Rabbi Steven Burg at 9th Annual Project Inspire Convention

you know we spent a lot of time this shop is talking about coming together and in fact it's not just project inspire whenever we get together as Jews we talk about Octus if only we could have office if only we could come together we would be so strong and it's interesting as you look in partials Noah the story of Noah that we all know which is quite famous the world was in terrible shape and the almighty came to Noah and said I'll save you and your family and he builds an ark but there's another story that happens in that parsha which is not quite as famous and that is the Tower of Babel mcdowell boville and the story is as you know they built a great tower to attack God and it didn't work out God spread them all over changing different languages and that rebellion was put down quite easily but what's interesting is as you look at the verses that you look at the sukham there you find it talks about that there was such great Octus there was such great coming together of all the people and the question we have to ask is if everyone came together and they were unified there was unity in the world how did it lead to such a terrible disastrous end and I've mentioned this on my travels quite frequently in the summer months I spend my wife runs Cantina for girls 500 girls sleepaway camp and I usually come up on weekends and I catch up on a lot of my reading from my travels and I order two books last summer and as one of my sons pointed out that as a result of ordering those books we are all probably on an NSA watch list and I'll explain why the first book was called the communist manifesto by Karl Marx and the second book was a book called my cough by Adolf Hitler and the reason I bought these books have wanted to read them because so many people have spoken about these books but very few people have read though and in fact there are no two other books in history that have been responsible for more deaths tens of millions of people around the world many many of our Jewish brothers and sisters were slaughtered because of those two books one book led to communist Russia one book led to Nazi Germany and if you analyze Nazi Germany and communist Russia they also at Optus they were unified they had come together but as I read the books I came to understand that the principle that they were built upon was that of hatred yes they achieved unity but it was only built on hating other people and the claw the rule is that if you build a movement if you build an organization if you build society based on hatred in the end it will inevitably fail unfortunately for us it failed but only after taking so many of our brothers and sisters and so a firm Aveeno comes to the world and he's seen mcdowell buffo and he's seen what they did and coming together to hate God and he decides that he's going to build Judaism he's going to build a movement not based on hatred on what he doesn't like but it's going to be a movement of love Judaism is going to be predicated on the fact that we love our brothers and sisters and Avram takes to the streets nefesh share share us with Clara and he gets a hundred thousand people to understand that there's a God he can't stop talking about God he can't stop loving God he is constantly giving it over and that is the basis for our religion to love each and every Jew to love each other but it's not easy to achieve this love and I was in yeshiva many years ago at a rib ear of Duffy Miller was giving a shear into seals for Sharaman path of the just and he wanted to try to explain to us the way that could dole him great rabbis relate to Jews and he gave us the following muscle he said if you're at home it's the middle of night it's 3 o'clock in the morning and get a phone call and it turns out it's one of your children and their car broke down they're stuck in the middle of some street somewhere what do you do you run to your car you race over there to be with them you get a call it's 3 o'clock in the morning and it's a good friend of yours you pause maybe a triple ok you know what I'm coming to help you out you get a call at someone you were really close to in high school but you haven't seen in years who needs a hand you start to Google maybe the local tow truck I'm trying to figure out do I have to go or not you get a phone call someone says I just saw a Jewish name and the phone book I decide to call you you hang right up he said that everyone has layers in their relationships he said godot ylim do not have layers for good olam they love every single Jew and they will do everything they can for every Jew because of that deep love they say that little Babaji Rebbe who stood all day long as Jews would come to him to receive a dollar and they asked him when he was much older how is it that you have this strength to stand all day and he said if someone was counting diamonds they would have that strength he see I see every Jew is a diamond we need to love every Jew and it's not easy and I'll tell you two personal things for myself this is something that I struggle with every day and I will tell you that when I walk into a room of Jews I always ask myself the question can I love every single person in here and it's not always simple it's not only simple I'll tell you something else I've been in cloth for many many years over 25 years and a cloth sometimes there are sharp elbows and sometimes we have disagreements and one of the things that I have done personally is that when I dive in I dive in for the people that I had disagreements to be successful because he ended as Jews we need to love each other as Ronald Reagan once said he said the person I were agree with 80% of the time is not 20% my enemy and there is so much that unites us as a community that we need to build off this love because this is what Avram avinu built our nation into so this first principle this one of love has to be first and foremost for all of us in our heart for a satara and for project inspire you know when you open up the Commish right at the beginning in Genesis and gracious almost immediately it's a total disaster we find other man cava Adam and Eve are given one commandment the commandment is you can do whatever you want just please don't eat from that tree and sure enough you know the story the null conscious snake convinces kava to eat from the tree she realizes she's in trouble and she convinces them to eat from that tree as well and when the almighty comes to confront them immediately all of them passes the buck and says she made me do it yo my tea goes to hava and she said the snake made me do it snakes left with no one to blame but immediately out of the gate we are living in a world where no one can accept responsibility and everyone needs to pass the buck and their children kind in heaven get into a fight and you know Cayenne kills have all Cain kills Abel and God comes to Kai and famously says where's your brother and he says am I my brother's keeper total inability to accept responsibility on any level the next parson says Noah God comes as we said before it to Noah and says your exotic you're an amazing person I'll save you and your family build this Ark and we'll just start over with you know if Bill see ark and he's saved but we don't find there is that no if ever turns to his neighbors and says do chuhwa repent say you're sorry to the Almighty you say Noah had learned the lesson of autumn and hubba he had learned the lesson of kaity he understood what it was to take personal responsibility what Noah did not understand is how to take communal responsibility and once again it was failure in the world and that is the world that Avraham walks into Abraham who understood mcdowell babo and how to build a religion a movement based on love now says not only is love needed but responsibility we have to be responsibility for ourselves and we need to be responsible for others and he goes to the extreme that even when stone and aymara two of the most we evil wicked cities in the world are gonna be destroyed he fights with God he fights with the Almighty to save them and when his nephew locat staking he goes to war spiritually physically he is always there taking responsibility and as we close out the book of braces were found with the story of yo save and his brothers we all are where the story where Yosef wants to see if the brothers have learned anything from selling him into slavery and when they bring back Ben yumin he says plays a game and he hides a goblin but Yeomans sack and says I'll hang on to Ben youngin and I'll enslave him and put it in prison but don't worry you can go free and this is where yahuda Avram's great-grandson steps forward not knowing that Benjamin was really instant innocent and this was a trick he says - yo Stevie says you can't keep the boy you can't keep my Jewish brother if you need to put someone in prison put me and that's where yo safe can't control himself anymore because this idea that Jews take responsibility for one another I did a lot of political lobbying in my career one time I was asked to speak for the head of the City Council Melissa mark-viverito she was the first female latina head and I was asked to give a prayer and it was in the Bronx and there were thousands of people and first of all I have to tell you I do love Jews just as I said before but usually when I speak to Jews everyone sits like this when you speak in the Bronx it's like going to a Yankee game I've forced standing ovations you know it was goose rock so I decided that I was going to give some leadership example in which example that I give I decided to tell the story of Moses when Moshe Albania was chosen Moshe Romania who grows up in a non-jewish household winds up defending the Jews till the Egyptian has to run away and God is looking to see if he could be that leader the story is told that Moshe is out with his flock of sheep and one of the small sheeps wanders off and instead of saying it is what it is it was small it's lost it doesn't matter he walks for a very long distance to go and save that small sheep and put it on his neck to walk it back because every small sheep was important to him and the Lord Almighty says if he cares about small sheep like that he'll care about every one of my Jews like that that was Moshe as a leader taking responsibility and as we close hummus should we get to the end of my mid bar and for those of us who have studied the book of my mid bar the first half is an absolute disaster it's rebellion at the rebellion after rebellion first to choose want Quayle and they rebel and below ska then we have the spies and schlaf then we have Korah and parses Korah it's a total disaster of rebellion at the rebellion at the rebellion and then the Jews spend 40 years in the desert and at the end when they're about to go into Israel two-and-a-half tribes turned the motion say Moshe we really like our lives here on this side of the Jordan we are probably not going to go live in Israel with you emotions beside himself he can't take you to get so upset he says you're just like your father's where do they answer they say motion no way we're Jews we're gonna leave everything behind and we're gonna go at the head of the army and defend our brother Jewish brothers and sisters because communally the Jewish people have matured and this has gone on for generations and generations of Jews taking responsibility for other Jews it's what made us strong very shortly we're gonna be look reading the book of Esther on portal where a young woman who was married to a total animal of a king who had chopped off the head of his previous wife was told that she had to go in and defend the Jewish people and try to save them and she's scared she's terrified she's nervous and she says to Mordecai you want me to go in there you know what happened to Vashti and Mordecai says one way the other Hashem is gonna save us but my dear perhaps you were put on this earth to save your Jewish brothers and sisters and I have to tell all of you everyone in this room that you were put on this earth to save your Jewish brothers and sisters it's what it means to be a Jew we're not here to discuss kirov or outreach we're here to discuss what it means to be a Jew and what it means to be a Jew is to love every Jew to work hard at it it's not something that comes naturally to work hard to love every Jew that we meet no matter where they are and we're here to take responsibility Jews are only as strong as a responsibility they take for each other because you and I both know that the rest of the world is not looking out for us it's really about us and so Asia tour and project inspire we've been living these two messages love and responsibility from the beginning and I have to tell you that as we move forward a chitara and project inspired together we're committing to reach out to every single Jew in the world we have three principles that we operate on they are connect educate and empower connect our job is connect with every single Jew in the world doesn't matter where they are we're gonna find them and we're gonna connect to them and we're gonna create proud Jews Jews that have a pride in who and what they are educate that's what Asia tour is no one gets close to the Almighty without learning Torah and as I mentioned many times the educational approach of Asia tour is something I call the PI approach pi stands for passionate inspiration inspirational and educational passionate when you walk into a class with an Asia tour rabbi Rebbetzin or someone connected to us you will never fall asleep the passion is always there inspirational you will always walk out of one of our classes inspired educational finally is something that we refer to as tourists I am the living Torah which is it's always gonna be real Torah it's gonna be cause I'll punish the real stuff stories are amazing but they have to be built back into the Torah that God gave us that's how we approach things and if we can educate Jews they will come back Torah will bring them back to mitzvahs and finally empower that's you it's about creating Jewish leaders is about giving people the ability to stand up and to know how strong you are we had a program recently and I have literally been talking about this all over the globe that came deixa Torah is called the mots amazing program that really came out of project inspire it was set up by sippy Wray fur and liebe Shui Bell and Michelle Pincus and what it was was a program to bring 40 Ksyusha and yeshiva female principals to Israel to learn how we teach God because the Kirov movement has become the research and development for the firm community we had a young seminary woman recently okay into one of our classes and just to give you an idea last month the month of January we had over 13,000 people who came to our world center the Dan family world sent her to study she came in and she said something that was really impactful she said look I know all the intricate laws of boa I'm just not sure I believe in God and that's our challenge of the generation and I have said that Asia tour has spent 40 years working with 90% of the population that was not connected now we have to be concerned about the other 10% as well and that's our job and when I say our job I really mean your job your job is to walk out of here inspired your job is to walk out of here empowered your job is to understand and to know that a chitara and project inspire will help you in everything and anything that you do we will be here for you we're here to support you in everything you do I'd like to just leave off with a brothel blessing for all of you if the Almighty should give you all the struts you give all of us all the strength to love every single Jew to take responsibility for every single Jew and to bring all of us back all 100 percent back to Jerusalem back to you shall I am to build the base of Ignis right across from Asia thora thank you