My Judaism Is Dead; My Marriage Is Lifeless; My Heart Is Numb

They Yeshiva.net This is a story in Nevi'im in the prophets Malachim base Perek dalet Kings 2 chapter 4 and it was inserted as the beginning of the haftarah of parshas Vayeira like every haftarah it's a chapter or a few chapters of one of the Nevi'im of one of the prophets and this as I said is Kings 2 chapter 4 Malachim base Perek dalet and let's go through the story inside in the text I'll translate and explain. This is how you remember probably some of you remember safer Malachim Malachim base this is how chapter 4 begins. Ve'isha achas mine benei hanavi'im tza'akah el Elisha leimor one woman she was the wife of one of the students of the prophets benei hanavi'im means children of prophets and Tanakh child is often a euphemism for a student for a disciple like vishinantam levanacha in other places so this was a woman who was married she was the wife of one of the students of the prophets meaning he was somebody who was raised in prophecy and became a prophet himself tza'akah she came screaming crying el Elisha to Elisha Elisha who was the prophet one of the great prophets of the age a disciple of Eliyahu Hanavi Elijah the prophet who then was succeeded by his student and pupil Elisha so this woman Isha achas this one woman the wife of one of the prophets comes screaming and crying to Elisha saying avdecha your servant Ishi my husband meis has died. Ve'atah yada'ata ki you know ki avdecha yarei Hashem you know you knew my husband you know that your servant my husband was a god-fearing man veha'noshe ba'al kachas eshnei yeladai le'avdim The noshe is the one he is in debt to. The creditor, the one my husband owes a lot of money. He came to take both of my children as servants to work for him as collateral in lieu of the loan which I can't pay back. Elisha says to her, to this woman, What can I do for you? Tell me, please, what do you have in your home? What do you still own in your home? Obviously, she is a poverty-stricken woman. She's impoverished. She has nothing. She has no money, which is why she can't pay back the loan that her husband took from this man who's now exacting payment after his death. And he wants the two children instead. So, he says, "Tell me what you still have in the home." Your maidservant, which is an expression of your servant, your servant, I should say, your servant has nothing in the house. Key and besides also shaman a a flask or little jug or barrel, not a barrel, a little jug container of oil. Elisha says, go. Borrow for yourself vessels, containers, from outside, from outside the home, from all of your neighbors. Empty vessels, but let them not be few. Meaning, borrow as many empty vessels as you can from all of your neighbors. Obviously, you don't have. That's why he says, "Go out go outside of your home. Go to all your neighbors and borrow all containers that are available. Let them be empty, but altamity, not few. Uvos, and then Elisha continues and tells this woman, then come, come back home. Visgarta delis ba'adech uv'ad banayich. And close the door, lock the door. For yourself and your children, meaning you remain inside with the door closed. V'yotzakt al kol hakaylim ha'ayleh. And then take this one asuch, this one jug of oil and pour it onto these vessels, all of these vessels. V'hamalay tasi, and whatever fills up move away. And the pasuk, the novi continues verse five, vataylech me'itay. This lady, this woman who came to Elisha leaves. Vatisger hadeles ba'adah uv'ad banah, obviously fill in the blanks, she did what she said, and she closes the door on her and her children. Haymagishim aylah, her two sons who would be taken in as slaves are giving the vessels to her. They're magishim, like the word vayigash, they approach her with the vessel, they bring close the vessels. Vihi motz'ekes, and she is pouring. She is pouring from the flask of oil, from the jug of oil into these vessels. Vayihe kimlayu hakaylim, as all the vessels were now filled with oil. And obviously what happened is somehow this jug of oil did not was not depleted. She poured, and she continued to pour, and the vessels are full. Vatomer avnosha, she tells her child, hagishi li od kayli. Od kayli, bring me another vessel. Obviously she saw that there's still oil left in the flask of oil, so bring me another vessel so I can fill it. Vayomer aylah, and her son says, ayn od kayli. There are no more vessels. Vayamod hashamen, and that's when the oil ceased, it stopped. There was a halt to the flow of oil. And she she shared the story with the godly man, with the man of God, meaning Elisha the prophet. And she shared with him what is going on. Basically, the story is she has a home filled with empty vessels that are now filled. They were empty vessels and now they're filled with oil. Go and sell the oil. And pay up the creditor. Pay up the person you are indebted you're in debt to. And you and your children shall live with the remainder of the oil, with the money that comes in from the left of from the leftover oil. Meaning, you will sell the oil. That money will be sufficient to pay up all the debts that your husband owned. And thus, you will be debt free. And now you'll still have extra oil. By noiser, everything that's left over noiser means from the word yoicer, anything that's more that's left over, that's excessive afterwards, you will use to sustain you and your children. And that's the end of the story, seven verses of chapter four. And then chapter four, seven verses. And then verse goes into the next story. The story of Elisha and the famous Elisha the prophet, the woman from Shunem connected with the hospitality room she created for Elisha and the child she was blessed with and a whole other story which continues in the chapter, but we are going to focus now on this story. A little background. And this background, as always, is often in the midrash, Torah Shebaal Peh, even though it's not articulated clearly in the verses, but the sages with their traditions that they received and the commentary dissecting the nuances of the verses give us a little background to the story so we can have the context of the story. And that is obviously Elisha knew who this person was because the woman says, "You knew my husband." Va'avdecha Yirei Hashem. It sounds like he knew her. He She calls him the servant. Even if he didn't know him directly, it doesn't say clearly, but she says, "Va'ata Yadatas Ki Avdecha Yirei Hashem." You knew that he was fearful of God. So either he knew him or he certainly knew about him. And the way the Chazal, our sages, explain the story is that this prophet was a man named Obadiah. Obadiah was actually a convert. He was a convert of Edom, Ger Edomi. He came from Edomite and he was a convert. There's a book of Tanakh, one book that was written by Obadiah. It's the shortest sefer of Tanakh because it contains one chapter and that's the sefer of Obadiah in Nach. So it's one perek, the only book of the 24 books of Tanakh that has only one perek, one chapter, that was written by this prophet Obadiah. Obadiah was, as I said, a convert and he was close, he was a very wealthy man at one point, and he was close to the household of the king at the time and the king of the time was a man named Ahab. Ahab was the northern king of the Jewish people, as you know. At some point after King Solomon's death, after Hamelech's death, the Jewish people split into two. There was There were two kingdoms, two kings. One called Malchus Yehudah and one called Malchus Yisrael. Malchus Yehudah was the king who was in charge over two tribes of Israel, Yehudah and Binyamin, who was centered in Yerushalayim and the capital with the Beit Hamikdash. That was called Malchus Yehudah. And then there was another kingdom that ruled over 10 tribes of Israel. there were 12 tribes, known as Malchus Israel. There was This was a northern kingdom centered in Shamron, what we call Samaria in English. That was the Malchus of Israel. And the two kingdoms often were in conflict over the next few hundred years until the one kingdom was completely destroyed by the Assyrian king and the 10 tribes exiled and then 150 years later the second kingdom was destroyed and never restored to the Jewish people. And so, Ahab was Malch one of the Malche Israel and considered one of the most heinous, immoral, and evil kings. And he had a good shidduch with his wife Jezebel, who was as heinous as he and the Tanakh records some of their well-known crimes. Obadiah was a prophet, a divine prophet who was close to Ahab and Jezebel. But when Ahab turned against the Jewish prophets and tried to murder all of them, Obadiah went and hid 100 prophets in two caves. He had two elaborate caves and he placed in each cave 50 prophets. Altogether he concealed 100 prophets and he supported them with his own money. He supported them in terms of food and drinks and also oil to be able to have some light. Obadiah then lost his money and he didn't stop his charity. Instead he borrowed money. And the person he borrowed money happened to be from the royal family, Jehoram, who was the son of Ahab. He borrowed money and the money grew with the interest. Jehoram was no saint himself and he asked for a lot of interest despite the issue of ribbis. And at this point Obadiah owed him a lot of money and as you know interest grows and grows and grows and as the possuk calls it, it's the bite of the snake, it's the neshech, meaning one doesn't realize, if you've ever with credit card debt, you know it grows and grows and grows and before one knows it, they're drowning in debt. And then Evadya died. And here he owes a huge sum of money, so the noisha, your hireling, the son of Achav comes to the widow and she wants the two children for collateral. And this is when she comes to Elisha screaming, "Your servant, my husband died. You know how much yiras Hashem he had, how much awe and fear of God he had. You even know why he what what caused this debt. And now they want to come take my children." And that's when Elisha says, "What can I do for you? Tell me what you have in your home." And she says, "I have nothing but a flask of oil." In terms of chronology, this story happened around 300 years before the destruction of the first base hamikdash, before the destruction of the first temple, approximately in the year 3040 since creation. Now we are in the 6th century, 5779 this year. This is 3040, which means approximately 2700 years ago. Nish das a lange zeit zuruck. 2700 years ago, in terms of Jewish history, you know, things what happened 2000 years ago, 3000 years ago, it's still around. They once asked a Chinese politician, "What is your opinion of the French and American Revolution War?" And he said, "It's too early to tell." What's a couple of Americans? A baby, a couple of hundred years. Too early to tell. But uh uh Jews have a very long history, so it's not too early to tell. Uh this You could learn a lot from the past. Avram Malamud is a hoiver. And so, this is around three 3040, approximately in terms of BCE, the common era, the secular calendar, I think like 720 BCE. Needless to say, this is 2018 C, after the common era. Here we're talking about 720 before the common era. Now, at first glance, this is a story of a broken, impoverished, devastated widow who was not only devastated by the loss of her husband, but also by the financial tsunami that now threatened to overtake her and her family. And a compassionate holy man of God who performs a miracle in order to be able to save this lady and her family by identifying the flask of oil in her home and giving her a method of allowing this oil to continue to flow and flow and flow and never be depleted with which she can pay up the debts and even have extra oil to pay to to live with for her and her children. That's the literal aim creates the literal understanding of the story and one of the great acts recorded by Elisha in the Tanakh. And yet, and yet, one really has to understand the mechanism of the story. She comes to Elisha and says, "I have nothing." Miracles can happen in many ways. Many types of miracles can happen. What is the significance of this one? Why does it play itself out this way? There's many ways, if you're using the miraculous path, there's many ways of getting money, perhaps infinite ways. The fact that this method is employed is meaningful, significant. Besides, there's something else to ponder. And that is, as the Zohar puts it, and in many of them it's recorded that any single story recorded in the Tanakh is never just here to tell a story of the past or even to glorify the acts of a great person. As we shared many times, the word Torah represents the genre of what it is. The word Torah, like the word mora, means instruction, teachings, lessons. In other words, any story that makes it into the text of Torah is not just a story of history, it's not just a biography about a great person, a man or a woman, it's rather In addition to that, it's also a lesson for life. It's part of the divine blueprint and a manual for how humans could navigate their own lives since life is often hectic and complicated, and we can get confused and overwhelmed in the journey of life. So, each story in its own way captures another timeless lesson in the his in the in the existence of every human being navigating our own lives. So, that means all the characters don't only exist outside of us, they also exist within our own psyche, within our own soul. They represent metaphors and parables for our own story. When you read a story like this though, it seems that the story has little relevance to us. Few of us, if any, can perform such a miracle. It would have been nice if Israel can do this and not have to rely for so many years on the oil of many Middle Eastern countries, the same with America. But at the moment, we don't know how to do this. Oil is oil, and oil is of course costly. What then is the lesson? What is the meaningful lesson? What is the blueprint and manual that is contained in this story of Eisha Achas in the Nevi'im? So, today we're going to offer one perspective, and I'm going to tell you uh how this how this came about. 200 years ago, in the first decade of the 19th century, meaning in the early 1800s, a young man entered the chambers of one of the great Jewish personalities of the day, known as Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. He's known as the Baal Hatanya, the author of the Tanya and the Shulchan Aruch, the Rav Shulchan Aruch Shulchan Aruch HaRav. He's also known as the Alter Rebbe or the Rav or the Baal Hatanya. And his name was Rabbi Schneur Zalman, lived in the city at the time he lived in the city of Liadi, which is in a town, a little city in Belarus. The Alter Rebbe, the Baal Hatanya, was one of the great figures of his day and of many ages. And this person, this young man, came into his room. He cried out. And his cry, his plea, was pretty simple. He told the Rebbe, the Baal Hatanya, "I feel numb. I feel frozen. I feel apathetic. My insides are dead. What should I do?" That's the question that this young person raised to his spiritual Rebbe, to his master. Rabbi Schneur Zalman, the Baal Hatanya, who was a person of extraordinary wisdom and intense spirituality and profound love, and one of the greatest Gaonim of his time and of many times, as the author of the Shulchan Aruch, he shared with this young pupil this story. The story of Kings II, chapter 4. He went through the story and he proceeded to demonstrate how this story really contained a response to this young man's feeling of despondency, desperation, maybe a form of depression, or loneliness. And when this person came out, luckily, he or maybe somebody else who heard it, transcribed it on paper. He transcribed on paper what he heard from the Alter Rebbe, from the Baal HaTanya, on what was called Yechidus. Yechidus was the name for a private audience in which one soul shares with another soul that which is sitting in the deepest part of its heart. And he transcribed this Torah, this teaching that he heard from the Rebbe privately, on a piece of paper, obviously, and it was it was maintained. And it was printed a number of years ago in a book called Ma'amarei Admur HaZaken HaKtzarim, the short, brief discourses of Admur HaZaken, the Alter Rebbe, as he's known, the Baal HaTanya, Rabbi Shneur Zalman. And there, he records what the Rebbe told him in response to his question. And today, be ezrat Hashem, I want to share with you this insight of the Baal HaTanya on this story, albeit in uh my own words, but completely based on what the Rebbe shared with this man. And he said this story is a story about a woman coming to Elisha and begging him to save the situation and save her economical status, and of course her children. But it's also a story of life. Ve'isha achas. It says it doesn't say ve'isha, it says ve'isha achas. One woman, a woman. You say ve'isha, say ve'isha, a woman. Ve'isha achas, a woman min ishei bnei ha'nevi'im. One of the wives of the prophets came screaming, tzo'akah. She didn't come talking to him. She came screaming. Tzo'akah means pleading, crying. Crying probably is a better word in this context. I don't think she was hollering, but she was crying. Tza'akah represents a scream, it represents an outcry. And he says that the soul of a human being in Judaism is always compared to a woman. A woman as the wife or the spouse of Hashem, as it were. Why? Because the soul, the neshama, represents that part of our identity that is in a perpetual relationship with God. A husband and a wife who are married to each other can sometimes have an extraordinary relationship, a very loving relationship. They can also have a challenging and difficult relationship. But they always have a relationship. As somebody once said, you can love your wife, you can despise your wife, but you can't ignore her. You can love your husband, you can have a lot of issues with your husband, but if you're married, you can't ignore that person. The soul is that part of ourselves that can't ignore God. It can try to. It can try to, but as you know, married couples who try to ignore each other, it just doesn't work because you're connected. You have to figure it out one way or another, and if not, the misery continues. So, the Isha Achas, in Judaism, the neshama is called the Isha. The whole Shir Hashirim, the whole Song of Songs, is based on this metaphor of Ani Ledodi Vedodi Li, Kol Dodi Dofek, Pischili Achosi Rayosi Onosi Somosi, where Hashem is seen as the groom, as the husband, and Knesset Yisrael, the soul of the human being, is seen as the spouse, as the wife. Ish and Isha, many metaphors in the Midrashim and the Chazals use this metaphor of marriage as a embodiment as a manifestation of the divine relationship between the human being and God. So, the alter rebbe of Balatanya says the Isha Achas there is that woman, that part of you that's in a relationship with God and it's Achas. It's actually one. It's connected. It's Misha B'nai Hanavi'im. It's the wife of a prophet. A navi of course comes from the word as Rashi says neev s'fatai'im. Why is a navi called a navi? A navi in Hebrew neev s'fatai'im means the utterance of lips. That's what is communicated. The navi is a channel to communicate divine truth, divine energy. In that sense, every one of us is the wife of a prophet meaning we are connected to a flow of energy that comes through the soul. Every person has antennas that is open to the energy of the cosmos, to the energy of the divine and in that sense, every person, every soul is an Isha Achas. It's the wife of the Ribono shel Olam, one with him, Misha B'nai Hanavi'im, capable in potential to itself be a prophet cuz every soul is its own prophet. Every soul, there is the message, there is the light that comes through your soul. Just like a prophet is basically an ambassador. He or she is a channel, is a conduit. A conduit for what? A conduit for truth, a conduit for light, a conduit for love, a conduit for justice. Every soul in that sense is deeply connected with nevu'ah. In fact, when it was in Gan Eden before it was born, it was actually a navi. It was a channel that received tremendous amount of divine inspiration and that in one degree or another continues throughout the life of the soul wherever that soul may be. But at this point, the wife comes to Elisha and she says to him, "Avdecha Ishi meis." "Your servant, my husband, has died. She comes to the prophet Elisha. And the prophet represents Hashem, meaning she comes to God. In fact, the word Elisha is a combination of two words, which means Kayli sha. My God turns to me. He responds to me. So, she comes to Elisha, who represents Hashem. That's what the job of a navi is. That's what a prophet is. And she says, "Avdecha, your servant, ishi, my fire." The word ishi means husband, my husband. But, the word ishi is also my fire. It's carboni lachmi leishi. And not just my fire, aish yud ishi, as you could see here. Ishi is aish, fire, and two yuds. Meaning, the fire of yud. Yud is, of course, a representative of the divine. The God's name begins yud kay vav kay. We write yud yud as Hashem's name. The divine fire in me has died. The divine spark has died. I don't have a soul anymore. I am numb. I am frozen. I am lifeless. I am bored of life. I am dead inside. I am apathetic. I am indifferent. I think it was Tolstoy who defined boredom as the desire for desire. What does it mean when you say, "I'm bored?" Your teenager ever tells you, "I'm bored. Life is boring. I have a desire for desire. I want to want. I want to want. I want to have something. I want to be excited, but I don't. I have a desire for desire. Because at this moment, I don't have a desire. So, this woman, representing the Jew, or the person, comes to God, to Elisha, to the prophet of God, Kayli sha, and says, "Avdecha, the part of you, of me, that is your servant, ishi, my fire, aishali. Like you say, my fire, my my flame fire, my passion, my oomph, my enthusiasm, my creativity, my love for life. My yearning to suck the marrow out of life, to live life to the fullest with presence, with feeling is mace. It's gone. It's just not there. It's replaced by indifference, numbness, apathy, spiritual and emotional paralysis, and stagnation. It's not that I NEVER HAD A FIRE. If I never had a fire, I can't say it died. Only something that's alive, that was once alive can die. I once had a fire. My soul used to have a flame. There was the stove was on. There was a flame burning in my in my gut, in my heart, in my mind. But today it's completely extinguished. I have become apathetic to any deeper reality in life, to any meaning, to any spiritual meaning, to any depth. Basically, I feel detached and lifeless, or in one sentence, God and everything represented by God has become completely meaningless to me. So, if we will define boredom as the desire for desires, basically, this soul is describing itself as genuinely bored. Gone is the sense of mystery, the quest to embrace life, to embrace infinity. I'm just not there. And I think this is a feeling that many of ongoing or sometimes at certain points of our life. Somebody once said, a wise man once said, I'd rather die from exhaustion than die from boredom." Dying from boredom is a very difficult death. Dying from exhaustion, as they say, a soldier dies standing. Dying from exhaustion, so to speak, represents the fact that the person is alive in the process. So, the death that comes from boredom and apathy could be extremely painful. But, worse, this Isha Achaas, this soul, coming to God and saying, "My fire has been extinguished." says it's worse. Ha'noisha, the one who is exacting payment, came to take both of my children as slaves." And the Baal HaTanya said this to this young man, "Let me tell you what this means. Love and awe, Ahava, love, Yira, awe, affection, closeness, and boundaries. Ahava is closeness, Yira represents boundaries, discipline. These are the two polar forces of the human emotions that in Jewish mysticism, in Machshava, in Mussar, in Kabbalah, and especially in Chassidus, are described as children, as the two children. And the reason is the Sefer Yetzirah calls cognition the mother and the father. Abba is Chochma, Imma is Binah. Conception, cognition, awareness is father and mother, and emotions are children. Because no emotion can play itself out, can be felt without awareness. Every emotion is always preceded by an awareness, by a label. We don't just feel things. We first have to identify in our mind a certain description of what happened, and that's when we feel. As we have shared many times, when you tell me something, when you say something to me, or you do something to me, I don't respond to what you say or what you do. I respond to how I think about what you said and what you did. Every single emotion is preceded by a certain awareness, which is why when we change our awareness, we often respond emotionally different. Just to give a very simple example, but you can give numerous examples in in different aspects of life. Um I once read uh I once read the following description. I think it was Covey, Seven Seven Habits of uh Highly Effective People. He was sitting on a train. And uh sitting on the train, it was uh one nice morning. And you know what people do on a long subway train? Some people read the newspaper. Have you ever been on a train recently? Some people sit on the sit and read the newspaper. Uh today some people sit with their tablets or phones. A lot of people snooze. Um you know, people do uh uh crossword puzzles. That's a very sacred endeavor on the subway. But it's generally a time just to sit alone and relax and get off on your stop if you don't sleep it through. And there was this father with a bunch of children. And these children were very rowdy. They were just running all over the place and screaming and hollering and falling on people and jumping on people. So people try to be polite, and they were trying to be polite, and you know, giving the children their eyes and the father their eyes, but at some point it was just unbearable. So one of them turned to the father and said, "You know, excuse me. Your children are really uh behaving inappropriately. This is a subway. People are sitting. They're jumping all over the place. Please control them. Discipline them. They should learn how to be quiet and respectful in this environment. And the father looked at this person and said, "You're right. I'm so sorry. I'm not even sure what to do. I'll tell you we're coming from the hospital. Their mother died an hour ago. And they just saw that and we're going home now. And I assume this is how they're dealing with their emotions and I apologize for it." And he describes how in that moment everybody was not only stunned, but their entire understanding, awareness, and emotional reaction transformed from one extreme to another extreme. Now they were almost begging the kids to jump on them. "Come sit on my lap. Come. Why don't we have a game? Come, let me give you a lollipop. Here, come jump on me, dance on me. As many times you could trip over my feet, that would be a pleasure." What happened? Same annoyance like 5 minutes ago. The answer, of course, is awareness, just awareness. Same kids. SAME FACTS. NOTHING CHANGED. They're still driving you meshuga on the train. But now there was so much compassion, there was so much sensitivity, there was so much love, they looked at these children completely in a different perspective, in a different light. But I ask you a question, isn't it always that way? How much awareness do we need in every situation? When somebody makes a comment or somebody says something, do I even know? May not be as dramatic as this story, but the point is all emotions are children. Emotions are children. Children have to be respected. Children have to be nurtured. But children also can't be worshipped. A person has to understand the place of emotions in life. They're very, very special. They point us to truths, but they're always a result of awareness, always awareness. I was once in a bagel shop in Brooklyn and I was waiting for the person to give me whatever I ordered. So we were schmoozing. So he told me that he was a little boy, I think he was 11 years old. He lived in Jerusalem in Jerusalem and his mother died Arab Sukkot. And she left a family I think of 11 children. She died very young and the day after Sukkot they went to put up the matzeva on Har Hazaitim in Jerusalem. So they didn't have a car. So the father was standing with all the kids at the bus stop waiting for the bus to take them to the grave site to put up the matzeva. And he tells this to me. He said I'll never forget. A man walks through the bus stop. It was Isru Chag Sukkot. Two days after Sukkot. And he turns to them all the kids in Yiddish and he says, this was the language that this person repeated it in. He said this is You didn't go on enough holiday trips. You didn't waste enough time holiday. Now you're still not ready to go back to school? And uh he tells me he says I learned a lesson for life. I learned a lesson how little people know about other people. Imagine he would have stopped and thought maybe they're going to put up the tombstone for their young mother who has died suddenly a day before Yom Tov leaving this whole family orphaned. But this is true in so many other situations in life again even in much less dramatic and emotionally heart-wrenching situations. Emotions are called children. Children are not born in a vacuum. Sometimes we think they are or they think they are. But every child has a mother as some of you know very well. And every child has a father. And the father and mother are those who give birth to children. That's what emotions are. Emotions don't come in a vacuum. You and I can hear the same thing, watch the same thing. Our emotional response is completely different because the way we processed it is completely different because every single emotion is preceded by a mommy and a tati. And the mommy has to point out truth. The mommy has to identify this is the case. Now, sometimes we can't change emotions by changing parents. Depends how deep the emotions are. Sometimes they come from subconscious parents. That's a whole other complicated issue. But generally speaking, emotions are called children. And the two major emotions that we live with in life are ahava and yirah. Ahava is any emotion you have throughout the day is either an experience of wanting to get close or an experience of wanting to go away. All emotions fall into this. We gravitate and we recoil. We come close and we become distant. We feel love or we feel fear. One is the direction of closeness, of connection, and one is the opposite direction. I go back into myself creating boundaries. And thus, since emotions are children because emotions are always born and molded by awareness, by cognition, it's the stories I tell myself about myself and about you and the way I interpret what you say and the meaning it has that produces those emotions. And that's why you're never a victim to your emotions as long as you have the courage to go back to tati and mommy and say, "What does this mean for you?" And not completely get stuck in the emotion. So, when your child starts screaming, "MOMMY, MOMMY, CALL THE AMBULANCE. I HAVE TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL. THERE'S THREE RESPONSES. One response is you say call 911 or Hatzalah cuz your child said we're going to the hospital. That's one response. When they come it turns out that he stubbed his toe on the corner of the bed, which is hurtful, but it doesn't baruch Hashem it doesn't need a hospital. ANOTHER RESPONSE IS STOP BEING A BABY. YOU DON'T NEED A HOSPITAL. STOP BEING A BABY. GROW UP. GROW UP IF YOU WANT TO BE IN THIS HOUSE. AND WHAT you taught that child is that his or her emotions and experiences are completely illegitimate. There has no room for them in this house. Next time you hurt yourself, even if it's serious, be quiet cuz all I'm going to tell you is stop being a baby. Those are two extremes, but then there's the third one. The third one is you go into the room. You pick up the child. You caress them. You nurture them. You show love. You calm them down, but you don't have to rush to the hospital yet. You take a look. If it's serious, chas v'shalom, you do what you have to do. If it's not serious, you continue to caress them. You empathize with their pain, and you help them. You help them emerge from it with dignity. In other words, it's really the model of how to deal with emotions. Some people they have an emotion, and they're right away calling Hatzalah. They lose it. The emotion becomes the master of their life. So other people go to the opposite extreme, and some of us grew up in such homes where all emotions are farbotten. You know what farbotten means? Our motto is repression, repression, repression. Put up a smile and go and do what you have to do. LIKE MY MOTHER DID, LIKE HER MOTHER DID, LIKE HER MOTHER DID, ALL THE WAY BACK TO CHAVA. IS THE statement you may have heard IN YOUR HOUSE, DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO. EMOTIONS AFTER 120 years you go to therapy in Gan Eden. Now there's duty, COUNTRY, RESPONSIBILITY. I don't care how you feel. Emotions are irrelevant to life. But what that happens is what happens then? You become a robot. Because emotions don't go away. The proper approach to emotions is like children. You don't make fun of children. You don't judge children. You don't TELL A CHILD, "NEVER EVER CRY AGAIN IN THIS HOUSE." WHY NOT? Why not? I also want to cry. I just can't always cry loud, so they can do it still. You could cry, you could laugh, you can express yourself. Now you have to learn how to deal with it. You help a child grow up not by denying childhood, but by allowing them to embrace childhood and then developing a vision for life based on values. Now, when we talk That's why emotions are are are are defined as children, and it's a very powerful metaphor that the Tanya discusses in chapter three. And every emotion is either a form of attraction or a form of rejection. You could name any emotion you had today. Think about the Anybody had emotions today? What's the policy in your home? You have emotions? Any emotion. Of course, emotions manifest themselves in in in in myriads of ways, in infinite ways, but ultimately it's either in the realm of ahava or the realm of yirah, in the realm of of attraction, I'm attracted, or the realm of rejection. Now, everybody who's alive experiences attraction in their life and rejection in their life. Everybody loves and everybody despises. We gravitate and we recoil. We love and we fear. There's only one question. Towards whom and towards what? Do you love people or do you love gossip in order to feel superior to people. Do you love truth or do you love addiction? Both are loves, but they're very, very different types of loves. Do you love depth or do you love superficiality? Do you love justice and righteousness or do you love instant gratification? Do you crave that which is authentic and real or do you just crave that which is transient and will make you feel good at the moment? Are you attracted to your soul? Do you love your true soul or are you drawn only to externalities? That's what grabs me. Or sometimes I may be drawn even to promiscuity, which is a distraction, because I have no relationship with my soul, because I have no relationship with my identity, so I have to numb it. Now, we all have fear. I don't know a single person in the world who doesn't have fear, unless you're completely mashugana alive. We all have fear. The question is from what? What am I afraid of? From losing my human dignity? Am I afraid of that? Or am I just afraid of what people are going to say about my human dignity? Am I afraid from people or am I afraid from God? Am I afraid of externalities or am I afraid of truth? Am I Am I Am I afraid of anybody knowing who I really am or I am afraid the exact opposite? I'm afraid of living a life of falsehood and forfeiting my truth because of external fear. We all have fear. The question is only to whom? When the Balshems was 5 years old, his parents died and his father, his name was Reb Eliezer, turned to his 5-year-old boy. Talk about education before his death and his last words to him were Yisrolik, your father is now leaving the world and I want to share with you two instructions for life, two messages for life. And he told them in Yiddish, Fear nobody. Fear nobody. Fear nothing but God and love every Jew with your entire heart and soul. And you could say that these two messages of his father became the two pillars, the shnei amudei aish of his entire life and weltanschauung which transformed the landscape of Judaism and of Jewish history till this very day for those who are open to the Balshems' teachings. But when his father told him, "Don't fear anybody or anything but God." Are those two separate sentences? Are they connected? Are they two distinct messages? First of all, don't fear anybody. Second of all, fear only God. Of course, they're not only interconnected, they're dependent upon each other. Cuz if I don't really fear God, I should fear somebody else. How could you not fear? If I'm in a company, I should fear my boss and my boss has his boss and his boss and his boss. And even if my boss is the founder and the CEO and the CFO and there's nobody to answer to, there's somebody wealthier in the Forbes 500 list that he wants to flatter, that he wants to live up to. There's always somebody to be afraid of. There is always something to fear of. And worst comes to worst, there's the mouse on the kitchen counter. And we won't go there at the moment. This guy calls me, says, "I tried telling my wife, you're bigger than it and you're stronger than it. He doesn't know why he didn't want to help. So, what the Baal Shem Tov's father was telling him is unless you really fear God, then of course you're going to fear somebody and somebody else, and that's a normal way of dealing with things. So, now we come back to the story. The Baal HaTanya tells this person, this lady, this neshama, this isha, who comes crying to Elisha, comes to Hashem and says, "I'm numb. My soul is dead. But not only that, my emotions have been taken into captivity. My emotions have been manipulated, have been abducted. They have been turned into slaves. I DON'T OWN MY CHILDREN. I DON'T OWN MY LOVE ANYMORE. I DON'T OWN MY OR ANYMORE. HA NOISHA BAAL HAKACHASH SHNEI YELADAI L'AVADIM. Both of my children he wants to take away as slaves. Because this is where I am. My fire has died. I don't own my love. I don't own my or. In many ways today you can describe one manifestation of this. I say one because really this applies to all of us in some ways. It's the life of that person who just they don't own their love. They don't own their or in the most drastic way. It's a form of addiction, which applies to every person in their own way. I have been robbed from them. They are owned by forces outside of me. The creditor has come to take both of my sons as slaves. This is the cry of the soul who feels, of the person who feels dead inside. You wake up in the morning, you go to sleep at night, you're just in the middle of the day walking or on the couch or going about your needs and affairs, and there's just a deadness. There's just an apathy. Sometimes you look at a person and you say, "A dead man walking." I don't want to see a dead woman walking. It's usually harder for women to become dead. But, uh they say, "I love Manchester. I visit Manchester often. I know a lot of people of Manchester." But, when I came the first time to Manchester, so the rabbi there, there was a reception at Kabbalah Centre. So, one of the famous rabbis of Manchester says, "Rabbi Jacobson, I want to welcome you to Manchester for the first time. Let me tell you about Manchester." That they say Mark Twain, who lived in New York, said before he died he wants to move to Manchester because from there the transition to death won't be that noticeable. This was what the rabbi of Manchester told him. I said, "And they hired you? These are your feelings about Manchester and they hired you?" He says, "They know it better than everybody else. I can't give an opinion about Manchester. I just go as a visitor for a few days and we have a wonderful time, besides the weather." Somebody once came to discuss with me a certain uh residence where they one should live. So, I suggested a certain city. They said, "No way. No way." We said, "Why not?" They said, "Cuz of over there," he said, "it sometimes looks like that people behave as though they died already." And in many ways it's easier to live that way. You don't have to make decisions. You don't have to be creative. You don't have to make choices. You don't have to deal with challenges. It's just over. And that's the cry. But, the pain of that is very, very profound. But, if I may, doesn't this apply not only to our own lives? It also applies often to our relationships. Sometimes people come and they speak and they say the following message, the same message of this woman to Alicia. They'll say, "We had magical moments with each other. Our relationship at one point was thriving. It was meaningful. It was inspiring. There were times that heaven has bestowed our union, our intimacy, our love with grace, with friendship. Romance flowed from our lips like milk and honey. There was an electricity in the air. There was a passion in the marriage. And then sometimes a couple, a wife or a husband or both will say, "The relationship is now suffocating. It feels like somebody is choking it, not allowing air to come through this passage. It's there, but it's dead. It's lifeless. We're fine. We're civil. We go on with our tasks. We're both nice people. He's a gentleman. She's a fine lady. There are situations where it's much worse, obviously. But even in situations where it's not bad, you don't come into the house and see or hear fireworks. There's no outright abuse, chalila, but it's dead. And whenever anybody has an excuse to go their own way, they go their own way. There's no fun. There's no excitement. There's no creativity. The heart is simply devoid of feeling. Even the sight of the other person often drains the other from vitality. They feel exhausted. They feel heavy. And it's sometimes things that people don't even bring up on their lips, because it's hard to talk about. It's painful to talk about, especially if you don't see in sight a solution. So, you turn to God, or you turn to a friend, or you turn to a prophet, or you turn to somebody close to you, or you turn to whoever you turn to. And you say, "Avdecha ishi meis. My fire, ishi, my fire, ishi also means my husband, my fire, aish yud, is dead. And the question is, where's the romance? Where did the life go? Where did the vitality go? Where is the electricity? What happened to that part of me that knew how to love?" And sometimes people ask the question in a different way. In terms of their own relationships, not with a spouse, but with children or with grandchildren or with other members of family, parents, siblings or good friends, but especially with children. Say you grew up in a difficult home. Maybe I don't like to use the word, but it exists sometimes, maybe even a dysfunctional home. Or a dysfunctional environment. And maybe even if it wasn't this classical dysfunction, but there were dysfunctional elements and no home is perfect. The only homes that I know that are perfect are the homes I don't know. Perhaps your father or your mother or both of them never uttered the words that a child deserves to hear and even more important than hear, to feel. To feel affection, to feel love, to feel I can trust you. I can lean on you. You're here for me. Sometimes people know how to say I love you, I love you, I love you. But I still don't feel it. Sometimes people feel the love, but they don't know how to express it. They don't know how to say it. Some of you knew you grew up in homes where you never heard that word. Maybe once, maybe twice, especially those parents who grew up in Eastern Europe or grandparents who went through a lot and emotional constant the patient became the way that they dealt with it. I had a great great grandmother. I had a not a I had a grandmother who was a great lady. Mama shed sadakas, like many of our grandmothers. She couldn't say I love you, but she expressed it in a very different way, by forcing me to eat. That's how the Russians used to express love. She would say, "Yoshevitz, why why Yoshevitz? YOSHEVITZ, ESS! ESS! NAME IS BOBBY GIBSON. NAME ASS MAN. YOU HAVE TO FINISH THE whole plate. And in those days it was potato, potato, baked potato and bread and more bread. They thought those are the foods that heal you. Turns out they kill you. But uh they didn't mean that. They didn't mean it that way. But and then when you finish the plate, the wheels man. And after you ate four times which of course from a health or nutritious perspective was absolutely toxic. But for her it just meant I love you so much. And in Russia we didn't have food or at least not enough food. So if I could just stuff you with more and more food to the point that you explode and you leave my house not breathing you will know how much I care for you forever and ever. Right? But sometimes people don't see it that way. You know how I I could love you, but how do I communicate it to you? How do I communicate it to my child? Not just verbally but but emotionally. Not just with with with with language but also with body language and with presence. Not just external words which are important. Words are very very powerful but they're powerful when they contain truth. When they contain when they contain depth. And sometimes this soul again comes to the prophet to God and says my fire is dead. I don't I haven't Somebody once told me I have an artificial heart. That's what somebody told me. I have an artificial heart. I don't feel like I have a heart. It It looks like a heart. Ever went to a wax museum? In London and other places, right? You ever saw Churchill in the wax museum? I once had a teacher in those days. He was a special man. He is a special man. He was a chain smoker, too. And a spiritual fellow, a little absent-minded. And they used to say and he was always smoke. In those days, he would smoke. I mean then he stopped obviously, certainly in the classroom. But he once went to the wax museum and Churchill was holding a cigar and he went over and he asked him. He said, "Host fire? Do you have fire?" He wanted Churchill in the museum to give him a match. So when you have this artificial heart, it looks real. It's just made of wax. Like in the in the laboratories where scientists or biologists do experiments. And so a person who grew up in this home he says, "I'm trying to build a relationship with my own children. And I find myself incapable of experiencing emotion, experiencing deep, real, authentic emotion. I'm locked. I have the ishi mace. My fire my emotions are dead. My fire has been extinguished. The pilot has been turned off and I don't know how to turn it on again. And I don't owe them I don't even own them anymore. This is the story the Bala Tanya saw in this story of the Tanakh. And he continued telling this young man, Elisha turns to this person and he says something surprising. He could have said, "What do you have in your house?" He doesn't say that. First he says, "Ma es eloch?" "What am I supposed to do for you?" Which seems uncharacteristic. If you come to somebody for help, you're crying for help. Save me. Save my kids. And what do they say? "What can I do for you?" Basically, that's a sign of rejection. Like, "Why are you coming to me?" "What am I supposed to do? I don't have money." He he goes on to help her, but what's the meaning of this introduction? "MA ES ELOCH? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO FOR YOU? TELL ME WHAT YOU HAVE IN YOUR HOUSE." HE COULD HAVE STARTED IT THAT WAY. TELL ME WHAT YOU HAVE IN your house. Let me hear what you have in your house. What did he mean with these opening words? My es el ach, what can I do for you? The truth is this is the first and maybe most moving divine response to the impoverished soul. What can I do for you? There is a powerful message here. You see what makes human life, what makes your life, what makes our lives so dramatic, so meaningful, so full of emotion, is the fact, it's the only story in history that's not written by God. God can inspire it. God God can create all the circumstances around it. God can even know it and predict it, but he never writes your story. You're the only one who writes your story. In the words of the Gamara, hakol bidei shamayim, chuts me'yiras shamayim. Every story is written by God besides your own. Your story, your biography, your destiny is carved out by you, by me, by my choices. We spoke a few day a few weeks ago about choices. Last week we spoke about lech lecha versus uh Spinoza, Marx, Freud, thank you. I wanted to say Trump. But it wouldn't work in this context. So, the real question, you come to Elisha, you come to Hashem, Keili Sha, what should I do? So, the real question God says is not what can I do for you. The question is what do you have in your home? If I would do this for you, then your creation was pointless. The uniqueness of human life is it's your story. There's a partnership here. The Gamorah has an expression, shut up an expression, shut up like a dish bar of a mice abrasious. You're a partner in healing the world. And the definition of a partner is not an employee. An employee comes to the boss and say, "WHAT NOW? WHAT NOW? WHAT NEXT?" A shut up is the one who takes initiative. You own the business as much as I. I do my things, you do your things, you do your part. You're a shut up. You're a creative here. You're not a victim. That's the whole idea of human creativity, human choice. So God you come God says, "What can I do for you?" That's not the question, what can I do FOR YOU? THE QUESTION OF YOUR LIFE IS WHAT do you have in your home? What do you have in your home that you could still call YOUR OWN? YOU'RE TELLING ME your fire IS DEAD. THE PILOT HAS TURNED OFF. I HAVE THE ISSUE MAZE. YOU LOST YOUR EMOTIONS, YOU LOST YOUR HUSBAND, YOU LOST YOUR NESHAMA, YOU LOST YOUR DIVINE SPARK. I want to know is there anything you still have that you call yours? Is there anything that you own? Is there anything that you're proud of? Is there anything that has not been taken away? Look into my eyes and tell me, what is it that is still really, really yours? It's in your home and it belongs to you. That's the ultimate question. And what does she say? She says ain't no shiv has a coil. I have nothing. But then SHE QUALIFIES. KIM ONLY ALSO SHAMAN. A flask of oil. One second, you're contradicting yourself. He said, "What do you have in your house?" You should say, "I have a flask of oil." That's not what she says. She says, "Ain't no shiv has a coil. I have nothing." It sounds like basically she told him I have nothing in my home. And he had to push. And he had to inquire. And he had to ask, "Really nothing?" And she says, "I have nothing." In her imagination, she saw herself AS HAVING NOTHING. THIS NESHAMA, THIS PERSON SAYS there's nothing left in my house. But Elisha challenges, stimulates, triggers her to ultimately say, "KEY IN, YES, YES, I have one thing." And what is it? It's an also shaman. It's a jug of oil. Because when she told him, "There's nothing left in me. I'm just dead. I'm careless. I'M LIFELESS. THERE'S NOTHING HERE." There's no what's called in Zoya kissed the chiyusa. THERE'S NO SPARK OF LIFE ANYMORE. THERE'S JUST NOTHING. I walk around like as somebody once told me, "I walk around like a zombie." An artificial heart, an artificial life. Elisha then challenges her with one question, "Really? If you're really dead, why are you in pain?" "If you don't care, why do you care about the fact that you don't care?" "If you don't have any emotions, why are you emotional about the fact that you don't have emotions? If you really don't have a soul, you would be content." They say two people are happy in this world. People who don't have a conscience and people who have a clear conscience. If you had no conscience, you wouldn't have a conscience about not having a conscience. If you wouldn't have any desire, you wouldn't have a desire for desire. You're searching. Your very pain is a demonstration that there is a fire burning. If not, you wouldn't care. And don't tell ME THAT YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THE FACT THAT YOU DON'T CARE BECAUSE YOU KNOW THAT AT SOME POINT you care about the fact that you don't care about the fact that you don't care about the fact that you don't care. If not, you wouldn't cry and you wouldn't come to me. You have something in your house. Tell me what it is. And it's yours. It's yours and yours alone. And she says, "Yes, a sukkah shalom, a cruise of oil." A little cruise of oil. Which of course would later emerge in Jewish history again in the story of Hanukkah a few hundred years later when there would be no oil to light a menorah and they would discover only a sukkah shalom, one cruise of oil, one jug of oil. Shalom shalom shalom shalom shalom And of course it would also burn for eight days even though it was only one jug of oil. But here it's a few hundred years earlier and it's an individual story between the woman and the prophet. One jug of oil. What is the uniqueness of oil? Why the oil? We all know when you mix pure oil with any other liquid the oil always remains aloof. It never forfeits its identity in the conglomerate conglom- Very good. Let me say it this way. In the mixture of many other liquids you can pour in every liquid, every beverage, wine with grape juice, with apple juice, with mango juice, with orange juice, with water, even celery juice and even cucumber juice. If you want you can put in some pomegranate juice and cranberry juice and the oil somehow will just make it to the top. The oil will not get bottled. It will not get nullified, dissolved. Its identity will not be lost in all of the other liquids even though it's just a little cruise. It's a little tiny oil. Oil therefore represents something. It represents the core of cores. Or what the Bal Tanya called in his language Nekudas Hachochma Shebanafsh. The quintessence of the soul. The Etzem, the Atzmius, the core of cores, a dimension of self that remains unsoiled and untouched by all of life's traumas, by all of life life's turbulence, by all of life's experience. Can each and every one of you now at any point close your eyes, take a deep breath, and if I were to ask you this question, meditate for a few moments and describe to yourself or to me or to anybody else your core. What does your core look like? What does your jug of oil look like when all the layers are removed? I know what I look like externally. I know what I'm dressed in today. I know maybe what I feel like, but what does my core of cores look like? If I could remove all experience, all disappointments, all pain, all trauma, all frustrations, what does it look like? Even if I could remove, if I could theoretically get beyond the subconscious layers and layers of identity, if everything was stripped, if everything was stripped emotionally, psychologically, what would emerge? Anybody? You don't have to answer. What would emerge? What would really really emerge? What do you think it looks like? If you can put a mirror a mirror to that, what does that core look like? And the truth is that as the Bal Tanya put it, there are four cardinal principles about the core. Etzem, Bilti Maschalek, Bilti Megaleh, Bilti Mishtaneh, and Bilti Mugdar. Very deep deep deep idea. The essence could never be defined. The essence is indivisible. The essence is never subjected to being impacted by something outside of it. And the essence is non-experiential. Meaning, the most innate dimension of my life is not defined by anything or anybody outside of itself. If I experience it, meaning if I talk about it, and I filter it through my words or even emotions, I am already not getting it. I'm defining it in a particular box. I am accessing it through my limited tools, and I'm not touching it. You know, some things when you try to touch it, it's not it anymore. It's what my finger can detect. It's what my language can detect, which is nice, but it's not that etsem. It's not It's not that core. If I try to describe it in words or even in feelings or even in emotions, it's not that core. The only thing that can capture essence is essence itself. The only thing that can capture your atzuk shemen is the shemen itself. It lives within itself, and that infinity does not allow anything to capture it. You can't put it in a box. You can't transport it to another domain cuz if you do, you have lost its pristine, its true essential self. So, the unshakable core, this is the essence of human dignity. It is the cruse of oil that could never be taken from you. Anything that happened in life cannot dissolve it, cannot capture it, cannot destroy it. You may not find it. You may not see it. You may not have easy access to it because there is a fragmentation, there's a separation between your outer self and your inner self, but it's what makes you you. What makes you you? Everybody knows there's something called you, but it's you can't identify it. What is it? You could say your looks, yes, your looks are unique. That's true. You have certain personality elements, but there's always similarities, there's always things you could say about other people that are similar. But the truth is there's something that makes you you. It's your flask of oil and it can't mix with anything else. It doesn't, not because of arrogance, but because of truth. This is called Yechida. This is called Etzem. You can't even understand it. It can't be mimicked and it could never be manipulated by anybody else. And in fact, this is one of the most important ideas when it comes to human dignity because many of us have come to believe, especially in light of some thinkers who preach this, that who are we? We're basically a combination of genes, of chemicals, of DNA that's brought together into a big cholent. Basically, the human being is a cholent. Does myself own a core that is uniquely mine? Is there even something called I? It's one of the big arguments in neuroscience today. Is there something called I or it's just a delusion of hundreds and millions or billions of neurons sending all types of interesting messages in your brain? From a Jewish perspective, that part of life that stands face-to-face with God's essence, essence to essence, Yechida L'yachda, could never die. It may be hidden for decades. It may be hidden for many years, but it never dies. The moment the lady, the neshama, said to Elisha, "I have in my house one thing that I own. I don't have access to it. It's tiny, but it's there. It's mine. There was a jug of oil that is mine and nobody ever manipulated it. You can't. You could mix it with anything. You can abduct it. You could try. You could traumatize it. It remains distinct by its nature. Even you yourself can't manipulate it. Not only others can't manipulate it, even I can't manipulate it because the moment I touch it, the moment I try to manipulate it, I don't have it. I have my awareness of it, my understanding of it, the way I deal with it, but not it. The it transcends any type of influence from without unless you're ready to embrace it in and of itself. So, Elisha turns to the widow. The moment he heard this and he said, "Now, let me tell you what to do." And here comes his advice. Quite counterintuitive. And let's listen to his words because they are so precise. Le chigo shali borrow loch to yourself. Kaylim vessels min ha chutz from outside. In your house, you don't have vessels. Go outside and borrow vessels. We are from your neighbors. All your neighbors. But with one condition, kaylim raykim al ta miti. Empty vessels, but let them not be few. He could have just said, "Go borrow as many vessels as you can." Very poetic language. Empty vessels, let them not be few. And what Elisha is telling her is, "I need you to go borrow a lot of vessels from outside. They're going to be borrowed and they're going to be empty." But the main thing is let them not be few. Let them be many. Then I need you to shut the door. You have to close the door. If you leave the door open, it's not going to work. The door has to be closed and who remains inside? You and both of your children. You can't have one of the children outside, one of the children inside. You have to remain inside. And then will come the next stage. What are these empty and borrowed vessels? You know how sometimes people will say, "I don't feel this is me." What does borrowed mean? Borrowed means I'm borrowing it from you. It's not mine, it's yours. I have to give it back to you. Empty means it's empty, it's devoid. I want you to borrow vessels which are empty. You're introducing things into your life which don't feel like you. They're alien, they're borrowed. It's like you say you're copying somebody else. You're borrowing a dress, you're borrowing language, you're borrowing behavior. What does borrowing behavior mean? I'm basically copying you. Which is what people do. I'm I'm mimicking you. And that's why it's empty. Whenever I borrow something, it's empty. Because if it was mine, it would be full. When it's borrowed, basically it means there's an emptiness here. And what makes it empty is the feeling that it's not me. So, I feel empty with it. And Elisha says, "I need you to go and borrow many, many vessels from your neighbors." It does not belong to you. You're going to borrow them, and they're going to be empty. Empty and borrowed vessels is basically a metaphor. And it's a metaphor for actions, for behaviors that could seem robot-like because they're borrowed. It's actions that are empty of enthusiasm. The vessels are not filled with fire, they're not filled with passion, they're empty vessels. Actions that I could never call my own because I don't feel it. Sometimes you do something because of an inner drive, and the inner DRIVE FILLS THE ACTIONS. WHEN you're doing something because you're excited about it, the actions are filled with fire because they're being fueled by your excitement. BUT WHAT IF I'M DOING SOMETHING WITHOUT EXCITEMENT? WHEN I'M DOING SOMETHING without excitement, it's empty. There's no fuel in it, there's no fire, there's no neshama, there's no heart. I'm doing it. And that's why I call it borrowed. I don't feel like it's me. Like I don't even know why I'm doing it. And Elisha says, "Go and borrow many, many, many Caleb rake Malta mitti empty vessels." Act an act an act even more. Act, I mean not act as an act. Act as in ma'aseh, act behavior. Act as in ACT, not in terms of an act of a movie, but act as in behavior. He turns to the soul and says, "What you need to do is you need to continue to perform godly, moral, and sacred deeds. Many godly and moral and sacred deeds. Many, many, even if they seem borrowed and empty." Go back to marriage. Make sure to fill your marriage with rituals, acts, and behaviors of love. I know you say it's borrowed. I'm just following textbooks. I'm just following Rabbi YYY's advice. Or I'm just following the guru the my coach's advice or my therapist's advice or the Balatanya's advice or I should say Elisha's advice. I'm just borrowing it. It's not me. It's not filled. Elisha says, "Fill up your house with EMPTY VESSELS, BUT GET THOSE VESSELS IN YOUR HOUSE. AND LET THEM BE MANY AND I DON'T CARE IF YOU CALL THEM BORROWED AND EMPTY." Your marriage is struggling. You may feel that your spouse is a burden. In inside you feel drained. You feel depleted. You fill your life and your home and your marriage with thousands of empty vessels, with numerous acts of what you may call borrowed love. Now, you don't have to announce on the vessel the word borrowed. BUT YOU KNOW what you mean very ELISHA, DO YOU KNOW WHAT I mean when I say borrowed? Your own heart may not be present. Alisha is telling the HUSBAND OR THE WIFE. GO, DO THINGS. GO, wash the dishes. Go buy roses. Go put the kids to sleep. Go clean UP THE GARBAGE. GO PUT AWAY THE GROCERIES. GO FOR THE GROCERIES. Do favors. Go out. Do acts. Connect in words and in actions. Be there for each other. BUT YOU'RE SAYING, "I'M A REAL PERSON. I'M AN AUTHENTIC PERSON. I DON'T HAVE A HEART. IT'S NOT REAL. IT'S FAKE." ALISHA SAYS, "YOU BEAR with me. I know about fakeness. I know about truth. I'm not a PC lawyer. I'm not here to fill your life with emptiness. But this is at this moment, this is what you need to do. You need Caleb, even if they're empty. You need to perform acts that one can look at these acts and these are acts of love. These are acts of kindness. These are acts of caring. Go to the third example. We spoke about personal numbness, numbness in relationships, numbness with your children or other people you want to be close to. A parent says, "I have an artificial heart. My heart is closed. I'm attempting to connect, to educate, to discipline, to build. I don't know how. There's something robotic about ME. ALL I KNOW about is duty." Approach your children and fill those relationships with empty vessels. Embrace them. Be there. Listen. Act. Tell them you care for them. Tell them you love them because this is what you want. This is your value. This is what you believe in. Introduce the relationship with acts and words and gestures that represent connection. But you say, "MY HEART IS LOCKED. MY EMOTIONS ARE STIFLED." Alisha says, "At this point, I just asked you for one thing. Empty vessels and no need to feel guilt. No need to invalidate your relationships because you go to sleep and you say, "That was so empty. That wasn't real." Alicia says, "That's exactly what we need. Don't feel guilty. Don't feel like a failure. This is exactly what is required. Empty borrowed vessels, you are doing the best. You are great. You are awesome. You are fulfilling exactly what you have to fulfill." And then Alicia says, "Let me tell you what happens next." What happens next is that little flask of oil is going to start filling up those vessels. And as long as there's an empty vessel, it's going to get filled up with oil. And what is he saying to her? What he's saying to her, says the holy Kabbalah Tanya, is one of the very profound reflections on human destiny. He says, "Every so often in life, could be once a month, once a week, once a year, maybe more often, maybe less often, your cruise of oil emerges. In every person's life, your cruise of oil is going to emerge. That little atzmus shamem, that little atzum that we spoke about, that yechida benafshi, that undefined invisible, non-experiential, non-manipulated essence will emerge. It will come out. The curtains will be removed. It happens. But now here is the choice. If there are no vessels in your house, if there are no vessels to fill, it will emerge. Those moments will be powerful moments. We all have moments when suddenly out of the blue you feel inspiration or ecstasy or oneness with the cosmos. You start crying, you don't even know why. Something in life just touches you. But, it can leave after 5 seconds, especially after you get that text. Or especially after you remember, "Oh, it's 4:00 and I'm late to pick up my girl." Whatever it is. And I didn't make dinner, and the laundry, and the house is a mess, and the bill wasn't paid. Ah! And then you get another telephone call that really racks you. And then you have no time for oil. Maybe oil for different types of oil. If there's no vessels to fill, it's going to emerge. And then it's going to retreat back to its core of cores in the human identity. We will remain hungry for that core. But we have no way of accessing it ever again. Until it emerges, maybe in a month, maybe in a year, maybe in a week. But Elisha says, "If when the essence of your soul emerges, it finds waiting for it hundreds and hundreds or thousands and thousands of vessels, you know what will happen? The oil will begin to flow. And every single empty vessel will be filled up with light, with passion, with life, with dignity, with depth. The divine essence of your core, which is limitless in its reservoir of life, it's connected to a wellspring that never ends, will fill up every single vessel." And that's why we say in Kriyashma twice, al levavecha. "These words should be placed on your heart." Is that a right expression? Shouldn't these words be placed in your heart? You tell somebody, "I want to speak to you and I want it to go into your heart, not on top of your heart." What is it supposed to be a top of your heart? Just going to give you chest pains. The answer is, "I can't always get words into my heart. Sorry. The God, the creator of man, says, "I know that. The heart is closed." My heart is not always open. Sometimes my heart is open. Sometimes my heart is just not nobody home. Sorry. There's nobody home. You can sit all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day and all day I'm not going to lie to myself cuz the worst is dishonesty. The uniqueness of the story is the honesty, the authenticity, dealing with who you are, not with who somebody else would like you to be, or we who you would like yourself to be based on some imagination that is completely unrealistic to who you really are. The beauty of the story, it's who I am and the Torah says IT'S ON MY HEART. SO, IF IT'S ON MY HEART, FORGET IT. NO. YOU PUT it on your heart and it's going to get stocked up, stocked up, stocked up. Imagine mountains and mountains on your heart. Cuz you know what's going to happen? One day that heart is going to open. You know what happens then? Everything goes right into the heart. And your heart is revitalized. But if there's nothing there, the heart opens and that's meaningful. When the heart opens there's an emotion. But there's no vessels to contain that oil. So, Elisha says, "Don't feel guilty about the borrowed vessels. Sometimes in life that's what we have. We have borrowed vessels and they feel empty. Fill up your life, but if you know about that flask of oil and you should know about it, let me tell you something. Make sure to remember that oil because it's always there. And that oil will emerge. How it will happen is every one of those empty vessels will suddenly be filled with light. And what you looked at as empty, as meaningless, as as robotic, as the void, will really have tremendous, tremendous value. The greatest mistake you could make in life, when you don't feel that passion and inspiration, is to decide that you're really dead. And therefore act like you're really dead. He says, "No way. Trust that there's a fire there. You may just not have the ability to access it now. Yes, the fire seems extinguished, but the oil is yours and nobody can take it AWAY FROM YOU. EVEN WHEN you feel that all of your emotions HAVE BEEN KIDNAPPED, ABDUCTED, AND HIJACKED. ALL YOU KNOW IS TRAUMA AND EMOTIONAL DEATH, and I tell you, "Do you really have nothing in the house?" She says, "I have a flask." And Elisha says, "Well, if you have that, we're good. Because then those borrowed and empty vessels are really not just borrowed and empty. Those borrowed and empty vessels are being connected in the subconscious layers of the human soul. Every empty vessel is being connected to a value. And the value is the value of your flask of oil, the value of your true dignity, of your true relationship with Hashem, of your true relationship with life. And even though right now consciously it feels empty, it's because the wire was not connected. But when it comes out, everything will be filled. And the life will be tremendously enriched, even if the fire may get extinguished again. And thus, the Baal Tanya turns to this young man who, as we said in the beginning, comes in and is complaining that he's frozen, he's numb, he's dead. And basically what he's saying is, "I'm a Jew. I'm trying to be a good Jew, but there's no life. There's no vitality." And who of us, especially those who have been through life, but really every single person, who of us can't relate to this person's quandary? How many of us, how many people, I know with myself, I know with many other people who say, "I wake up in the morning, but I'm just I'm just not in the mood. There's no passion." A man will say often, "I just don't want to put on t'fillin. I don't want to daven. I don't want to connect. I don't want to meditate. I don't want to learn. How many mitzvahs in my life are often exercised in boredom, in monotony? And a person says, "What's the point? Just what's the point? How long will I live a superficial, empty, false life?" And it's a good question. And very often people just don't have the answer to that question. I'm I'm just numb. It's just all robotic. So, unless you scare the living daylights out of me, HOW EXACTLY AM I GOING TO BE INSPIRED? This is a profound issue. This is a real question. So, SOME PEOPLE SAY, "OH, FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT." WELL, I'VE BEEN FAKING IT MY WHOLE LIFE. AND I HAVEN'T MADE ANYTHING. And it's it's a cry. It's a cry that has to be understood. It's a cry that has to be embraced. Avda ishi mase. I just don't feel God. My mitzvahs are empty. So much of my life feels so empty at least sometimes, even if not always. And yet, if you can understand a little bit and identify with your cruse of oil. If you can appreciate what that cruse of oil is, you have to acknowledge it's yours and it's only yours. And therefore, you're the one who has to be able Elisha can't tell her, "You have a cruse of oil." All he could tell her is, "What do you want me to do for you?" If it's me doing it, we lost the point. You have to tell me what you have in your house. And when you can identify with that cruse of oil and appreciate it, that cruse of oil is always there and it will emerge. Those who with toil and concentration constructed empty vessels in their lives while experiencing what I would call the matching moment. And the matching moment is that moment of synchronization when your core and your outer life match up in a seamless flow of oil that saturates and penetrates your entire identity and you get filled with the profundity and the dignity of the divine core. It's impossible to live a perpetual life of vitality and inspiration. But you know what? It's not asked for. It's not demanded. What I am capable is of always filling my life with those VESSELS THAT MATCH UP WITH MY REAL VALUES, THAT MATCH UP with my real core of oil. That I can always do. I CAN ALWAYS HAVE A SCHEDULE THAT IS SATURATED with meaningful acts and acts and experiences. And then when the moment will come your soul will peek out from its inner core and its life force and inspiration, which is infinite, will fill all of your empty vessels with the source of infinite divine life. Have a wonderful week. Yeah. Um the part of closing the door. Oh, you're right. You're right. I'm sorry. No, no, no, you're right. I didn't get to that. Do you mind could you say a word about Yeah. Good good question. Closing the door means a person ultimately has to own themselves. They have to close the door. They can't allow their energy to seep out. They can't allow others or other forces or habits or addictions to own their behavior, to own the schedules. You're going to have to bring in empty vessels and you have to create closed doors. The sham itself can't be touched. Right. But the vessels and other things can be affected. If you If you leave the doors open ultimately the oil won't be able to flow in cuz there's too many distractions. You understand? Too many parasites will feed off it. Like for example, people who are going through stuff, if they can't close doors on certain things, like this is not coming in, then I won't go out. If you don't come in, I won't go out. My soul won't get lost. If the wind comes in, Yeah. Oh, you have to close the door. You have to be able to close the door. You know, a person can go on a diet and then the next morning, you know, break it at a bris and then start it afterwards. It's like at some point you just Some things are off-limits. Yeah, like you can't feed off of me and I'm not going to let this happen. I'm not inspired. I just have empty vessels, but I have to close the door. I have to create a protective, sacred oasis, a cocoon inside my core. It is, yes. I thank you for bringing it up. Thank you. Very vital. Not not pretty, very vital. Thank you. You understood? You understood? Closing the door. This class is brought to you by the Yeshiva.net. Please help us continue the classes. Make even a small contribution at www.theyeshiva.net/donate.