Living With Emunah (Part 240) - Simcha and Churban

good morning bogartov welcome back to living with emunah as always want to thank our very generous series sponsors avian bella morgan in memory of rabbi dr brian galbet and in memory of bella's mother dr ellen schanzer very grateful to them for their generosity also this morning she is sponsored by mata youngworth in commemoration of her dear mothers rifka bastleya who's thank you so much for your sponsorship we are finishing up we are concluding today this chapter we spent many many months learning about simca learning about happiness and joy simcha joy for life through the work of morgenstern and he ends very appropriately there are no coincidences nothing is random or chance but he ends with inyan at sara how could we spend all this time talking about how our default disposition how our instinct and intuition has to be for simha simcha joy and happiness and smiles what about the khurban are we supposed to be mourning and grieving aren't we supposed to feel it's absence and loss aren't we supposed to be pained by the fact that there is no base i make dash there is a silica the withdrawal of the divine presence rather than feeling an intense hashrat so how do we reconcile which is it should we walk around and people say what's the matter what's wrong say didn't you hear didn't you hear what vasa miktash was destroyed many many years ago when we were children my brother was working one summer in a laboratory and he wasn't shaving it was the three weeks and somebody there in the lab and non-jew i think was an asian person asked him you know i could tell you're not shaving what's the matter he said i'm actually in mourning i'm so sorry i didn't hear you you had a loss i said yeah my people are the jewish people at a loss what happened the temple was destroyed so i get the newspaper i read it every day i follow the news i didn't see anything i didn't see anything i missed it i said well it was it was 2 000 years ago 2 000 years ago and and you're mourning and grieving today and the napoleon is quoted famously as saying when he passed by in his conquest on tish above a group of jews sitting in the floor crying and he asked what it was about and he found out they were sitting and mourning and grieving and crying the destruction of the baby she said a people who could cry for something from so long ago are destined to see it be rebuilt a people who could hold on and mourn and grieve and cry for something so long ago are destined to see it be rebuilt that's the challenge of these three weeks how do we relate to and feel the loss of something we never knew we never had it's like saying you know on your great great grandparents your site you should be in tears and cry and be broken and fall apart i'm sad i'd like to know about them but i didn't know them i don't know them it's not like god forbid the loss of an immediate family member who you had your whole life and now they're gone so they said make this we never knew how can we feel it's how can we feel it's absence but nevertheless we're meant to not only these three weeks of the year and nine days in tish above itself please god we won't observe it this will be rebuilt speedily but not only these three weeks of the year were meant to regularly we have all kinds of halachas all kinds of halachas that we remember we break a plate at the khasn's dish we break the glass under the chuppah we leave a piece of our home unfinished unplastered so that every time one enters their home they see that unplastered unfinished portion of their otherwise magnificently decorated home and they say it's incomplete and i'm incomplete because my life is incomplete because there's no base i make tash i don't have that place of miracles to go regain that confidence in hashem i don't have place to be able to go achieve forgiveness and atonement i don't have that place so my home is incomplete as a reflection and a reminder that i'm incomplete and we have all kinds of other reminders all throughout the year that's not the time to elaborate but it's the difference between zechar al-khurban and zaika lamiktash some things we do to remember there's destruction like the unfinished unplastered part of our home the three weeks and nine days and so on and then there's zechar lamiktas we commemorate the way it was done there for example the fact that we shake a lulu of an asteroid for a week really only in the baseline dash it was taken for a week outside the base of mkhitaryan was only taken the first day but it was established by minzakai that we too would take the little vanessa all week other than shabbos to commemorate the way they did it in the bay sami dash to remember zechariah we have many many other examples so it's not only this time of the year it's throughout the entire year do we not include in our dhawaning as david we're longing for the blossoming and the sprouting of the redemption we want it to be rebuilt bonney shallayim in the present because any generation in which it's not built means had it existed today it would have been destroyed we spoke about that on on sunday night we spoke about judging favorably going from hyper criticism to hyper compliments you could still uh listen to it and we spoke about bonaire i'm in the present because we need to be rebuilding yerushalayim because we're responsible for its destruction if it existed today hashem would look at us and say uh-uh i'm taking it down so we should feel that pain that absence that hole in our hearts all the time how can we be happy and joyous when our home our true home our eternal home has been destroyed it's been decimated it's been leveled and we are suffering the consequences of it absentee-based amitash and sila hashem's withdrawal means that we're living in a place of doubt and uncertainty the almighty is hidden we're living in a time of anti-semitism of hatred of danger of threats of skin cynics and scoffers from the nations so how could you be basement how can you be baseball your house is burnt to the ground you're homeless you're going to be baseball you're going to smile and laugh someone's going to meet your house and go amazing everything's great how's that possible isn't it fake isn't it disingenuous how can we really be besimcha when there's such a thing missing is here's how we understand it based on apostle our joy and our happiness are there but they're incomplete they're incomplete the simcha he says of of non-jews who don't suffer from an absence of a based on mikdash that's complete good steak a bottle of wine purchase a new car a new dress new jewelry make a new money have a new relationship celebrate a new birth so that silk is entirely complete it's entirely whole because there's nothing missing from it but for us by definition definitionally we are missing you know a person who lost a parent a loved one and then had a simcha so it's a it's a mixed experience it's a it's a mixed experience it's a bittersweet we use that expression it's bittersweet it's sweet to be at the wedding of a child it's sweet it's sweet to be at the wedding of a child it's sweet to be at the birth of a child the birth of a grandchild but there's a bitter sweetness because you think about who didn't walk down the aisle you think about who wasn't the sandik you think about who's not there for you to call and tell the good news to there's an incompleteness and a bitter sweetness to it and that's the life of a jew there's simcha but is by definition always bittersweet hashem i walk around joyful and i'm happy and i'm grateful and i'm focused on what i have not what's missing and we spoke about last week that the uh bashantov bissimha are the same letters as mahshava it's all about where i place my thoughts and what i choose to think about i am bisimbra when i place my makshava my thoughts on what i have not what's missing but in that simcha there's a bitter sweetness there's a bitter sweetness i'm so happy hashem but really i wish i could be happy with you anhara bias in your shall i am in the basement i wish i could offer a carbon to say thank you i wish i could offer a carbon to say i'm sorry i wish i could come close to you and witness the daily miracles that happened there when i feel doubt or distance and i need to know that you're there i could just come to the base of mikdash and see the 10 daily miracles and have certainty and completeness the joy for a mitzvah not a frivolous joy not a fleeting joy not a superficial joy but a simple mitzvah what is it it it is tapping into hashem we don't have him in the building but we have him in the mitzvah we don't have him by going to the destination or the location but we can still tap into him through the mitzvah that we do a person transforms and elevates the physical into the spiritual and that's the will of hashem that too is a mitzvah so we have 613 mitzvots which are mitzvahs proper 613 that are counted that are defined that appear in the so we have to light candles on it to put on to fill in we have to observe the how they have to keep kosher we have 613 rules and regulations and then we have everything that falls between everything that falls between where it's what we might call rishis it doesn't fit into either mitzvah or average it's neutral when i choose what to wear when i choose what to eat how i eat i have to eat what's kosher i have to make a bracha before and after i eat but the attitude in the way i eat my philosophy of eating countless other examples oh what we call rashers but they're not really uricious explain that the truth is there's only two categories everything i do i need to stop and ask myself what does hashem want what mindfulness what attitude am i meant to have right now what is this experience am i living to eat or eating to live is the food nourishing only my body or am i eating in a way that this experience is nourishing my soul when we bring the mind right mindset and mindfulness to all that we do to all that we do then we take that which seems mundane and we make it holy and we transform it and we elevate it and we find hashem in it we find hashem in it in fact maybe we'll learn this next i don't know yet but he has a say for a beautiful parakanachila the philosophy of eating you wouldn't necessarily think a sephiroth would have a pair called achilla eating i mean you would if you know the jewish people but you think it'd be recipes and you know recommended restaurants and all kinds of other things like that but it's not it's a philosophy of eating and what's the philosophy of eating i'll just give you one insight that he has he says you know if we don't eat what happens to us we die you can't live without eating the bria we were created and designed in such a way the human being needs nourishment we need to eat in order to live if you stop eating you can't live that means that what's inherent and intrinsic in the morsels of food that we put into our body the life force the life source where actually when we eat we are actually making contact with the driver of life with life force life energy with life and who is the one who sustains who is the one who gives life hashem so every time we take a bite and we swallow we are imbibing hashem into us we're taking a a physical manifestation an object of food and in that object of food are nutrients and nourishment that will sustain us so we're swallowing a life force and hashem is the life force now hashem of course is infinite and omnipotent and can't be contained hashem is not in the morsel of food you can't put them in a box hashem doesn't come with a label it's how much carbs and how much sugar and how much whatever's in it you can't put hashem into something physical but it means cejavichemia that every bite we eat and every act of eating and every experience of sitting down to eat you say i am in the process of dying i need to experience life hashem is the sustainer of life through this act of eating i'm making contact with the divine it's an amazing and entirely different philosophy of eating that is very different than shoveling into our trap as much food as we can mindlessly and thoughtlessly just eating as much as we can while we gossip or schmooze or watch something or distract ourselves by solving the wordle or whatever you know that it's a very different philosophy am i present am i centered am i mindful and he writes that's the purpose of abraha i make a bracha so that i'm saying this isn't food this isn't physical this isn't just carbs and sugars and proteins this is a life force i'm about to imbibe what will sustain my life and i'm going to ground myself and focus and i'm about to see hashem and what i'm eating because he will extend my life he's giving me life itself in what i'm about to eat he brings out a life force from the world it's unbelievable it's unbelievable so you could eat like an animal we use that in our vernacular we describe somebody as eating like a pig or eating like an animal and when all you do is shove it in then you're eating like an animal but if you pause and make a bracha and you mindfully say i'm about to make contact with the divine i am about to experience a connection with hashem i'm about to imbibe hashem in me through the gift of the nourishment and the life force that he's given that i could eat wow now the active eating is entirely different so says richard meyer even within simchastam a good steak rare black and blue little char on the outside nice and rare on the inside maybe some fried onions with it that's ah that's simcha but if it's just eating like an animal so that's a simcha but if i elevate it because i say you love me so you've given me a chef who knows how to properly prepare a black and blue steak which not many do and it's not easy but that is the proper way to have a steak black and blue char on the outside and really rare you want the piece of meat still moving a little bit on your plate if the kavanagh is to open the nephesh you want to be smacked to eat the steak you're going to make a shahakalana that's you're going to find hashem in it so our first of all is bittersweet because of the khurban i put this when i'm happy i'm blossoming i'm flourishing i'm growing the sin and that's interchangeable i'm growing i'm blossoming the same letters i'm focused on the brock i'm focused on what i have not what's missing i'm focused on what i'm grateful for not what i want to complain about i'm focused on the bra in my life not the challenges makshava where i put my thoughts and my focus and my mindfulness and my meditation that makshava yields it makes me besimcha but my sencha is bittersweet because as happy as i am you walk your child down the aisle you're on cloud nine but if a parent or someone you love is not there is missing you could be on cloud nine laced with a little bitterness too and the khurban is that laced with bitterness so how do we understand we'll go back actually and read the bracket how do we understand morning and grieving if there's such a mitzra there'd be all the time and always how do you tell it to a mourner someone loses a loved one they're sitting on a low chair they're wearing their torn shirt they're not getting a haircut or shaving and they should be basement sadness is forbidden a jew can't be it can't have atfos no and if you live knowing that everything is from him and everything is for the best and everything is right and just and our loved one is in a better place for them experiencing the ultimate ecstasy of being in the presence of the divine so what room is there for sadness how could there be an obligation to mourn to grieve to cry isn't when you sit and you cry and you mourn you grieve and you say why and how and where are you isn't that the opposite of amunah of faith isn't faith saying i accept and it's from you and it's for the best isn't it a stereo bay isn't it a contradiction so availas and here victor meyer gives a philosophy of mourning which is not easy i'm not suggesting it's easy but the ovel the ovel should not have an existential crisis or a crisis in faith through their loss and the other should not be said in the sense that i'm sad my team lost in in sports i'm sad i i tore my favorite alpha i'm sad that it's not a sadness it's what he calls gaguwa what's good is longing it's longing it's longing i long for my loved one i want to hold their hands i want to feel their embrace i want to tell them what's happening in my life i want to be able to pick up the telephone and call them i have a good their absence i feel that absence and it's creating a sense of longing in me not sadness but longing what's it like muscle is you send your child to go learn in a faraway land yo you know that's what's good that's what's right that's what's best for them and you send them with your full heart you send them willingly do you know what happens you miss them it's at the airport you cry and they cry and then a week goes by and you're crying they're not crying anymore no but they're still crying now i'm not talking about today when my children were teenagers living at home they had no interest and didn't talk to me then they went to israel 6 000 miles away and tried to facetime me 400 times a day i spoke to them by far much more when they were away than when they were home so today it's a very different experience when i went to karemi avena just a few years ago there was there were pay phones three of them in kby and you waited desperately in line and you called collect with a little signal to not accept and to call back and when you called back you had exactly two minutes to say everything going on in your life because it was 400 a minute and i spoke to my parents this is not an exaggeration because of the cost of long-distance call i spoke to them every other week for five minutes every other week for five minutes you believe that children today don't believe that how much should we talk now you're back living with us and we don't talk anymore we need you to go back to israel you're going back to israel to show when you go back to israel we'll talk again many times a day hashem for facetime so every other week for five minutes so let me ask you did i want to be there i wanted to be there were my parents excited and happy and proud that i was there absolutely did it create gaguem did they long did they miss me my mother did at least i'm just joking my father did too i hope but my parents were me and i miss them you could be in the right place and in the best place and long and miss one another the longing and missing doesn't create sadness if you said to my parents ephram's in caribbean he's away for the year for two years are you sad i'm not sad i miss him i miss him and i long to connect with him that doesn't have to equal sadness you could miss someone and long to be connected to them and that doesn't have to equal and equate to sadness benefit if you are a loving person an affectionate person a connected person a feeling person then when there's an absence of someone that you love it creates guru and there's longing there's longing and there's and there's absence there's missing this is an expression of the genuine depth of the soul yearning to see and to connect physically practically meaningfully image with the one that you love with the one that you love in other words when you talk to somebody who's an avail who mourns and grieves they say to themselves you know i feel the presence of that person all the time i don't necessarily even miss them spiritually because i feel their presence all the time this year is dedicated in memory of brian galbet who a couple weeks ago would have turned 50 because your site is coming up on air of tish above and i feel his presence every day he was a dear dear friend and an incredible source of inspiration and often i say what would he do what would he say remember some encouragement or or the role model he was you could you could spiritually continue to feel the influence and presence but you still miss laughing or hugging or dancing with or learning together or playing ball together or making together that physical connection and if it's a loved one you miss holding the hand you missed the embrace you missed picking up that phone you missed that text you missed that text so what we have is bipol the physical realization of the connection the spiritual connection no one can take away when you see those pictures and when you live the memories and when you invoke the sayings and you feel the influence and you look at the family nobody could take that away that is eternal that is immortal that is uh something that cannot be taken away but but poe the physical connection that's what we don't have now that doesn't have to yield sadness you could express it not it's said but i miss and i long directed when you mourn for someone you're giving them covered it's called kavanagh you're honoring the deceased how are you honoring them when you sponsor the new building or the campus of brs you put their name outside that's honoring them and by the way feel free to speak to me after this year if you'd like to do that that's honoring when you put someone's name on something but it's covered on mace because you sat shiva it's covered on mace because he said karish it's covered on mace because you're literally inside kendall on the year outside he said yes it's covered on mace because that's kawarames the answer is that's covered you know why because when you say you didn't just disappear and you're not invisible and you didn't i miss you i've got good i long for you i miss you and i long for you and i feel that absence and that holy heart that's covered that's honoring you're not invisible you didn't disappear without a trace um so if you see mourning not as sadness but as longing and missing then it's no longer a contradiction to a moon to faith because the tears are not for the death because a person who stops and says to themselves particularly if one's loved one was suffering or struggling at the end of life as many or most do physically mentally then you're not crying really for them because when you pause and you think about it you say they are in the world of eternity they are in the world of bliss they are in a world where they're no longer suffering or compromised they are in a world where there is no struggle there in a world where they are flying and thriving and flourishing they are in a world where they are experiencing the ultimate pleasure and bliss of the presence of hashem and they are still looking down and they're still connected to all of us we don't cry and mourn agree for them really all those feelings are for us for them good i'm happy it's good for them like a parent whose child is off in israel yeshiva seminar i'm happy for them they're in the best place for them they're having a phenomenal experience for them but i'm sad but i miss them i'm not sad i'm not supposed to be sad but i miss them but i miss them and i long for them and so i'm crying for missing them i'm not crying you know when we cry when they're on all kinds of machines and connected to all kinds of tubes we cry when they're in pain and all kinds of pain medications we cry when they struggle or suffer in this world that's when we cry for them but when they transition to the next world we're not crying for them at that point the tears are for us for us i long i feel an absence i desire a connection so that's not a contradiction to faith my faith my faith empowers me to know that they're where they're meant to be they're in a place that's best for them my tears are for me so with this we can understand how to properly grieving more in the absence of the base of mitosis we're not crying because the bricks and mortar were burnt to the ground we're not crying because the miz bayach was disassembled and the parochus was pierced by titusa russia we're not crying for the physical material rather than say raqqa that's amazing you know why we're crying because that was a place of divine revelation that was a place of miracles that was a place of certainty and now that's missing we long for it we feel its absence we yearn for the physical connection and you know why we're crying because when a parent has expelled the child from the home and says i have to practice tough love it's not that i don't love you it's the hardest thing in the world for parents i've been countless times with parents through that process but when a parent has to practice tough love and says the reason i'm throwing you out of the house and the reason that i'm withdrawing any help and support is not because i don't love you it's because i love you so much that this is the only thing i can do to shake you out of your circumstance tough love there's nothing harder in the world for a parent than tough love but yet the loving parent when the circumstance demands will practice that tough love chris bark was practicing tough love with us tough love with us he threw us out of the house and he said i love you so much that i need to wake you up and shake you up i need to do an intervention to get you to change your ways that i've thrown you out of the house in fact i burned the house to the ground there is no house for us right now we can't live together right now you're on your own because of that tough love and so our tears in this period is not because of sadness it's missing and longing to be together with him it's the reality of that tough love that we are the recipients of it not with doubt that he's doing it out of love but with the reality that he needs to do tough love so the core is for the distance so these three weeks these nine days every day on our calendar when we observe zechariah we are longing to be reconnected with him we're longing to that time in that place where we can go with certainty and confidence where we can see miracles in revelation where we could pour out our hearts and receive a capara atonement um so by the way we have a kaddish club that meets once a month those are in the year of morning we learn and we have a sort of support group together and we often talk about that when you pass that picture or you have that trigger that reminds you of the loved one who's not here and you cry there's even a little simcha in that why because you say you know as much as that just tore open the wound again it ripped off the scab but it's a relief and it's a point even of joy to know that they were so important to me i still miss them enough to cry that that relationship is still so alive that it hasn't dissolved or disappeared it hasn't lost its intensity i still love them so much that when i see that thing that it makes me pause or cry on the one hand i'm i'm crying but on the other it's also nice to know that the relationship is still so alive that it brings me to that tear so that's the same thing in these three weeks and nine days so we used to be much closer and now we're apart and we yearn and and long to be close again so the sim class forbidden during these three weeks and nine days is the personal the selfish simcha the of the music's on and so i've got to skip in my step turn off the music i got a perfect black and blue steak so the nine days tone down that simcha that's not the simcha right now the simcha in knowing that i'm sad that i'm not connected to him that's an appropriate sim cast of the external supervision that's inappropriate um is coming up when the month enters we lower our level of i've told you many times schwab said simcoe is like a pilot light sometimes you raise it it's cooking fires it's fire sometimes you got to let it you have to lower it and let it simmer but it can't ever be extinguished so simcha in our life can never be extinguished in adar all cylinders we raise that flame the rest of the time it's at a good steady level av we lower it a bit but you always have to have simcha so it's not when the nine days start no laundry and no swimming and no meat and no no it's we have to do less but you could never forfeit you can never shut off that simcha a year the jew always has to be always has to be not sad you could be basimha even within longing and missing and yearning so this is the time of year that we focus on the yearning and the longing and the missing and how do we do it even that we do with the sense of with this sense of simcha tonight's behind the buma you do not want to miss [Applause] an amazing amazing woman motivational speaker advocate author she was diagnosed with two forms of polio as a child and she's confined to a wheelchair her husband is blind they have children and beautiful grandchildren and she's an incredibly inspiring person you do not want to miss the conversation your fred and i will have with her tonight behind the bema until next time stay happy stay healthy and stay