Rabbi YY Jacobson & Meir Kay: Judaism & Trauma; the Emotional Struggle of Celebrities

the yeshiva.net how are you today thank you so much i'm privileged and thrilled to be able to be here with you mayor thank you for the opportunity thank you i'm already appreciating to see your passion and excitement it means you love what you do so that's good it is it's grateful it's in days like today when i record these podcasts that i just i'm filled with excitement and energy and it carries through once i hit like you know stop we jump off the meeting i'm like the whole day is a whole nother day after such these conversations and i'm really excited to to jump in with you and i think we'll be up a pro to kick off a conversation with you um would be with me asking you what would be what's one of your favorite jokes that you would like to open up with you know it says in talmud that a good way to warm up the crowd before they hear something important or deep is to say a joke you like to open up with jokes what's some what's something that comes to mind so i'll share a joke that i just shared today that was uh i had a zoom with the south african jewish community so i opened with this one there was basically a teenager who was studying for his finals on european history so he turns to his father and he says daddy daddy i need some information here you know for my homework who is responsible for starting the first world war how the first world war began his father was ignorant he knew he knew nothing about history but he didn't want to embarrass himself so he says i think belgium invaded holland and that's how the first world war began problem is his wife wrote her doctorate in european history she was a teacher of history and she overheard it in the kitchen so she for her this was an unforgivable crime to make such a horrible error and she says what are you doing a cup as they're saying either well you're happy with china how could you distort history so much belgium invaded holland that's not how world war one began it's not what happened it's basically gavrila princip shot the ear of the throne of the austro-hungarian empire on june 18th that's how first world war began in sarajevo he says if you continue preaching your ridiculous history to our son he's gonna grow up as ignorant and clueless and foolish as you of course the husband got insulted and he says who asked you to mix in he never asked you the question stop mixing into my life stop insulting me and what do you think you know about history you know nothing and the boy speaks up and he says okay daddy i know how the first world war began got it [Laughter] that was today's joke i love it i love it wow do you have uh at one point he wrote you know you have so many different articles out but perhaps one day you'll compile the jokes that you put together and perhaps humor of rabbi huawei i love that i love i love the one that you mentioned i've heard it recently um where you it's the son who's talking to her his mom mom says hey can you go to the back porch it's dark outside you get me the broom the the boy is like mom i'm scared of the dark and here i am saying you're a joke but i think the listeners may enjoy it and it may segue into something and the voice says i'm scared of the dark the mom's like don't worry god's out there god's there he'll watch over you the boy's like really god's out there in the dark in the back of the porch he'll be there you're watching over me sure go you'll be okay so the boy timothy walks to the back door opens it up peeks his head out and says god if you're there can you please hand me the broom yeah but i will tell you mayor i will if you want to know the joke for all the years i always try to begin lectures with jokes not always but very often because it it opens up people's hearts it also removes stereotypes sometimes i speak to audiences and the fact that i'm wearing a kippah yamaka i have side locks i have a beard i look like an observant jew somewhat sometimes very secular audiences or non-jewish audiences could look at me and like you know where's where did he land from you know from which planet and how is he going to teach us about life yeah and the fact that we can laugh about the same things and ultimately cry about the same things really just brings out the inner unity that we're all vulnerable and we're all sensitive and we're all human and we all long for transcendence and meaning and belonging and attachment so humor really i always found to be a very good icebreaker and psychologically it opens opens people up yes so so by now in this podcast i do hope that the listeners are somewhat warmed up to to you and to and to us in this conversation and uh and as we delve into this i mean even just now in your latest what you just said like you speak in a way which is quite different the vocabulary and the terminology is a bit different from the typical rabbi or observant looking jew in your position with this like the positive psychology that you infuse within your your talks and your and the way you approach problems or how you talk about god in that relationship all that is so different and so fresh and so unique i i wonder where was there a defining moment or where in your history did you start developing that voice this approach to sharing in the way that you do wow that's that's a wonderful question so i cannot pinpoint a defining moment maybe there was but not i i can't pinpoint consciously you know this was this was the moment you know when as soon as i hear people's stories you know i i went to this place and and my life was changed forever i don't have such a moment but i did grow up in a home that was culturally quite open my late father was a jewish journalist for more than 50 years uh he worked for various newspapers around the world including for israel's largest daily idiot and then he ultimately opened up his own yiddish newspaper so the guests that frequent their home that the guests that frequent in our home and the types of conversations in our home i think opened me up to a lot of diversity in the world then when i myself came of age i traveled a lot i've met a lot of people i always tried to listen um to educate myself to open myself up to different experiences especially in my own inner work in my own spiritual and emotional psychological growth i guess it just all came together in my soul in my brain in some way and then when i realized that it seems like part of my mission in life is to share and communicate and inspire i just felt this is the most penetrating effective and powerful way to really allow people to open themselves up to deeper states of consciousness i mean you do such a great job at it i mean you did you feel like that the home that you brought up in was it conducive to challenging questions to challenge the effort to the mainstream was there was there space to be yourself or to question the things that you were being taught yeah for sure my father was one of the least judgmental people i think that i have ever met he owned himself he grew up in the hell of stalin's communism and it left such an impression on him that anything that was censored triggered him in a very profound ways he could not deal with censorship he could not deal with people trying to control other people's minds other people's mouths and other people's souls so we grew up with a very deep rooted uh denigration and hatred or that type of tyranny and control i remember i was a kid it's in 1981 the yiddish editor of a newspaper called ms now you have to realize the humor ms means truth in russia there was a newspaper pravda which means truth but they also had a yiddish newspaper called ms which means truth now i'm not always a fan of newspapers my grandfather used to say when he wanted to trigger my father he would say that all newspapers are lies and everything that says in the newspaper is a lie even the date because it was printed yesterday but within my father was a newspaper man but within newspapers i could guarantee you that the newspaper called truth in yiddish in moscow probably didn't have even two percent of truth and that there was absolute communist propaganda they even titled it ms they didn't spell it in the hebrew emma says aleph men tough three letters of the hebrew alphabet they spelled it in which was even a distortion of the word truth so the very name was a distortion and the editor-in-chief who was an absolute communist agent came to the united states to persuade american jury that communist russia is a paradise so he came to our house because my father had the biggest yiddish newspaper at the time or one of the largest jewish newspapers of the algamena journal so he came to my house to persuade my father that he should give good publicity to communist russia and my father interviewed him for hours and my father published the entire interview without censorship where mr verbalist aaron vargas is extolling the virtues the beauty the exquisiteness the liberty the cultural freedom in in the soviet union this is 1981 and my father prints the interview without censorship people were horrified with him how do you how do you become a channel for such lies and deception you know our animal farm yeah the next week my father wrote an editorial and the way he began the editorial is i grew up in the soviet union i'm not an american who read you know american propaganda i grew up in the soviet and he describes his youth he describes what his parents went through his father was taken friday night in the middle of kiddush during the 1938 purges arrested tortured exiled to the gulag almost killed made it out a broken man he describes his relatives his visit there in the 1970s and he concludes his article he says mr vergilis please don't sell me the lies about the soviet union one of the worst worst hells ever created for mankind and the annals of human history around 30 or 40 some say 50 million deaths so i think in my home there was a certain my father and by extension all of us were very allergic to controlling minds to censoring information and not to allow speech truth to speak for itself my father told this to me maybe a hundred times he says the first thing that dictators do this was a classic of this the first thing dictators do is they create a bureau for truth and information the stalin did this and hitler did this the first thing in other words they make sure that all the information is channeled through them because once i could control the information that comes to you i can control everything as jefferson famously explained the difference between free government and free press right wow so that's i mean so there's it seems like the humor and the wit and the and the wisdom has it's just it was embedded within you from a very young age from your grandfather to your father now now you're a great catalyst to share that with with the world your um your brilliance is it's quite well known from a very young age i'm not here to fluff you up too much but the truth the facts are the facts at age 15 you're you're a razor for uh for the rebel which for those who do audience knows what that means or is it for there ever well i was gonna jump right into it but if you want to explain what you did you can but in short and sure you could correct me where i'm wrong but long story short the lava tureby would uh talk of hours at length on shabbos on yamchavan times where one could not record what he was saying so there was a team of of individuals who would go and listen and hear and remember all that was said and then afterwards when it was appropriate to write they would write down and record every and then record everything that was that was said and you at the tender age of 15 at 15 years old were able was able to remember and be part of this elite team of people who are able to remember what was said absorb it and then transmit it afterwards correct how to do this so far yeah correct excellent man okay all right oh my god i would be happy to hear it so now and where i'm going with this is that so at 15 you're 15 years old you have this brilliant mind um i i'm i'm curious to know like first of all just technically like was there a certain task did you find a way to clear your mind before you delved into this job into this task at hand what's how did you prep before going that's a great question so i have an older brother who some of you know many of you know rabbi simon jacobs and the author towards a meaningful life and he he's 16 years older than i am was part of this group and he actually also worked with my middle brother bharara barak jacobson and when i was a little kid i was a little child la bhava chereb of blessed memory would hold a public gathering almost every sabbath almost every shabbat and holidays and they would go for many hours they could go anywhere from three hours to six hours sometimes seven eight hours on holidays he would sometimes speak four days and each each address can last a few hours so all together you're talking about 10 12 15 20 hours of talk and when i was younger i just i developed a certain niche i guess which my brother identified so when i was a young teenager a little after my bar mitzvah he summoned me into the team it was incredibly incredibly challenging for so many reasons number one the lubavitchery was an extraordinarily brilliant man who mastered really all of the branches of torah wisdom philosophy mysticism kabbalah hasidic thought talmud biblical studies jewish law halacha what's known as reshaina maharaja all of the various components of mahashava for ethics legalistics legalistic components maimonides rashid talmud babylonian jerusalem talmud and the various halachic works of the generations and all of the mystical writings and he really contained the but he also had tremendous knowledge in a lot of the secular sciences science physics mathematics engineering algebra trigonometry modern physics astrophysics cosmology geology and history and current events and his talks were really a mosaic that synthesized all of these branches of wisdom and always with contemporary applications because he wasn't only a great scholar he was also very sensitive visionary and leader and he had his finger on the pulse of the people so to listen to the rebel for a few hours was an intellectually and emotionally and spiritually transformative experience to memorize it though and transcribe it was not easy to put it mildly and i think it was probably one of the till today i have to tell you saturday night my wife knows i get a little bit into a bad mood and not because i am so sensitive to the spirituality of shabbat departing maybe subconsciously too but because it triggers what saturday night was in my life you know all my friends would go for pizza or bowling or just chill out whatever they were doing saturday night but i knew it's going to be an all-nighter because we're going to start writing down the talks of the river probably the most important prerequisite to be able to memorize and to be able to be involved in this was two things number one continuous and diligent learning of the rebbe's works and teachings to understand his methodology his style his approach because he was extremely systematic thinker very organized thinker uniquely organized thinker in fact the ember today is known as a social activist but really by nature he was much more of an internal thinker his social activism came out of a necessity of what he felt was god's mission but he was an extremely organized thinker so the more one can delve into that the more it made you prepared you also had to try to learn and master as much material as you can generally because he was always quoting from here and there and he wouldn't give you notes before to read from he wouldn't read from notes but in addition to that i think the most important thing that i found was and my brother shared this with me also a few times because he was part of that team was the ability to really be able to listen to really be able to listen is not as easy as one would imagine listening means and i'm going to say maybe a little dramatically is that when their ebb is talking i don't exist there's no i the mind is completely vacant an open conduit and channel just to absorb no opinions no critique no compliments i remember once the rebbe said something it was brilliant and i tell myself wow that was good you would think that would be helpful it ruined it i forgot that talk because my intellectual ego asserted itself and started to give opinions that was good you're great you're excellent no no no you're not a student anymore now you're a critic now you have opinions you know why children remember everything and they'll remind you 20 years later what you told them at the age of four because they actually listen they're wet sponges they absorb everything we as adults it's very hard for us to listen even if you're sitting at the most brilliant lecture in the world usually when the person is speaking you're telling yourself that's good i'm gonna make a youtube video of that he's brilliant i'm getting him on my show you're not listening to him you have opinions about him that's how we all listen so i learned that early on there ever starts talking i am not present completely open it's called emptying out in kabbalistic terminology it's emptying out the vessel of all of your own toxicity and all of your own ideas about life and just allowing this energy to flow through you later you're gonna have to reassert yourself and try to retain it i mean that's an incredible like how does one even go about at such a again young age you're in your teens how do you go about practicing such such a deep way of just existing of being ultimately present in the moment actually i was not told to do it i just i learned it from from instinctive experience that when i did it i realized when i was just allowing myself to be mesmerized that's when you know that mark twain mark twain once wrote he said when god created the grand canyon he did not create the adjectives with which to describe it sometimes you just have to allow yourself to melt away in the experience don't give words you don't have to give it words you don't have to describe it describing it language is wonderful but it also limits every experience so in real listening even though the person is communicating through language but for me to get it i cannot confer language upon it i just had i had to allow myself to be mesmerized to to melt away in the experience sometimes a hug could be more powerful than i than i love you you know yes even the gaze of the eyes the eyes to eyes that gaze yet because it captures an emotion or sentiments that often language will limit and define so even though we are creatures of language and we cherish language and i certainly should be the last one to criticize languages how i make my living and put bread on the table but we also have to always be aware that language is a trap because it captures everything and defines it and then we close the lid on it yeah you know i tell always my students i said when i look at a raisin the moment i say this is a raisin or the moment they say this is a cup the story is over it's a cup that said i know everything about it you ever saw a two-year-old or a one-year-old in the crib looking at a cup or looking at a raisin they could look at it for 45 minutes from all angles you know why because they don't give it a name by not giving it a name they actually remain open to the experience that language really limits so it's important to always have that ability to be in the world of language but then to remember that we have to transcend the world of language yeah yeah and i once heard from the but says about moses that he couldn't talk he told god i'm not a man of words so he said the real reason is because moses lived in a world that transcends language he could not put a limit on anything because he always saw things as reflecting their infinite source so there's no language very powerful idea that is quite powerful i mean there there has to i mean though maybe i'm going a little off tangent here but there that seems so vast and so tremendous but for us in this world that we're talking about we we we automatically as humans practice limitation of our way of being but we put labels or we put people into certain boxes and we need to even for our own lives can't be so open because then there's so many options and then we get lost and confused and for someone like so many talents you know where do i go with it how do i achieve it so where's that fine balance between staying open and curious and not labeling and yet also living in a realistic great wonder wonderful question and there's a lovely talmudic story that on the holiday of sukkot which is considered the holiday of joy the greatest sages and leaders would jungle they would juggle torches they would juggle glasses of wine they would juggle eggs you're talking about the top tier of jewish scholarship and leadership we're juggling eight torches four torches twelve torches like what was what what what was that about like it's nice to have a good show a good a good juggling show but you had here literally i mean captain sages are buyer rather levy so uh the lubavitcher ever once explained on sukkas he said something magnificent he said the art of life is juggling because when you juggle you know you throw one ball up the other one comes down but when it comes down the other one goes up there's two ways of living i call them for those of you who still remember listening to the radio allah shalom somewhat all over shalom there's am and there's fm right you remember am nfm so if you go to am the world is coming to an end within the next hour whether you love trump or you love biden you're pro-global warming or against global warming between coronaviruses and pandemics politics and everything else and within the next hour the world should be coming to an end that's am radio you go to fm radio [Music] brilliant and the question is which station where should you live should you live in a.m or should you live in alpha right when you have a marriage sometimes one of the spouses is am one of those f so the spouse who's an am look at said the spouse of ephraim you're out for lunch you're detached you live in the heavens i can't be with you and the one on fm is like you need therapy you're traumatized you're triggered you don't know how to chill out you don't know how to relax and that's the art of juggling the art of juggling is that a part of me always remains above but a part of me has the courage to be able to come down below and that ability to vacillate freely between the world in which we impose language and confer definitions on things so that we can survive so when i say pass to apple you don't pass a sledgehammer right and when i say give me a hug right you don't shoot me in order to be able to survive in that world where language and communication is essential for life but always to be able to know that i have to keep a channel i have to keep a link open with the satellite above where i should never feel the need to put a lid on the box and just believe that i know the whole story i should always be able to be curious and inquisitive and open especially when it comes to the yourself and people around you one of the great tragedies in life is when we tell stories about ourself consciously and subconsciously and we never revisit those stories we put our spouses in boxes and we never revisit them we put our children in boxes and really it's just our definition of those experience and those definitions may be horribly impoverished based on our own wounds and scars and this is where you have to realize how part of us has to remain uninhibited and free to explore so that's a great that's so great i love where we're going with that and with with what you were saying here there there there are so many types of limitations and stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and we tell about others but then we also fall into these blind spots of like this is we don't even know we don't you know we know what we don't know but how do we find out the things that we don't know that we don't even know about so and that's how it shows up most of reality which is most of reality what i know i don't know is wonderful but what i don't know that i don't know is 99.9 of reality yeah that's a big piece of the pie and so if somebody is wants to go about that journey and discovery how would they go about that and and to and that's something i've asked i'll be honest i've asked that question in the past in some of the podcasts with people who are psychologists or life coaches and such um but here's a unique opportunity perhaps to ask that question but through the prism of a saitara um or something because i think people sometimes get scared about when we start talking about this type of language is this jewish is this kosher is this healthy what's it tied to where's the source we get lost in that jargon and i think there's so much healing to be said in this conversation how would you tie it back into a place where it's like no this is truth this is you know this is this is real this is wonderful not only is this judaism it's the essence of judaism i'm going to tell you a teaching of the great market of miss rich the margaret of miss rich was the famous successor of the boshantov and the second master in the history of citizen he died in 1772 on the 19th of crystal he's known as rabbi dove bearer of miss rich just a little interesting historical point and that is when carl jung carl jung the famous student of ziggman freud and one of the only non-jews in freud's minion they used to say that freud if he wasn't such a heretic and didn't hate religion so much could have had a minion for a minute every day in his office the only one who would pray would be carol carol young who wasn't jewish that's hilarious i i read an interview it's fascinating with him when he was 80 years old and i kid you not i could send you a copy of it somebody sent it to me like 15 years ago and somebody asked jung who is responsible for molding your velt on xiaomi specifically the idea of collective unconscious he believed in this inner unconscious unity of all of us and he says a man who died in the 1700s and his name was rabbi dove bear of mizritch wow the hasidic master and he's quotes different things that he learned from him about ayan about going into a state of of of no thingness from which all the somethingness comes from so i'm mentioning this just to reference the power of the teachings of the market of ms rich even on a mantle of carol jung had such a major impact but no very few people would know to trace that back to the hasidic master the market of miss rich who was also the teacher of the founder of chabad the al-tarab arabis who was a student of this man of miss richmond which is a city in ukraine he has a wonderful teaching very meaningful on the opening verse of genesis in the beginning god created heaven and earth but there are two superfluous words there atashamaya the ettaarets which are not necessary and they come from the word os which means letters he says in the beginning god created the letters of heaven and the letters of earth meaning pre-creation the whole world was here everything was here god didn't change the prophet says in malwa everything was here pre-creation just as it was post creation you know what changed language in the beginning what we call the big bang the moment of beginning when time was created space was created matter was created what happens he created letters for heaven and earth he created language for heaven and earth and that changed reality because today we know in physics in linguistics and psychology our language of reality defines reality especially in the world of quantum physics my language defines reality max planck said matter is a derivative of consciousness consciousness is not a derivative of matter matter exists because i think it exists my perspective on reality my language on reality is what defines reality a different language is a different reality so the difference between appreciation and post-creation is not reality it's pre-creation the posture of reality was an expression of infinity so if i would look at myself i would not have language to define myself i would see my posture as being rooted in the infinite source of the godhead and i am a manifestation of the infinite light that's how i would perceive myself once language is introduced now there is already an ability for separation for fragmentation and ultimately for trauma what is trauma if not the stories i tell myself about myself that restrict me and now i'm operating from a very very narrow unlimited place and everything you tell me is being filtered through those very narrow stories which all originate in language so we live in a world of language but to be in a relationship with reality i always have to be able to straighten up and lift myself up and allow my posture to be rooted in infinity and not allow it to become contained and confined in a box of language which will inevitably result in stories that will limit my creativity dampen my joy and tell me that i am incapable of real love and real connection so how that's that's fantastic to first of all i had a question about you did mention how within this realm of trauma how it's how it's brought down through through language however isn't trauma or can be tr trauma and in some cases and perhaps in my own life it's stuff that has happened to you like it's actual it's physical oh it's of course it has its own reality are you saying it's the meaning we give it here's the key mayor i can deal with pain you can deal with pain what i can't deal is with the stories i tell myself about my pain and you know where we learned this from the animal world okay if you ever watch national geographic or you take visits to the jungle or you watch planet earth or all these wonderful videos about god's beautiful world so the cheetah is chasing the impala okay one of three things happens then power gets devoured then pilot makes an escape or the impala freezes by knowing that sometimes when you freeze you startle the lioness or the cheetah or the leopard because they don't know what's going on why did you freeze and they they get scared and they go away and you can run away they saw a fascinating thing an impala or a zebra or an antelope freezes the cheetah gets close to it runs away and now the zebra the impala is there it just came close to death that's called a trauma what do these animals do they start shaking trembling for 30 seconds for a minute for a few minutes and then they go back to the herd and naturalist scientists noticed that there was absolutely no indication in any form of any change of behavior no displays of trauma in terms of connection and they wondered what happened and then they realized those 40 seconds of shaking it off was the end of the story animals are fortunate in the sense that they were not given the gift of language imagine the zebra would tell itself you know why the cheetah is chasing me because i'm a horrible kid in fact i don't deserve to live and that's why my mother insulted me yesterday because she also thinks i'm not supposed to live which is why my father kicked me yesterday because he certainly doesn't believe i'm supposed to live which in fact is proven by the fact that i was left behind because i'm anyway incapable and incompetent i am a loser why am i even alive the zebra doesn't go there the zebra just knows that was scary i'm not going back there again i can deal with pain it's not easy it's painful to deal with pain our souls are bigger than our pain our souls are infinite i could contain my pain the stories i tell myself about my pain they paralyze me they suck the spirit out of me it's the language i tell myself about who i am and who i'm not and then i live in that language and i never emancipate myself from it and now 40 years later my wife tells me something i'm not hearing what she says my trauma is triggered and i'm responding from that place i'm living in a prison it's a very sad place to live in so i always have to be able to align my posture with infinity and that i would say is one of the most important and essential teachings of judaism would you be able to give an example from your own life if you're comfortable about a of a space and time that you had to work through to learn this lesson firsthand because you give it off so beautifully i i i have to work on this every single day just to give one example i grew up with a lot of pressure a lot of expectation i had some talents as a youngster and they were identified and in a good jewish family you know pressure is on the pressure is on i grew up with a lot a lot of pressure to succeed and that's a struggle i had to work through i still have to work through it because i had to succeed and i felt that if i'm successful that's what i'm going to be like that's when i'm going to be loved that's where i get my validation what does success look like in the translation success looks like in my world it looked like powerful intellectual achievements excelling in school excelling in whatever i did nobody expected of me to go into big league football or you know join the super bowl that wasn't part of the ashkenazic jewish american expectations okay but a lot of other expectations you know and then when i am now speaking and communicating right very often there is those toxic thoughts can exist you know are the people liking me am i getting the validation of the audience which puts me right away into a prison i'm living in a very small place that's just one example are you not free from that now because of the success that you have today that you are so here's the rule success doesn't free you up from toxicity success can sometimes create much more toxicity because you start believing your own toxicity it's one of the reasons why so many celebrities have miserable relationships and sometimes unfortunately have to surrender to substances that are not very healthy for them because when you have been by a concert where 50 000 people are ready to worship are worshipping you and even if you spit they some of them will even lick your saliva forgive me and then you come home and your wife says hey take out the garbage 50 000 people think i'm god and you're telling me to take out the garbage success doesn't heal wounds it could sometimes but not necessarily success can sometimes increase wounds it's the inner work it's the inner work that helps a person heal so success is gratifying success is meaningful but if it's not coupled with inner work it's meaningless i once went to visit rabbi adin steins rabbi haddin even israel who just passed away a few months ago giant other man he was a giant of a man a towering figure in the jewish world authored close to 80 books translated the talmud first translated in english in hebrew you know before before many other publishing houses did it like art school massive etc real pioneer and a great person and i went to see him a number of years ago to consult him he gave me time to come see him shabbos afternoon in the backyard of his home in the german colony in jerusalem he had a little garden with some tree stumps that we sat on and uh we were schmoozing as the sun was setting saturday afternoon shabbat afternoon in jerusalem and i asked him advice i said listen i'm invited to travel around the world i lecture to many audiences young and old jews and non-jews religious and secular i write a lot i communicate i want advice from you you have been doing this work for years you wrote you you traveled you lectured could you give me advice and one of the he he he shared with me a few insights but one thing that i will forever remember is he was very funny and he could be cynical and it really touches on what you're talking about he says to me he says you know they say that you're good he tells me i hear from my wife he wouldn't say i think you're good that's okay i hear from my wife that you're good and you'll get better he says you'll get better you'll you'll perfect your skill he says you'll reach a point where when somebody invites you to a lecturer you won't even have to know the topic what will happen is you're going to come up to the pulpit and on the pulpit is going to be a flyer with the topic and then you'll go into the filing cabinet okay we're talking about happiness okay you'll take out the filing cabinet boom on our lecture we're talking about marriage okay we're talking about faith okay we're talking about depression okay whatever it is israel he says and it'll be wonderful and you'll finish you'll get a standing ovation he said most importantly you'll get a nice check you'll go home you'll deposit it in the bank and the next week he'll go somewhere else for another lecture and then he looks at me he says 25 years will pass and one morning you will wake up and you will take a look in the mirror and the only thing you will see is a mouthpiece nothing else and at that moment you will know that you are a dead man talking wow because there is only a mouthpiece there he says that is what will become of you and he says i see this with many rabbis speakers teachers educators lecturers they become a copy of their old self all there is is a mouthpiece the audience doesn't mind they get their entertainment but he says but you'll be dead that was it as i said rabbi schneizel that's encouraging advice to put it a little cynically what's what's your suggestion he said my suggestion is don't speak to people don't give lectures the first person you have to speak to is yourself you have to be learning challenging yourself growing every day create another challenge transcend your obstacles get out of your insecurities have real people in your life and then you speak to audiences he says make sure that after 25 years you don't only see a mouthpiece you see a real person how do you actually apply that so when when you if a client actually tells you hey we want to talk about x y and z are you then challenging yourself in that topic and faith in in marriage are you are you looking into your own experience are you challenging that how do you i wouldn't put it that way it's not like you know if he wants me to talk about marriage i tell my wife okay i think i gotta go to therapy it's more what he meant in the way i took it and the way i try to apply it is just just an ongoing just in order to be able to to give to people something genuine i have to be genuine so it's really constant inner work of being of trying trying at least to be real to be authentic to confronting my demons my skeletons my insecurities my flaws my weaknesses to open myself up to genuine criticism of real people my respect so what are some ways you do that what are some ways that someone's listening now that you could they could go ahead and start that start a process of of healing and growth right uh i think for me i could speak about myself yeah i think for me first and foremost it's it's real learning real learning i i i spend a lot of time studying and learning especially works of judaism and the spiritual works of judaism the works of what's known as the spiritual dimensions of judaism learning them meditating on them applying them breathing them and really practicing them another very important component is prayer prayer in the form of letting go not prayer of just opening the prayer book and saying the words that's wonderful but i'm talking about prayer in terms of connection really connecting letting go and trying to align myself with my infinite posture allowing one of one of the most beautiful interpretations in jewish mysticism on the word tefillah the hebrew word father's prayer tifila's prayer the word we say is jacob tells joseph before his death i never imagined that i'll see your face and now i see you and i see your children though is referring it to the self for example if i'm dressing my child i'll say la bish lahitlabaish is to dress myself lehitra hates us to bathe myself so they hit paul is to surprise myself what does that mean to anticipate what it really means is to feel is to imagine my reality from god's perspective to see myself from a pre-language vantage point to be able to see myself from a pre-trauma pre-definition point of view to see myself maybe the way god sees me that's what prayer is that's what i try to do during prayer and it's not easy because the toxicity is always there you know oh i'll tell you who you are yeah you're this you're that you're that you're that yeah we love going there our trauma loves going there because it's a safe place you know battered woman syndrome battered battered man syndrome so prayer for me is very important meditation is important and then there is listening listening and learning from teachers masters colleagues friends who really inspire me it's very important for people and today with with the internet it's one of the blessings that you don't have to have a teacher in close proximity if there's somebody who talks to your soul spend time with them every single day yeshiva.net thank you spend time with them and get your spirit get your spirit fired up these are these other people these are the messages these are the texts you want to spend time with the more we spend time in a world of innocence the more that innocence will take root in our psyches let me ask you what is i mean what would you say you say so many things right you you give so many different types of talks if you have to con can concess into one thing what are you trying to say in so many different ways wonderful question if i can if i can summarize what i try to say in one sentences each and every one of us is an indispensable in the divine cosmic symphony never ever underestimate your value and always be in touch with the following truth you are a divine ambassador in this world you are an ambassador of infinity you're not an ambassador of finiteness you are an ambassador of infinity you are never a victim of your circumstances you are an ambassador of infinity that was sent into those circumstances in order to bring light into them you are at every moment in every situation under all circumstances and within every encounter see yourself as an ambassador of love light hope healing authenticity and redemption which i i had a follow-up question which perhaps it gets answered here but which was going to say what message is most important to be said to and spoken to to the youth and then i was going to say with the elderly it's it's it's really it's a great question what i think i think is actually a i think it's a similar message to the youth and the elderly but the language i think changes the youth must i think identify this truth don't be afraid of any of your emotions you are larger than all of them give yourself permission to experience whatever you experience and don't allow them to define who you are that is so important when that 17 year old boy or girl starts experiencing depression melancholy sadness and so many other emotions sometimes mental illness mood swings sometimes dysfunctional families which result in so many different impressions and we become afraid of all these emotions so we either have to numb them or repress them and we get into these emotional confined traps in prison don't be afraid of any of your emotions there's an amazing teaching of the balshemptov he says that in exodus right before the splitting of the sea moses tells the jewish people don't be afraid of the egyptians stand here and watch the salvation of god because you are seeing egypt today and because you're seeing egypt today you will never see them again they ultimately end up drowning and the commentators say what an awkward way of saying this because you see them today you'll never see them again he should say you'll never see them again obviously they see them today and the boshantov said no it's because you have the courage to look at them today that you won't be able that you won't see them again if i have the courage to look at my emotions and not be afraid of them i actually liberate myself from them if i don't have the courage to look at my emotions i repressed them and now they leak out from everywhere in my life but i have no control because they have now been relegated to the subconscious sellers of my psyche realize that you have the courage you're larger than them you can handle every emotion that comes your way do not be afraid of any experience because you're larger than it and realize your power you are you were sent here on a mission and at every single moment of your life you can choose to be a victim or to be a prince i think these types of messages are very very crucial for the youth when they're said with heart and with genuineness and with authenticity without judgment and without the need to impose ourselves on them and control them i think with elderly people what i have found is that these these ideas resonate very deeply and i think here the focus has to be people have so many regrets you know you get older i should have done this i should have done that i should have had this family i should have this marriage this is not when you're younger when you're old all these expectations and and i get out again another teaching of the the judaism says wicked people are filled with regrets because they always do the wrong thing so they always feel guilty he said no no wicked people are filled with regrets mean people who are filled with regrets it's not a sign of moral upstanding you know why not because you're feeling guilty because you basically don't realize that your expectations of life are completely erroneous i'm busy regretting my past i don't realize that my past was exactly where i was supposed to be to bring me to my present so the ability to really embrace your life and say wherever i am is where i'm supposed to be this is where my mission is it's what mordechai told esther the story of purim you became a queen of the persian monarch not by mistake you were placed here because this is your moment to shine i know it wasn't the trajectory of your life but can you let go of your old expectations and embrace your opportunity today but for this i have to transcend my ego and my insecurity is this is this the jewish version of the power of now of being totally fully present in this um yeah i'm actually it pains me sometimes when people tell me you know that the power of now is a recent idea when every single day in our prayers we state that god creates the world anew constantly the khalyan constantly every day the balsham to 300 years ago taught that to be a jew to be a human being means to be in tuned with the creation of this moment and if i'm living in yesterday's moment in a way i'm dead because i'm not marching to the beat i'm not aligned with the rhythm and god is like i'm creating you now why are you living in yesterday because yesterday i messed up i goofed up i'm a nerd i'm an idiot can you be alive now you're a channel of infinity right now in fact i think it's one of the most fundamental ideas in jewish spirituality to be completely in tuned to the calling of the moment to the opportunity of the moment the opportunity of the moment may look very different than what i would like it to look like it may be my teenager telling me something very very uh difficult for me to hear but that that's the moment that's the opportunity don't run away don't let your amygdala reptilian brain uh create this fight-or-flight uh situation don't lose the plot tune in take a deep breath anchor yourself sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut and then ask yourself what can i learn from this moment how can i grow from this moment what is my calling at this moment as a father or as a wife or as a husband or as an individual can i challenge two things one of which is the you mentioned that the regret aspect of like looking back and and taking into account that everything that took place led you to this present moment now but let's say that person is not happy with where they are right now yeah right yeah yeah and number two would be and on what you just mentioned about staying in the pain facing the pain fight or flight where is that line when you're saying hey and maybe that takes rigorous honesty and some guidance and i'm trying to answer the whole question but how do you where's that line between saying yes i gave it all my all i but it's just the pains it's just coming back in ebbs and waves and time to leave time to move on to the next thing right right right okay wonderful question your first remind me your first question power in the sense of where one looking back at regrets very important very important happy with the present moment though okay so so i i don't want to make this too abstract but i'm just i'm just going to say this i'm going to give the the one minute version of it and i hope it can trigger all of us to you know to reflect on this more one of the biggest problems in philosophy is how we reconcile divine providence and free choice you know my calling the shots is is god calling the shots you know who who's making these decisions obviously so much of life is based on genetics and based on environment nature and nurture and based on my chemical you know chemistry which is completely beyond my control and every one of us has tools that we were giving you know look at most mistakes of your parents or my parents or our grandparents i mean they were wonderful people but they just had the tools that they had and no more you know and and our trauma goes back 2 000 years it's international into intergenerational trauma you know and you also come from russian families i literally just had a coaching session on my podcast i turned into a with uh jerry carnova he's a he's a ceo he's a ceo whisperer long story short he talked he was like i was talking about certain fears that i have in my life and being stuck and he's like let's go back to your grandparents let's talk about those per grumps let's talk about running away from russia and so we went down that conversation but yeah keep going so we have to have a lot of compassion really compassion is is the word uh the alta rebbe always writes in the quote entirely says the deepest attribute is the attribute of compassion and he says something beautiful i love what he says he says because compassion doesn't deny anything and it doesn't need to suppress anything and yet it doesn't have to judge anything that's the power of compassion i don't have to deny you to be able to deal with you and i don't have to extol you i can create space for you and just have compassion so it's a very very powerful attribute he calls it so obviously a lot of that is you know beyond our control and then there's the element of choice where do the two come together and one of the deepest teachings of kabbalah is that there are parallel universes that are going on simultaneously and they're paradoxical in one universe god decides and chooses everything in the other universe rabbi y why decides and chooses a lot of things now you'll say it's a paradox that's fine we know today in quantum reality paradox is the norm subatomic particles are clockwise counterclockwise simultaneously light is a particle and a wave simultaneously schrodinger's cat is dead and alive etc they're both happening simultaneously so okay great here's what happens and here is a very profound idea it could be misconstrued but it should not even when i'm sinning i'm doing the wrong thing i'm making a mistake i'm doing something destructive god himself has told me in the torah don't do it and the greatest kabbalist said you did it because you chose badly but you know what in another universe god decided that you do it where where where we this is ridiculous here is the deal when i learn from my mistakes and i grow into recovery from all of my destructive and toxic behaviors and i transform those mistakes into springboards of humility vulnerability awareness and love retroactively my ill-fated choices become aligned with god's choice and that's what the talmud means when it says that when you truly transform your life your sins become mitzvahs how because my sins are sins from my perspective from god's perspective they were just a prelude for transformation when i take my mistakes when i take my failures when i take those disastrous choices that i made in my life and i turn them into springboards for health for growth for awareness for recovery for helping other people retroactively those mistakes now became success stories you know that great story about henry watson he was the the chief of ibm and they say that there was a manager who made a horrible business decision and he cost the company 10 million dollars in losses and he came in in the morning to watson to give in as resignation papers and just leave the company he felt horrible watson said where you going he says i don't want you don't have to fire me i'm just leaving no severance pay i just want to apologize i wish i could pay you back but i don't have 10 million dollars and henry watson says you're not going anywhere i just spent 10 million dollars on your education the moment a mistake becomes a moment of education it may have been your greatest success story and that's where faith comes in if i could say to myself i made a lot of mistakes and i may have destroyed my life some of us have made mistakes that destroyed our lives and may have destroyed the lives of people we love i can live in that space i'm a failure i'm wicked i'm evil i'll burn in purgatory for eternity you're detached from the real story i made terrible mistakes now if i can go there and say okay but god also chose those mistakes i'm not the only one who chose them why did he choose them he chose them because somehow this is my path to become a source of light and inspiration this is my path to my unique music that i have to bring to humanity and to the cosmos and when i do that i redefine retroactively my mistake so that it's now a different type of mistake it's actually a mitzvah this is a meditation that i think can help all of us but for this we have to let go of expectations if i s i'm stuck in what my life was supposed to look like you know i was 20 this had to happen i was 25 i was 30. oh 100 i mean i i know myself i i replay certain tapes over and over and over again i cannot forgive myself for certain mistakes that i did and in those moments if i was honest i was operating from a place of fear or ego or or a lower self which i i see the work of this forgiving myself accepting myself accepting reality and knowing that 100 percent of the things that took place in those moments though in some parallel universe i could say what if this happened i didn't say no to that relationship and that could have put me to where i am today and make more yes yes and that we all know that dialogue in our own version of our own lives yes yes that's what have said that when you're filled with regret regrets is coming from a place of weakness not of strength when you're really in touch with the deeper energy you don't live with regrets the question is why the question is not why was i so stupid the question is what can i learn from this and how am i moving forward to be able to fulfill the mission for which my soul came down to the world that's the question we want to ask ourselves that's a real question that's a good question without minimizing the pain that we caused ourselves or other people other people caused us in terms of your other question about you know fight and flight and the line between sticking around or when it's time to throw in the towel right so it's so important to be able to be as you said be very honest with ourselves number one but also have a support system of people who care for us but they also can challenge us whether it's close confidants and friends whether it's it's it's great therapists or therapists professionals whether it's a rabbi a mentor mentors people who care for you they want to see your success but they're also ready to challenge you and they don't have that confirmation bias that you may have i think we have to have these ongoing conversations to be able to process what is happening in our life and say you know maybe i need some feedback here to react differently and is this relationship toxic is this relationship healthy is this about my trauma is this about something that's really not meant for me these are conversations we have to have with ourselves but with people who can help us let go of our own biases and blind spots to be able to see a deeper narrative and and don't get stuck with those people and sometimes people go to a therapist they start worshiping the therapist if this therapist is not working for you it's time to move on you know don't allow other people to make decisions for your life it doesn't work that way i need to hear feedback from other people but i have to take responsibility for my life and ultimately the advice has to resonate with me and i have to i have to be the one who calls the shots god created me because the buck stops here for me and the book stops there for you i understood i understand there is um before we start wrapping up there was one uh concept which i did enjoy i deep dive again it was hard to do research on you because every all your videos it's hard to find a why jacobson video that's less than an hour so to just let god you know i just double speed was created for me for my lectures well there you go miracles one of the miracles created for my lectures and some say triple speed even better it is about okay side note before i get to the last point before i get to the closing where did the training the of how to speak so slowly where opposites i speed up i get quick i get excited is it natural or the preparation to train yourself to speak so eloquently to to speak so slowly and to to expand your vocabulary was that something that come naturally to you or is this yes so actually people ask me all the time i never i never took lessons i never got uh lessons on speaking or communication no toastmaster class no no type of uh postmaster classes no workshops no great professionals who taught me how to open how to close take off my glasses wave my hands had a cry had a laugh how to make jokes i never went to any of those training sessions not that they're not wonderful i just never went it was really something inside of me that was there from a very young age i think and but whenever i listen to masters or i read literature i read books i absorb i say this is how you phrase a sentence i did that from a very young age this is how you say it this is how you phrase a sentence uh i once asked the chief rabbi one of the great rabbis of melbourne by kaiyan gutnik he was a great orator so i once asked him who was the greatest speaker you ever heard in the jewish world he didn't want to tell me initially and then he said at the end it was jabatinski japatinsky was zev he was a teacher of beggin he was a revisionist he believed in jews being strong and fighting it they were very against the haganah he was ultimately exiled he died in 1940 chapatinsky created the network of real warriors in israel who wanted to drive out the british unconventional methods and he was a brilliant orator and rabbi goodman told me he was a student in tells it tells a lithuanian yeshiva and tells very famous yeshiva and chabotinski was coming to towels to speak he says all of us went to the lecture with eggs in our pockets because we knew that chipotle was a secular jew and he's going to try to persuade the yeshiva boys to leave yeshiva and go find other missions for their life so we came with eggs so when he starts speaking his heresy we're going to hurl eggs on him so what he told me and he said he opened his mouth he said he spoke for four hours and at the end of the lecture we just felt the eggs oozing oozing quite peacefully and silently below our garments so uh you know i always tried growing up to be able to learn from the best to see how to how to say a phrase to to see how to build an idea how to develop an idea and i still uh always try to learn beautiful i hear that okay so there's this uh i'm really pulling something out but it just resonated with me deeply and i do hope that perhaps listeners will tie to this as well uh from your talk on yeshiva.net how do i cultivate a positive attitude in life it's a beautiful talk and thank god i just scrolled through i clicked here in there and i came across this one bit where you talked about rebar and carlin delving into the word hamakun a name one of the names of hashem and how not to have a fight with space with the space i'm just abbreviating it would you be able to just touch on this idea this concept i think it's just so powerful beautiful beautiful concept there's an expression and the talmud in the midrash is free your heart should not be fighting with the space sort of iron of carlin one of the great masters another student of the market of miss rich it all ties together of it all ties together all ties together he says what is a strange expression your heart shouldn't be in a fight with god god he says no no god is often called in the talmud ma called the space the ability real faith means the ability to be able to make peace with your space geographically emotionally psychologically and spiritually so much of our frustration in life is because i don't make peace with my space i tell myself if i would have only grown up in a more functional family if my father would have only been xyz my mother my brother my sister if i would have only married such a guy or such a woman if my in-laws if i would have had these talents these skills this car this type of this type of gene this type of personality if i only lived in warm weather you know you ran away to los angeles i'm still here in new york we have a huge snow here outside we had almost two feet a foot and a half if i only lived here if i only if if if if if if my husband was easier my wife was easier my mother-in-law was this my father life would be great surabayan of karlin says the essence of life is stop fighting with your makkah with your space baruch can you come to a place where you discover that this is the place moses wants to get close to the burning bush and god says take your shoes off your feet because the place upon which you stand is sacred soil the key is to be able to say the place where i am in right now my heart my brain with all of its issues my family with all of its issues my past my present my future this is the place this is where i can encounter god this is where i can encounter my truth this is where i can encounter my mission this is where i can play my music when i can really embrace that then i will be able to see my space rather than a hindrance actually as the opportunity for me to shine beautifully said i love that it's it definitely resonates deeply a lot of work it's always a once you you take the inspirations and it sounds great in the moment but then the moment you go back into real life or to just that critic that voice comes back in and challenges that's the challenge we're overtaken by anger by laziness by by by toxic repetitive thoughts of how bad everything is and we're triggered by people's responses and that's why it's so important to be able to connect daily with a vision of yourself that is rooted in infinity so that when the second part of the juggling happens when you go from fm to am instead of getting flustered and overwhelmed you could respond to it with uh equanimity with uh with focus with balance with love with compassion and i want to say mayor you know i have found for my life and i see it constantly people do not realize how much love they can give we're all looking for love we're all looking we're all looking for something you know we all love that person to come over to me and tell me how love how lovable i am and we all want that in one way or another we all want to belong and and it's important but realize that one of the most powerful ways to touch that place in yourself is by you becoming that source of love when people see you in the marketplace or in the synagogue or in the office or in the street or in the park they'll look at you you know what you want them to see there is a lover there is a source of love there is a source of inspiration there is a person if you get close you're going to get love you become that person and you know what will happen you will fire up souls wherever you walk you should be walking with a bag filled with seeds you know how farmers walk around with the seeds and they just spread the seeds that bank should be filled with seeds of love and just wherever you see a person just plant a seed and you know what you'll come back in ten years and you'll see a bunch of trees of love have grown because you threw the siege wherever you went don't be stingy don't be stingy to hug people i don't necessarily mean physically with corona but i mean virtually to compliment people to uplift people to believe in people to say nice things to people to do good gestures of of kindness of goodness you will never realize the impact people are yearning for it and when there's such a source that they come flocking because th this is this is what we each of us has to become and you will you we we cannot overestimate how powerful how powerful that can be somebody once said you know what love is love is learning the song of the people you care about and when they forget that song sing it to them beautiful beautiful so wow you've spoken on such a variety of topics today and i want to thank you for that you pulled out facts and names and dates i mean what are the what are the challenges or downsides to having such a great memory that's a funny question i guess i remember a lot of things people say to me oh i guess i remember a lot of things people say to me uh listen i absorb a lot i absorb a lot and uh i could get it i could get down i can get into a very bad mood um i could come off a great lecture where people were really moved and internally i'm empty i pick up a lot of energy from people i'm sensitive i absorb a lot one of the most beautiful beautiful teachings i know we're about to end every moment but but you trigger stuff in me it's just it's just a great teaching it's i don't know it's top of my book oblivious he was a great hasidic master he died in 1809 and uh in ukraine again a student of the market of miss rich right i want to say carol jung's rather but that that wouldn't fly so much and and he says to something so beautiful you know today you hear it and people think it's like you know this new psychology but he wrote this in the 1700s it's it's printed and in in in numbers joshua sends two spies to to scout the land of israel and it says margulies perish death spies now what's the use of sending deaf spies i mean spies have to listen they gotta pick up where you don't send death spies so there's different interpretations make believe you're deaf you know so people won't think you're here he says something else he says when sensitive people walk in a particular space they can feel all the energy that was put into that space by anybody who ever walked there before and they have to deal with it because they could confuse it as their own so he said to them you're going to be treading the same path like the spies that moses sent 40 years earlier he sent 12 spies and 10 of them were overtaken by fear and dissuaded the jews from going into the promised land when you follow the same path you're gonna feel their energy their energy may affect you you're gonna have to be deaf to their energy you're gonna have to be emotionally sensitive to distinguish your energy from their energy not to allow them to dictate your behavior and i'm like wow sometimes you come home from a wedding and you're in a bad mood and you're blaming yourself no you picked up the energy of 150 people who all have issues just like you have issues i'm not saying you don't have issues but you have to distinguish you got to be deaf so this is this is part of this is part of living to be able to know i have to own my energy i'm responsible for my energy i cannot own your energy we have a we have a wonderful law in judaism before passover we clean our house for comments for leavened bread but my responsibility is only to clean the places where i have comets not where you have psychologically that's very healthy advice so this is some of the stuff i and i think some of us have to deal with cleanup house beautiful well broadway jacobson thank you so much for your time for your insights this is the great day podcast and i i realize now when i ask a question it's more than just a yes or no it turns into a whole russia which i'm grateful for but if we can what's a great day for you double speed was created for me including this podcast double speed speed double speed is made for me oh double speed what's a great day for you what's this is the what's a great day for you a great day for me is i would say a day of alignment simply a day of alignment a day in which i'm operating from a deeper space of consciousness i'm not responding to the pressures of the moment i am not being reactive to the stress and to the anxiety inside of me or people around me but rather i am operating from an inner awareness that i am an ambassador of love light and hope beautifully it's a good day that's a great day all right thank you so much for sharing it's always about how you start of the day you know starting over the day is so important if the moment i wake up you know i'm on my phone checking emails getting overwhelmed i often lose the plot you have to start off your day from a space of of deep connection and alignment and then you can deal with every email great thank you thank you so much for sharing and for showing up so powerfully today thank you for the privilege and thank you for the opportunity mayor 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