon thank you rabbi majeski we will meet eventually and thank you of course to robbie thank you so much thank you to all of our panelists rabbi gordon i'm by donner and by dr fox and ryan majeski and um for for for enlightening tonight uh for enlightening us tonight and uh majeski hinted to us we've been getting some requests um that they want a sequel um hopefully it'll be uh preparation for mashiach but if it didn't come doesn't come yet and then um then that means if next week or if it works or if not but uh definitely it's an idea and thank you to everyone for joining us and i forgot what one quick note um we mentioned before project high um and anyone can reach out to that 24-hour crisis helpline that by dr fox mentioned the number is you so much 855-327-4747-855-327-4747 for joining us