Can I Change Me? | Lecture to the South Africa Community

the yeshiva.net [Music] good evening everyone and thank you so much for joining our webinar tonight is tonight is a new jewish month it's a new moon it's a new moon it's new hope tonight is a very auspicious night in the chabad calendar and in the life of the river now the river had a dream and the dream was to bring meshich and when mashiach comes there'll be no more war no more suffering no more sickness all families will be reunited and godliness will be revealed in this world how do we bring the by changing ourselves and changing the world around us but can we really change ourselves so tonight rabbi yossi jacobson who needs no introduction he's arguably the best and finest jewish english english jewish speaker in the world he's going to take us in a journey based on the discourse by isla from the rabbit a very mystical discourse which rabbi yossi jacobson will discuss can we change ourselves can we change who we are surabayas thank you so much for making the time we look forward to the journey thank you so so much rabbi mesenter my dear friend just give me a thumbs up you could see me and hear me yes okay yes wonderful wonderful thank you so so much so first of all it's an honor it's a thrilling privilege to be here with each and every single one of you so many beloved friends in the south african jewish community thank you rabbi macinter and your wonderful staff for creating and putting together this wonderful program of learning and this great evening it's a thrilling privilege to always address my dearest beloved friends in south african community one of the greatest communities in the world in terms of your innovative creativity your love for yiddish guides and equally important the unity and the love of the jewish people in south africa for each other i live in a little shtetl called new york some of you may have heard from it and we have a few minions and a few souls but it's not always easy for us to get on with each other so i always cherish an opportunity to speak to this extraordinary warm hospitable passionate fiery jewish community of south africa and thank you thank you for the invitation thank you for the privilege of being together with all of you for this night of studying torah and emotional and spiritual growth i know that this program this evening of learning is dedicated to rahmeel ben rafal ronnie bass whose yard site was today thank you so so much and may ronnie remain an eternal source of blessing and inspiration to the family to all of his loved ones friends neighbors community members to all of our communities and to all of the jewish people it's dedicated to moshe minyakov to your habit but thank you so so much for your friendship for your partnership for making all of this happen for bringing so many of our brothers and sisters together this evening and thank you rabbi messenter for leading this project so as the rabbi as the good rabbi just mentioned and i also want to mention everyone who's watching virtually i know everybody's watching virtually everybody who's watching in south africa and across the globe welcome welcome to everybody in the different time zones and thank you so much for joining us what we're going to be exploring today is an extraordinary hasidic discourse that was presented by the laboratory in the summer of 1976. just a little context a little historical background is always uh helpful and that is the founder of chabad was rabbi schneider zalman of liadi he's known as the alta rebbe he offered the tanya he was born in 1745 and passed away in and uh actually soon in a few days the 19th of kislev is the famous hagga ghoul of the day that he was liberated from czarist imprisonment in 1790 1798 a couple of years ago and he founded the hasidic dynasty known as it was his tradition that he instituted to deliver what's known my marim on shabbos on holidays or special days during the year deep profound extraordinary presentations that dealt with the spiritual science of the universe the spiritual science of the human soul and the spiritual science of yiddishkeit so it really takes us into a deeper layer of experiencing and understanding judaism in a very sophisticated and profound way that relates not just to practical law and ritual which is the foundation of jewish life we call it but also to really have appreciation of the of the inner what you would call my divine physics of the cosmos and the divine physics of the human brain and the human soul and the divine physics of yiddish and this was developed over seven generations of spiritual masters that began with the al tireba all the way down to the seventh chabad leader which was of course the labacher so his custom was shabbos yamcha special days he would deliver a mime or a discourse that was usually based on the teachings of his father-in-law and his father all the way back to the founder of whose teachings are based on his own teacher the margaret of misrich and his teacher the baal shemptov the founder of the hasidic movement who passed away in 1760 on schwarz and the teachings of the great jewish philosophers and mystics people like the rambam people like that arizona people like rabbi moshe cordovero people like the maharal and shalom just to mention a few of the pivotal scholars who shaped many of the ideas that were developed in the kabbalistic and hasidic traditions over the centuries this particular discourse that i'm going to be exploring with you tonight is as i said from the summer of 76 1976 it's very famous summer in jewish history some of you may know what i'm referring to i may remember it it's of course the summer of and tabi when yoni netanyahu the brother of bibi netanyahu led the israeli commando to idi amin's idiya means uganda and tabi where the israeli jewish hostages were being held captive and in a stunning raid liberated so many of those captives something that stunned the world stunned the jewish people and really was one of the great miracles of our generation july 4th 1976. this mimer of the rebbe was said just i think one shabbos or two shabbas earlier i don't have the spiritual vision to connect events i'm not that type of person those who know don't say those who say those who say don't know i'm just mentioning just the history of the time it's just interesting to note this was shabbos the shabbos from the torah portion was during his fabring in his shabbos afternoon gathering delivered a hasidic discourse among many other talks that began with the words vaishla yahushua some of you i know have studied this text inside over the last days or weeks i'm not going to be reading the text inside you're welcome to read it on your own to learn it on your own i'm going to be discussing some of the pinnacle and uh moving and inspiring ideas that he brought up in that discourse which he based on a discourse of the altera the balatanya that was said two hundred years earlier in a little town in the yard in belarus published in his magnum opus liquette we all know that the jewish people have a promised land it's called the land of israel it's israel but it was not easy for the jewish people to get into the promised land abraham was promised the land isaac was promised the land jacob was promised the land moses was promised the land moses tried 40 years to get into the land but he never did he never made it into the promised land he passed away and was interred in petra on jordan on the eastern side of the jordanian river but his disciple joshua is the one who led the jewish people into the land of israel the torah tells the famous story of the spies moses sent 12 scouts to survey the land to look at it to examine it they did they came back but instead of motivating the people to enter the land they dissuaded them from entering the land they basically robbed the jewish people from the willpower and the enthusiasm and the faith that they can do it and instead hysteria and panic and despair overtook the jewish nation an entire night it was the night of tish above they wept that we're going to go to the land of israel just to be slain we our wives our children will all be murdered as a result of that they stayed in the desert for 40 years there's a famous line that a wise man said he said whether you believe you can or you believe you can't you're probably right if you believe you can't you're right and if you believe you can you're also right the jewish people at that time believed that they can't they were right they could not so god said you can't just stay here they stayed for 40 years and they died in the desert moses died and was interred with them and it was only joshua who was one of the 12 spies who led the jews into israel but he also sent two spies the opening of the book of joshua tells the story how yahushua binut the disciple of moses decided to send two spies to jericho irico to also survey the city and get a feel of what's happening in the land to prepare the fledgling nation the new nation to enter and conquer the promised land now it's fascinating because moses sends 12 spies joshua sends two spies moses god did not tell him to do it god tells him it's up to you moses wanted to do it so hashem said you can do it but i'm not telling you to do it it's not a mitzvah. i'm not going to tell you to do it if you want you have my permission i'm not going to stop you indeed it turned out catastrophic it was a dismal failure the spies came back as i said and dissuaded the entire nation from going into the land joshua was told by god to send the spies the logic is obvious would he go and do the same thing his master did when he realized what a failed mission it was why would he get involved you know what they needed an expression to mention remember your grandmother would say that you don't take a healthy person and put them into a sick bed why send spies and potentially repeat the same disaster god told joshua to send spies only two now moses spies surveyed the whole land joshua's spies only went into urichae but jericho eureka was called man ullah shalom the lack of the land of israel it was like the lack if you open up jericho the door is open you can conquer the home if jericho remains locked and shuddered you will not be able to go into the house jericho was like the entrance the vista the portal the lock that takes you into the land they came to jericho they stayed in the hotel of a famous woman named rochov who later would convert to judaism and she would marry joshua rahul would marry joshua that's a separate story it's not for tonight and rakhov hid the spies because the king sent emissaries to abduct them and arrest them and kill them she hid them in the roof she lowered them down the wall through the window the back window outside of the wall of jericho and saved their lives and rakhav told them that everybody in this country is in awe of the jewish people everybody knows the story you guys have nothing to fear and this really gave the jews the courage the extra dosage of stamina to be able to enter into the promised land and conquer it and settle it which took 14 years under the leadership of joshua so let's remember moses sends 12 joshua sends two moses is not commanded by god joshua is commanded by god moses the spies go through the whole land joshua spies only go to jericho moses's spies are not successful joshua's spies are successful this is a famous biblical story in the hebrew bible the first story of moses is in the book of numbers and the story about joshua's in the opening of the book of joshua and it's the after of but now we go to the next step every story in the torah is not just a physical story that happened at a certain point in life it's also a timeless story that transpires in our psyches and brains throughout millennia which means every single story in the torah captures a certain profound truth that relates to our inner emotional and psychological state and therefore it's not limited to the middle eu in history when the story transpired but rather it's continues throughout our throughout the centuries because it represents allegorically those issues struggles dilemmas that each of us have to deal with in our own lives conquering the promised land is no exception there is the physical story of the jewish people passing crossing the jordan river to go into the land that's one story but there's also the emotional spiritual story doesn't everybody have a promised land that you want to conquer don't you have goals that you want to achieve don't you have a destination that you want to reach don't you have those elements in your life that you feel you have to conquer in order to become the person that you're capable of becoming each one of us has a promised land we all have a collective promised land it's called eretz israel our eternal homeland for eternity the land which one day will home be the home of all the jewish people with the coming of mashiach speedily in our days and today is already the home of close to six to of of almost seven million jews 6.6 million jews and whenever i hear that number of jews living in israel it always triggers such a profound emotion because when you hear the number 6.6 million jews living in the holy land of israel 75 years after the liberation of auschwitz it's a very very moving and profound experience and it's important to think about this that for thousands of years our ancestors dreamt that they're going to one day come back to israel hashanah baby yerushalayim was the end of every seder and the end of yom kippur throughout millennia and it was in our generation our generation our parents generation our grandparents generation that millions millions of jews are now living in the land of israel but we're still in exile and when mashiach comes all the jews will come to israel so there is the national collective promised land but there's also your individual promised land everybody has their own eretz israel whether you're in johannesburg or you're in cape town whether you're in jerusalem or you're in new york whether you're in moscow or you're in hong kong wherever you are in the world you have your own promised land there are your goals when it comes to your marriage to your happiness to your family life to your vocation to your finances to your spiritual emotional psychological physical financial mental goals everybody has those obstacles we need to overcome those roadblocks that really obstruct our journeys i want to get into my promised land what is your promised land and here we have the two sets of spies that moses sent and joshua sent and there was a big difference moses spies surveyed the whole land joshua spies remember surveyed jericho what's the difference what does a spy do a spy a scout goes into the land checks out what's happening tries to see the lay of the land tries to eat the foods socialize with the inhabitants with the natives get a flavor of the zeitgeist of the atmosphere there's a german expression spitzen finger gefil it's called the sixth sense get a sixth sense of what's happening the strategies find out about the military find out about the fortresses see the roads understand what is going on in this country so that we one day should be able to enter it and conquer it that's what the spy does now let's take this from the physical from the world of the military to the world of psychology what does it mean that i send a spy into the land that i want to conquer it basically means this is a very profound idea self-awareness that's what the spy does you're not just going to come into a blind land it's not going to work you know why your enemy will defeat you right away you need to know his strong points you need to know his weak points you need to know where he staged his troops you need to know the vulnerabilities you need to know where you can enter you need to know where you can then do you need to know where you're going to encounter the greatest resistance and you're going to have to prepare for that that's what espionage is all about for those who are familiar with espionage literature espionage documentaries espionage films whatever it is but that's what it's about what is it in the psychological life it's the quote plato know thyself it's called self-awareness self-awareness is a blessing there's no growth without self-awareness because without self-awareness i don't even know what's happening in myself you know somebody was just telling me about his father just today i was kind of somebody was driving me somewhere and he was telling me about his father he's a young man a very sweet kid and he tells me my father is a nice person but almost every night he loses it he gets so angry and he screams at everybody screams at every child and even the young children they become terrified i asked the boy what does your mother do he says my mother tries to tell him to relax and he turns to my mother and he says who asked you i say so how does it make you feel he says my father's a nice guy but he just loses it i say why does he lose it what's going on inside of him and he says when my father becomes aware of that he'll become much healthier from the mouth of babes right he says little kid what's his point his point is we have so much going on in ourselves we get angry we get mad we get scared we get glad we get into bad moods we feel empty sometimes we feel on top of the world self-awareness is the ability to really tune in are you ready to find out what is happening inside of you can you listen to the cues of your body can you figure out at least try to figure out what makes you tick what triggers you so deeply what is going on in your brain what are you reacting to these are not always conscious stuff they're usually unconscious and that's why it's so difficult and maybe i've spent my whole life suppressing or repressing so many of these thoughts and emotions i'm not capable of awareness you know sometimes people come to me to consult about different things and i always ask the first question not always but often i'll ask them one question before i answer you let me know one thing do you want to hear the truth or do you want me to tell you something you would like to hear and of course what do most people say of course i want to hear the truth but when you tell them the truth they often stop talking to you how many people want to hear the truth do i want to hear the truth do you want to hear the truth i say i want to hear the truth but do i really want to hear the truth or i just want to hear what i want to hear just a little bit of the truth well our conscious brains filters 99 of the information that flows into us and flows inside of us and it only lets us experience just a glimmer of a glimmer just a tiny tiny fraction of what's happening that which it feels that our conscious self can deal with but everything else is relegated to the subconscious of the super conscious sellers of the brain so the concept of sending spies is you have to be able to send your own emissaries in other words your own forces inside of your promised land to see what is going on what is happening where is the resistance where is the trauma where is the pain where are the wounds [Music] what are the fears what are their insecurities what are those unresolved elements in my psyche that still trigger me and ultimately control my life and block my passage into my promised land why can't i have a good marriage why am i always getting angry at my husband why am i always getting angry at my wife why can't it be intimacy why is there no trust what is it that i'm afraid of what is it that am i recalling of course i can always blame her i can always blame him that's easy my wife is this my husband is this but that's not going to get you anywhere because you point a finger at somebody you're pointing three fingers at yourself the bigger question i have to ask is what is happening inside of me i should mention the fact that the world just lost dr aaron beck dr beck was 100 years old passed away a few days ago and he's considered the founder of cognitive therapy cbt cognitive behavioral therapy and dr beck dedicated his whole life most of his life to basically teach people that we don't react to other people we react to our thoughts about other people so when you say something to me or your spouse says something to you your child says something to you or your employer or your brother or your mother or your sister your father says something to you and you react in a very intense way whether you're aware of it or not aware of it you're not reacting to what they said or to what they did you're reacting to how you process what they said and what they did and how you process what they said and what they did is based on your thoughts and if you could confront your thoughts if you could talk to your thoughts if he could listen to your thoughts a lot can be changed now i know today especially there's a lot of different forms of therapy and cbt has been embraced by many and disputed by some and the truth is in every one of these systems there are tremendous gems and in every other but not every system works for everybody and today we recognize that trauma exists on many many different levels and sometimes cognitive therapy will completely be ineffective the body keeps the score and therefore there are so many other forms of healing today but that's beyond the realms of tonight's lecture but i'm pointing out here this is where spies come in because spies basically have to go in and find out what is happening after that they can open the doors for me to come in and conquer my promised land and it's here the rebbe makes the vital distinction of two sets of spies the spies of moses and the spies of joshua there are the spies that god tells joshua to send and there are the spies that moshe sends on his own god does not tell him to send what's the difference between the two give me a cup of just a cup of water thank you thank you so here we go this we come now to a fundamental distinction of the tanya the tanya you probably know is the basic work of hasidic khabad philosophy it was authored thank you by the founder of zaman of lyadi who i mentioned in the beginning of the class the tanya was published in 1796. it's a small work it's not a big work it's a small work it's basically a map it maps out the soul just like there are x-rays for the body the tanya is an x-ray of the soul what does the soul look like what are its building blocks what make it thick what is it allergic to what does it want now you might say that map should be different for every person it's true the map is very individual because each one every person has his or her own unique sequence of dna molecules which is god's individual imprint that makes you you and makes me me as the talmud says in sanhedrin 38 no two people look alike and no two people think alike and it's not a mistake it's intentional because every person must say for me the world was created there's something i have to contribute to the universe and to the cosmos that nobody before me or after me could make that contribution and it's all about that unique distinctive individual light that you and i bring to the universe because you are a unique manifestation of hashem in this world but in order to get to understand your uniqueness that tanya gives us a blueprint of how the soul works what the soul is made up of it's like a spiritual x-ray of the soul in the tanya the balatanya the author of the tanya makes an incredibly important distinction between two aspects of self which touch on the big question can i change me or i can't change me and the question is what is me who is this me that i could change or that i can't change and i'm going to quote his words and then explain them and he makes distinction between a part of the self that he calls garments levotion garments and a part of the self that he calls me dice the core of you not the garments of you garments you can exchange if i don't like my jacket it gets dirty i don't have to wear it i can take it off even if i'm wearing it because i can't take it off i don't confuse my jacket or my tie or my glasses with me yes they're part of me they uh hopefully they're nice i hope you like it actually this is a kappa that's not a jacket but they're still garments they're alien to me it's not your essence and you can change them but that's not the same with your arms and your legs and your heart and your kidneys now there too we have today transplants we have today upgrades we have grafting i mean there's a lot but it's medical procedures it's complicated it's not changing your tie you're changing your outfit or your skirt or your gown what does this mean in a person's life there are two different parts of a person's personality there is what the tanya calls your midis and what the tanya calls your levush and i'm going to explain what that is there are inner emotions inner motivations inner fears that i experience not by choice it's part of who i am it's part of my personality it's part of my nature and it's part of my nurture then there is a part known as thoughts words and actions says the altitude when judaism demands of us to work on ourselves to repair ourselves to change ourselves you have to always make a distinction because if not you are going to get so frustrated and you're gonna live and wallow in guilt and shame and despair for something that you're not even guilty of people get upset at themselves constantly that i have this and this emotion don't get upset yourself that you have this in this emotion i have to be able to accept that there's certain things in me that are not easily changeable they're not suits that i could take on put on and take off it's a very painful acceptance but it's critically important because people spend so much time wallowing in self-loathing and self-guilt and self-shame why am i feeling this way why can't i feel this way why am i being triggered you know what at this point in life there's nothing you can do about that we'll soon see there's a lot of work to do in this but it's not something you can snap your fingers and you can say i don't want to be like that and therefore i'm not going to be like that and this is so important especially people who take religion seriously because when you read torah you read literature you read gemara you read madrid you read books of musa ethics you read books of mahshava of kabbalah of siddhis of and you see the great standards of ethics that our sages our leaders our rabbis our mystics our spiritual masters and our great minds and hearts aspire to and try to inspire us towards and then you look in the mirror and you say this is so not me this is so inauthentic so sometimes people fake it and they fake it till you make it but certain things you won't fake it till you make it i could fake being a bird but i'm not i'm not gonna be a bird i won't make it i can fake being an angel but i'm not an angel you have to become aware of who you are and what your potential is so people sometimes either they become fake sometimes they just detach from their inner life and sometimes they just surrender to synthesis cynicism because it just doesn't speak to them so the alternative says in tanya you have to know the difference between a sadiq and a banana name about a sadiq he doesn't mean that sound like a good guy a righteous person but it sounds like he means somebody who can actually send spies through the entire land of israel survey the whole inner world of your psyche to help you conquer the promised land in full that's a unique person who has that ability to be able to extricate from themselves all the toxicity all the wounds all the negativity all the forces that paralyze me and take me away from my truest divine pure holy essence but for most people that's simply not a possibility i can't just rid myself from anything that i don't like there are certain thoughts and instincts and emotions and fears and pains that will come up and the reason they will come up is because of all types of realities that lurk inside of me either consciously or subconsciously there is another set of spies joshua spies and those spies go to jericho comes from the word reach which means smell aroma there's the smell of a person there's the aroma of a person and this represents your garments your conscious active thoughts words and behaviors here is the domain where i really have control over when i'm experiencing a thought when i'm triggered by something that i have no mastery of and you have to get upset about it now come stage two what do i do with that thought do i indulge it do i engage it do i fall prey to it do i allow it to take over my mouth and i become verbally abusive i become verbally irresponsible i go on a verbal rant do i allow these triggers to translate into actions that i actually do things that may be hurtful to me to my spouse to my children to my loved ones to other people around me this is where real choice happens these are joshua spies that god commands you you have to send those spies into jericho and have good self-awareness of how your neural pathways are controlling your active thoughts where are they taking you so what this means is as follows very practically there are thoughts that come up in you constantly some of those thoughts are wonderful they're blissful some of those thoughts are really depriving you from happiness from serenity from tranquility from attachment from connection from purity from holiness from god and from your loved ones they are those thoughts and i go there and that's my go-to place we denote and we know today that we have millions of highways in our brain we call them the neural pathways and those are the go-to roads that i travel to in different circumstances and that's where my mind goes comes down to that band says god never commanded moses to spend spies to the whole land he doesn't give you a mitzvah that you can't feel a certain way and you have to feel a certain way it's not possible it's not feasible certain things are going to trigger you certain situations are going to be very difficult and yes you feel like screaming because in your mind a lion just came into the room now i'm gonna sit down with you in the therapist's office and say the lion is not dear it's in your imagination yes but when you were two years old you saw that as a lion and now you're 45 years old or 55 years old 35 years old and you don't have the ability to distinguish that is a lion in the room and you freeze up your amygdala has become frozen at three and when this happens 30 years later your amygdala your the stem of your brain your reptilian brain still freezes up the brain has different dimensions the tiny calls of the animal soul and the godly so today in neuroscience there is the reptilian brain there's the amygdala there's the limbic brain the limbic system and then there's the prefrontal cortex the prefrontal cortex is associated with the nephrolucis with the divine consciousness the ability to see things from a larger perspective to analyze them to dissect them to look long-term not short-term to respond to things not from an instinctive reaction of fight or flight but from a place of deep awareness and reflection but sometimes i am stuck in my amygdala that's how they define trauma today my animal soul is petrified my reptile just needs to survive it's fight or flight so you hear something from your wife or your husband or your teenage kid and you lose it you fight or you run away you space out you become detached does anybody do that in south africa or you just freeze and you're not present in life it's too painful it's too overwhelming you know like the antelope that freezes because it doesn't want the cheetah to attack it or you fight back or you just run away that's what we do my nephesha bahamas is responding this happens constantly in life every person according to your life story to your nature and your nurture i can't control that i don't have to control it that's the good news that tanya says you don't have to change these things it's part of your destiny it's part of your vocation it's part of your journey at this stage we're still going to get to a deeper stage but you know what you could control you know what you have to control is stage two when i can become aware where my thoughts are going to how they're translating into my verbiage and how they're translating into my behavior those are the things i could control and i could say you know what my animal soul is barking my reptile is frightened okay have compassion for it but i really don't have to allow my thoughts to actively go there imagine i tell you all don't think for the next 60 seconds i do not want you to think about an elephant nobody nobody in south africa there's no thoughts about an elephant what's going to happen you're going to think about an elephant right you're going to think about an elephant there's some thoughts you're just not in control of they're called instinctive thoughts one of the rabbis said is the spigel from hearts thoughts are a mirror of the heart you can't just have a heart transplant and you can't have a thought transplant there's going to be certain thoughts that come into your mind but now is the question what happens at the next stage the next stage when you're living with self-awareness and when you're living with divine awareness i could tell myself okay yes these thoughts are very very powerful and they're triggering me very deeply but when i can identify where they're coming from i say you know what i'm not going to indulge them i'm not going to go down that path i want to create new neural pathways and when you do this 60 times you create a new pathway in your brain and after 60 times you're already going to start changing the deeper layer and that's where moses and spies have come in so there's two stages in serving god stage number one is take control of your garments take control of where your thoughts go where your words go and where your actions go you don't need every trigger to overtake your mind for the rest of the day your words for the rest of the day and your actions for the rest of the day you don't need to when you become a self-aware human being of what's happening in you when your spies are moving around and examining and telling you look look look there is a lot a lot of resistance there there are many enemies there be careful there are land mines you're going to explode you're going to implode we need those spies surveying the promised land constantly so moses who is on a higher level of joshua he's the face of the son joshua's the face of the moon he wants the spies in all of the land of israel but that often turns out to be a failure because when you feel that serenity will come only when you master everything and you rid yourself from all toxicity you create an impossible situation for yourself and you don't succeed so joshua introduces the next step where you send the spies into jericho to be in control of your conscious active thoughts and your conscious active words and your behaviors and say i don't need every trigger to be translated into active thoughts and active verbiage and active behavior and that changes everything yet when we do this for a while we allow ourselves to go into a deeper step and start changing things internally because after we accustom ourselves to certain habits of living it starts creating real changes in our brain and in the way we respond to things and in the way we're triggered or not triggered by certain things what then happens is we can start learning about these triggers and understanding that they are teaching us something about ourselves they are alarm clocks and alarm clocks i'm not here to destroy you and give you headaches alarm clocks are here to wake you up and alert you to dangers alert you to reality alert you to things you have to work on and then what happens is slowly you can begin to cultivate the other spies moses spies that look through the whole land of israel now some people might think and here we come to the final point that controlling guiding lovingly your thoughts words and actions are really not so consequential because ultimately it's only the garments it's not me i want to change the me that's not the case and i'll give you a very interesting example for this we all go for x-rays at times what do x-rays accomplish they allow the doctor the physician to be able to see what's happening on the inside so you go to the dentist and the dentist takes x-rays of your teeth and when you look at those x-rays it doesn't look like what your mouth and teeth look when you stand in front of the mirror or you look at somebody else's teeth you're seeing a picture of a deeper stratum a deeper layer the same is true with x-rays of the body now imagine you come into a house and you walk into the kitchen to the dining room to the living room to the family room and there's a wall filled with pictures but instead of seeing the pictures of your parents of your siblings of your children of your grandchildren all i see are pictures of the x-rays from the doctor's office so you have them you have pictures of their bodies but of their x-rays and i ask you what are you doing you say listen i didn't want to hang up the external pictures those are just facades they camouflage the truth i wanted to hang up the real pictures i wanted to show people the peniles not the excitingness the inside not the outside so why would i hang up pictures that you take of somebody's face and their clothes and their tie and their mouth and their forehead and their eyes i wanted the real picture in my eyes i want to remember who my child really is so i put up the x-rays we all laugh because it's absurd why is it absurd because the x-rays don't tell you the picture of the purse no the picture that you take of me on my outside that is who i am so why do we have x-rays when there's an infection when there's a cavity when there's a virus when there's an illness god forbid the x-ray helps the doctor tune into what's going on on the inside to be able to repair the person x-rays are important x-rays are life-saving but you don't hang up the x-ray in the wall of your home or your office because at the end of the day the person is the way he appears to be this is their empire's conclusion of the discourse your appearance is not your fake self it's who you are how i speak to people how i smile to people how i communicate with people the mitzvahs that i do for people and for myself and for god my actions my behaviors my habits my gestures the charity i give the love that i show the words that i express and the conscious thoughts that lead me to those words and behaviors i choose to think about life positively to think about myself positively positively to think about my loved ones positively that's not fake that's you the picture of your child is the way he appears not the x-ray the way she appears not the x-ray i don't want a wedding picture of you and your bride or you and your groom with your x-rays no no i want it with your tie and your suit and your gown and your physical hair why it's your external physique it's not the real someone they look for in the hospital who cares about the outside we care about the inside it's that display that is the real you we need the x-rays for repair for examination for reflection but it's your marshava deborah maiser it's your thoughts your words your actions your daily interactions with yourself and people your active thoughts your active words your active actions that ultimately define your life eddie jakku was born of rahm jacobowitz in 1920 in leipzig in germany he grew up in a classic german jewish family between the world wars loved his parents his father used to tell him as a youngster eddie avraham abraham there's much more joy in giving than in taking he was a good with his hands when hitler came to power in 33 he could not stay anymore in the school system in germany his father sent him away far he got himself papers as a non-jew as a german not as a jew and he went to a mechanical engineering school he did very well at the age of 18 november 9 1938 he decided to come back to leipzig to surprise his parents for their wedding anniversary he came into the home nobody was there besides his dog lulu 10 ss nazis came in they beat him they tortured him the dog protected him that they shot the dog dead and they sent him to buchenwald after a few months he managed to escape from germany he went to belgium he was reunited with his family who escaped from germany to belgium when hitler invaded belgium he was arrested and sent on a train to auschwitz from the platform he stole a hammer and a screwdriver for nine hours he unscrewed the flag the flood boards of the carriage and he escaped from the train he made it back to france and belgium reunited with his family they hid for years in 1943 they were arrested by the gestapo and the entire family was placed on a train again to auschwitz they arrived to auschwitz dr mengele sent both of his parents to the gas chambers immediately eddie of rahm was sent to work he was one of the few jews who managed to escape auschwitz from one of his workplaces but then he was shot by a polish farmer and he realized he won't survive so he went back on his own to auschwitz he joined a group of jewish slave laborers he went back into the camp without the nazis detecting that he was ever absent he was put on the death march in january walked for days without food without water he was emaciated he was sick he was starving he couldn't continue if you stopped they shot you on the spot he noticed a ditch he escaped into the ditch and lived there for six months eating raw snails he got poisoned from the water he drank flowing through the creek it was poisoned water and he fell so ill he couldn't stand anymore this point he just wanted to die he crawled to a nearby road hoping waiting for a nazi soldier to come by and shoot him and take him out of his misery an american tank came put him in a blanket sent him to the hospital the hospital he was unconscious for a week but then a nurse told him when he woke up that probably he won't survive he's too ill 65 chance he'll die he survived six days later he was out of the hospital he bought himself a ticket to belgium hoping he would be reunited with somebody in his family he met his sister henny who survived auschwitz but he had nothing they lost their family a few months later he met another survivor a girl named flora they got married in belgium they relocated to sydney australia he was a miserable broken man he said but when his first child was born in 1950 michael my happiness returned to me in abundance and at that moment i made a decision i'm going to live a life dedicated to kindness make people smile i'm going to be happy i'm going to celebrate life i'm going to be polite sensitive and empathetic it's the life he lived last year he turned 100 and he decided it's time to write a book don't you think so at 100 he published his memoirs he published his book probably one of the oldest authors in history moses wins the prize moses wrote the torah when he was 120. eddie was a hundred last year after his birthday the book became a bestseller you may have seen it titled the happiest man on earth avraham jacob with eddie jakku is the self-proclaimed happiest man on earth he says tomorrow will come you have to enjoy today for him one friend is worth the world and looking into the eyes of his child is the joy of his life very moving moving book very moving memoir and it really inspired millions just a few days ago on the sixth day of freshman 57 82 october october 12th 2021 of ram jacobo it's eddie jakku returned his soul to its maker in sydney the happiest man on earth was reunited with his parents murdered at auschwitz he was 101 years old i was reading his story i was reading his book the happiest man on earth but i want to tell you about one scene just personally it moved me very much he was in belgium in brussels after the war he lost everything like everybody else he lost everybody he had a sister that survived he rented a flat he got a job as a mechanical engineer and they were sitting one night and he was reading the newspaper in the newspaper he reads about two jewish girls who were arrested and put into a mental hospital because they tried to commit suicide what happened they jumped off a bridge in brussels now the bridge wasn't very high but they wanted to fall on a barge but they missed the barge they fell into the water they survived they got arrested and they were sent into a mental institution eddie says i just felt i have to help them now imagine he himself had nothing he was but i want to help them svey yiddish two jewish girls he goes to the hospital mental hospital he asks to see them he says the conditions were appalling horrific he meets the two girls he says they're normal they're intelligent they're beautiful but they were both an auschwitz birkenau their entire families were wiped out everyone in their world was destroyed and murdered they had nobody and they simply didn't have the will to go on they simply didn't want to live so they decided to jump over the bridge just to take themselves out of their endless misery he made an appointment with the chief with the head of the hospital and he says to them these girls don't belong here besides the fact this is horrific place and even if you come in normal after three months you go out mad these girls need love these girls need camaraderie these girls need somebody to believe in them and help them believe they have a future let them come to my flat i'm there with my sister and my friend let me take care of them the guy said okay take these girls and you know what there was a third jewish girl a survivor who also tried to kill herself and he took them he took her to so now it was him and his friend kurt and his sister henny and these three jewish girls and he told them listen we're all single no monkey business but we have to take care of each other he fed them he nurtured them he forbrained with them he shared with them his story they shared their story and he infused them with the hope that they will yet build a beautiful life and after a few weeks or months they thanked him they left they married jewish husbands they built beautiful jewish families and he maintained a relationship with them through correspondence from australia and then he says and he says i remember then what my father said to me because i experienced it there's much more joy in giving than there is in taking and at that moment i realized that even in the darkest of moments you can see miracles and if you don't see miracles then remember you are the miracle you are the one who will create the miracle and for me that moment i became the miracle that saved these three jewish girls from a death after they survived the nazi holocaust for me this is so inspiring because it captures the real power of the human spirit avraham jacobits was no not naive he was not living in la la land he saw the worst of the worst of the worst he suffered the worst of the worst ultimately he realized he said i never felt i will never forgive the germans i will never return to germany ever i will not touch that soil when he was a youngster he said i was so proud to be a german i was german first german second german third judaism didn't mean much the night of krystal knocked he said i lost faith in humanity and i became embarrassed to be a german certain things you cannot erase but he chose to reframe his life and ask himself in the midst of darkness will i be a victim or will i become the miracle i'm looking for wow this is the ultimate message of this mimer in every circumstance i can look for miracles outside of me and it's great if you find them embrace them and run run with those miracles if you don't it must be that you're the miracle you your presence your choices eddie jaku chose he says to smile to be polite to love people and to celebrate life these are the choices we make and in those choices that we make we change ourselves because the x-ray is not who you are it's who you appear to be that really makes you who you are or in the immortal words of ecclesiastes the last words of kahelas mitzvah at the end of the day when everything has been heard when all the therapy has been completed fear god and celebrate and observe his commandments because this is what constitutes the totality of human life thank you very much and now we'll take questions so rabbi jacobson if anybody has any questions please post them i have two questions for you question number one so land of land of jericho is your thought speech and action the land of canaan which becomes the promised land or your seven emotions but what happens if god has given you even what's the purpose of it does it does it accomplish anything up on high if you have all these evil terrible emotions what are you accomplishing if you do subdue them is anything being accomplished why are we plagued with it why can't x-rays be beautiful beautiful question beautiful question beautiful pun intended so yes i wanna i wanna emphasize that the land of kanan is known as the land of seven nations because we're made up of seven middles love discipline boundaries empathy victory submission bonding and confidence royalty those are the seven building blocks of the human emotional soul the land of canaan is a land of seven nations that's what we want to conquer but we can't conquer all of the seven middays and perfect them we could conquer jericho which represents the three garments thought speech and action which are the reach the smell the aroma not the inner x-ray but what's displayed the aroma we exude the smile we share or the opposite god forbid so here's the deal ultimately our divinity will pervade all of our seven meters but the point is you can get frustrated if you cannot conquer that immediately if you're being triggered in very difficult ways because i don't always have control over my inner attitudes of what's going to come up for me you may visit a person's you may visit a certain situation and certain things come up for you don't get upset at yourself in fact let me tell you a little story there's a i have a very close friend he's a very impo he's a great therapist in muncie so he shared with me once that there was a couple who came to him and it was always the same story the the husband would go to his wife's to the wife's parents home and they made all these comments that simply drove him mad they always had what to say to him and to his wife about their children and he said i just don't want to go there anymore i can't go there for peso i can't go there for cause i can go for hanukkah parties i cannot deal with it and go just get triggered so the therapist told me so i gave the guy advice him and his wife i said listen instead of going and getting frustrated why don't you make a list of everything that your in-laws are going to say and do while you're there that is going to trigger you just make a list beforehand since you know them so well just do a list and then when they actually do it then follow through just check off that box and the couple did that and they said instead of it being a miserable experience it became actually a skit it became a comedy show it became a fun adventure it's like his father-in-law said this check mother-in-law said this check because they had to predict everything it was wise advice because instead of combating a situation that won't change you're not changing your in-laws tonight it's not gonna happen for whatever reason i'm not talking i'm not judging anybody i'm saying the facts instead realize that this is part of the journey and your choice is what you're going to do with these triggers are you going to start fighting back are you going to run out of the house are you going to start insulting your father-in-law or mother-in-law are you going to get upset at your wife are you going to let it out at your kids because you can't let it out at your mother-in-law or you could make a checklist say here we go here we go here we go the lion has came come into the room and i'm being triggered by this delusional lion but in my mind it's a lion and now i'm gonna choose how to react now what happens after a while is it starts changing your internal x-ray as well the outer has a very deep impact on the inner not right away not always not with the snap of the finger but it has an impact so that one that's why moses spies are also important because even though they fail but there is a time when all the jews will conquer the land of israel and all the seven emotions will ultimately be transformed and each day we get a little closer to that space of holistic healing we're running out of time here but just one one more thing on the uh it speaks about the land of canaan it speaks about the jericho but it also speaks the river speaks at the end about three other lands that are eventually going to be conquered what is that in us the land of kanan is our animal soul jericho is our thought speech in action what are those three or if we run out of time for that uh well but very briefly god promised abraham ten lands seven sev the land of canaan which had seven tribes and another three called kde knees in hasidic literature the middle earring says that the seven tribes represent the seven emotions which i mentioned the three lands the three tribes promised to abram for the future in the messianic era represent the inner inner core of consciousness known as wisdom understanding knowledge or conception comprehension and application if you wish that is yet even a deeper level of conquest where i get to the source of everything and that's for the future just very briefly tonight is kisly why don't you just elaborate what happened on this night of course is the head of the month the month of redemption the month of lights the month of chanukah a great month where we shine the bright lights in the darkness of winter in the chabad calendar descriptive also assumed an extraordinary significance this is an event that happened in the year 1977. i was a child but i remember it it was the middle of the hakafus was dancing shmini at ceres at the akafos live and festive thousands of people in shul and the rabbis suffered a massive heart attack one heart attack and then another heart attack it was very very uh difficult and uh challenging situation uh you know many of the doctors did not think that naturally the devil will be able to survive this and uh he did it was they turned his he didn't want to he refused to go to the hospital was sort of interesting he told the doc one of the doctors who shared this with me his name is robert feldman he told the doctor he said look at this room he says this room has heard over the last 40 years 30 years the tears of hundreds of thousands of jews this room the walls have absorbed the holiness the struggles triumphs of hundreds of thousands of jews if there's a place that's going to help me heal it's going to be this room so you stayed in the room and they turned it into a mini hospital great doctors and their ever slowly healed and rosh kislev it was the evening of the first day of kislev that the rebel for the first time had the energy the fortitude to be able to leave his room and he appeared at the entrance of 770 eastern parkway nobody has seen him besides the close people and doctors and so forth because he couldn't come out and he walked home and for the hasidim and for friends and admirers and disciples of the rebbe in new york and the world over this was really uh an incredible moment that god gave the rabbit back to the jewish people and the rebel lived and not only lived and never lived for another 16 years right 16 years but those years the debbie really didn't only double his efforts didn't only triple his efforts but really transformed chabad into a global movement and most of his initiatives happened after that you understand most people after a double heart attack close to cardiac arrest at the age of 77 you know you buy a nice flat in palm beach florida and a good beach chair and you relax together with your wife right you go back to natural jewish habitat which is florida or the hamptons [Music] but the rebbe at that time he completely transformed not just the chabad movement but the jewish world in empowering it with a vision to be able to grow yiddish in an unprecedented way to build israel in an unprecedented way and to bring a consciousness of divinity and redemption into the whole world so till today hasidim celebrate rashford as a day of gratitude and thanks to the almighty for that great miracle rebecca have it to you think that robert jacobson we need to say a huge huge thank you and a big yasha kayak um we've heard you over many many years and i think like good wine it just gets better and better and better you've inspired us you've given us keys to open and to change the parts of me that we can work on and believe me there's a lot that needs working on but a big big yasha kayak for sharing with us for giving us that that insight and that passion um that we all need um over here it's dark already and uh it's kislev but he brought a tremendous amount of light into our lives this evening will be able to take it and utilize it and use it correctly so thank you for your time thank you for your passion thank you for your enthusiasm and thank you for the brilliant brilliant way that you always explain everything it enriches us all as it does the entire jewish world abigail and thank you thank you my love and blessings to all of you thank you rabbi cass thank you rabbi mesenter thank you to all of you my dear brothers and sisters khazak this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at www.theyshiva.net donate