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Rabbi Shlomo Landau
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good morning everybody
every hunt if we say viremam tanumi
kalasha and that bark who elevated us
from all lushen from all expression
and a number of years ago someone shared
me something so profound as a jewish
person as a yid we go through
experiences that are random tanumi
kalashan they're more elevated than any
expression you can't explain it as much
as you try
for example
not that long ago to walk our first
child down the chupa i can't i can't
describe that feeling
i can't write about it
and i think about mr sham one day when i
walk my child who's put us on this
journey down the hupa hashem
i i can't even begin to describe what
i'm sure those sentiments and emotions
will be
about 36 hours ago i came to this
shabbaton
i've never been involved with kesha navi
i didn't even heard of it actually
and it is indescribable what i've seen
over the last 36 hours
it is so more elevated and so much more
guy been and higher
than any words can describe to see
the incredible commitment and dedication
of parents to their children
people opening up to complete strangers
because maybe they can gnash a nugget
of inspiration of
something they could take home to their
house
of the unbelievable dedication of
mesiras nephesh from kidalia on every
other person that's involved here it's
very mumtanamic i can't describe it and
i know when i come back to lakewood
people are going to say where were you
for shabbos and i'll say kesha nation
i'll say what is that i'll be like i
can't describe it
i'm sorry i'll really try
that's not what we're going to talk
about today
we're going to talk about something that
i am not an expert about
and that i struggle with like everybody
else
i'm not a therapist
i was a rough for 20 years now i'm a
positive
but i will say that this is something
which is first and foremost in my my
mind and my wife's mind all the time
and that is building resilient kids
and especially let's call spade a spade
we're all in the same room here
definitely the thing that we're worried
about the most besides after our child
that's struggling
or maybe equally is the rest of the
children in our family
i was speaking to rebecca landau and
that's not my wife she's the wife of
rabbi lando from varetsky by the way
friday night there were a lot of people
the session because they thought rabbi
lando from veretsky was speaking so i
know i was i was like to get to i'm
going to call him after shabbos and say
rabbi landa i just want to give you yes
i spoke to his wife last week and she
she runs a support group by the way
fantasia she runs a support group from
others of struggling children she's a
torski so she's she's got a lot going on
for her and she said to me that the
topic that whenever she asks the women
what should we bring a speaker about and
about everyone unanimously says the same
thing the rest of the kids the rest of
the kids
so i'd like to take mamish a few minutes
to talk about building resilience in
children just to demonstrate how inept i
am at this so my wife my wife and myself
we ran a cure of community for two
decades
and there was a family in our community
that had three children
that were beyond rambunctious
virai mam tano mikhail there's no way to
describe what their children were like
and they were secular and every time
that they would come to makhav we had a
fellow who worked together with me and
care of every time that they would come
to his house he would they would see how
these children sit through the whole
sudah they share divreitard they sing
smears they're respectful they say they
bench together and they're like this is
crazy there are people in the world who
have children that are misuddar they
have children that are functional
respective respectful
if this is what yiddish i could bring we
want to know more about it
and eventually they became from and
they're tremendous beautiful benetika
family today
but what happened was that their
children
still were the same rambunctious
verimontanum colossian children
and they felt like they did something
wrong
and then they came to us for a shabbos
meal and they realized you could be from
and still have kids that are off the
charts
so i'm not an expert
but i want to share just a few nuggets
what the of what the research shows
about resilient children and we know the
research just supports what clients
throw in the tire have shown us for
thousands of years
and just just to segue in or tiptoe into
what i want to talk about
less than a year ago
i'm going to say in the last five years
i got a phone call from a premier
rabbitson
if i said her name i think almost
everyone here would know who this
robinson is and she said i'm arranging a
getaway for post-high school girls
and i'd like you to come and speak i
said i'm flattered
i could talk to my agent i didn't say
that um
i said what do you want me to talk about
she said i want you to talk about one
word
hashem
no
torah
no
want you to talk about resilience she
said i interact with hundreds maybe
thousands of post-high school girls
post-high school girls
and as long as the narrative follows the
way they crafted their life
they're okay
you see what's going to happen is
they're going to go to high school
they're going to get into high school
they're going to go to high school
they're going to get into their seminary
of choice they're going to come back and
take courses at tti and pqr and all
those different things
they're going to get a shidduch because
of course why not they're going to get
married have great shell and bias have
wonderful children and everything's
going to be roses it's going to be a
bowl of peaches
and then all of a sudden
something doesn't fit the narrative
they don't get into the seminary and by
the way rejection is so painful
they get into the seminary but they
can't keep up
they come back and they can't find the
job
no shidduchim are being read
or everything goes well and they get
married and all of a sudden
what do you mean i thought i was going
to marry prince charming and life would
be ever we'd live happily ever after and
they're struggling in sean baez
or then the rebunging throws a curveball
and they have a child with all kinds of
needs that they never expected
and they literally said this top rabbits
and they crumble
they implode they have no inner strength
and no spiritual muscle
please i beg you she said if you could
say anything about resilience something
that would make them that will build
them up
please do that
now i i didn't know i'm not an expert on
resilience i speak a lot and try to be
mikhasic people and share what's
meaningful to me but i didn't know
anything about resilience i'll tell what
i talked about soon i just need to tell
you what happened after i spoke i spoke
for an hour i never speak for an hour no
one in today's dark could listen to
anything for an hour
our kids could music that's it by the
way the average american teenager
listens to eight
hours of music a day not average from
kid average secular american teen eight
hours of music rebounding shalom that
takes your brain and turns it into hash
browns
anyways
i spoke for an hour because she asked me
please speak for an hour they're a
captive audience they're at a retreat
they're not going anywhere and i spoke
and i listened for an hour which was
amazing
then she says can you take questions and
answers i'm like
no more coaches
we did questions and answers for almost
an hour and then i said i have to leave
and then as i walked out there was a
line of girls waiting to speak to me
i'm not saying this classic
to toot my own horn or to flex as my
students would say i'm just saying this
to show how people crave resilience
and then a young lady approached me on
the way out
this is where i'm going with this
and she said to me
can i talk to you privately for two
minutes i said i don't have an office
here and i don't talk to people
privately but if you'd like we could go
into a corner in the lobby and i'll tell
the rest of the girls please stay back
how can i help you
now just for brevity's sake i want to
describe to you what the girl looked
like
okay i wasn't ma iron
but she was
sanua rabbitson edelknadel
mamish that's who she was
and she says to me
and she exhales
and she looks at me and she says to me
i've never told this to anyone
i'm starting shidduchim in a few months
my father and mother are hush of a
people
special mabitara
i'm going to be read the best
brochurement brisk because i'm the best
girl
she said i want you to know something
it's all a show
i am a hollow shell
an edel canada hollow shell
there's no paneemius whatsoever i have
no relationship with rabbi shalom
tara and mitzvahs are not meaningful to
me i'm a straight a student i crushed
all those ramban reports
i could read a parhadit
but there's zero inside of me and i'm
gonna go out with some guy
and i'm gonna marry him because that's
what everyone says i should do
and i'm marrying a fellow and it's a
sham and a lie
what should i do
and i realized the and said speak about
resilience
she didn't need a speech about
resilience she needed to fill the shell
and it was hollow and empty
and as parents
that's our kadash
we need to fill a paneemius
in our children
and i want to share four things that the
research shows
that what how do we fill our nemeus how
do we fill the inner part of our child
so the shell
the edo canada on the external
has an edo canada inside
how do we do that
i'm going to share just the simple
research that's out there
and show you how profound and beautiful
it is because it's literally
a symmetrical walk with with with
husqva for so many years and so many
generations
the first thing that the research shows
what i'm quoting now is you can go out
there it's all it's all available i
happen to be quoting from
harvard that's okay but harvard is like
high described harvard people never
heard of harvard it's like brisk in the
gosha world
that's how i describe by the way to all
the secular jews they're like where'd
you go to sheep i said i went to the
harvard of yeshivas really right
huh he can't get into harvard either the
tuition is different
the first and foremost recipe nakuda for
raising resilient children the research
shows
is a healthy
relationship
with one adult
one adult
that adult could be a parent hopefully
both parents
matteo manoy
a rebbe
a grandparent
even an older sibling
one of the ways the first and foremost
way is to work on making sure that our
child has a healthy
open communicative relationship with a
with an adult
if you as a parent can't be that person
rahman al-islam there are people like
that
find somebody else
now rabbi so we all know this it's so
easy to say our kids need to have
healthy adult relationships
but a healthy adult relationship is very
hard to form with a child
it's a lot of love
it's a lot of listening
it's a lot of time
it's energy it's effort
i want to say something
if you don't prepare
for your shabba suda
i don't mean preparing the food
the revisions and the ladies do an
amazing job with that
but if we don't prepare for our shabbos
then we missed out on recipe number one
because so much happens at the shabba
suda by the way your children know if
you put an effort into preparing
something to save your job
they know they're so good at telling
they know if during kabbalah shabbos you
are flipping through the art scroll
handout and rabbi hisliker who's here
with us the shabbos he put together a
cute story and you read it because your
kid read it also drink of all shops so i
shouldn't do you were reading during
chicago
that's a little tiny nugget of something
we could do
to build that relationship quality time
everyone talks about time all these
things but quality relationship is not
something crazy
it's trying to take each of our children
and our lives are so busy we're pulled
in so many different directions
and create
a safe exclusive space just for that
child
i'm also a rebbe but i'm totally fine
when a kid doesn't come to yeshiva one
day
because his parent decided to take the
morning off with the child took them out
for breakfast went for a walk with them
played a game with them whatever they
did this is building resilience the
problem is we are pulled in so many
different directions financially we're
trying to support our mishpaches we're
trying to fuel our own rochnias work on
our shalom bias be involved in simcha's
kanai nahara if you're anything like me
every single day in our mailbox there
are multiple simcha invitations and we
want to go to every single one of them
that means we're not we're not home
every single night
of the week and the year
right now i'm in a very difficult
situation whereby i'm getting a lot of
speaking opportunities but like
you can't go away for shabbos all the
time shabbos is the most important day
of the whole week
so we need to make a plan with our
spouse or ourselves
of how we can have a real goal to
attaining a good adult relationship with
our child they crave it so badly
and sadly everyone said this a thousand
times over shabbos when they don't have
it with us or a functional healthy
person they'll find it with somebody
else and that could be so
counterproductive so we we must need to
carve out time i don't know when you do
this or we do is where we turn off our
phone by the way don't craft the plan on
your phone
i'm sure there's an app for building
resilient children app
check
child has a good adult relationship
build time to think about it to reflect
about it what am i doing to invest in
each of my children
can i know how the on benched us with
nine children
none of my children are even a drop the
same
each one of them has their own
personality each one has their own
intellectual capability each one has
their own emotional vulnerabilities
and you mummy have to take time to do
heiser
they're so important i had a
conversation with someone that was so
heartbreaking there's a very affluent
fellow and he never stops working and i
said to him why do you work so he says
i'm doing it for my children
so how often do you spend time at your
children
a rabbi got a phone call
he couldn't answer that question
he's doing it for his children what do
you mean you're ignoring your children
in the process you're not building any
resilience whatsoever
we need to take time to craft
a plan with every child and think about
it you're a parrot of multiple of many
children you know how much time and
effort that takes let's call a spade a
spade it's by far the most challenging
task we ever got in our lives
which is raising our children resilient
and making them healthy
i mean natara says it it's not it's not
it's it's it's our greatest
responsibility yo solomon told me one
time
i went to speak to him about expanding
our mishpacha
i'll be honest i cannot hurt we had a
whole house full of kids
and myself and my wife were having a
discussion you know do we expand the
mush bacha sometimes i think when people
tell my wife i may have asked him she
thinks children
so
romanticize solomon shared with me she's
not here right hashem so anyways
yo salmon shares to me and he said if we
would know on a spiritual level api
what the incredibles
of bringing in shama into this world is
we would just want to fill our houses
with children and children and children
but at the same time we also have to
realize
what it takes to nurture that
and we have to be honest with ourselves
hashem wherever you are right now and
whatever your plans are you need to have
a plan
that's point number one
and point number two is something called
self
efficacy
if anyone here is a therapist or one you
know learned about this there's a big
word self-efficacy it's fine you'd have
to know what the word efficacy means
i'll tell you and you shiva should
determine what efficacy means
but it means giving your child
opportunities
to build inner muscle
you know children all the time struggle
and all the time
they have necessity on us even a small
child we think about that when our first
when our kid was two or three years old
and they had a bag of chips you know a
snack bag
whoever invented that by the way should
be shot all my kids ever want is snack
bags it's crazy
what do you want for breakfast this
morning i'll have barbecue potato chips
it's a vegetable my son i'll be honest i
have one kid who's unbelievably creative
and so anyways this week i come like
it's like 10 o'clock at night and he's
eight he's still up he's eating supper
because he'd eat supper before
he's having a salad
come tell you what's in the salad potato
chips
corn chips and pretzels he says toddy
there's two vegetables and one starch
self-efficacy means creating
opportunities for our child
to win
remember when our child was like two or
three years old and they
they shared that snack bag with another
kid with another kid in the family what
did we do
we made a kiddush like the whole family
hooray we're so proud of you because we
hopped up for your for the first time
maybe in that kid's life he realized i
could eat the rest of myself
or i could give it to somebody else and
you know giving it to somebody else
maybe that's a good thing and he made a
conscious decision
and by the way when you applaud it
oh my gosh it's amazing
i want to share a moment beautiful
personal moment of self-efficacy it's
one of my proudest moments as a parent
there's many moments i'm not proud of
it's so much easier to talk about the
proud moments we went to bar park for
purim
for those of you that were in bar park
on param it's so beautiful it's so
amazing we had our own kahila's purim
suda then my wife drove me
i didn't drive anyone
to the purim suit and we came to purim
as the sun was setting you know
matsupuram
my schwager calls that the time when you
coast i don't know what that means but
you coast
and it was beautiful and we were still
we got we still got some of this somehow
we still got some of the energy and we
still got the opportunity for the many
knocks at the doors from a ton of young
men everything else in between
10 o'clock at night i sobered up
i get drunk on porn i'm sorry i do
whatever i'd sobered up
and we're putting away tables and chairs
and stuff like that knock at the door
and there's a man standing there and
he's clearly
a real nebucha i'll be honest
and he says tsudaka and i reach into my
pocket now before purim i went to the
bank and i got a roll of ones and some
other bills because i knew a whole
perimeter people come over you want to
give them out
i had no money left
i didn't have any money and it didn't
have this is before the credit card
machines they only take 3.5 before that
my son is there he must have been four
maybe five
and he looks at me and says todd you
don't have any money
i said i don't have any money
so what are we going to do
because i don't know
he reaches into his pocket sorry if i
get choked up
and he takes out his wallet i didn't
know he had his wallet on
ladies and gentlemen my four-year-old or
five-year-old
had five dollars
that was all he ever had in his life
he got four dollars for his fourth
birthday and one dollar of purim gout
where i'm from they don't give porn
guilt
and he had five dollars and he says to
me tatty do you think he really needs it
he said he really needs it
look at him
and he reaches into his pocket
and he takes out all
five dollars
and he gives it to the man
no don't clap for okay
and
i remember just picking my son up
and smothering him with kisses
and hugs and telling him that it was
like my perhaps my proudest moment as a
father and he's like number six
and rabbi ladies and gentlemen my son
just turned 15
and he still talks about that moment
because that was a moment of
self-efficacy
a moment of greatness zion and he
crushed it
and i feel in shamayim that matzah purim
at that moment it was such an ace rutzen
when the additional person did what
hashem does and that's just give for no
other reason
we need to give our children
opportunities a lot of parents i think
would have said no no no it's fine don't
worry about it he just collected ten
thousand dollars today it's okay
no let your child figure it out
help them identify
help them identify the moment than akura
and then congratulate them like you
never did before when they're successful
and by the way if you're a smart parent
and you're a smart human being you can
even craft the the opportunities for
children to prove themselves give them a
challenge
there's nothing more rewarding in the
world than the feeling of being
successful
there's a lot of artificial knockoffs
for that but real success
and work through success that's amazing
so number two number one right we said
was a healthy nurturing adult
relationship and number two is giving
our children opportunities
to decide and to shine
and again these all take
but if we don't think about them we'll
never ever get there
maybe if we're lucky our child will make
the right decision and then we'll be
able to congratulate them if we realize
if we realize
and by the way
success
doesn't mean the way the world defines
success right what's success
scholastically you got an a
as a rebbe this tore me apart i'm
teaching for 20 years high school and
this tears me apart all the time where i
have a boy in the class who gets 83 on a
test and he studied for three days for
that gemara test
and of a kid in the class who gets 100
that didn't even study he doesn't even
listen
and this kid gets an a
and he gets a b
it's great because i'm not teaching in
the school anymore but
i'm gonna tell you the truth i stopped
grading tests
the kids would be like
the kids would be like rebbe when are we
gonna get the test back
and i'll be like when you're a senior
citizen
that's when you're going to get it back
because it's not about to me it's if
you're functioning in this class and
you're doing well and you're putting in
the effort and you're feeling the
success oh
that's who i want
and i want every single kid in the class
to feel to taste that success
so i'll ask a simple softball question
and a kid will give a response and we'll
put him up on a path did everyone hear
what he just said
yeah oneplus one is two
it does make a difference but that's his
definition of success and you know what
next time when i ask a question
slowly the hand will go up because he
was successful that's how you build
self-efficacy
the opportunity to put yourself out and
to be successful
we need to craft that narrative
we need to follow it that's number two
i want to skip to number four and if we
have time to come back to number three
because number four was so inspiring
the api course or the kai for him who
are part of this initiative at harvard
they aren't all
that speaks about building emotional
intelligence in our children
put this at the end
but listen this is mind-boggling you
know what the fourth nakuda for building
resilience in your children is
it's faith
hope
and traditions
is that not crazy in a world where
religion is shunt and everything that's
holy is profane
they couldn't control themselves from
putting number four obviously
the importance of resilience being faith
being hope
and traditions
and this is really what i want to talk
about it's about creating a real
paneemia for our children
because i think that
there's so many people that observe
yiddish kite
but much fewer people live yet
there's so many people that go through
the routine they dive in they shuckle
they keep taran it's just they buy a
beautiful lulula vanessa
but how many people have a paninis in
each of those mitzvahs
and no one's to blame but at least
myself i look back to my career i
learned brisk and i learned ponovitch
and a bunch of these yeshivas
and we always focused on the what
huh
gemara gumar is what it's what
and i'm telling you i could take apart
hitler mitzvah if it's a
misa mitzvah if it's a standalone i
could tell you the briskarov and then
all those different things but i'm going
to tell you the truth i never cropped
what hitler mitzvah is
i'm not talking about what it is
but what it is
why am i spending on this
well anyways i have a budget that's so
limited because can i not have to pay
tuition for nine children
oh and therapy bills whatever that's
nothing
actually it's more
and i'll say what i said on friday
because i believe in this so strongly
they just raised 25 million dollars
trying to raise 25 million to give
morris um raises and they should because
they deserve it we need to raise 25
million dollars to create a fund for us
parents so we could pay our therapists
and go on vacations and give our
children what they need so if anyone
here wants to give 25 million dollars
right now stand up
you were here when it happened
let's keep dreaming
build some resilience
but i think this is so important we need
to be proactive when it comes to giving
our children yiddish
i just got a text message this morning
we had a little get-together upstairs
for some other abundant therapists i got
a text message from someone in our
community and he says i know i should
have come to the shabbaton
that wasn't the right week
okay
i i respect that
please can you make some time to talk to
my two sons he has two children that are
struggling they have emunah questions
now we all know often that that's just
the result of all the other emotional
stuff that's going on it comes
afterwards
but do our children have a forum where
they're comfortable asking
someone told me the shabbos i'm amish i
was crying away inside on the outside i
was empathizing but i was moms crying
inside
their son got ex got suspended from his
from his messifta high school
because he asked his rebbe a very strong
hush guffa question
and the rebbe said to his credit can we
talk about it after class
and he said why
why why can't we talk about it now
and the rebbe said to him
i told you i don't want to talk about it
now and he continued to act up so they
suspended him
rabbi islam this was an ashama crying
for meaning
he just wanted to know
and they shut him down and they
suspended him and then you wonder why
that night he smoked up
because he didn't get a high from where
he should get the hive from
imams just tore me apart
someone else shared with me the shabbos
that their son finally made it to shul
mazel tub we should we should we should
make shakhiana with shemo malchus and
this kid has a beautiful voice and the
gabba who should be blessed for many
years asked him to dab him for the ahmed
tell me how many shows a kleistral that
would happen in
but he wasn't wearing a hat
so the rav came over to him and said you
have to put a talus over your head
which was really hard because there's a
lot of things between his head and the
towels a huge mop you know the new
that's like a new fab with a lot of kids
i always feel we should put a handle on
top and just
and he said no i'm not comfortable and
then the rough came over and did it
again
four times
and i just said you know i don't want to
do this
and we lost an opportunity
for a kid to shine you know how good it
feels to be a sibor especially if you
have a good voice
you know what resilience that builds
when you finally come to shul and they
recognize you
it's so special
and what happens
he gets crushed
the word resilience totally is deleted
from this kid's world
but as parents
at least our home hopefully is a safe
place and hopefully our home is a safe
place in yiddish night i'm not talking
about for the struggling child that's a
totally different discussion for the
rest of our children
do we really feel ashrae no matter how
awesome it is to be a yidd let's let's
ask ourselves this question when we look
in the mirror are we like wow i'm so
happy that this is who i am
because if that's how we feel then our
children will feel it
i was sitting by hassan a week and a
half ago
and hashem put a guy next to me who is a
russian sifta and a very crush of a
messifta
and we got into the most
bizarre conversation by the way i shared
with him the story about this girl who
was hollow biffin
i wanted to see what would do he was i
was instigating
and he says you think that's bad
i said
yeah
i'm going to tell you what that is
so what is this
my daughter came home from shabbaton i'm
not saying this i'm not making kaiser
here telling you the story my daughter
came up from the shabbaton
and the speaker said that he spoke in a
different chapter
and he asked the girls if they had the
opportunity to be born a guy how many of
them would want to be born again
70 said they'd rather be a
and i was scared to ask my daughter how
about your summit you're you're busy
that's what he said
ladies and gentlemen we have a problem
forget about resilience in life
if the gayam understand that what gives
resilience to our children is faith hope
and traditions
we need to build such a beautiful
narrative of yiddishkeit
our children need to see that we love
shabbos
that we value it's so precious to us
that we learn every day our children
know that we take time to learn
we don't celebrate
correct 100
100 it's so interesting i had a
conversation with someone a bunch of
years ago he told me he hates gaddain
biographies
this is
the kind of person that one day they'll
write a biography about him
so why
he said because a child reads that and
they're like i can never be a god though
it is so beyond me
they should have books
about regular people
with regular struggles there is a genre
of those books throw them out but there
is about regular people
with regular struggles
who are masliyah
and who are successful
and like you're saying
a kid has a good dove davening they
should feel good about it
you have a good davening tell your child
i felt hashem in my life today
you hear a good tire it should suffuse
you with simcha
share it
come home and the kid sees your happy
why i had such an amazing seder with my
with my coverage today
and then when we take you to skype and
we practice yiddish guide and we cherish
it in times of challenge
that's even more amazing to our children
when our children know that we have a
crazy schedule and we come home and we
have no kayak and we still open up the
safer and learn you know what that does
to them
i have a family member who shall remain
unnamed who committed when he got when
he got married he was a boy who
struggled he could have been he could
have been part of this uh initiative
or his parents could have
and he he committed to learning a half
hour every single day
ralph heimstein's
rush of shiva was very big into this and
he wouldn't be messi condition unless
you committed to learning a half hour
day
i'm telling you this guy is a very busy
businessman
and sometimes his day finishes at one
o'clock in the morning
or he's away at a semicolon and everyone
else is sitting and schmoozing and this
guy's at his safer
it's no wonder that his
misifter today is not stamina learner
he sees me sees me seriousness for for
limited time
but the mysterious nephes doesn't have
to just be in terms of learning or
davening it's just a perspective
a yantef comes there should be
excitement in the home not stress i know
easier said than done forget about pesa
we'll talk about everything else
okay
come on let's call a spade a spade i
look back in the last 12 months i think
the highest moment in my entire family
was the seder
it was the seder
i tell you something beautiful which is
not my own but i started doing it about
a decade ago and it's transformative my
seder is a totally different seder
did i
i don't now my kids don't let me do it
but when they were younger i did this
practically anyone know what a huddle is
and before you have a football game the
team gets around everyone puts their
arms around one another
yeah and they're like i didn't do the
wrong part it's not me
but i went into huddle with my children
and i said to them
for three thousand three hundred and
thirty some years
our family has not missed the seder
and we have a family tree up to david
hamilton i know we're okay
why
because you see the person that ran the
seder
made sure
that the children understood how
important the sailor is
and one day
may have asked him not kids but ears
you're going to lead a seder and tonight
you really have to listen because you're
such a strong link
so tonight's such an important night
ask
answer
discuss
it's your night and it's the night for
the opportunity for me to share with you
let's make this the most amazing night
of the year
and you know what children understand
okay if you ask a good question my
family i have a box of 500 spoons of
plastic spoons and you get a spoon
by the way my kids want four for
manustrano alone and they could cash
those in on pesach for different things
he used to be able to cash it and this
is hard for me to say for
toys r us
now it's amazon or whatever all the
other types of things down but they have
a cat every one of those spoons has a
cash value
you cannot imagine the brilliant
questions that my kids ask
and the totally crazy ones
tati how can you put that coming in the
left side of yours of your of your
kitten not in the right side of your
kettle because shema yeah the kind of
vessel no there's no reason because i'm
more comfortable i don't know put it by
my heart
but we need to lay evenings like the
seder are what carry our children
and they know they know how
we worked so hard my wife works so hard
for pesach but when it comes and we sit
around and the table is beautiful
i know this sounds like a magical crazy
world but we were we were able to craft
that one night a year
the other 353 years days of the year has
total chaos
but a kid remembers that and they
remember it with
and especially the struggling kid by the
way they go back to that night
my son who was struggling all the years
the seder to him was a climax or a high
point and another family a member of
mine that was at risk before it was
popular
the seder is
his favorite night of the year he sings
louder and stronger than everybody else
and he's an adult and it's weird
for some reason the seder
creates incredible power to him
and particularly when your seder is
multi-generational i didn't that's not
part of this research but why i want you
to know something the children have a
strong connection to where they come
from are incredibly resilient it's one
of the most brilliant and beautiful
concepts that's been discovered but we
know this when your child knows where
you come from
and where you come from could be a
parent a grandparent it could be a
mushroom doesn't make a difference
that's very powerful
so i don't think i said one quidditch
since i started speaking we all know
every single thing that i said
le basi el kazakh
we need to take time out of our crazy
schedules
and we need to give our children a
healthy adult relationship
and sometimes in life we have to divide
and conquer
you'll take three
i'll take yehuda
and we'll both try to take so-and-so
maybe
we need to craft those those real
relationships we know we know in our
hearts that that's the most powerful and
precious thing that we have
questions just what we're going to do
with it
and you know what it's the saddest thing
when we look in the rear view mirror of
the last 12 months or two or three years
of all the missed opportunities
this is so precious and so important to
us and yet we don't do it
we need to be hazardous and we also need
to give our children up we can't afford
we can't spoon feed them life let them
fail that's part of efficacy
let them be matzliak and celebrate it
hold their hand when they fail
cry with them empathize that also builds
inner muscle
life is not about successes
the way the way you ruin your child is
to constantly be there you know
constantly help your child just be
successful be successful be successful
let them fall
like someone said yesterday
rabbit young shabbat sadiq is the tsarik
he said sadiq when he's not following
his exotic when he's come
and then we also have to focus uh so
hard
on building a beautiful yiddish kite
i'll say something that's tragic on one
hand and beautiful on the other hand
i was going through a tremendous void
in maharbata satara when i pivoted about
two months ago three months ago we moved
to lakewood and i was a rebbe for 20
years in high school and a rub of a
community we walked away from everything
because it wasn't working out for our
little kids
that's how life is you're only as happy
as your most unhappy child we got our
das tyra
we made our decisions and we embraced it
but i'm going to be honest with you i
teach on torah anytime and i speak and i
lecture but that doesn't give me the
choice of teaching a classroom for those
of you that are teachers there is
nothing more amazing than a successful
lesson and there is nothing more hurtful
than what it doesn't succeed you need to
have a lot of successful ones and then
you could have a few bad days i was
really hurting
and i decided i'm going to commit
suicide
it's a scary word i don't mean that way
i'm going to take i'm going to take a
12th grade job
in the afternoons in a messified
lakewood
okay yeah i shouldn't use the word
suicide
i'm gonna do something scary
and i took a job it's in english
teaching english now i told them i don't
know how to teach english i'm gonna be
honest with you i don't know english i
can't even teach history
i'm going to teach hashgaffa you can
write on the transcript whatever you
want jewish philosophy jewish thought it
doesn't make a difference the psychology
of spirituality i don't care what you
write doesn't make a difference to me
because it says they do get diplomas
but i teach hashgraph
and i come into the classroom each time
that i speak that i speak and by the way
this is i love these kids i love
everyone ava's nephew 27
tremendously active energetic kids i
come into the classroom which is a
little bit smaller than this
my first time because i'm the new
teacher so they got to give me a run for
my money and there's party lights in the
entire classroom and the lights are off
and there's a kid on a guitar and a kid
on the piano and they're
they're having a nice little kumzis
let's see let's see what the rebbe is
going to do
so i'm not the kind of guy to like say
hey give me the guitar let's do this
it's not me i just stood in front of the
room and i watched
until it became so awkward and
uncomfortable and everyone stopped
talking and someone turned off the light
those strange lights and someone turned
on the regular lights and one kid just
kept on talking nobody turns to my
system i'm not going to use the words
let's see if this guy could last more
than two minutes
and then it was quiet
i don't know how many minutes later
probably not so long just felt long
and i just began and i said
david cohen was 37 years old
he lived on the upper west side with his
wife zahava
they had a beautiful family
picture-perfect family
and he sat down one night to talk to his
wife about bar mitzvah plans for their
oldest son shimon
and i finished that story about a half
hour later
and i drove home the message
and 40 minutes later the class of quiet
class by the way
came over and each kid introduced
himself and said that was really
interesting
and thus began one of the most
interesting journeys i've ever had
because i come to the class twice a week
for 45 minutes
and i just
talk about the things that matter
like why we dropping
and what does it mean to have a
relationship with hashem
and i shared with one of them one of the
most amazing things which none of the
kids in the class ever heard because you
see to most kids there's a division
there's the star kids and there's the
non-star kids
and i just changed their perspective and
said there's the star kids and the other
star kids so you have the guys learning
the whole day but you have the other guy
that david one part of chemin estrella
with kavanaugh today
that stark to me
or he learned and to say that he doesn't
usually learn a little bit that stark to
me
and that life isn't black and white and
that it's a series it's not all or
nothing
and all of a sudden the craziest thing
happened
my class was 40 minutes a half hour
later everyone's still sitting and
schmoozing and talking about things in
life that matter
and my goal with this class is just to
build up anemias
and each week we talk about something
else
to last week a kid asked could we talk
about elim habba
and i'm about shema was never there but
i could share with you what i know
the closest i ever got is shabbos may no
i'm happy my name is sarah
shabas we talk about chambers you think
any kids in 12th grade know what shmir
shabbos really means this knows a lot of
don'ts
you know how many kids never heard of
the word neshama yasera
any kids never heard of the word neshama
ladies and gentlemen i'm saying this and
it's cynical and it's true but it's not
cynicism
the most precious thing that we have is
how many people think about that how
often do we talk to our children about
it
i've been speaking a lot for high
schools
over the last bunch of years i love
telling them when you turn around for
boy
the banished guy rights and the arizo
you get your first dose of nisham yes
whether you do it in your by your couch
in your living room or in shul
imagine if every little kid who was
fourteen fifteen ten or eleven or twelve
by by hal would take a minute and say
hashem is giving me an extra added dose
of him
for the next 26 hours
it's really powerful i you know how i
know it's powerful
because i started doing it and it
transforms my shabbos
you know how powerful it is
i share this with my class i'm telling
you it's transformation i said before
you could take three steps back this
month
take three seconds
and think to yourself
i'm about to talk
to the only
being
in creation that could actually make
things happen in a real way
and i don't i know i don't deserve it
but he wants to hear what i have to say
three seconds
it transforms your shminasari once a day
it transforms your monastery but no
one's talking to the children about this
at all they're just penalizing them how
come you came late the chakras
why wouldn't i come like the chakras i
hate davening i don't even know what i'm
doing
no one ever told me i should talk to
hashem
so if we can't create a penis
and ladies and gentlemen i'll conclude
this guy tell me have to finish
if we can't create resiliency
in the children who barack hashem are
what we would call mainstream
then when we get the biggest sun we've
ever had in our life and a child that's
home who's not being sharmishandis who's
using terrible words who has no derek
but has the iphone
and has the car
and has the vacation
why would our children want to be any
different
so sometimes we have perceptive ones
that realize it's all sham and it's
artificial but not every child's like
that
so we need to build in the rest of our
children such a resiliency emotional
rookney's
that whatever that person has
doesn't rate
we all know that even children
understand what's real and genuine and
meaningful
versus what's just a knockoff
and if somehow we're able to create
a space in each child where they cherish
the relationship with us and there's
nothing that's stronger than that
and they cherish their relationship with
their abundant shalom and there's
nothing stronger than that
and they cherish their relationship with
another youtube person which i didn't
even get to talking about that
by the way one of the most powerful
things we could do for our children is
get them involved in haaset
it's an automatic wind
it feels so amazing
and i'll conclude with a marshall i use
thousands of times i wish i could share
like everything else we only have like
one minute left i always tell the
students like this or the children
imagine for a moment that you have a
terrible basement
and it's cluttered beyond
and your mother comes to you and she
says to you
shafel i can't even get into that
basement and i don't have the time or
the energy you're such a good organizer
that's your strength and you know it is
can you clean the basement i know sunday
morning you have nothing on the schedule
it'll take you two and a half hours and
you can work your magic i'm asking you
for a favorite the whole mishpakha will
be enriched by it
i'm not saying this is the right way to
ask i'm just saying you do that
and there's a hesitancy
you know what i'll sweeten the deal
you know that new ice cream coffee shop
that just opened down the block
i heard that they have like 11
frappulacino it has two and a half
thousand calories
and lactose intolerancy and all kinds of
great stuff
but if you clean the basement i'll buy
you one of those i'll give you the money
you can go there and buy it
all right mom now you're talking my
language
i wanted one of those frappula
dappuccinos
by the way this is just my own little uh
little thing okay i'm finishing
i think that the tadas was actually iced
coffees let's go right there so
so
she cleans it two and a half hours later
it's beautiful
she comes out and she walks to the
frappula cappuccino store
and she's about to put her hand on the
door to open it when she hears a
conversation
it's a mother and a child and the child
says
mom
could i buy ice cream just just ice
cream comb
the mother says ever since daddy left us
it's been so hard we just need the money
for rent then for everything else i'm
sorry schaeffler but my i haven't had
ice cream in like a year i know one day
i'm going to buy you a whole container
but for now
i can't
alison you're thinking you're like
whoa i have 11 dollars in my pocket so
you walk over to my child they're like
can you wait one second you turn to
child what kind of ice cream do you like
he goes vanilla with sprinkles and they
think to mother if the child has that
ice cream and a half a year what was the
last time the mother had what do you
like of course coffee
could you wait here for 60 seconds i'm
telling you i'm gonna make it worth your
while okay
you run into the store you say this is
an emergency it's
i need a cone with sprinkles and vanilla
i need a coffee one
and you bring it outside
you give the child
and you give the mother
the child says
is that hashem
no but it's his child
and you give them the ice cream
and you walk around and you walk back
and you saunter home and you never had
the ice cream and you come home and your
wife and your mother says sheila how was
the frappula dappuccino as good as the
azadas
i didn't have it why
you say the story
i want to ask you a simple question
do you think the child had more no i'm
not giving it not eating it or eating it
it's push it
because when they eat the
frappulapuccino the lactose intolerancy
sets in halfway through the sugar rush
starts killing you etc etc you walk out
of the store feeling worse than when you
came in
when you gave to somebody else you keep
coming back to that this is a primitive
example of what giving teaching a child
giving of what teaching them ruthless of
what giving them love does it trains a
child to appreciate that builds
resiliency my most profound and deepest
brag is that each and every one of us
should be able to create that resiliency
in the rest of amarsha and the other 80
seventy percent and that we should have
infinite nachas from all of our children
i feel that the word kesha nafshi is
prophetic because kesha now she's
supposed to be about you and your child
that's what it was crafted for i feel
after 36 hours that i feel
with every single person of the 900
people that were here the shabbos
because we're all on a special journey
we all appreciate so many things in life
that maybe we've never appreciated
before and we all dive in our hearts out
for our children hashem should just
listen to those prayers he should listen
to those fearless and the kashanashi
that we feel should continue to endure
amit hashem they should give nachas to
each and every one of us
beyond our most wildest dreams thank you
for listening
[Applause]