Did Moshe Think He Could Handle 3 Million Fights? | Likkutei Sichos, Yisro

the yeshiva.net people are tense people are anxious people are stressful and here i share with you a teaching of the grandson of the another grandson rabbi menachem who said this on the 15th of schmatt 1975 published in the successor and he asked a simple and extraordinary question and gave a very profound answer and the question is in the torah portion of israel it says that jethro moses father-in-law came to visit him and what does a father-in-law do when he comes to visit his son-in-law he started to give him aces he started to give him advice and he told them it's not good the way you're running the country the way you're running the people what happened he saw that moses was sitting all day from morning to night teaching every single jew who had a question dealing with every disputation with every debate with every quarrel with all the bickering and all the infighting every financial moral ethical civil spiritual dispute everybody came to moses to moshe and he was literally handling every person every problem every challenge every doubt jethro told moses yisra told moshe naval tibo you're going to wither away lo tova davra taosa this is not a good idea you can't sit alone and judge 3 million jews it's like i would tell you that you have to answer 3 million emails a day or even 3 000 emails a day you'll go crazy moses this is not going to work you have to delegate you have to learn how to delegate if you do not delegate everybody will crumble you will be destroyed the people will be destroyed and jethro tells his son-in-law you have to delegate and confer responsibility over people appoint what we call middle management to run the nation and then everything will fall into place and the torah says moses obeyed his father-in-law and the commentators and the rebbe asked a very obvious question you need a rocket scientist to tell you that one man can't handle three million people alone what was moses thinking there's an expression in yiddish august of aval zetta family a guest for a while sees a mile you know sometimes you come into somebody's home for a few minutes and you see things that are going on that they themselves don't notice granted sometimes you need an outsider to give perspective but this is an obvious issue moses grew up in a palace he knew about infrastructure rabbi sherman has been here many years yeah why did he bring other shlokan why doesn't he do everything himself and the answer is because you wither away it's impossible many of you are successful companies you have offices you have projects you have organizations you have corporations you have businesses the first rule in successful management is you got to learn how to delegate you have to train other people with you and under you if not if you're going to be changing the light bulbs and you're going to be making every copy yourself and you're making every decision yourself nothing is going to happen we all understand that some control freaks who can't delegate they remain very very small and very very petty so you need mo you need an outsider a non-jew to come from the outside world and tell moses that you can't run a show this way how do you understand this it's a good question no and the rebbe said furthermore and if moses did have a way of doing it why did he acquiesce to jethro why didn't he tell israel i have a way i'll do what i i know what i'm doing he surrendered to his father-in-law so the labaravitch in his own vintage and inimitable style presented what i would call a very moving and emotional insight and briefly it's briefly very briefly it's this insight that i think is gives us perspective on how to live in such a time and this is what he said he said moses understood that you have to delegate he understood like every successful person understands that one man can't do everything alone but moses also knew something else he knew who he was and he understood that when people have direct contact with him everything changes he needed to give every single jew man woman and child no matter who they were direct contact with him so that they could feel that they can approach them with every issue and with every problem because in judaism ultimately every person must be a student of moses we don't believe that some people are too small or too remote or too insignificant everybody stood at sinai everybody hears torah directly from moses or worded directly from god however there's people who have fights and disputes how you gonna handle that so the rebels said when people would come into the presence of moses that itself he knew would have the greatest impact that it wouldn't take the same amount of time to handle as if he would have delegated it because when you're in the presence of a person like moshe your whole mindset your whole attitude changes i want to illustrate this with a little old jewish story there was an old father and a son they were both living on a farm the father was 90 years old living at home and the son was working the farm it was winter time it was cold this was a poor family so the home was not warm and they had one coat and the father told his son listen i'm 90 years old if i get cold if i get a cold i can die i need the coat for myself the son told the father no i'm outdoors i'm working outdoors i need a coat you're indoors and they got into a dispute so they went to the rabbi and the rabbi says what's going on they say we have one coat the father says it belongs to me i'm 90 and i'm home i need a coat and the son says i know he's 90 but i'm outdoors and it's freezing outside i need the coat the rabbi thinks and he says the sun is right he's working outdoors he gets the coat you're in the house let's figure out how to get you some wood maybe you can make a fire maybe you could find some old schmatta some blankets protect yourself you're indoors your son gets the coat okay they're walking home from the rabbi's home back to their farm and the son is wearing the coat and he's all happy he won and the poor old man the 90 year old father is trembling in the middle of the road the sun feels horrible how can i watch my father so cold even if i'm right i'm so wrong and he takes off his coat and he puts it on his father he says i'm sorry you have the coat the next morning father is proud of himself he has the coat he's looking at his son working in the farm and he's trembling and he feels so guilty how can i do this to my son calls in his son he says you have the coat son says no you get the coat now they're fighting again but now the fight is different he wants his child to get the code the child wants the father to get the code they go back to the rabbi they come into the rabbi the rabbi says what happened now they said we have a new fight what's the fight father says i cannot bear that my son stands outside without a coat he gets the coat son says no i will feel too guilty knowing that my father is stuck inside without a coat he gets the coat each one is fighting that they don't want the coat they want the other one should have the coat the rabbi looks at them and starts thinking and says you know in my closet i have an old warm down coat that i don't need i'll lend it to you and he goes and he takes out his own coat and he gives it to them he says now you have two coats one for the son and one for the father the old man says rabbi i have a question why didn't you come up with this idea the first time around why now and the rabbi looked at them and he gave such a beautiful answer he says you see the first time around you came here to my office screaming the father was screaming it's my coat the sun was screaming it's my coat father was screaming at michael son was screaming it's my coat subconsciously you know what i was screaming it's my coat it's my coat you are screaming that it's your coat and subconsciously that coat in the closet i was thinking it's my coat i'm not giving it away the second time around you come back tati is screaming it's your coat it's your coat you take it and the sun is screaming no tati no daddy it's your coat you take it and you know what it triggered to me it triggered in me the feeling it's your cult i want to share the coat with you and that's when my conscious mind discovered that i had a coat in the closet in other words my attitude towards you is ultimately so powerful in determining your response when the rabbi hears a father and a son quibbling fighting over the coat and everybody is just thinking about themselves subconsciously he's also thinking about himself because that's the environment he lives in but when the rabbi is in an environment where everyone is thinking about the other person subconsciously he doesn't even realize it his brain changes his brain expands his neural pathways open up to experience larger different opportunities and suddenly you realize i have a cult i'm not using it i can give it to them comes the laboratory and says two people are fighting they come into moses's office israel says jethro says you're going to wither away you can have hundreds of thousands of jews fighting moses knows that when you're in the presence of somebody who radiates the organic oneness of the cosmos and of humanity it impacts people in a deeper place they start seeing themselves differently and when they see themselves differently ninety percent of ninety percent of the disputations will wither away gaula cohen was a very very well known uh member of the israeli parliament for decades she passed away not long ago in her nineties very special woman and i once read an article she wrote about the labavachireba in maariv she was sitting with him for two hours in the 1960s and she wrote as follows it left such an impression on me she wrote i have met many people in my life sometimes you meet a brilliant sage you come out of the meeting they're brilliant yuri still remain a simpleton sometimes you meet a brilliant leader after a long meeting you come out of the meeting you're dazzled by their courage and resilience and vision but you remain the same person that enter the meeting you can meet the greatest scientists of a generation you come out of the meeting overwhelmed startled impressed but you remain who you are they remain who they are she says there's one exception when you go in to meet a real believer a ma'amin after two hours you come out a different person because the believer believes in you too and she says i spent a few hours with alibaba chereba he's a great scientist he's a brilliant mind he's an extraordinary leader he's a man of courage and resilience and vision he's a great communist he's a great lover of israel great heart and great mind but most importantly he's a believer and the believer believes in you too so she says you come out not the same person this was moses's perspective i want every jew to come in contact with me because by coming in contact with me they will come in contact with themselves because what is the definition of a true leader if not somebody who empowers you and allows you to come face to face with your most real and authentic you that is the definition of arepa that is the definition of a real leader a real leader is not somebody who impresses you with their dazzling brilliance that may be true or with their tremendous accomplishments a real leader is somebody that after you come in contact with them you get to discover yourself moses was the humblest person the torah says it was not about him i'm great it was about helping people see their own greatness or to quote the legendary the late rabbi jonathan sax who just passed away a few months ago who said that there are small people there are small leaders who like to create followers but the greatest of leaders they don't want to create files they want to create leaders they want to help people achieve their own unique potential so moses understood that for jews every jew to have direct access to him even two jews are fighting about something going on near one of their tents in the desert he didn't want to delegate he wanted they should come into his four cubits because being in his presence experiencing consciously and subconsciously his faith in them his faith in god the fact that he was a spiritual conduit would help them experience themselves as conduits of infinity and the moment you experience yourself as a conduit for infinity everything changes you see yourself as a much greater person and the moment you see yourself as a much greater person then 90 percent of your fights are gone take a look at most of our fights and arguments it's coming from my trauma from my insecurity for my low self-esteem from my scars from my wounds tell me about most marriage disputes you don't have to all speak up at once but most marital disputes most fights you have with your children with my children with your brothers sisters parents brother-in-law sister-in-law neighbor former neighbor employer employee most of our fights come from the fact that i don't recognize who i am i think that i'm small i'm tiny all angered all 95 percent of anger is a secondary emotion eclipsing pain and loneliness right next time you get angry don't worship your anger the anger is a cover-up for something much deeper it's easy to get angry and say you're such an idiot you're such a horrible person it's harder to look deep into myself and say what am i angry about something was just triggered inside of me i'm experiencing so much pain and loneliness talmud rambam says the zohar says that anger is a form of idolatry why and the answer is what's idolatry idolatry is you're looking at a physical object and you're attributing divine qualities to it the physical object is just a manifestation of divine energy anger is just a manifestation of something much deeper much more authentic don't turn that into the real issue so so many of our fights come because we look at ourselves as small people and that's what trauma does to us so moses wanted that direct contact because he understood that in his presence the consciousness of the people will be elevated they will see themselves in a different light and 90 of their disputes will be resolved without him even uttering a word and yet he acquiesced to jethro because he understood that the infrastructure of judaism must be built in a way that it should be able to become generational and should be able to endure the fluctuations of history so that even in later generations when moses is not here anymore judaism should be able to have a structure of what we call sanhedrin but they didn't judiciary systems of scholars and sages that can take the truths of torah given to moses and ultimately allocate them and apply them to various circumstances and situations for me this is so telling about our mission today because when you live in a fractured world there's one of two options either you're part of the problem or you become part of the solution there's no other option in every situation that i confront either i become part of the remedy or i remain part of the problem we live today in a time when there is a lot of fragmentation a lot of brokenness there are arguments there are theories to this extreme and theory this extreme there are those who when they hear somebody disagrees with them this person is busy with conspiracy theories and the other person hurls accusations that you're out for lunch you're in denial you're brainwashed you're indoctrinated and there's so many arguments and so many debates and there's families split up families get dichotomized and torn apart siblings don't talk to each other especially if they find out who you voted for people are like afraid to be themselves to be authentic what's our mission in such a time what's going to be the future people are uncertain and here is where the real issue and the very practical idea of the rebbe comes in and that is at every single moment i can have a choice either i live in a higher space and that's what i will bring out and all the people i come in contact with or i live in a much more petty orbit and that is ultimately what i will help bring out in people every person i meet i can bring out the best in them and i can bring out the worst in them but there's only one way i can bring out the best in them that is if i bring out the best in myself first if you live within yourself in a higher state of consciousness what does it mean to live in a higher state of consciousness it means that you know who you are who are you for this we all know the rebbe would say who are you you're the ladder of jacob in his dream the latter that stands on the ground sula mutsavatsa viroshi magiya hashema the top of the ladder reaches heaven the tanya says yakov imagine yourself as a rope you are the interlacing link between heaven and earth your soul's posture reaches into god himself the godhead and it comes down all the way down to the lowest terrain of earth right here in mainline pennsylvania 2021 or wherever you are you are that rope you are that link at every moment i could live a bent life caved in surrendered mediocre i think thoreau said most people live lives of quiet desperation or i could stand straight with my spiritual emotional psychological and physical posture reflecting my true heights and what are my true heights my true heights is i am the link between the infinite and the finite every soul of every jew is a helicopter a tale of two souls in one city and one of those souls is a piece of god a fragment of the divine you are a piece of divinity sent into this world it's a fractured world of course you got to make it whole i'm looking out the window here we have it looks like almost two feet of snow kids are excited here they have school but no school today of course everybody was out in the snow i also of course had to be out in the snow i didn't want to be called a detached brainy uh father so i was out in the snow it was a great great experience close to two feet of snow we built the snowman we did some sledding we rolled in the snow we went on the sliding ponds it was a great experience but it was freezing and i remember the story the third president of israel his name was zalman shahzad came to new york february 1973. it was freezing like tonight here freezing and he meets the la bhava chereb and he says to him he says it gets cold in israel but frostbite like here i can't endure how do you guys live here on the east coast how do you live here we don't have this in israel and without skipping a heartbeat there ever says to the president of israel that's exactly why god sent down jewish souls to the world to bring warmth into a cold climate to bring light into a dark terrain there's a fractured world there's a cold world of course that's why you were sent there but for this you have to remember who you are you're not cold you're not fractured you're not fragmented you're not broken you are a fragment of heaven you're a piece of infinity you are a piece of hashem himself so to speak and just as god is invincible your soul is invincible at your core you are wholesome you are full of promise happiness confidence resilience faith light wholesomeness and happiness but you must be able to stand straight and recognize your true height and then every person you meet beginning with yourself you know you're not here to argue you're not here to become part of the problem you're here to show people their real light how simply by you being a source of love you know when i go out often obviously today much less because of corona i still get out often look at people and it always seems to me that people are so desperate for love they're so desperate for love they're so desperate for somebody to tell them that they're loved that they're accepted to be validated and when we don't didn't when we don't feel that inside we substitute it some of us drinking and some of us internet and some of us through looking by looking for attention i just want attention because i need to substitute that void and the jewish approach to this is you're looking for love you become the source of love you become that source when people see you in the supermarket when people see you in the synagogue when people see you in the office when people see you in the street they'll immediately be able to look at you and say she's a source where you can get love he is a lover he is a source where you can get love she is an ambassador of love he is an ambassador of light and hope and healing you become that person you say nah i'm desperate i've been in therapy for 32 years and it still didn't help i go from yoga to pilates to the gym to the first therapist and i go to another therapist then my mother gets into a fight with me then i say i'm the wrong person and i say to you you have to learn who you are you have to straighten out your posture this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the 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