Rabbi YY Jacobson Interviewed on J-TV: Who Is God?

the yeshiva.net [Music] hello everybody and welcome to jtv um about a week ago i was invited to go to a talk in central london given by one of the internet's most popular rabbis out there he's called rabbi y y jacobson now initially when i heard the name y why i thought is this one of elon musk's children or something but it turns out it stands for yosef yitzchak and i went to hear a talk and i put up my hand i was the only one in the room that actually asked a question um brits are a little bit more reserved but anyway i asked the question and uh when i asked him rabbi jacobson said wow that's a that's a fantastic question that's a great question and i'm so proud of myself afterwards bragging to all my friends and uh a week later i'm currently here in muncie new york with rabbi y jacobson in person to speak to him so that just this just shows you what flattery can do to a person eh but rabbi thank you so much for travel across the world huh thank you so much for making the time to join us on jtv actually happened to be a good question just for the record okay i appreciate that um so thank you so much for making the time it's great this is my first time in monty actually i've been to new york a few times yeah yeah it's great to be here it's really uh it's a totally different world it's amazing um so i was looking through or i mean i've seen a lot of your content already but i was looking through you know video content things you've written and some articles and and one of the things that i feel like is a constant with you is you're very into like just being real and walking the walk not just talking the talk and being you know you talk philosophy but it's also about okay tucklist you know what what actually does it mean for me in day-to-day life so i thought let's talk about character development and and growth and self-growth and we can talk about it from judaism's three main paradigms and pinpoints which is relationship with myself relationship with god and relationship with other human beings we call it being adam lachavera being adam lamarcom bain adam latzman so i want to start off with god and i think this is in in many ways the most well not necessarily the most challenging but the hardest to make to solidify make real because we don't see god he doesn't talk to us literally in the way that you would talk to me so the the first thing i wanted to ask is just how can any of us just what are some of the practical things that you feel are ways in which we can solidify feeling god's presence in our lives when we don't have that day-to-day uh well not day-to-day but we don't have that the interaction that we might have with another human being beautiful question another fantastic question both in england and muncie you ask good questions i think i'm going to run out of them soon you're asking obviously a very fundamental and important question which is at the basis the core of all of judaism a lot of different ways of going about it but i think one very real and meaningful way that at least speaks to me is the paradigm that was taught by the baal shem tov the baal shem tov was the founder of the spiritual hasidic movement he was born in the 17th century at the end 1698. and i say this because his birth coincided with the birth of the european enlightenment which came from your side of the world and the european enlightenment redefined the jewish people just as it redefined the west and one of its greatest challenges was the idea of god or inichi's words god is dead so judaism at that point in history needed to dig in deeper and discover a much more sophisticated and profound approach that would be able not only to compete with the progress of the enlightenment and science in general and the idea of focus on the individual rather than on the pope the church or the monarch because all of society changed so till that point the most common phrase in judaism for god was melech the king of the world which was very simple to understand because everybody lived under monarchs whether you were in russia or you were in england or you were afraid wherever you were in the world certainly where jews were monarchy was the name of the game now when you spoke about god being the king of kings the ruler of rules the ruler who doesn't have to be voted in the ruler who won't die the ruler who won't be usurped the ruler who's not sadistic cruel barbaric insane mad it's like wonderful instead of worshiping louis xiv or zara nicholas we can have god but at that point in history when the focus started to go away from the king to the individual so the bashamtv said we now have to find god within ourselves sure god is the king of the world every blessing in judaism we'd identify god as malacha but not just the king of the world that world is inside of you the washington started to talk about the teachings of jewish mysticism that really every one of us is a manifestation of god in this world god is reality so god is not just some big powerful amnesian omnipotent king who lives in the celestial heights and with a joystick controls the universe and can either reward you or punish you that was a much more superficial view of religion the balshemptev like the kabbalah in general and the hasidic mystics in particular brought out the idea in the words of the bolshem to god is also also got god is everything and everything is god god is really a euphemism for reality for the truth of reality now i want to ask you where is reality can you have a relationship with realities how do you have a relationship with god that one is how do you have a relationship with reality can you have a relationship with reality well the answer is you are reality you're in reality we are all part of reality we're all an aspect of reality we are all in god we're a part of god we're an aspect of god a relationship with god really means a relationship with your own deepest truth with your own core with the essence of all with the essence of existence with the essence of your own identity whenever i challenge myself to go beyond the superficial to go beyond the blockages to go beyond the fears the insecurities and to go into my innermost space that is where i meet god but that feels to me like beyond my day-to-day reality doing those kind of things is where i'm tapping into something extra my data reality is we have the derek the ways of the world everything's natural but the idea of god of course he's the one sourcing it all it is all from him then he he powers it but this idea of this personal being who influences my day-to-day uh life that i should have trust in that kind of stuff as you say tapping into that how where do you go with that how do you how do you get how do you get to that i think you know when we realize on the most basic level that every moment of life is a miracle from the perspective of logic and randomness the universe should have not existed the planet should have not existed the fact that there is a universe the fact that there is a planet every nuance of it every iota of it is so unlikely is so miraculous is so supernatural just the formation of one cell and how that one cell gets replicated into 50 trillion cells that makes up the human organism i'm just talking about one organism just a dna molecule and what is contained in that genome it is really from a jewish perspective all an imprint and a manifestation of god's love and god's purpose each one of us was conceived in love and the day you were born is the day that god said that the world is an incomplete place without you the talmud says that every person must say for me the world was created meaning there's something at stake in my existence for which the whole world was created and we see it in nature every force of nature gives and takes it's part of the food chain part of the food web there's not an element within our nature within our planet that doesn't somehow receive or give the clouds have their role without it we could not live the solar cycle and the lunar cycle lightening allows nitrogen to merge with oxygen so that can be absorbed absorbed in the soil and it can produce that amino acid which is essential to our cell every component of nature every worm every particle every wave every component every atom is part of a gigantic cosmic symphony but how can you take that and then feel that personal connection with god is there a way of feeling anything one can do to feel a bit more of that a personal touch because one of the things i personally struggle with is i don't struggle with intellectually with you know god's existence and and judaism it's not an intellectual struggle for me but i have a very strong emotional side to me that you know says really are you sure you know how can you be sure and this is really something you can rely on and you know it's i think it's it's it's it's it is a tall ask to to to trust in a being and to regularly communicate with a being that doesn't respond to you in words and that doesn't give any guarantees of how they'll respond um it's you know so so for me just saying it's it's got it you know it's reality but it's i'm trying to figure out how how can one feel more of a personal touch and and also personal confidence because i also think that it can often be easy in day-to-day life to talk about trusting god my relationship with god i prayed to him what about when things get really tough what about in those moments of real panic or crisis do you really in those moments when push comes to shove how do you tear away those emotional fears and doubts and remind me of an old jewish anecdote about an opera singer who did a rendition of psalm 23 the lord was the shepherd one of my favorite and it was an amazing rendition and he got a standing ovation and then an old jewish woman gets up and says do you mind if i do my own rendition of psalm 23 he says go ahead it was one problem she couldn't carry a tune to save her life but she sang it with every fiber of her being and people were crying when she finished he looks at he says i don't understand i did an impeccable rendition of the lord as my shepherd nobody shed a tear they applauded me but they didn't cry you violated every law of singing in music when you did the lord is my shepherd but everybody was crying why so she said because there is her she said my dear friend you may know the psalm but i know the shepherd wow there is a very intimate space in the human soul the human being from the jewish perspective is not just created in the visage of god the image of god but there was a professor his name was abraham joshua heschel and he once said when did god violate the commandment not to make any images replicating god he says when he created man when he created the human being because the human being is really so to speak a replica of god the human being is god's partner in the world it's like a child's relationship with a mother and a father from a jewish perspective that relationship is there it's innate now straight sadly i can be alienated from my father i can have anger towards my father or my mother i may not be on speaking terms with them but that's a tragedy in a healthy family the greatest joy in life is that a child can trust their parents parents can trust their children siblings can be close to each other if that's true with physical parents with biological family how much more so is it true with every person's father and mother not just physical but also spiritual psychological emotional cosmic a relationship with god from a jewish perspective is a deep relationship with the one who made you who formed you who is responsible for every moment of your life for every breath you take for every move you make for every word you utter for every neuron you fire for every vibration somebody who holds my hand and in good times cheers me on and in difficult times is there as a support for me so relationship with god is really one that depends on me it's me going into the depth of my heart and opening myself up to the truth that my life is not a random mistake i'm not a random mutation i'm not just a valueless infinitesimal blimp on the surface of infinity just a heap of molecules that happen to become together it's realizing there is purpose when a child looks at a mother and understands that this mother gave everything to raise the child this is a relationship that relationship comes from the fact knowing my life i shouldn't take for granted god sent me here he put me here on a mission and he's here with me should we have expectations of god we can we can i think the word expectations of god is a little bit of uh an oxymoron because if god is really god i don't think i should even try to wrap my brain around it or around him i think one of the mistakes that we make is we try to create a relationship by god that is mathematical that is logical we turn god into some mathematical equation or some law of science or chemistry laws of science are manifestations of god's wisdom but they don't sum up god you really cannot wrap your brain around infinity because the moment you do it's not infinite the moment i reduce god to my expectations my dreams my ambitions what i think is right what i think is wrong i don't have a relationship with god god by definition is that which transcends any brain and transcends even the laws of logic quantum mechanics is already an expression of things that are not logical certainly the author of quantum mechanics so i think part of that personal relationship with god is letting go of the need to wrap my brain around him and fitting him into any box on the contrary it's opening myself up to what is the mission god wants for me at this moment full presence in fact as you're saying focus less on expectations more about what does he expect of me right or in the famous words of the author of the tanya rabbis who told the disciple he says you keep on talking about what you need can you also talk about what you're needed for or to quote our former president ask not what your country can do for you ask what you can do for your country but that line was already said by the founder of khabar in the 18th century in a different way so i saw you said in a in a speech um that with regards to the question of the relationship with the head and the heart which is so often spoken about in the muslim character growth um writings of judaism you said that the mind will always lose so let's in the battle between the head and the heart so let the heart win what did you mean by that i don't remember that particular lecture i speak unfortunately unfortunately i speak a lot but what i might have meant was what i might have meant again i don't know for sure it could have been a it might have been just a quote it might have been from an article or something i thought it might have been from a speech maybe it was a just uh yeah it was that so what i think i meant was that sometimes we try to impose our intellectual ideas on our innate primal drives and we think that we can obliterate our or eclipse or repress or suppress or innate primal drives through some logical equations only to get more frustrated or become more neurotic it happens to a lot of religious people i think it happens to a lot of people and i think it's important to honor and respect our innate primal drives because they're not mistakes they're part of what make us tick it's like you don't get rid of your genes you are your genes your innate primal drives are essential to the fabric of your existence of your being it's it's your dna it's it's god's your dna sequence is god's imprint on your individuality you don't obliterate that you embrace it you harness it you work with it you appreciate it you honor it and how does that are not bad your innate prominence are not evil absolutely but i remember this being specific with regard to a relationship with god that you were saying this you should let the heart win um in terms of i think it was in terms of just day-to-day living and making choices oh you're probably referring to something else what i was talking about was you know i once saw a beautiful definition that somebody asked what is a hasidic story hassan have beautiful stories they said it's when you your soul surprises your mind what i meant was that sometimes in life we approach situations and we try again to intellectually contextualize them now if you're dealing with a certain business venture or a certain mathematical problem you're trying to master a particular text that's the way to go and that's where the cerebral mind of the ashkenazic jew is a very great blessing and of the jewish people in general the people of the book but when you're let's say confronting a crisis with your children or with your marriage or with your own childhood wounds or trauma or mental illness or mental anguish or loss or grief or a real curveball in life the last thing you want to do is try to make sense out of it you reduce the experience to something that is not real the first thing you do is you open yourself up to whatever experience you're experiencing and it's very vulnerable and you need not understand it you need not make sense out of it in fact the less you make sense out of it the more you'll be able to integrate it because it's actually an opportunity for you to grow very deeply so don't reduce the experience to your finite tools expand your finite tools to incorporate an experience that is challenging you and stimulating you to become the person you're supposed to become that's that's a painful process building muscle you know when you're lifting weights and your tissue tears but it builds muscle it's not an easy process emotional muscle because it's also built through pain this this leads nicely to the next topic that i want to go to which is relationship with what with oneself um because as you say when you are faced with adversity and you have to you're faced with a choice am i going to start building your emotional muscle resilience or am i going to crumble or just give up that's sort of the same thing actually what do you do when you when when you feel when you feel very strongly and it might not even be because you face adversity but an individual a jew feels a sense of apathy with regard to life indifference about his or her responsibilities um trying to even serve themselves and do well in life if when people feel just a sense of what's the point what's it all for what does it all matter how do you deal with that because that can often creep up on people without even realizing it when things even just go a little bit wrong just not in the mood of life yeah they once asked to drew what's the difference between apathy and ignorance he said i don't know and i don't care and and i say this because you just got it just dwelling on it it's very good yes it's a good one thank you for the for the feedback ignorance breeds apathy the the question has to be answered on two levels one is a practical one and one is an existential one practically sometimes as they say you just gotta do it if i wait to do everything good until i'm in the mood i may wait till my last breath so sometimes you just have to say you know this is a good thing you know you're not going to regret it you know this is the right thing go ahead and do it i'm a writer so i know this writer's block and what you do is you have to write and write and in in hasidic spirituality it's an expression the vessels draw down the light sometimes you don't have the light you don't have the energy create the containers there's a story in the hebrew bible the book of kings about a widow who came to elisha she said she has no money her husband died they want to take both of her children as ransom for her death and he told her to go borrow empty vessels she had only one jug of oil but the more vessels she borrows the more the oil can fill all the vessels until the vessels are gone and one of the deeper interpretations is that sometimes you feel you have nothing left but create vessels create containers do things for people get involved in a project bring joy to people's life embrace people sow hope become an ambassador of light of love even though internally you're struggling the containers themselves are very powerful that's on one level on an existential level i would say very often our sense of apathy is anything but that it's a betrayal it's a it's it's it's coming from trauma it's a feeling that whatever i did i have failed i'm not appreciated i'm unworthy of love it's really coming from an underlying wound that i'm not ready to address and i'm avoiding it through apathy in other words we all love life really we all want life really deep down when you know who you are everybody loves life and everybody loves love but if i never got that love i can't sit in that pain it's too painful so i say i don't need love children do it all the time when your primary caretaker is not giving you the love you need it's too painful to say that i'm living without something i need i can't do that so i say i don't need your love and i detach emotionally for myself and i shut off the faucet of my emotions i don't cry i don't laugh i don't get excited i don't get angry i'm just frozen i'm numb i'm like dead so i have to have the courage to be able to go beyond the facade of apathy of indifference and say what am i really afraid of where was i hurt and to open myself up to the fact that my infinity is greater than any trauma that the light of god that sits in me the light of god that shines through me is infinite and is absolute and it never snuffs out my creativity my goodness my power my potential there's always that purpose for me in this world that is unique every one of us is an indispensable note in the cosmic symphony and that note is yours and yours to cherish but i have to be able to embrace it and believe in it and go beyond all those messages all that mental chatter that says will be much easier to live if you just give up it'll be much easier to live you have no expectations be much easier to live if you're dead emotionally yeah and sometimes physically so how do we tap into that light on a day-to-day basis you know when you're running late from meeting stuck in traffic and uh i think this is where your personal relationship with god becomes indispensable it becomes vital because what that means is i could choose to say there's no god or even if there's a god he's some cosmic force who couldn't care less about me i can do that and i could go on living but my life is just so much more shallow you know you could live without humor you can live without music you can live without love you can live without literature you can live without relationships you could but it's just a shallower life it's just a more impoverished life you could live and you may be a wonderful person you can also live without god it's just a shallower life that's it and it's a choice and the choice i can make at every moment is yes i'm stuck in traffic i have a headache i'm having a hard day i have a lot of responsibilities i'm stressed out can i now let go and open myself up to the idea that every moment of life is a divine gift every moment of life is an opportunity to be a partner with god in the work of creation every moment of life is an opportunity for growth an opportunity of bringing awareness and light into the world the great masters had an expression that to be alive is to be an ambassador of the divine i am an ambassador and the question i have to ask myself is what is my mission right now when i'm stuck in traffic what is my my marriage is going through a difficult time king esther was stuck in a palace of a persian queen esther and stuck in the palace of 2021 [Laughter] with with a drunken persian monarch and marduk i told her those faithful words miyodaya eight-kazoo who knows if this is not the moment for which you have been appointed the queen of the superpower of the time persia in order to save the jewish people from the impending holocaust that haman wanted to impose upon them the genocidal plan to exterminate every jew in the ancient persian empire what he was telling her is we look at it we look at life and we say it's not a coincidence and it's not a mistake when i was born where i was born the unique circumstances of my life my gifts my challenges my virtues my setbacks my experiences both good and bad my parents my environment my genes my nature my nurture none of it is a coincidence none of it is a mistake i was brought here for a particular unique contribution and mission that i can and must make with my life and when i can really become aware of this and realize that i have to work through those blockages and traumas that obstruct me from seeing myself that way then that itself becomes a tremendous opportunity for growth and every blockage you work through turns you into a much greater person than if you would have never had that blockage the greatest leaders are not the people who haven't failed winston churchill your former prime minister once said my definition of success is jumping from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm i think the jewish perspective would be with the jewish perspective would be the definition of success is learning that every failure is only a failure if it doesn't become a source of education a springboard to a much deeper awareness and that's where you find god in your life seeming that that that inner spiritual presence that silent small subtle silent voice that tells you you're not damaged even if you're abused even if you grew up in a dysfunctional family even if you're dealing with inner challenges that are profound you are not damaged goods you are an ambassador of the divine sent into this particular place and circumstances to bring your unique light which nobody else before or after you can bring and what if someone says this with the whole apathy thing but why why why does god need me to do this i mean why i have to go through all this you know for to what end okay i've got a mission okay i've got it to reveal okay i'm not broken but to what em why do i need to go through this roller coaster what's the po what's the whole point ultimately to reveal but why i think the deepest way of addressing this is in terms of a relationship one could say why should i love why should i connect to somebody else in my life but today we know that inmate to the human being is our need for attachment in fact cutting at psychology sees attachment disorder as one of the major forces that impair people's lives if when i was young i experienced attachment disorder the lack of attachment with my parents or my primary care takers and it didn't give me the confidence the resilience that i need to become an independent person now to deny that and say i don't need attachment i'm a hermit i'm a self-contained human being it's denying the fabric of who i am it's the mind the fabric of reality so you might say but rabbi why why explain to me the logic why i need attachment so i'll tell you what a big therapist here told me once a good friend of mine he says as long as i ask my patients questions and they have logical answers i know we're not getting anywhere i did not hit the primal spots how do i know i hit the primal spots when they stop giving a why they'll shed a tear and they'll say because that's who i am that's who i am and that's the deepest truth about your question logically i can argue this way i can argue this way did god really need any of this good questions god is infinite and perfect and impeccable and flawless what exactly was he missing but the great spiritual masters understood that as long as you're playing the mind game you're in a very external space of the self an important place we love the mind we love logic we love math the whole talmud is based on structures of logic but those are manifestations they're external layers of the ultimate reality the ultimate reality is about the essence god in his internal deepest essence craved a relationship he wanted to get married he wanted love and he chose you and he chose me to become those partners to become his his soulmate so to speak we're one this is this is who i am so in my most primal space i am attached and i'm in a relationship and therefore i need the relationship because that is who i am i can deny it i can say well it doesn't make sense okay it may not make sense good question but it's not going to take away the truth of who i am and what i really really need and we see it emotionally all the time when we deny our need for attachment it's because of our pain that we're not ready to address and the reason for that is from an evolutionary an evolutionary biologist psychologist will tell you because millions of years of evolution taught us that we have to hunt together we need the support of the group we need the support of the system judaism will say it's much deeper than that the dna of creation is relationships the dna of creation is attachment so before we go on to the last topic which is relationship with other human beings other people um i've seen that you've written and spoke a lot about mental health generally and we've been speaking a lot about that now just wonder before we move to the last topic any kind of what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned from you know you also give counsel to a lot of people as well about the question of mental health anxiety especially in my generation it's kind of it's a broad open-ended question some of the things that stand out to you is like some of the biggest lessons you've learned about the issue of mental health and anxiety today especially for my generation i find it really fascinating that despite the fact that we have so much more prosperity than our great grandparents could ever dream of and relatively speaking we have much easier lives than they do nonetheless there has been an explosion of anxiety in recent years and you're talking about among the demographic in an age group that relatively speaking has it pretty good they have food and they have support and they have shelter and a lot of them have success and a lot of them have excessive prosperity nobody knows where is all this anxiety coming from it's not like all of us were tortured so badly and i really feel maybe wrongly so that history evolves from a jewish perspective all of history is an evolution from multiplicity to oneness from fragmentation to wholeness from brokenness to repair we call it wasakin olam the fixing of the world and part of that is to be able to create fusion between god and humanity and between man and man and man and woman and woman and man fusion and unity and part of that is it's almost like god is causing us to confront a lot of anxiety and trauma that has been buried in our psyches not just in our own times but with epigenetics we know that our genes inherit the trauma of thousands of years and i think in our generation it's coming to the fore i think a lot of what we're carrying from our grandmothers and grandfathers generations back are coming out now with one opportunity to be able actually to work it through instead of running away from it and avoiding it again and focus instead on your existence because to survive day to day right they they have to survive right off time in many ways our existence are because our existence is more comfortable it requires more justification oh of course of course we we have we reflect and that reflection is a double-edged sword sometimes it can drive us more sugar yeah and we become couch potatoes but it's an invitation to actually embrace life from the most earnest and genuine and deepest place which is all the preparation for the ultimate fusion for a divine awareness and oneness that pervades society and all of our world which we call redemption redemptive consciousness is a consciousness that doesn't ignore my anxiety it embraces my anxiety it gets to the core of my anxiety and it retroactively heals it not only for my generation but for all the previous generations so let's move on lastly to the question of interpersonal relationships um i've seen you speak a bit about quite a lot about how to deal with people who frustrate you or hurt you give us a little sort of crash course on that in the next few minutes yes so let me tell you my my the most powerful statement that guides me comes from the third labacher rabbit that's he asked what's the he lived in the 18th century 18th and 19th century died in and he writes what's the difference in children and adults and we all know one of the differences is the children don't keep grudges my child may say tati i hate you mommy i hate you you're not gonna get a part of my birthday cake i'm not your friend anymore but 20 minutes later you give them some ice cream and they're your best friends adults keep grow keep grudges they can keep grudges for weeks for months for years for decades i tell you i'm not speaking to you ever again and a decade later i want to invite you to my child's wedding to my child's bar mitzvah because of something that happened 20 years ago or eight years ago or 15 years ago and the rebbe asks the question why children are less mature than adults adults are supposedly so much more developed why is it they let go of grudges a day later they forgot and adults hold on to it if we would live long enough for centuries this is what he says i'm using my own words but the concept is his he says the difference between children and adults is children choose being happy over being right adults choose being right over being happy as a child my need to be happy is more important than my need to be right i let go of the grudges and we become friends again as an adult i would sometimes rather be miserable than be wrong why an inflated ego that is fueled by profound insecurity it looks like an ego but it's engine is insecurity which the child doesn't have child is closer more aligned with their innocence with the divine light that flows through them i want to be connected to i don't want to not be on speaking terms with my sister with my brother with my sister-in-law with my mother with my aunt with my cousin with my partner with my employee with the guy near me in the synagogue i don't want to not be on speaking terms with you it's hurtful it's not the way to live my soul misses your soul maybe we're not best friends maybe we're not destined to be best friends maybe we don't want to go out every thursday night fresh for for a coffee or a drink or a schmooze but i don't want to cross the street when i see you i don't want to avoid you at the wedding that's not how a person wants to live but my deep insecurity tells me he's a threat to your life it's my trauma taking over and i start living a very narrow life a very restricted life and my decisions are pathetic and i look at the children they want to be happy they don't want to be right so the question i have to ask myself in life is do you want to be right or do you want to be happy i once told somebody why don't you make up with your brother it happened 20 years ago they got into a fight over a business he says let him apologize to me i said why don't you go to him and say i'm sorry he says if i tell him i'm sorry he's going to think that he was right that's worse than everything else for him thinks i said so he'll think he's right never justice you know what we do we guard our dysfunction and idealism i'm not fighting for my own wounds i'm fighting because justice because i was right and he was wrong so i become paralyzed i avoid my own pain by camouflaging it as a form of idealism i'm doing it because of god i can't speak to you because god doesn't want me to speak to you how pathetic is that we turn god into something that is really another name for our own internal unresolved emotions so that's the first thing i would say we have to learn to be able to talk to each other to forgive each other to apologize not to hold on to fights and disputes i should say there are of course unique situations you know if somebody is actively abusing you and you really have to detach yourself obviously there's also situations where you need healthy boundaries you know sometimes we need healthy neighbor healthy fences healthy neighbors make i think robert frost said we need boundaries you know you have to know what parts of a relationship are toxic what parts of a relationship are productive this is where mature responsibility comes in we sometimes need help and feedback from other people but i think the fundamental principle has to be that when you're when you're in a relationship with with truth with your own truth you're in a space of love you're in a space of of affection you're in a space of of closeness hillel famously said to the convert to the non-jew who wanted to study judaism standing on one foot and hillel said what you dislike to be done to you don't do it anybody else that's the whole torah everything else is commentary now go study the commentary this means anything in torah is a commentary on this statement what you dislike to be done to you don't do it anybody else so living in that oasis of love that's where we find ourselves that's where we find god that's where we find hope that's where we find redemption wow well rabbi jacobson this this segment is called jewish wisdom on jtv and you definitely gave us a heaping serving of it in this uh segment so thank you so much for your time for letting me come to your uh your your hub in muncie and um yeah just really appreciate your time and hope we can do this again sometime in the future absolutely great to meet you thank you for your work and spreading the light and the love thank you so much this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make 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