Living With Emunah (Part 340, Live From Israel) - Leaning into and Learning from Pain

[Music] Thank you first of all to one of the it's hard to talk about any bright spots or positive things of the last year and a half although maybe that will be our subject for this morning a little bit but getting to meet and and that moment is one I'll never forget ding mina on the border of Lebanon while the what do they call it purple rain was falling over our heads and they said you'd better dav quickly and leave. We said, "What do you mean? We came to make a barbecue. It's a little bit rude. You're going to eat the food and you're sending us away." Said, "It's for your own safety. Go." And as we drove, they continued to fall. But to see the type of am that has carried in his pocket in his army uniform that he said is the most potent weapon that he has that he has was and continues to be a tremendous inspiration. So, thank you for this opportunity. It really is um incredibly special and I'm grateful. I'm grateful to see so many friends to be here in Shalim. What better place? I had the best of all worlds. I shouldn't say the best, the best of all worlds would be here and to be here permanently. But if I was going to be in Bokeh for part of Purim, this purash to be able to get out on Mo Shabas direct flight from Florida and the end of Purum last night. My daughter's here with Leora and her family and a very liid purum that's still being cleaned up. It was a incredible incredible privilege and opportunity and even though I'm here for very short when the chance came to learn together and to grow together was one I didn't want to not take advantage of I feel so indebted to Alex and to Eritda who over the last year and a half that bond that closeness with everybody my dear friend Schneller all of everybody everybody maybe he'll be successful in helping us find a place here everybody who's uh the connections that were formed are really forever and they mean the world and So the chance to be together to learn together to grow together was really um really very special. I brought with me I was asked to bring and I did I don't know how to distribute it or which side of the makita to give it to first. I'm going to leave it with Alex. I'm going to make it his problem. But I brought some of the swag. We've been speaking in here the last several weeks months about this idea. Wherever we are is where we're meant to be and therefore embrace your place. You are exactly where you're meant to be. And we made decals for the windshield of the car. So when you're stuck at a red light or behind the train or in traffic and you're running late, you remember we are where we're meant to be. And when you see it, embrace your place and a sticker for the back of the phone. Turn your phone over and whatever is going on. Embrace your place. You are where you're meant to be. And then the latest thing that we made a version of it was this luggage tag that can hang from your luggage. So, I got in um when did I get in? Yesterday, last night I have the luggage tag on my briefcase and I was uh coming to customs and I was so eager to try to cop the end of Purum. I wanted to make the suit. I wanted to get to Shallayam for Purum and I didn't check any bags. I thought I'm going to fly out of the airport. It's all going to happen on my schedule in my time, the way I want, the way I picture it. I get to customs and I I'm decent at some things. I'm terrible at choosing lines. Whoever I'm with, I said, "You choose the line. Whichever I choose is guaranteed to be the longest line. I don't know what it is. Whichever one I choose will be the long." So, I was on the phone with my wife and I said, "One, two, three. Just give me a number right now. I've got to choose. You know, the line breaks up into three. Which one?" So, she gave me a number. I chose that line. And a couple of uh minutes after I'm waiting on this long line, the person behind the counter, I don't know where they went. They take a lunch break, take a have a coffee, return a phone call. They literally walk out of the customs booth and we're all in that line and and nothing's happening and I was starting to feel like my heart palpitations, my pulse, blood pressure, all the things that happen when the world is not operating on our schedule. And then I saw the tag on my on my briefcase and I thought to myself, I'm the guy supposedly who gives the amunish. Embrace your place. You're exactly where you're meant to be. And that's the beauty of Amuna. You take that deep breath and you are where you're meant to be. And a moment later, I was on the phone still with my wife and the somebody else working in the customs on the side came over and said, "You're on the phone." I thought, "I'm going to be in trouble now. In America, you're not allowed to be on the phone when you're in the customs area. I didn't know that there was a rule here." Also says, "If you want to be on the phone already so badly, so just go." And he gives me one of the things to pass, so just leave. See, so second, I embraced my place. He always has a plan. It always works out and it's very beautiful. So I'm leaving these with Alex. Alex, you're in charge. you could get in trouble figuring out who to give it to. We're happy to send more ore will be back. We'll be back soon and we'll we'll bring more when we come. I wasn't sure what to speak about. Um first of all and you have so many people who could speak. I don't know that you need me at all. But I'm also so humbled and feel grossly inadequate. But I think the people all of you who live here, who've lived here the last year and a half, who lived here a lot longer, who are living here our destiny and our future to come in and to share a perspective and an insight and an attitude and an approach I I really feel grossly grossly inadequate to speak about amuna to share about and to address address this important but difficult and complicated topic. So I want to come at it. We find ourselves now between Purum and Pesak. It's anticlimactic as the Rav said you know last night deep into the night maybe early this morning still celebrating Purum and then Shak this morning saying there's no pur after so it's a a strange transition but we find ourselves now it's good you're all sitting down and I don't want to pass out but it's for those who are staying home casing their home and cooking for rabbis who have to cook up drushes shabas is even a week earlier than normal this year. So it's we're holding by it's of pes today is already of pes it may feel like mo purim but it's already of pes. So I want to speak to you about a topic that bridges Purum and Pak something that's on my mind and I think very much probably on yours on all of Kali's show because of the year and a half because of the time that we've that we've had and it's the question of of pain of pain of loss of suffering and often the bitterness that goes with it. For many people at their pes table the mur is not the only or the most bitter thing. There are people who are sitting around who've suffered, who struggled, who've encountered challenging times, who've had to navigate unimaginable circumstance. And whether it's our national collective anguish and loss still at this moment as our hostages are not yet all home and soldiers who continue to risk their lives and families who've lost loved ones. But we all come to that pesak table with a sense of pain and a sense of anguish and that often can express itself in a sense of of bitterness of bitterness. When we come to the four questions, there's a famous story relu. When he got to the the four questions, he put his head on the table and he began to weep and he began to sob and he began to cry. And I won't elaborate and dramatize the story because we don't have the time. But he cried out and he screamed to Hashem, "Four questions. I have 400 questions. I have 4,000 questions. I have endless questions. How could there be hostages still in tunnels underground? How could there be soldiers, young people who gave their lives? How could there have been an October 7th and the kind of tragedies and calamities and catastrophes that happened? How could it be the scorn of the nations? How could it be college campuses? How could it be a rise of anti-semitism, Jews being targeted, Jews afraid to wear yamakas in public places? How could it be members of Congress, including or maybe most shocking among them, Jewish members elected of Congress who are failing to protect their own people? Hashem, if you're inviting us to ask questions, it's not for couldn't go on. He couldn't begin his seder because he said, "If you're inviting to ask questions, we have endless questions." But he said, "What could we do? Hashem, you're in charge. You're in control. When we submit and surrender to you, we recognize it's all part of your divine plan. We can live with the questions and we can go on. We can proceed with the seder. But this year for us, the questions are endless. The questions compound. The questions are complicated. The collective national questions individually, personally, people who are struggling with so many things. health, parnasa, loneliness, longing and waiting to have children, physical health, mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, children. As I said, people are only as happy as their least happy children. The list could go on and on. Like, we feel we feel lost and we feel that we have so many questions. So, I want to share with you some some thoughts in anticipation. We're in this bridge between Purum and Pes on navigating the questions, the struggle, the pain and helping to try to avoid it becoming bitterness. That the ma be the only bitter part of the seder table. And the ma itself is a very perplexing thing. It's a night of freedom. It's a night of celebration. It's a night of joy. It's a night of redemption. And here we are tasting and chewing and to a degree savoring the mar, the bitterness. What place does bitterness have for a night of freedom and a night of celebration? Why must it be present? Why must we chew it? Why must we taste it? Says maybe because he was bothered by this question. He doesn't even address mur despite the telling us to remind us of how bitter our exile was. He says no because after all ultimately we're going to mark this night with a great schwarma lafa sandwich. We eat a proper matzah the soft matzah. That's like a lafa and the pesak was a great schwarma of the great lamb and a proper schwarma in a lafa has a little bit you have to put a little bit something spicy in the writes in Egypt that's how they ate lamb and that's how we commemorate having left that's the purpose the mar's role it's an ingredient and a recipe the mara doesn't represent something spiritual or emotional the says is simply an ingredient in a recipe but we know it's much more than that and from we were privileged to have in bokeh last week he started off last week with 10 or 15 minutes was an incredible privilege in his he quotes a I think the Mishna Buddha quotes it from the kadosh there was such a to kiss the mur at the seder to give it a kiss to show it affection to be grateful to welcome the presence of that mur at the seder not only to tolerate that there's something sharp sharp or something bitter, something painful there, but to kiss it, to love it, to show it affection, to somehow embrace it, to be grateful for it, which is bizarre, a bizarre thing. What role, what reason, why is it there? Why is it there? The uh mitzvah of eating mar Torah tells us and later in midbar for the first p and both the carbon p has to be eaten with together with and I have a lot of maromas here I'm happy to email or share them another time Alex I'll I'll give them to you and you can uh you can pass them on to anybody who wants to see inside but the in both places tell us about the mitzvah of And then later in thank you have to eat the mat with the now today without the without the today is only that's tells us so the matzah remains today biblical and the rabbitically because we don't have the is conditional or dependent. It is tied directly into the carbon. We don't have the carbon today. only and the writes today the is only a throwback when we eat the ma at the seder table with all the dorra will give about connecting to the bitterness of the gul the exile the says it's commemorative of longing for a mash like many things we do taking the all the days of yont that we dot. So falls under that category of of mikt of mikash. How do you fulfill the mitzvah of is a complex topic for another time. The mission list five different possible ingredients that could be mur. If we took a poll here, how many used lettuce? How many use lettuce for mara? Roma lettuce. Which lettuce? So there's many customs. Some gadam used iceberg lettuce. Some used romaine lettuce. If you really want something bitter and miserable, you should have kale. But even we on pesak don't go to such a level. We don't wish upon anybody to have to eat that. But uh some have the custom of eating lettuce. Others eat from our horseradish. Do you grate the horseradish? Do you slice the horseradish? How do you eat the horseradish? So where do these customs where do these men hug him evolve from? There's a lot of literature and it is a fascinating fascinating question in Israel the time of pesak lettuce is readily readily available and lettuce starts out uh sweet and the stalk is bitter so that's why it was m whereas in European countries where Jews were exiled and spread out too lettuce was not available during that time of year maybe that was the origin of eating the horseradish other posts can talk about lettuce as in insect infestation so in order to fulfill a mitzvah particularly today that's durabana don't violate many risa by consuming many insects. So there's a lot of literature on the of or what the custom should be. Some do both. They put a little bit of the horseradish inside the lettuce and dip that in the in the kosas. There are many many different minhagim. What to use? How much do you have to eat of the of the mor? So we eat a kazay. We eat a kaz of the mor. Do you make a bra? Do you make a bra on the mo? We make a mitzvah a brah for the mitzvah before we eat the m but what about a han we have not yet washed we didn't yet have the matzah when we eat the m so why don't we make a answer is we already did when did we the kpas and that's why a person should have in mind when they make the priama and the kpass they're having in mind to fulfill the mitzvah of as well when should not which can get complicated with a late start for pes night everybody hungry and all of a sudden A bland potato and some parsley is a delicacy at that hour. But one should not eat a kazay would obligate a could be an interruption before the mor. So there are all kinds of minutia and details one has to be one has to be aware of. An interesting question that came up more recently in in Israel and elsewhere when a lettuce is grown hydroponically. If you have a lettuce that's not grown in the ground but it's grown above ground with water hydroponically. What braha is said on such lettuce? That's a big question in general. If the bra is shahak as many post can think it is. So can you be yay with the carpass on the m or maybe if you're using lettuce for m that was grown hydroponically that is a different of shahak maybe a wood warrant to tell and even before the moatzah these are all questions in in the m which are interesting and you can examine them and look into them another time but I want to get to the deeper meaning and the deeper reasoning some of the deeper view of of mur and what it can tell us about what we're going through and what we're experiencing. Today, Rabbi Saxs, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sax, a colonel of Ra has a beautiful essay about the mar and he suggests that the mar is so that we remember and we embrace and we hold on to and we never forget the taste of slavery. Don't take freedom and liberty for granted. Don't even as we enjoy it and celebrate it and lean into it, don't ever think we've always had it and don't necessarily believe we always will have it. Don't ever take it for granted that the presence of mar at the pes the presence of mar in the freedom experience is to embrace the freedom by remembering where we came from how it all began that it's not something that's a given and it should never ever be taken for granted but something that should be deeply deeply appreciated always also elaborates on a similar theme the gerba writes that we eat the mor in order to remember that not only were the matzah and the freedom from Hashem, but the suffering and the bitterness and the struggle and the pain, they're all part of a divine plan. They're all part of a boru's will. It's very difficult to understand this, but it's the only way in fact to live. It can't be. It can't be. We recently had uh on our behind the beimma podcast Zi Sammit who's a tremendous bentora and tremendous ball player. And I learned my lesson now because Twi's had we've had WU superstars and we interviewed them right before they played the first game of the NCA tournament and then they they lost. So we clearly are a bad uh so we're going to wait for after the season before we interview the next superstar. You know, he's fantastic and we had a whole conversation. He hit this maybe you saw it this turnaround fadeaway three-pointer almost at the buzzer to actually win. They had been down 15 points, 16 points with 15 minutes to go. If you're a basketball fan, you're excited about this. But it was uh it was pretty exciting to see this bento or this bakar with a yamaka come back and and win in that way. And we had a whole discussion as he talked about his faith in Hashem throughout the game. Even as halftime, even when they were down so much, he knew they were going to come back. He just didn't know exactly how. And he felt that are what helped him win the game. And it was a beautiful perspective, a beautiful attitude. I have no judgment about his approach. I'm grateful for that conversation, but I'd wonder if we had it again after the next game when they lost. Is Hashem only involved when we win a game or is Hashem also involved when we lose? Do we credit Hashem when it turns out well or is Hashem also behind when it fails? More perhaps difficult. Is Hashem only behind when miraculously beepers kill our enemies or ballistic missiles don't kill us or buses explode and no one's on them? And those are miracles from Hashem. But October 7th, Hashem had nothing to do with. He was nowhere to be found. He deserves no responsibility or credit. Do we live a life of the recognition that everything and all is from Hashem whether we understand it or not, whether it makes sense to us or not, whether we welcome it and embrace it or not, but somehow it all fits and it all comes and it all collects. He's carefully curated and choreographed it all from above. says this at the sed because even when we celebrate freedom and especially when we celebrate our liberty and the good times and the positivity and the revealed and the open miracles and the redemption we don't bifurcate and we don't differentiate and we don't say oh hashem is only only the positive and the good he has nothing to do with and he's not behind the bad that's a form of idolatry we know he We changed the word not because it was too wasn't palable for us to say the actual that is bor but it all comes from him and if we're going to take the good we have to take the bad if we're going to take the happy we have to take the sad if we take the pleasure we have to take the pain and the presence of the mors at the seder is to remind us that it's all from Hashem it's all part of a master plan it's all part of his design what we want what we welcome and what we wish never happened and never name others say we eat the mor to remember that even after matzah even after being set free even after redemption and miracles there are bitter moments in life and they too are part of the continued journey and the continued story and this is a very very important lesson that freedom and miracles and gratitude to God doesn't come with the assumption or the expectation or the entitlement that it's smooth sailing from here oh a miracle happened so now we're good to go nothing more bad will happen life is awesome oscillating. There are ups and there are downs. It's a roller coaster and it's an adventure. And even after we have a breakthrough, even after we have freedom, even after there are miracles that we are so grateful for, we need to be prepared and we need to know we're going to encounter Mar again. When the seder is over, when we go back to life, there will be more waiting. So rather than pretend, rather than have some utopian dinner, rather than have some fantasy evening, we have ma at the table in order to know and acknowledge and remember and remind ourselves that there will be mr waiting. It reminds me of of an insight of why we break a glass at a wedding. I came in for a wedding I'll be going to tonight. And we end the with breaking the glass. And of course the main reason the reason we're all most familiar with that we feel we feel so poignantly and so powerfully right now is that there is no bdash and as joyous as we are as grateful as we are as happy as we are our joy is incomplete because there are as we know and know too well there is still Jewish suffering but an alternative reason another explanation that's given of why we break the glass at the is to tell this couple who right now just came off the shabasa where they are the greatest things on earth and everyone offered the greatest praise and everyone talked about how well and how much they belong together to the where the rabbi described their virtues and their values and the families they come from and how beautiful this bias on their building will be and before they walk away from that we break something to tell them things are going to break things won't be perfect it'll only be a matter of time until your first disagreement you'll have to navigate your first argument someone's going to drop something and break something, literally or metaphorically, things break. And so we break a glass under the to remind ourselves, life is not smooth sailing and life is not perfect, but things break. Indeed, indeed. Theank of quotes that existed several hundred years ago, no longer. We are of a mining three matzas to the seder table of ki is whatever it corresponds with. the children and grandchildren can save the divor for the day or night, whatever it corresponds with. But he quotes a custom that there was a fourth matzah, a fourth matzah. And the fourth matzah had a name. It was called the matzah's safet. And the fourth matzah was when one of the other three matzahas inevitably and invariably breaks, there's a fourth matzah ready. There's another ready, a backup matzah. As Jews, we live life knowing life is not perfect. It's not smooth sailing. We shouldn't expect and we're not entitled that everything will always go perfectly. We are prepared that there will be bumps, there will be hiccups, there will be problems, there will be challenges, there will be pain. We should not have any expectation. There are people who go through life and the first sign, the first cracks, the first pain, the first ache, the first challenge, the first struggle or tension they run into, then everything falls apart because they had some unfair expectation. But that's not life. It never was. And that's not what we were promised. And so we have a fourth matzah at the table. Thank you. Prepared. Thank you. That something's going to break. And we break a glass under the to tell this couple, be ready. Be prepared. Know something is going to break. And says this, we have more at the table. One of the reasons to know that there will continue to be more in life. Hopefully, it'll be minor little specks barely discernable. For some it'll be great, large, bigger than a kaz, unbearably painful. But there undoubtedly, inevitably, invariably, there continues to always be more. Thank you. Rafuk has a magnificent explanation about the presence of mar at the table. Rafuk says the reason that we eat Mara on Pesak, the reason Mara comes to the seder table is not a throwback to remember it was bitter and miserable and the suffering and the anguish and the torture and the torment and the persecution and the oppression. No, no, no. The reason that we have mur is actually to enhance and to define and to experience the freedom. How does tasting something bitter help me appreciate freedom? sort of cook has a magnificent insight. He says a slave whose whole life is defined and characterized by bitterness who never ever tastes literally or metaphorically something sweet has no idea that something is bitter. The slave everything is bitter. Every experience, every taste, every moment it is all consuming it is all bitter. It's all bitter. The slave the entire experience the slave for whom time is not his own. who doesn't own any possessions, who can't eat, who doesn't acquire, who doesn't achieve, who has no independent identity. All of life is bitterness. The moment something comes across as bitter, then what it indicates, what it signals to you is that generally my default I have freedom. My default is I taste sweetness. I have so much good. If you recoil and resin because you taste something bitter, it means your taste buds are maladjusted to something bitter. And why are they maladjusted to something bitter? Because you've adjusted to sweetness. Generally, life is sweet and delicious and wonderful and good. And so when you taste something bitter, you say, "Wow, that's sharp. Wow, that's strong. Wow, that's bitter." Because generally that's not your experience. And so it stands out says Rafuk. When something happens in life that feels bitter, you could either say woe is me and why me and why is this bitter thing happening? And we're talking now about not necessarily the major enormous, but the smaller like wo was me, why is the Wi-Fi so slow? Wo was me, why did I get a middle, not an ILC? Wo was me, why am I stuck in this traffic? Wo was me. the little things that aggravate and agitate us in life but make many people crumble and fall apart. We can either feel victims to those bitter moments or we can stop and pause and recognize if this is the worst bitterness I have. If this tastes bitter, how much sweet is there in my life? If this is the bitterness when you step on a Lego in the middle of the night cuz a child or grandchild left it in the middle of the floor. You can scream in pain, and if you don't, there's something wrong with you. Cuz there are few things worse than stepping on a Lego barefoot in the middle of the night. You can scream in pain and wallow in why is me. Or you can say, "That hurt, but wow, I have a child or grandchild in this home who played with a Lego who left it in the middle of the floor. How sweet and delicious. How beautiful and how blessed am I to have that says the presence of the ma at the seder is not to remember where we came from or lean into the bitterness or know that we're going to have more of it in the future. All the other explanations we saw says the presence of the m of the bitterness is to remember the freedom. We eat the m not to invoke bitter times but an affirmation of how sweet our lives generally are. We can transform ourselves from negative to more positive. Not by overwhelming the negative with positive, by embracing the negative and being grateful. If that's the negative in my life, I am maladjusted to negative. If I still taste bitter, then my life is generally free and filled with sweetness, with sweetness. We can be transformed with micro moments of ordinary positivity. We call them the micro moments of the hugs and the winks and the nods from Hashem. The little things that maybe we overlook, we never notice, we never appreciate, but if our antennas extended, we can see, we can feel, and we can be grateful. In fact, that I pulled up in front of Alex's house and there was a parking spot right there waiting. That was Hashem. There's a little hug and a little wink and a little nod. And we should hug and wink and nod back to him and appreciate it. And those micro moments of positivity in life. In life, a cold cup of water someone gives you just when you need it. It's a micro moment of positivity. The things that we dismiss and overlook and we take for granted. Micro moments of ordinary positivity. But most negative people suffer suffer from the opposite. The composite or the compounding of micro moments of ordinary negativity. The little small mirrors of their life. they add up and begin to define their whole lives by murder instead of realizing that you know someone said something that stings that was hurtful or the store ran out of that pesak product I was counting on or the traffic made me late or my seat assignment made me unhappy or the restaurant service took too long or the Wi-Fi is too slow. People are defined either by compounding those micro moments of negativity and becoming mur themselves or realizing if those are my mur how lucky and how blessed how grateful and how sweet the rest of my life is. So says cook we're commanded to eat the mur to remember that the romaine lettuce of the horseradish should be the only bitter and negative things at our table. If we can t still taste bitter that means by definition how sweet how sweet are our lives that we should be so grateful for. Rabbi Lamb, Rabbi Dr. Lamb has another insight in his hagada. This is all by way of introduction. I want to get to the main point about Mona. So I asked Alex how long I should go for say what you said. He said all day, but I'm not going to take him up on it. Rabb says that we don't only eat the mur separately and independently. We don't eat the mur by itself. We also eat the m in a sandwich. The original sandwich, the korak sandwich of hill where hill made that schwarma. He took that lamb and he wrapped it in that lafa and added that karif the m and made a delicious sandwich. Why would we put the m and combine it with the matzah? Says Dr. Lamb Hill sandwich teaches us about synthesis, the ability to live with attention that life is not either or. And I think we can appreciate this this last year and a half. Well, life is not either matzah or m. We don't live in chapters of life that are independent and separate and apart from each other. They're not units of time or periods, but often they overlap. Often they're integrated. Often there's a tension and a coexistence between the two. It's not that we admire, we're oppressed and persecuted. Hashem took us out. Oh, it's been smooth sailing since then. Not at all. Not nearly. Not this last year and a half. Not every single day that we still don't have our hostages home. We can have matzah and mr in a sandwich. What Hill was indicating, what he was teaching us is we can live with the tension between the two. They coexist. They're not separate and apart. And we've seen in this year and a half miracles the revealed hand of Hashem. Yakaved writes in his sitter in his time a couple hundred years ago already writes in his sitter that the miracle of the Jewish people's survival and existence these 2,000 years the miracle of his time he writes is greater than all the miracles of mitim combined in his 200 years ago and he didn't live through the beeper episode and the ballistic missiles and the buses that exploded without anyone getting and the many more miracles, many of which we may not even know about. And yet already then he wrote that the miracles of our time, the miracle of our existence, the miracle of our survival are more revealed miracles. Those miracles are greater than the 10 plagues and the splitting of the sea combined put together. We didn't walk out of Egypt to smooth sailing to being a life of freedom to building a base of mikdash and then celebrating being on top. Our entire existence has been ups and downs. Our entire existence has been exile and little steps towards the redemption. And this year and a half, we've had moments of horrific loss and suffering and unimaginable pain. And we've had moments of revealed miracles and the undeniable hand of Hashem. How could they be happening together sometimes on the very same day? That's Hill sandwich. The matzah and the mo. The tension between the two. Eating them. eating them together. Eating them together. Understanding that we live with that tension and that we're comfortable and it's a space that we're able to live in. I'll take you back to Pur for one moment. Many say you know we all know the gumatri of amalik is safik is safik and that the mitzvah of our commandment to destroy and obliterate and eliminate a malik wherever they need to be eliminated wherever they need to be eliminated and malik are rearing their ugly head across many venues and in many different capacities today and they all need to be taken and whether it's of course our our enemies kamas andbah and the houthis who need to literally be obliterated and eliminated and wiped off the face of the earth as the Torah instructs us. Whether it's students on visas in America who are advocating evil, who need to have their visas rescended and be sent out of America. Whether it's members of Congress who don't understand and who are adjacent and who are standing with Amalik and they need to be defeated in their next election. Whether it's heads of universities who don't protect Jewish students and are allowing a malik to rule who need to be who need to be fired and find a new job we have a mitzvah of so the malik is suff because says happen stance chance random oh the parking spot it just happened look at that Alex what a coincidence there was a parking spot open in front of your house just when I needed it wow what a coincidence that's the voice of a malik even inside us and that's the classic lesson the classic teaching about destroying a malik is getting rid of suffikinfeld the here in rakal he says that misses the point and when you hear this you'll never you'll never approach this question or a kamatri the same way again how could you say there should be no suffic no doubt it's human nature and human condition to have doubt when will we get the hostages home how Will this war end? What's going to be? Even with all the living with amuna swag and paraphernalia in the war in the world, it's impossible to not be filled with doubt. You wonder and you have uncertainty and our life is not predictable. There is doubt. And it's interesting that of all holidays that are filled with safet or you're sure you read it twice. Yeah, exactly. You read it several times in several different ways. When I was in Cambrian, I think seven or eight different people came up to read to read. So the very para of we have a safer way to read it. We have cities that's a sufficere where they walled unwalled. When should they observe Purum? We have five sukim in the migilla that we repeat because we're unsure exactly how to read it with this letter without this letter. So we reread five sukim in the migill. If there's any holiday in our calendar which incorporates and includes in it so much something so much doubt in terms of the actual observance how to read these five when certain places should observe pum how to read the only biblical obligated part of Torah reading zalik it's all suffic so what is it so says by winefeld a person is not supposed to get rid of suffic that's impossible that's asking us not to be the humans that we are what's the mitzvah of fighting a malik is learning to live with the suffik the capacity to embrace the tension to live with suffik to not need all the answers to not need certainty to not need to be able to anticipate and predict everything that's going to happen to be able to accept and say yeah there's suffic my individual or our collective particular thing will end there's doubt There's uncertainty and I can live with it. I can live with it. I can be comfortable within it. The capacity to live with doubt. In fact, the Torah, the tell us where do you see as a hint, an illusion to in the Torah the why? Because the was needing to know. He couldn't live with uncertainty. He wanted a crystal ball. He wanted to be able to predict and anticipate and secure knowledge and to know with certainty everything. That was the very original of I need to know. I can't live with this doubt. I can't live with this uncertainty. When we said nasa, we did the opposite. We said nasa we're in. We can live anishma. Well, come to find out we can live. We can embrace uncertainty in our lives. And so the Korak sandwich, the sandwich of hil was matzah and m at the same time. To be able to live with the tension of the two. To not have an expectation that it's either or it's one or the other, but to know that we can have both. We can have both at the same time. There's a lot more I wanted to share, but I want to get to the crux, which will be, I guess, the the um the essence of what I wanted to really share. We're living in a time in a day and age where people don't have the capacity to endure pain. The statistics, the data all bear out. The opioid addiction crisis that's taking place across the world. the addiction to substances, which anybody who works in the recovery area will tell you. At the root of every addiction, it doesn't matter the substance or the behavior, is not the substance or the behavior. It's a hole in one's heart. It's a pain in one's soul that someone is trying to desperately escape to numb themselves to. And they're looking for an agent. They're looking for something to be able to numb themselves. When a person is in unbearable pain in a depressive state they sleep because they will describe to you it is painful and unbearable just to be awake just to be conscious just to be alive and confront my reality the ache the pain I need to be asleep. People who struggle with depression and depressive state sleep. And those who need to be awake or are awake to operate through life often turn to addiction because whatever they're addicted to, whatever whatever behavior or whatever substance is numbing, it's trying to escape because pain is unbearable. We're living in a time more than any that the world is telling us we shouldn't have to live with pain and that pain is categorically bad and that we're entitled to feel an expectation that we'll be able to create lives without pain. But that's not true and it's not accurate. And it's my that maybe the presence of the m at the seder is to remind us that freedom freedom is the ability to bear pain. A person who is enslaved to comfort. A person who's enslaved to convenience. A person who's enslaved to always having to be happy and positive and feel good is a person who is a slave. They're being oppressed by the tyranny of comfort and the tyranny of convenience. But a person who can lean in and say, "Yeah, this is uncomfortable and yes, this is painful. Yes, this is inconvenient. Yes, I don't want this or like this, but I can live with this." Only that person is really and truly free. Maybe that's why the tells us that though matzah you're allowed to swallow in one bite if you swallowed the kazay of m in one bite you did not fulfill the mitzvah the mitzvah is dka the mitzvah specifically is to chew the mashem says here's some chew on it chew on it don't swallow the ma in one bite and then quickly wash it down with a sweet drink because that's how you're going to avoid the discomfort and the inconvenience because you're going to numb yourself and you're going to escape and you can't live with it. No, here's some more. Chew on it. Chew on it. Taste it. Feel it. Lean into it. Embrace it. recognize it too is part of life and understand that only when you're able to live with discomfort and inconvenience only when you can live with pain and you don't need and you're not running and you don't feel pushed to escape and to numb only then only then are you free only then are you freebaseshues that the beginning of the Yeshua the salvation was when the Jewish people began to feel and could live with the bitterness. He writes in you have to chew it. When you chew that which is bitter and you bring out its sweetness. When you chew and you lean into the pain and you find meaning and purpose even in it, you find that which is sweet about it and he writes that is modless. We live in this world of moatas. We can have a very small and diminished and very narrow and very unsophisticated, immature, undeveloped perspective of life. And then sometimes we break through and we have what are called mo and the godlas. And the mo and the godlas is that capacity to look at the world and look at ourselves and look at our lives with a broadness and a perspective with a sophistication and with a maturity with a greatness. And very counterintuitively he writes how mor is the agent the source of this moin deglas of this capacity to have a perspective of of greatness. Victor Franco in his search for meaning writes he who has a why to live can bear with almost any how. If you have a why you can bear almost any how. When life throws at you something painful and uncomfortable and bitter, if you have a why and you can make meaning of it, then you can you can live for almost anyhow. How how can we overcome an October 7th? How do we bounce back from this year and a half? How do we endure and how do we continue while hostages are not yet home? How can we navigate whatever bitterness or struggle or challenge is in our own personal lives? The answer is not to escape it or run away from it. It will follow. It doesn't disappear. It won't go away. And it's not the answer to run or to numb or to sleep or to escape. That is to be a slave to live a pain-free life. That is to be enslaved to comfort and convenience, to the tyranny and to the oppression. to truly set ourselves free is the capacity to experience and chew on the pain and find the meaning and the purpose and the order because we are a people who know our why. We know why we are here and what we live for. We know the difference we're meant to make in this world. We're here to be to repair the world in Hashem's image. We're here to redeem a world from so much darkness and to be a source of its light. We're here to be role models on a mission. We know why. We know our why so we can endure almost anyh how when we know what we're living for. We can chew on that m can chew on that m there's a phenomenon today of toxic positivity. And with all the motivational speakers and they're wonderful and I enjoy them inspired by them too. There's some messaging about always be happy and always be smile and always be positive and everything's always amazing but that's not authentic and it's not real. And the people acting that way are often actors and they're trying to imitate something and live a standard that not only is not realistic, but it's unhealthy. It's unhealthy and it's dangerous. We actually have a tradition of feeling pain. We don't pretend we don't. We don't escape it or run away from it. We don't suffer from toxic positivity that everything's always amazing and perfect and fantastic and phenomenal. We make a but we make of we don't make on everything. One doesn't hear that a loved one passed away and say hashem is amazing. I'm just so glad I had them for the years that they were here. That's not realistic and it's not healthy and it's not who we are. We have a kashim. We have a tradition, a rich and a long tradition of how to live and embrace pain. How to embrace pain. We have a poss we're not allowed to harm ourselves in grieving or mourning a loss of a loved one because because we are children of Hashem and writes we tear a garment not our body. We tear what's temporary not what's permanent. We believe in immortality so we know we will be reunited with whom we lost. It's only temporary and so we don't react excessively and in the extreme but we do feel pain we embrace the pain writes in that in fact a mourner somebody who's sitting shiva someone who suffered loss who doesn't mourn and grieve is cruel it's borrowing from the language of the Rambam he says it's cruel to not be sad because one is not sad after loss what they are implying is that the loved one the one who's no longer here meant nothing. They made no difference. They're here. They're gone. I'm good. I'm good. But when a person feels grief, doesn't mean they have to wallow in pain. It doesn't mean it has to be excessive or extreme. Doesn't mean you have to be paralyzed or debilitated. But when a person at least recognizes and feels grief, what they're saying is this was someone who mattered. This was someone who meant something. And this loss, it hurts. And I chew on that pain. I chew on that pain because it gives meaning to the person who was here. It gives meaning to the life that they lived. So I chew on that pain because it meant something. It meant something. Adam Grant who's a great sociologist, economist, economist, he's a great author. He had a tweet once. He wrote, "Many people see grief as pain. They avoid it, suppress it, erase to process it so they can expel it from their lives." Here's a beautiful alternative. Grief is unexpressed love. Holding on to it is a way of staying close to the people we've lost. Let me read that again. Here's a beautiful alternative. Don't avoid it, suppress it, erase the process it, or expel it. Grief is unexpressed love. Holding on to it is a way of staying close to the people to the people that we've lost. To the people that we've lost. Hashem runs the world. He's in charge. She's in control. Everything is for a reason. Nothing is random. And that gives us comfort. But having the comfort and the knowledge that he's in charge and in control, that there's an immortality in eternity in a world we're not yet in doesn't mean doesn't create an expectation that we won't have pain while we're here. Medish tells us that cried and rejoiced on his way to the and the quotes in his pun this med and it's so powerful and so important because we all were taught and we all have the image of skipping and singing and dancing taking his grown son to slaughter him to say goodbye to him to kill him to go against everything he had taught and preached to the world and we're all given this image that au Aram who discovered and proliferated ethical monotheism. So Aram certainly had a skip in a step had a joy in his heart had a dance on his way to the aada right wrong says the medish Arainu oscillated between singing and dancing and then stopping and crying and then he'd sing and dance and then he'd stop and he'd cry because he was human. He was real. He was Adamongyan. He is the father of our people and he modeled for us what it means to be human and to be real is to fulfill the will of Hashem. To march and walk to the that's asked of us, but to also not do it and pretend like it's all happy and joyful and wonderful to try to suppress or escape or numb. That's unrealistic and it's unhealthy and it will backfire and it will destroy us and it will express itself in very unhealthy ways. But like a to cry and rejoice to live with the matzah and the mor at the same time to not try to pretend there is no suffik but to learn to embrace and live with the suffic non-Jewish a non-Jewish sage who said pain is inevitable but suffering is optional. Pain in life is inevitable. Pain in life is inevitable. To be alive is to know and to expect. Things are going to break down. They're going to start to hurt. They're going to need to be replaced. They don't come with a lifetime warranty. And if they do, that lifetime is not long enough. Your knees, your hips, your ankles, the things that need to be replaced. People encounter those in life. They react in one of two ways. Some understand that that was part of life. How lucky I am to be alive, that my parts now have outlived their warranty and they need to be replaced. and others say there's no God and woe is me and how can it be that I need to have knee replacement surgery? To be alive is to know and to expect. There'll be pain. There'll be pain from the loss of your knees and god forbid pain from the loss of people in your life. And whether it's illness or injury or whether it's growing old or whether it's challenges that are unexpected that life throws our way, pain, pain is inevitable. But suffering, suffering is a choice. Pain times resistance is suffering. Pain and presence is freedom. Is freedom. Tara Bra is a psychologist who's blended psychological principles with meditation practices. She has a book about this. And in her book, that's her formula that pain and resistance is suffering. When you try to resist and you try to pretend and there's a tension, you're fighting and you're trying to eliminate and purge that pain, that's suffering. But pain and presence, when you lean in or in the words, when you chew on the pain, then that's freedom. That capacity to live with it, to make sense of it, to give meaning to it, to be able to embrace it, to persevere and endure despite it, that is that is true freedom. That is true freedom. And that's what I think Pes is all about. That's what I think this time we're finding ourselves. This message is maybe more poignant than other times than other times. Chewing the marens not because it reduces the bitterness, but it gives it a presence. And pain times presence is freedom. And freedom is what we're trying to get. So when we live our life and we recognize that Hashem is in charge, he's in control. We're not random a chance. I don't have to worry. I don't have to be afraid. I am uncertain and I do have doubt. And we don't know what will be. But whatever will be will be for a reason. Whatever pain we'll encounter, whatever pain will be our purpose. Whatever pain will be part of our plan and our lives. It's inevitable. It's invariable. It's inescapable. Stop running away from it. It's at the seder. It's in the sandwich. And when we eat it, in order to be ya, you have to chew on it. Because real freedom is the capacity to live with pain. And if there's any country, any people, it's all of you who I'm in awe of and so deeply and boundlessly appreciative to. But really, it's all the Jewish people around the world who for a year and a half have been living with unbearable, unbearable pain. Every day right now, a ceasefire that seems to only benefit one side. In a ceasefire, each side is supposed to benefit, but only one side right now is benefiting. No more hostages are coming home. and only another side is able to regroup and that is unbearably painful. Every minute, every hour, each day that that continues is compounding that pain. There is so much pain of this last year and a half. So much freedom, so much redemption, so many miracles, but laced with and integrated with and wrapped in a sandwich with also so much pain. Real freedom is to learn to live the capacity to have the tension between the two, to not have an expectation to be separate and apart. Real freedom is not a need to escape or numb or have a false expectation, but to be able to chew on that pain with a sense of purpose, a people and pes is the ultimate reminder of our of our why. And when we remind ourselves of our why, why we are here, a relationship, that we are here, that he has assigned us, he has sent us all as agents and ambassadors to redeem and repair his world, that we can endure almost any almost anyhow of our lives, to recognize and to respect that pain is part of the process of pleasure and of freedom. that the mo only be a speck. That the mo be something insignificant. That the mo be something that we were yay and that we're done and that's behind us. In the future going forward, may we celebrate only the matzah of freedom, of liberty, and of the complete and speedy redemption. Thank you so much. [Applause]