Rabbi Yaniv Meirov | CHAZAQ Tisha B'Av Marathon

Thank you Robbie. Thank you for all those at Kazak putting this whole marathon together. Not simple. Not simple at all. So many logistics. So many details and thank you to the Nazar family for once again dedicating memory of their mother Estatara and all those others that dedicated as well. Dedication opportunities are still available. Khazak.orglive cjq.orglive is where you can watch and dedicate over there as well. Special thanks to our friends at the beta community center for once again hosting the amazing marathon. Uh special thanks to our friends at to any time. Shiman Ruven are here uh for live streaming to the entire world. Bar so much great feedback has been coming in and we're not satisfied. So everyone watching don't just think about yourself let inspire others as well. Everyone that's in the room so many of you I'm so proud of every single one of you if you're coming share the link share the flyer let other people come visit as well and all the all the merits of the people that you inspire to come and to watch will be for you. I want to start off by sharing with you two personal stories. First story is that Kazak we're involved with saving people's lives, bringing people closer to and many years ago we had this to bring an individual back to Torah and we were so happy because the case was not such a simple one. It was a little bit more work than usual. And after a while, we realized slowly but surely he's going back to his old ways. He used to keep Shabbat feeling the whole nine yards. And we went over to him, knew what's going on. What's the story? What's happening? And he simply said, I just can't take it anymore. Oh, what happened? He's like, I'm constantly being told by family members that are not holding yet or friends that are not holding with regards to religion. Look at you fanatic. Look at you. You got brainwashed. Look at what happened to you. Look at this. Look at that. He's like, I'm constantly being thrown these words and it's affecting me. And we double down. We supported him and we helped him. And today, not only is he holding his family as well, we get his friends. It's an amazing story. But the words the words had a massive effect on him and unfortunately I know people that these words have affected them forever to the negative. I want to share with you another personal story and that story is that I have this the merit and I see quite a number of you here and it means a lot to me. I have this to go around to different places to give Shirim on a constant basis almost about more or less 50 Shirim a week. And what I love so much about it is that I get to see so many various different people from different backgrounds. And one of the things I do many times after I finish a shir is I encourage people take something upon yourself. Do one mitzvah. And if it's a smaller crowd, let's say it's a lunch and learn, we sit around a table. I point at the individual. What are you taking upon yourself? This one says I'm going to put on right now. This one says, "I'm going to take upon myself toem makea. I'm going to go and pray. I'm going to go and learn. I'm going to do." So, one time, this is going back three years ago, I pointed at an individual and he said, "Shabbat." And it made me feel so good. And a few weeks ago, he sees me. He's like, "You should know it's three years." I'm like, "Three years? What? What are you talking about?" He's like, "Three years ago? This Shabbat is going to be three years and I'm keeping Shabbat." I'm like, "Wow, that's amazing." He's like, "I don't know if you remember this or not, but you point it at me." And he said, "What? You take it upon yourself." And he says as follows. He's like, "The word Shabbat just came out of my mouth." That's the word that came out. And I'm a man of my word. And you should know I keep Shabbat for three whole years, and it's the best thing I've ever done in my life. It's the source of all blessings. Now why are these two personal stories very very very important? Because it connects with you have the first individual where there was words that were negative that were about to take a person down. The other hand the second story there's a word one word that he said Shabbat that has changed his life forever to the better. It started with Shabbat and there was a ripple effect from many other things and other family members and other friends. It was an amazing thing that happened. You should know we're all sitting on the floor because of words. That's right, words. Let's rewind and we all know that did not start with the with the destruction of both holy temples. Tisha started when we left Egypt Mitim. We were in the midbar. We were in the desert for 40 years before we entered the land, the holy land of we sent. We sent spies to check it out. They came back with negative report with words saying negative against these words caused to cry. God says you're crying for no reason. I'm going to give you a reason to cry. That was tisha. And then fast forward, you have the first bet holy temple was destroyed because of the three cardinal sins, idolatry, adultery, and murder. Barak. Thank God we got the first bet mdash back with the second beta mikdash. That means we did chuva. We repented. The second beta mikdash was destroyed as we all know because of which is baseless hatred. People think oh why is it that we're mourning, we're fasting, not eating, we're wearing leather shoes, we're sitting the floor, we're doing all these things because of thousands a thousand 1,958 years ago. It's not fair. Why why are we sitting on the floor? It's not our fault. People might think like that but the garam he says something very powerful and that is every year that the mdash is not rebuilt as if it was destroyed that means we still have the issue of what of now I have news for you what is the root of how does it all happen the tell us you know what's connected to the sin of words negative speech so here you have it it started with negative speech talking against the and and it continues with negative speech against one and the other. But there's a beautiful connection, a crazy connection, wild. You know what the tell us the says that the first destroy of the three carnal sins like we just discussed and the second was because of bases hated as equal to the three carninal sins. That's wild. And why is that? Because you have to understand the power of words. It's no coincidence that the word words is similar to the word worlds because your words can build worlds. Every single one of us have to understand what says you want to save yourself from all the issues, problems, trials, tribulations, keep those words to yourself. self-control says King Solomon life and death is in the hand of the tongue says you want a good life keep that mouth control it in American society there's two massive huge issues issue number one is dieting a lot lot of people are obese and overweight and issue number two is gossiping. People talking against one another. The simple solution to both is very very simple. You know what that is? Close your mouth. Close your mouth. The mouth you have to understand is one of the most powerful tools that we have. How do we pray? How do we God Almighty? Through our mouth. How do we make a How do we make a blessing? Through our mouth. How do we learn Torah? Through our mouth. The mouth is the only tool that differentiates us from the animals. Animals eat, we eat. They drink, we drink. They walk, we walk. They sleep, we sleep. We could articulate with our mouths. We could take articulate with our speech. Just to build on and to explain how powerful our words are. I want to go to Sephid parades, the creation of the world. We all know in this community over here in Queens, there's many jewelers on 47th Street. What tool does a jeweler use for his uh items, whatever he's doing, for jewelry, for rings, for bracelets, for for for necklaces, the tools, because the the items are small are small. But if you go on to a house, okay, or no, let's jump before the house, let's do a car, a car mechanic. the tools it uses are a little bit bigger than the jeweler to fix a car. And the guy that's building homes and houses, the tools are bigger because the house is bigger. And how about a person that's involved with skyscrapers and buildings and bridges and tunnels and all these things? The tools are much bigger. But I have a question for everyone that's here and everyone watching all over the world. What tool was used to create this entire universe? Ah, you hear this? You said it powerful and Hashem said or let there be light and there was light. The words were used in order to create this humongous massive universe. How powerful our words are. What a powerful tool it is bigger than all the tools that are all around. This is just to reiterate how important it is for us to control our mouths. I took upon myself to go around. I do this a lot and I create challenges. People love challenges, you know. Oh yeah, you're challenging me. I'll show you. I could do it. Sure. Here's a challenge for every single person. No matter what level you are, you should take the on the challenge. What's the challenge? Very, very powerful. For some people, it might be a day, others might be a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. And that is the no negativity, no lash, no evil speech, no cursing, nothing bad coming out of your mouth challenge. This is maybe something that the sin of of evil speech of of negativity is why we're sitting on the floor. Why don't we all take upon ourselves right now, this moment while we're still mourning to do something about it? I'm taking upon myself from now on. I'm not going to say anything negative. I'm not going to curse. I'm not going to be saying evil speech against anyone else. Now, I have news for you. You know what's going to happen? Everyone is going to take this upon themselves right now. Take a moment. Take it upon yourself a week, a month, a year, a lifetime, whatever you could do. Be strong. You could do it. Be kazak. Be strong. You could do it. I'm telling you, you could do it. You'll see tremendous amount of blessings coming down your way. Tremendous amount of blessings. Take it upon yourself. And you know what's going to happen? Accidents do happen. It might just come out. It might just for some people, it's part of their lexicon vocabulary or just, you know, it's part of their speech. But I have news for you. When you fall down, what do you do? You stay on the floor. You get back up. When you fall down, you get back up. Many people, they make a mistake. Oh, I messed up. That's it. It's over. It's like one time we convinced someone to keep Shabbat. And he's keeping Shabbat. Everything's nice, is good, and he accidentally he turned on the lights. The next thing you know, he says he goes into the car and he goes to do some shopping. Like, what? How did that happen? It's not all or nothing. If a person, I always say, drops 10 $100 bills and a ganav, a thief comes and grabs one of them and runs away, do you say, "Oh, forget about the other nine." No. You go back and you try to get whatever you can. Same thing over here. It might come out. You might accidentally say something. You were in a phone conversation. You're in a meeting. You're this. You're that. The wrong things happen. The main thing is that you start from the evil wants us to have a down world spiral and to be negative and to be depressed and to be sad. What should we do? Double down. Fight back. Continue moving forward. This is what every single one of us need to work on. Let's keep the mouths with holy and pure. Let's take this upon ourselves position for and the good news is that we didn't say we didn't have supplications. You know why? It's going to turn it's going to turn from a day of mourning to a day of happiness. Okay, we have to understand that is not even a name. It's not called it's not called the destruction of the temple. It's called the ninth day of the month of a it's a date. Why doesn't don't we have a name for this for this fast for this for for today? Why is it called a date? the say something powerful and same thing with you know it's only a date and it's not a name of destruction because right now right now we're mourning but in the future is it be a day of so taking upon ourselves and there's much more to speak about this topic a lot more but if every single one of us could take upon ourselves right now I'm going to work on my mouth I'm going to work on this powerful tool this that talks to Hashem prays listens to every single one of us. But we have to have a clean vessel to be able to have our prayers answered. People complain it's not fair. Oh, how is it? How is that? At the end of the day, every single one of us need to take this upon ourselves by us doing so that we should have the days. Amen.