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Living With Emunah (Part 222) - What You Have, Not What is Missing
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Who doesn't need an injection of faith, hope and courage. Join each week as we inspire ourselves to let go and let God, to submit and surrender and thereby to find greater health, happiness and holiness. For more, check out www.rabbiefremgoldberg.org. Including insights from R. Itche Meir Morgenstern.
Categories:Torah/Mussar
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Good morning, boker tov to everyone.
Welcome back to Living with Emunah
series. Generously sponsored by Dr. Zev
and Bella Morgan in memory of Rabbi Dr.
Brian Galbut. And as well sponsored in
memory of Bella's mother, Dr. Ellen
Shanzer, whose yahrzeit is the 10th of
Adar. So, it is coming up. And we're
deeply grateful to the Morgans for their
sponsorship, for their generosity, for
their friendship. And Dr. Ellen
Shanzer's neshama should have an aliyah.
Very special woman.
As her yahrzeit is approaching. Today's
shiur is also sponsored by Sarah
Margulies in memory of her husband,
Israel Margulies, whose yahrzeit is the
11th of Adar. We all remember Israel
Margulies, very special man. Came to
learn, loved learning, was very involved
in our community. Leader and pillar in
our community. So, his neshama should
have an aliyah as well. Sarah should
have only strength and comfort. Also by
the Schrier family neshama Skita Mendel
bas Avraham, Maxine Sullivan. Yahrzeit
is the 14th of Adar Aleph and refuah
shleimah for Dovid Ber ben Edel and
Esther Tehilla bas Ariel Tzipora. Also,
a big thank you. This just came in.
Sponsored by Sal and Leslie Abady for a
complete and speedy refuah shleimah for
Esther Tehilla bas Ariel Tzipora. And we
continue to daven for Carmiel Shai ben
Reza as well. Okay, Living with Emunah
series. I get a lot of emails. I get a
lot of feedback baruch Hashem from all
over for the shiurim that we give and
that we share. So grateful for the honor
and privilege of being able to try to
communicate some of Hashem's messages to
the world. But this week I got an email
and there was one sentence followed by a
long, lengthy PhD dissertation email.
The one sentence said The one sentence
said
In your last Emunah shiur, your wife
made a brilliant comment. Could you
forward this email to her?
So, I'm very happy to be her mailman
and I delivered to her.
And it was a beautiful email. Maybe
we'll share parts of it at one point.
But we get back to the topic that we are
studying in Sheini Nissan that we are in
the month of Adar. But no matter what
month in the year that you're listening
to this, if you're live with us in
person or live with us online or you're
listening later no matter what month we
have to be b'simcha. Simcha is a
critical component to life. Simcha is
life. Simcha, joy, happiness,
satisfaction, feeling complete and
whole, recognizing that we're not alone
but rather everything that happens is
for a reason. There's meaning, there's
purpose, there's order to the universe.
And we spoke last week, it doesn't mean
that we can't sometimes be sad. There
are moments of grief, there are moments
of loss, there are moments of pain. Of
course. It doesn't mean that there
aren't real and justified reasons to
feel sad, to be down. Even if there's
not a particular reason, there are
people who struggle with feelings of
sadness. Sadness is a very real feeling.
It's a very real feeling. However even
within the sadness we can find joy. What
does that mean? It means that there's
nothing as whole as a broken heart. It
means that even when you're feeling down
and even when you're feeling sad and
even when you're struggling to remind
ourselves, to remember to be intentional
and mindful that I'm not alone. I'm not
bearing this, I'm not going through
this, I'm not struggling with this
alone. There is a God. There is a Ribono
shel Olam. And he's in charge and he's
in control and I submit and I surrender
to him. And no matter what it takes to
get to this other side of this or what
it will look like when I get there it's
for a reason, it's for a purpose and he
will be with me and he will be by my
side. So, I'm capable of being b'simcha
even within the sadness. Even within the
sadness, I'm capable of being b'simcha.
In fact, I saw a beautiful a quote. I
mentioned it yesterday in the parsha
shiur as well. From the great Karliner
of Ahavas Shalom Karliner, the author of
Ko Achsaf. Rav Ahavas Shalom Karliner
says, "Ha'atzvus einah cheit."
Ha'atzvus einah cheit. Aval af cheit lo
yakhol la'asos as much as osa ha'atzvus.
Atzvus, sadness is not a sin.
But even a sin can't be as destructive
to you as sadness.
Sadness is not a sin.
But even a sin is not as destructive or
sabotaging as sadness. It means that
when a person is down and out, when
you're low when a person is hopeless and
helpless when a person feels I give up
then the foundation is so weak, you
can't build anything on it. Cheit,
mistakes we make. The root of the word
cheit is a mistake. We make mistakes.
We translate a cheit as a sin. Sin is a
Christian word and we don't use those
words.
But uh cheit more accurately translates
as a mistake. We make mistakes. And he's
been hearing me say that for
20-something years. A cheit is a
mistake.
It's a mistake.
We have opportunities and invitations to
draw close to Hashem.
And when we don't take advantage of
them, when we violate them, when neglect
them, are disobedient of them it's a
terrible mistake. It's a terrible
mistake.
Shechavit says, you know I'm already
settled for the night, would you mind
taking the garbage out to the curb? It's
garbage day tomorrow and I say I'd
really rather not. I don't feel like it.
It's a sin.
But it's a mistake. It's a mistake.
Lightning's not going to strike and
there's not necessarily some external
consequence. She's not going to say,
"Well, then you're on your own for
dinner tomorrow night."
She might, but she wouldn't say that.
She wouldn't say that. But you know
what's going to happen is the
relationship's going to feel tense. It's
going to be fractured. I've added
distance. I put a gap. I put daylight
between us because she articulated
something and I said no. So, Hashem is
the same way. The difference is when
Hashem articulates it, it is entirely
and exclusively for us. He gets no
benefit, he has no interest, no part of
it is for him. It is entirely and
exclusively for us that he says it to
begin with. And when we say no when we
do a cheit
when we violate his word, his will when
we're disobedient to his halacha
we made a mistake. We made a critical
mistake. We had an opportunity to draw
close, we had an opportunity to express
our interest, our love, our affection
and we failed. It's a cheit. So, says
Rav Ahavas Shalom Karliner that atzvus
einah cheit. Sadness is not a cheit.
Study the Taryag Mitzvos, go through 613
and you will not find sadness listed
among them. Open the Shulchan Aruch and
you will not find a halacha you're not
allowed to be sad. There's no halacha.
Doesn't appear in the Taryag Mitzvos,
not in the 613. Doesn't appear in the
Shulchan Aruch. It's not a cheit.
But says Rav Ahavas Shalom Karliner, but
it can do more damage to you than a
cheit can do.
A cheit, a mistake, you can bounce back
from.
The garbage I neglected on Monday. But
Thursday, there's always Thursday.
Tshuva gemurah.
And the next Monday. And the next
Thursday. There's always tshuva gemurah.
By the way, Yocheved doesn't even ask
me, she just does it. So, I don't want
to give her a bad name. She does it and
everything else in our lives. But it's a
cheit. A cheit I can make up. There's an
opportunity for tshuva.
But atzvus, sadness sadness means that
in the core something is broken.
And if the foundation is weak, you can't
build upon it.
And so sadness is just a categorically
bad and challenging
quality. And we're not in judgment of
people who are struggling with being
sad. And there's a clinical sadness that
needs help and support that we're not
talking about. We're not talking about.
I say it every week, but there's a
clinical sadness that needs help,
support therapy medical intervention,
medicine. We're not talking about that.
Talking about just a general melancholy
and sadness. So, before we get back to
Rav Yitzchak Meir, Rav Yitzchak Meir
before we get back back to B'ein Derech
Halacha I was looking at uh
this wonderful sefer that gets published
once a month
called Vavei Ha'Amudim. Rav Yitzchak
Zilberstein in Eretz Yisrael
is a rav, a posek in Bnei Brak, the
posek in Mayanei Yeshua Hospital. He was
a son-in-law of Rav Elyashiv, a
brother-in-law of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, a
huge talmid chacham in his own right. A
very cheerful person.
Every time I've seen video or or uh seen
anything capturing him, there's a smile
and a radiance and he's cheerful. Rav
Zilberstein. He's a prolific, prolific
writer.
The amount of sefarim that come out from
him I don't know how he does it. It's
extraordinary. So, once a month he puts
out a Vavei Ha'Amudim, comes in a PDF
over email. You make a donation to the
yeshiva, the kollel the hospital the
million things that he is responsible to
raise money for. And he produces once a
month, he puts out a sefer.
The the questions in it are always
fantastic. They're great questions.
They're no questions. He has questions
like if you need to do a um
COVID test on Shabbos, are you allowed
to?
Now that we have take-home COVID tests
when would you be allowed to do a COVID
test? What's the melacha involved? Maybe
it's tzoveya.
It's coloring. You're not allowed to
color on Shabbos. Tzoveya.
Because the COVID test is
the big Q-tip the liquid and you're
looking to see if you create a line.
So, is creating that line like writing?
Are you coloring? Are you writing? You
know, that's that's one example. But he
has always he always has great
questions. He always has great
questions. Um
He has a great question. If a person
This has nothing to do with Living with
Emunah, but they're great questions and
I don't know when else I'm going to
share them.
He has
I don't know if you know anyone like
this. It's possible in my home there are
people like this who talk in their
sleep. People who talk in their sleep.
If somebody says lashon hara in their
sleep do they need mechila?
Somebody has a roommate. You're in
college, you have a roommate. You're in
yeshiva, you're in seminary, there's a
roommate. You hear some mumble in the
middle of the night. You listen up and
they're telling you some good, juicy
lashon hara. Their subconscious talking
in their sleep is sharing
So, do you need mechila? Do you need
forgiveness for lashon hara that you
shared in your sleep? Last month's Vavei
Ha'Amudim he had a great question.
I just told this to triplet bar mitzvah
boys. He had a great question.
There were these twins. One of them was
learning in the yeshiva in Bnei Brak,
one was learning in the yeshiva in
Yerushalayim. But they overlap with a
lot of friends. They get invited to a
lot of weddings. They're that age. For
the Yerushalayim twin to make it to Bnei
Brak for a wedding is a big shlep.
Expensive, would take a night off of
learning. For the Bnei Brak twin to make
it to Yerushalayim big shlep, expensive,
take a night off of learning. They
wanted to know what's the halacha that
they were identical twins.
So, we'll just go, wish mazel tov
and not be mevatal Torah, not not not
cancel the Torah learning. Not have the
expense and the time. And every every
wedding in Bnei Brak you're me. Every
wedding in Yerushalayim, I'm you. What
would be the halacha? Great great
questions like that. They're all They're
all great questions.
Uh what is the answer? I got to keep you
coming back.
I'm not giving you the answer. Anyway,
the introduction to this month's Vavei
Ha'amudim, he says the following.
The introduction, I'm going to summarize
it because it's several pages long, but
it struck me. It's exactly what we're
talking about in our Living With Emunah
shiur. And then we'll get back into the
And then we'll get back into the month
of Adar. We'll get back into our lives.
We'll feel
200 years ago and even much less than
that, in order to have water in your
house, you had to go out to a well and
you had to go draw water.
You wanted to go to the bathroom, you
had to go dig a hole and you had to go
use some leaves or a rock and uh take
care of what you had to take care of in
the middle of the night, in the cold, in
the snow, with whatever was happening, a
biting wind. That was what was
necessary. When you need to do laundry,
you had to schlep it down to the river.
You had to schlep it down to some source
of water, the well, and you scrubbed and
you washed and you and you had to go.
And you had to go. If you wanted some
light in your home and it was day it was
already after daylight, in the winter
months where the sun set early, you had
to light candles and hope that you
didn't burn down your entire house. If
you were freezing cold and you wanted
some warmth, you had to schlep log, you
had to chop down a tree and schlep logs
and you had to build a furnace and so on
and your house would be filled with
smoke and smell and so on. If it was the
summer months and your house was hot and
you wanted to have fresh milk or cheese
or you wanted to keep something, then
you had to figure out with a block of
ice. We're not talking about ancient
history, he points out. Everything I
just described to you, which imagine
what your day would look like if you had
to be occupied with each of those
activities, each of those descriptions
was not several thousands of years ago.
We're talking less than 200 years ago,
that's what life was like. So if you
spoke to somebody 200 years ago,
you were in the year 1800, probably
living in Poland or Hungary or Russia,
somewhere in Eastern Europe,
Sephardi in the Sephardi countries or
lands, in Morocco or in wherever, Yemen.
200 years ago,
you were able to go back in time, got
your flux capacitor, and you go back in
time 200 years and you go find a Jew in
that country at that time and you say,
"I know you can't picture it right now
when you're going to the well, down to
the river to wash the clothing, you're
having to have a bath once a month,
you're having to dig a hole when you
need to go to the bathroom in the middle
of the night. I know it's hard for you
to picture, but just 200 years from now
there's going to be these things called
pipes that going to run through walls.
You know why this
is meaningful to me, I shared it with
you last week. So there're going to be
pipes, they run through walls and
there's a little
place where they come out. And there's
two knobs. You want hot water, you want
cold water. You have both options right
in the convenience. And there's not one
bathroom for a family of 10 to share,
homes have multiple bathrooms and
kitchens and two sinks, milk and
fleishigs, and and a toilet that's going
to be a device that when you have to go
to the bathroom, even in the middle of
the night,
you just when you're done, you pull a
lever and it's clean and it smells fresh
and you don't have to go anywhere and
you don't have to get dressed, you don't
have to change.
And when you want to cook, there's going
to be a button. There's going to be
something in the wall that you just put
the raw food in, you push a button and
then you take the cooked food out and
you eat it and you serve it and you're
ready to go. And when you have something
that could spoil, there's another box,
you open the door and you put it in
and it keeps it absolutely cool or cold.
Or if you want to keep it for a long
time, it can even freeze it and keep it
for a long time. And when you need to
get from one place to the other, if your
family's spread out, you can get into
another box, it's got wheels and you
push another little pedal on the floor
and it takes you there. Takes you there
at speeds 50, 60, 70 miles an hour. Or
another box that's got wings and it
flies through the air and it can take
you halfway around the world in less
than half a day.
And if a person gets sick, I was
thinking about this the other day when I
was having the second half of my root
canal. I was just picturing I hate the
Novocain and I always beg the dentist I
I I can't stand the feeling of not
feeling half your mouth and how long it
takes to wear off and
so on. So I just always say, you know,
make it light. And then he says, "Trust
me, you don't want me to make it light."
And we we have the same we have the same
negotiation each time. But as I was
laying there and I my dentist, it was
the greatest compliment, it was an oral
surgeon,
he he had to keep nudging me to open my
mouth wider because I kept falling
asleep. I said to him afterwards, "Has
there ever been a greater compliment
than in the middle of your root canal on
me, I kept falling asleep?
It Let me give you a testimonial or
something, you know?" Anyway, but I sat
there thinking, I don't know how long
ago was it that if you had a tooth that
had an infection,
you know, you had a swig of something
sharp
and then they pulled it. There was no
Novocain, there was no laughing gas,
there was no they just pulled it. So
today, you know, the surgeries and the
shots and the medicine and everything
that we have that is available to us.
And we don't all live in one room in one
house. Our homes have multiple bedrooms
and people have multiple houses and
there's no shortage of food. You go to a
place called You don't just have a farm.
We heard the incredible farmer Alana
this past Shabbos who's observing shmita
in Israel and what it's like. Hashem
make it rain, but not too little, but
also not too much and also at the right
time and also never hail and maybe we'll
have the right crop and maybe we won't
have the right crop and maybe everyone
will have too much crop which will make
our our crop worthless. And we just go
to the supermarket and endless shelves
and endless choices and endless
selections
and so on. So what would the second
person say? Again, 200 years ago, 1800,
you're telling another Jew, "Fast
forward 200 years, there's going to be
pipes in our walls and toilets in our
bathrooms and multiple rooms. We're
going to have washing machines and ovens
and refrigerators and freezers. It's
going to be incredible." What would that
other person say?
And Mashiach is there, right?
You're describe You're describing
Mashiach. Boxes flying through the air,
boxes that drive on the street. Now
Tesla, self-driving. What do you mean
it's raining and you're at the simcha so
on your phone you can have your car come
around and pull up to you, which is what
you can do today.
So the other person's going to say,
"It's It's Yemos Mashiach, right?
Mashiach's here, no?" So the second
one's going to say, "No, it's just
ordinary times and believe me, we still
desperately need Mashiach." So what's
the second person going to say? He's
going to say,
um
It's Yemos Mashiach,
No, it's There you go. It's before Yemos
Mashiach. No, it's more before Yemos
Mashiach.
So I imagine that those who live in that
time with indoor plumbing and toilets
and refrigerators, with airplanes and
cars, they're probably just going to
dance all day long. They're going to
smile and laugh and they're just going
to be the happiest people on Earth.
They're going to understand that for
thousands of years, the effort, the
toil, the pain, the suffering, the loss
of life.
Do you know how many
pregnancies never made it full term? Do
you know how many women died at
childbirth? Do you know how many
children never made it to their fifth
birthday? So you live in a time with
those statistics and the life expectancy
and the convenience and the comforts. So
that that person in 1800 says, "So what
will it be like? Everyone's just happy
all the time? Everyone's just joyful?
Everyone's filled with gratitude?
Everyone's dancing in the street?"
Said, "No. No, it's not what it's going
to be like."
No, actually they're going to be more
depressed and more sad, more anxiety,
more antidepressants, more mental
illness. And actually more people will
be going to recovery
More people will be going to recovery
centers from their addictions, from
numbing themselves from their own
happiness. More people will be
prescribing medicines to try to climb
out of depression and unhappiness.
So the person in 1800 will say, "I I
don't understand.
Your life is so good, so comfortable, so
convenient, so filled with blessing. How
is it that everyone won't be happy?"
The answer is
The answer is that simcha, joy, and
sadness are not external, they're not
about possessions, materials,
experiences, things. They're not about
that which is external to us.
If you're not contemplative, if you're
not thoughtful, if you're mindful, then
any generation with any comfort and any
convenience, all you'll ever see and all
you'll ever think about is what's
missing.
And then no simcha.
If your happiness is based on what's not
there, if I had If I won the lottery,
I'd be happy. If I had that Tesla, I'd
be happy. If I had her husband, I'd be
happy.
If I had those children, I'd be happy.
There's a lot of people, by the way, who
think that way. Shabbos, Yom Tov, milan
shul, they sit in a committee and they
say, "Oh, he They don't know, by the
way, the horror that sometimes the
people are.
I, as a rabbi, know more. I also don't
know. Sometimes people look like, "If
only I was married to them, then I'd be
happy. Look how respectful, look how
they treat, look how kind, look how
generous, look how humble, look how
good."
You don't know that they're a terrible
dictator despot in their own home.
That's what they show to the public.
But sometimes there are people who
genuinely are like that. So people will
think, "Well, if I was married to them,
I'd be a better me and I'd be happy and
I'd have a skip in my step. If only I
had what I'm missing, I'd be happy." If
happiness is defined by what you don't
have, you could live in the most blessed
generation of all of history and walk
around miserable.
But if your happiness is based on what
you do have,
you could be living through the Great
Depression.
You could be a prisoner in a
concentration camp in the hospital in
the in the Holocaust.
You could have almost nothing in your
life and you could be happy.
And all it takes is a little bit of
thoughtfulness, a little bit of
mindfulness, a little bit of
contemplativeness. All it takes is a
little bit of concentration is to take
inventory. To stop and say,
"Do I want to focus on what's missing or
am I willing to focus on what's there?
What do I have?"
Now, I know that I'm oversimplifying
because if what's missing is your spouse
or a parent or a child, that's not like
what's missing is I don't have the
latest version of the iPhone.
I understand that what's missing is a
source of acute, overbearing,
overwhelming pain.
And nobody's judging and no one is
trying to bring guilt or shame to
feeling sad when someone was taken from
you that's irreplaceable, that is a
source of great pain.
But yet, I'll give you the encouragement
to say that even within that, you can
choose to while honoring that pain and
leaning into it, also recognize what's
there, who's there.
And feel that pleasure.
You could be the be sad and you could be
the poorest person in the world and
choose to be happy. I had a meeting this
week with someone.
And unfortunately, there are many people
like this so you know,
you have no idea what I'm talking about.
There are people who have no mazel. This
was actually today's daf yomi, very end
of Mike Cotton.
That bonai, mazonai, there are three
things in life that are a function of
mazel no matter how hard you work. There
are people with mazel and there are
people with no mazel. There are people
that are not necessarily smarter than
anyone else, they don't necessarily work
harder than anyone else. Everything they
touch turns to gold. Everything they
have is perfect. There are people that
work tirelessly. They're creative and
they're brilliant and they try and try
and try and everything they touch turns
to lead.
They can't make success out of anything.
So somebody who we're regularly helping
and supporting and we love
and it was a conversation again about
paying the mortgage and the bills and
putting food on the table and what's the
next plan and how can it come together?
Not someone lazy, not not willing to
work, not someone entitled who wants a
handout. They work harder than anyone I
know. Just
Hashem is still
we're waiting to remove that impediment,
whatever was blocking their success. And
at the end of the conversation, I
emotionally really told him how much I
love him and feel for him and so sorry
we're still having these conversations
and it must be so hard. And all of a
sudden, his face transformed and he had
a smile on his face and he said, "It is
really hard. But on the important
things, I'm the wealthiest man alive.
I have the most special children. I have
a beautiful family."
I I was blown blown blown away.
The world doesn't know it. His name is
not on lights and it won't be on a on a
plaque and it won't be on the side of a
building. Please God, it will be one
day, but right now it's not.
And he won't necessarily be honored or
get the the biggest aliya.
And yet this person
That greatness,
that righteousness,
that heroism, that mindfulness,
it's unbelievable.
And it was such a powerful lesson and
inspiration to me
to be in his presence, to choose to live
life that way. The other people I meet
with who have everything, by the way,
they have the spouse, the children, the
money, their health,
but
something is not perfect in life.
Miserable and angry and resentful and
bitter and fabitzed and
hypercritical.
It's a choice. It's a choice.
He goes on and on.
He has many more pages about this this
conversation between the two people in
the year 1800.
Right? It's it's a great perspective.
This hypothetical conversation in the
year
in the year 1800 between these two
people.
It's a choice. There's a lot of pain.
There's a lot of pain. Show Sandberg
we had him behind the bima, he spoke
about this. Her book, Option B, was
about that. She was stuck and
perseverating in her pain
when her husband tragically dropped dead
out of nowhere
out of nowhere.
She discovered him in the gym next to
the treadmill
at the at a hotel when they were away
together
and she just couldn't move on and
couldn't move past it. She was stuck,
understandably. She was stuck.
And Adam Grant, who is a great author,
writer, and
expert, he said to her
that look, option A, they were at a
parent they were at some kids' event of
the school and she just kept crying,
just said how badly she wanted her
husband to be there. And he looked at
her and he said, "Option A is no longer
available.
That's option A
and that's no longer available.
It's time to move on to option B." And
that's the name of her book and she
talks about that resiliency. How do you
mourn and grieve and love and never
forget and at the same time,
how do you how do you pivot to whatever
option B is?
And I understand that to mean it's a
fantastic book. It should be required
reading for members of the clergy and
anyone on a chesed committee or bikkur
cholim committee. Should be required
reading in my opinion, Option B. And she
doesn't bring this down, though she does
reference a couple of Torah sources, but
that's what simcha is. It's the choice
to think about option B.
It's the willingness and the ability
when option A has been taken away
to not get stuck and and feel sad, but
to search for option B and find
happiness.
And that doesn't dishonor whoever was
option A.
They they want you to have that that
happiness. Anyway, I read that and I as
we had a leak in our pipe that is now
requiring redoing four rooms in the
house. Baruch Hashem. It's from Hashem.
It's amazing.
Get to redo four rooms.
It's amazing.
Says the person who has no part of the
project. It's amazing.
But it's from Hashem so by definition,
it's amazing. But that hypothetical
conversation is super powerful. That's
what simcha is all about. Okay. Page kuf
nun. We're on page kuf nun in the
handouts. Ayam deracha Rav Yitzchak Meir
Morgenstern, known affectionately as a
Rich Mayer.
Eitz lavdei Hashem agoram eikara atzva
shul kasheim roim unedmalehem
shenichshlu ba'aveira.
When it comes to
avdei Hashem,
when it comes to those who are loyally
serving Hashem, if we want to try to
dissect and analyze, if we want to get
to the root and the core of where does
sadness come from?
Where does sadness come from? So again,
at the risk and we don't want to
oversimplify, we don't want to
oversimplify. There are a lot of forms
of sadness. There's the sadness of
grief.
There's sadness of underachieving,
sadness of insecurity, there's sadness
of failure, there's sadness There's a
whole range. No shortage of
of sources
or motivations of sadness, but here
we're focusing on one.
When it comes to an eved Hashem,
a source of sadness often is shenichshlu
ba'aveira.
When we stumble, when we fall, when we
fail,
when we feel like a failure,
when we have the guilt and the shame of
failure,
we feel sad. We feel sad.
Although it's lichba'avodas Hashem kemo
she'ratzu.
Or when we set goals in serving Hashem
and we don't achieve them, we fall
short, we come up short.
So I'm going to learn all Tanach. Went
to an amazing siyum of Tanach by a group
of women in our shul. Completed the
whole Tanach. It's Pesach Shabbos, went
to a beautiful kiddush.
Nach.
The ta of Tanach, they finish every
year. It's Chumash parsha.
You have to come back to shul.
It's part of the motivation. Nach. If
you want the ta of Tanach, you got to
come hear the parsha. You got to come
back to shul. Nach yomi. Tanach yomi.
Tanach yomi. I'm calling it Tanach yomi.
So you set a goal, you're going to lose
a certain amount of weight, you're going
to stop speaking lashon hara, you're
going to finish a certain amount of
learning, you're going to not get angry
so many days in a row, you're going to
cut down on screen time. Whatever the
goal is. And then we come up short, then
we fail, then we break our streak and we
don't achieve what we thought we would
what we thought we would. So
this is not just the insight of Reb
Yishmael.
I meant to bring I'll bring it for next
week, bli neder, but there's a lot of
scientific research, a lot of data
that this is again studied. It's not
just a religious perspective, but a
psychological perspective. We see all
the time that people who feel like
failures, people who feel insecure,
people who come up short, they are
riddled and racked by guilt and shame
and by sadness. People feel sad. People
feel sad.
When people um watch inappropriate
images and act out as a result of it,
atheists and agnostics, it's not a
religious reaction to it, but there is a
feeling of guilt and shame that comes.
When a person claims, "I know, I
understand, this is important, I care
about this." A person has communicated,
they've articulated, "This is a value of
mine." So kishalom ba'aveira, when you
violate your own value,
when you violate your own boundary,
choser hatzlacha, or you uh fail, shover
os amud, it is it is heartbreaking.
A person feels broken. A person feels
broken.
Venifres ba'ess Hashem Yisbarach. You
know, the Miami Marathon was on Sunday.
I know that
not because I ran it.
I know that because several people who I
know and love ran it and completed it.
Uh but they described, if you recall the
weather on Sunday, if you're watching
nothing in Florida right now, do not
expect you to take out your little
violin and play for us, but the weather
on Sunday was very hot. If you recall,
unusually hot for February and there was
no cloud cover and the pavement was
permeating heat and it was in the 80s
and a a humid and it was a very hard
marathon for for the people who ran it.
And I read the story about one person. A
marathon is 26.2 miles. At the 26.1
mile, she passed out. She didn't make
it.
Can you imagine you train, you work, you
set the goal, you run, and then you
don't make it.
And then you don't make it there.
You don't get a participation trophy.
You didn't make it to the finish line.
I I don't even want to imagine.
So, you feel broken. I trained, I work,
I told the world about my goal, I spent
all that money on Nike outfits to
practice and train,
paid a trainer, downloaded every app,
had to get the Apple Watch, did it all,
and didn't make it.
10th of a mile short, fail.
Person show very some order breaks you.
But the same is not the same as true
religiously and spiritually. Same as
true in the emotional and relationship
goals that we set.
So, let's break this down.
[Music]
The Yea Sahara, the voice of
self-sabotage,
the negative instinct in us, it's
working overtime.
It's always working.
You see, you know how the Yea Sahara
works?
Yea Sahara is very pernicious, very
evil, very wicked.
Yea Sahara is very scheming.
Yea Sahara knows,
"I don't have to talk to you about
whatever it is that I don't want you to
be doing.
I don't have to talk to you about
whatever goal that you set that I don't
want you to achieve. All I have to do is
make you sad.
All I have to do is
bring you down in the dumps."
You ever have this? You set certain
exercise goals, certain amount of times
during the week, certain length of time,
and then your calendar dings, you're
supposed to be doing that exercise, and
you're like,
"I don't feel like it.
I'm not energized. I have no energy.
I feel down and out.
I'm unhappy.
I'm I'm exhausted emotionally, mentally,
spiritually."
So, when you're sad,
you don't have the strength to do
anything.
This was supposed to be the week I start
saying to him,
"I start concentrating on my ass right.
I stop yelling at my kids.
I have more patience that my husband
still hasn't taken out the garbage.
This was supposed to be the week."
When you're sad and you're down, it's
very hard to find drive and to find
motivation. So, the Yea Sahara knows.
The Yea Sahara knows. When I use the
term Yea Sahara, I want you to
understand that I'm not 5 years old. I'm
not describing a little angel on your
shoulders talking in your ear.
I'm talking about the human psyche.
When Hashem, when our brilliant rabbis
thousands of years ago talked about the
two voices in our head, the Yea Sahara
and the Yea Sahara Tove, it's not a
little guy in red with a pitchfork and
chains, and the guy all in white robes
and a halo, and they're on our shoulder
and they're talking. I I got it.
I got it, and I promise you they got it.
So, if that image seems immature and
unsophisticated, and therefore the words
Yea Sahara and Yea Sahara Tove take you
back to kindergarten and say, "Ah,
what do I need this for? Grow up." We
are grown up. We're not talking about
little people, little voices. We're
talking about the voices in our own
head. They're called the human psyche.
They're called the human condition.
Called human psychology.
We all have those voices. We're all in
those conversations.
We're all in those conversations
regularly.
In fact, do I have it here?
No, I have to find it. I save articles
that I want to read later.
Most often the later never comes.
But someone had just sent me an article.
See if I find this very quickly.
Yes. This was an article someone just
sent me.
GQ magazine. It's just the text of the
article.
How to overcome the negative voice in
your head.
This is not in the base it's work.
This is not in the mishpocha.
A magazine.
I don't think it quotes Torah often.
And the title of the article is, "How to
overcome the negative voice in your
head."
I I'm going to guess it doesn't talk
about the Yea Sahara and the Yea Sahara
Tove, but that's exactly what it's
talking about. We all talk about it.
So, there's the Yea Sahara, there's a
voice in our own heads that is working
overtime.
That is trying to get us to be sad and
down because it knows that if we have no
energy and we have no strength, and we
have no hope, and we have no faith, and
we have no belief, and we have no
tenacity, and no resilience,
mission accomplished. Job is done. I
don't have to fight you now on davening
and hesed and learning and middos.
I just take out one thing and the whole
thing crumbles.
Everything crumbles.
So, overcoming that sadness,
overcoming that melancholy,
finding a joy for life and a happiness
even within the grief or the pain,
is the antidote to the Yea Sahara.
That's how we begin to have a fighting
chance. That's how we can set goals and
pursue them and achieve them. That's how
we can be the best version of ourselves.
I cannot believe what time it is, but
I'm out of time.
So, we have to stop here. But Hashem,
we pick it up next week.
Where are we going? Not till next
Thursday night.
We pick it up. No, this Thursday night.
Next Wednesday night.
Oh, you're right, we're here. We pick it
up next week. Tonight we go behind the
bema with Rabbi Eli Mansour.
Until next time, stay happy, stay
healthy,
and stay holy.