Rabbi YY Jacobson on "Inspiration for the Nation" Podcast

the yeshiva.net [Music] an infinite light that can change the world but it's so deep it can also remain dormant for their whole life and the only way you can access it is if you really have to work through lots of issues you really have to fight for yourself you really have to work through all of your vulnerabilities and traumas and blemishes and blockages only when by working them through will you discover your true potential your true essence and then you'll be able to own your light and you'll be able to actualize it this is the first time i did something like this never did it before i got to sit down with rib y jacobson live in front of hundreds of people and i loved it i loved every moment of it aside for the incredible wisdom that revoir shared with all of us there was also this energy there's something magical about you know everything i do with these interviews i never hear an audience reaction yeah we get i got i've gotten feedback before but to hear people laugh or clap or react or ask their own questions it was really special it was really really special it was also the first time my wife makes an appearance on a podcast that i do so get ready for you know her her part in it at the end and i i i was hoping to like for this event to be a 10 out of 10 and i think it was a thousand out of 10. rep yy you could tell he gave it his all we've cut we covered everything everything i i i'm really excited for this it's it's long i know it's long you hit play already so thank you for hitting play and watching this but i'm telling you just go through it there's there's so many beautiful moments and gems i i like while it's happening i'm like that's a soundbite that's a sandbite that's sandbite um this event uh was very complicated to plan and i got a lot of help from a lot of people so thank you to all those people and i'd love to do more of these events like once a month maybe in the white shield maybe the five towns maybe i'll come to your community i don't know but there's something really magical about doing live podcasts i haven't seen it i'll take ownership i want to be that guy the jewish guy going around doing live podcasts so this episode this special episode is yehuda ben shalom and ben yakov miriam it was actually his yard site that night and yaakov naftali ben jonas this podcast is also powered by events cedar media studios and marchevac huskels a very special uh thing i don't know if things are right or podcast show whatever you'll hear a little more about them in the middle but until then without further ado my live conversation with the one the only yyjacobson [Music] we can all use some inspiration to help us overcome the obstacles we encounter in our lives get ready for thrilling conversations about struggle and triumph with those in pursuit of making a positive impact in this world i'm yaakov langer and you're listening to inspiration for the nation has ever anyone ever told you you have like a very good speaking voice has that ever been told to you no no until tonight thank you yeah we're off to a weird start i apologize everyone um no but you do have a great voice and okay so i wanna i wanna talk about a few things right before we start i once sang a song and somebody told me not to quit my day job oh i was told the future i was actually gonna ask you to sing a little but sphero so i held it back on that you want to thank hashem for helping us get helping me get to this point i'd like to thank my wife for putting up with all my craziness and giving me all the time to do all this i like to thank my parents my in-laws i feel like i'm giving a bar mitzvah like i'm going to talk about spilling so i'm like okay well yeah okay yeah yeah go ahead yeah okay i think i think i'll leave the device the caterer the florist getting everyone your parents for raising you yes your brothers and sisters emily i don't have allergies all your brothers i mean i don't not yet okay you never know but um okay so you're known as why why but i googled you which i do often not stop no before i interview you not because i just randomly okay so reb yosef yitzhak is your full name how would you describe yourself growing up would you say you're the same type of person well uh my name is jose vitruck so that's one way of describing myself growing up yy was a later addition and the reason is my my mother-in-law god bless her is a balastruva she returned to judaism at a later point in life and she's an american i think six generations and you know they can't say yes they have a problem with chess right so my parents both russian was like yosef yitzhak for my mother-in-law that was like impossible so it became why why retroactively the joke became that when i was born they asked why why and i'm trying to answer that question so uh so why why it is and today during davening somebody came over to me and said i just got a call from israel and somebody said that they listened to you and they wanted to know they call you why why because after some of your speeches people say vow vow wow so that was a nice compliment um i grew up in a very uh fine home and community uh no major dramatic uh upheavals like there was never a stage of you being jj [Laughter] my mother used to call me jj really i didn't know that yeah i don't know how you know but yeah you were makaven you really you really googled yeah yeah i was using bing i was going to do the cia so so at what point would you say that you shifted into this i guess personality where a lot of people know you you're talking a lot you're speaking a lot i mean even just to book you tonight it wasn't so easy but hashem you're going around was that was that gradual or was like a certain moment that hit um i don't want to sound like a party pooper but it was like almost a mistake and what i mean by that is i didn't plan it or expect it growing up nor did i go to a what do they call it a job coach when you go to somebody to uh i went to one once they said i should be a florist okay i don't have so much faith in them anymore so i never went to a guru to tell me what the trajectory of my life would be it really happened very gradually i grew up in brooklyn in new york and uh as a yeshiva student in the last years of the laboratory of his life i was on the team of khaisrim which means oral scribes but i was learning for many years i was learning and then my father of blessed memory who had a yiddish newspaper he asked me to write a column so i wrote a column there and then just one week i got an invitation from a community in chicago to come for shabbos and i told the rabbi i think you got the wrong number i don't do this you know i was learning sometimes i would give a share he says no no i read you i want you to come i'll even pay your tickets i'm like okay he'll pay my tickets fine he nudged me and i came and i was there for shoppers and i guess he shared it with a friend because next job is i got a second invitation and then things just really developed uh organically or as the gemara says however isla so it wasn't really you know strategically planned i'll be here at this year there at this point i'll be here at this point i'll be here and it just uh evolved really do you think the rebber saw something in you that maybe you didn't see it's very possible the rebber generally had a skill of identifying incredible potential where others didn't see it and actualizing it in people so certainly that has had a very deep impact on my life listening to the rabbi growing up at his feet in his four cubits it left a very profound impact on me and i think one of the impacts was to know that when you're given an opportunity you need to seize the moment and embrace it and when you're given a potential you are obliged to actualize it as the rebel would often say every single person's light is indispensable and an essential fabric of all of history i remember he once said when somebody doesn't utilize their potential it's not just they're squandering their potential so it's a pity he says it's actually affecting the entire history and the entire cosmos because every piece is an essential part of the puzzle so if i'm not showing up to life with my full presence and my full energy and my full creativity and my full potentiality it's not just myself that i'm affecting but he said it's really it's part of the essential divine scheme of the entire cosmos that's being uh affected so that's uh that was a very powerful message that i always grew up with and you know i take it seriously so when different opportunities came up and showed up i always understood that it's important for me to work hard and show up to the best i can and then let god do the rest what um it's a little of a personal question um and don't worry if if you don't answer we could cut it out after i'm used to saying that we're in front of everyone else and we'll delete it we'll ask them to delete it from their members right so at that point what were you struggling with personally in your life at what point at that point where the reba is like kind of telling you like you have this potential and there's something in you and you got to tap into it and yeah they have never told it to me personally i'm saying his presentations his talks as for bringing every shabbos he would talk this was a very uh prevalent theme but he didn't tell it to me personally the one thing that once happened that was interesting again it was a message maybe somewhat eclipsed i was a child before bar mitzvah was a young boy and the laboratory would hold a fabrian on shabbos shabbos afternoon it would begin 1 30 and it could go almost till the end of chavez for many hours uh he didn't sleep on choppers and he didn't let anybody else sleep on shabbos we almost never had challenge uh it was a very different type of shabbos experience it sounds like a different totally completely different davening was over and then you had a little break so you could make kiddish maybe run home if you wanted to most people didn't even do it because they wanted a place a good place and then he would come down 130 and for bring throughout the day so it was a very different type of shabbos experience my late father would take me there every shabbos and there were like four or five or six thousand men in the women's section women in the women's section and i was six years old they never would speak for long and he wouldn't tell jokes and stories it was long talks and sickness and long and depth shirim and all in yiddish very complex so what is a six or seven year old child supposed to do i was there i was very jealous of my friends who would play on eastern park where they would kill each other like good brooklyn jewish boys what do you do shabbos afternoon you know you run around beat up each other you know classic new york style not five towns we're talking you know brooklyn was less more brute i'm from brooklyn so yeah yeah stronger so much more tough boys yeah yeah but i was there and uh you know i have to confess that i wasn't really listening i would daydream there were a lot of beams i would count the beams and when i finished counting the beams the person who put in the tiles in 770 didn't know what he was doing so nothing was symmetrical so i became an expert on all the crevices and all the dissonance i didn't know about cognitive dissonance yet but the dissonance between the tiles anyway then i don't know if i should confess all of my childhood sins i don't want to get you cancelled like that yeah long as my wife doesn't cancel me i'll be fine okay okay is she here now or no she's home okay my children okay that makes sense so what happened was i uh i was really bored so i took the citrus of one man and i tied it i know shabbos you're not supposed to do it i tied it to the citrus of another guy and i would wait till the fabrega was over and they would try to part ways the the zenith of my sadistic career happened one shot is when i tied four men's titses together and they lived on the four corners of crown heights south and west and north and south and east and west and north and south and i couldn't wait till the end of the fabregan when a third world war would break out between these four people trying to go home and it did and one day i was in the middle of my tutsis campaign just trying to entertain myself and suddenly i stood right parallel to the reb if the rebel was sitting there i was like standing here a little kid and suddenly i see there ever was a middle of talking i see him lifting up his hand and pointing his finger right at me i still remember his finger was shaking a little bit and he was pointing like this and i'm like omg this was very rare because the rabbit wouldn't address individuals out of heaven there were thousands of people he would talk to the crowd they would sing and say look i'm in between the talks i was mostly talking sichus my mario long circles on my mark and he's literally pointing at me and i'm like wow maybe after all these years of you know daydreaming and then there was no add there was no diagnosis right it was just uh those days everybody got the same diagnosis it was called two fresh two patches of everybody but after years of daydreaming and sciences i thought maybe the rabbit got upset and he's going to tell me you know what are you standing here and tying people's stitches together you know one of the 39 melakas is kosher you're not going to make knots on choppers you're doing this and you're doing this for a long time i just didn't know what's going to happen next and you know if chabad throws you out where do you go you know if you're not jewish if you're not jewish enough for lubavitch where do you go to satmar like where do you go victoria carter what's the next destination but instead of throwing me out he broke out in a big smile and he asked me a question i'll never forget it in yiddish and his question was these words from vanent vase to a how do you know that the universe exists you know a question out of the blue if there was ever a question how old were you at that time 9 10. wow how do you know the universe exists five thousand men were now looking at me and the laboratory is waiting for an answer and i was thinking i don't know how the universe exists i never thought about it what is this uh an epistemology philosophy theology class in harvard how i know the universe exists and besides i was thinking to myself you know the bhava charab i didn't disturb you you were talking why are you disturbing me you know live and let live we live in america let me go on with my tattoos campaign and you can go on with your brilliant talks and i i remember my face changing colors i really didn't know what to say it was so uncomfortable so i just was quiet and they rebel waited for maybe 10 or 15 seconds to me it seemed like eternity all the eyes were focusing on me and lubbach broke out on a big smile and he decided to answer the question for me as though i answered it and he said so the child answers how do i know the universe exists because the opening verse of the whole terror is viratious barula kim as a shamayim visarets because the terrorist says that hashem created heaven and earth so if the terrorist says it it must exist and then he went on to the talk but next week i was afraid he's going to ask me in other questions i wanted to be prepared so i started to listen and as i was listening it really enthralled me and i became pretty addicted an addiction to which i hope i won't recover from till my last breath so first of all it was an incredible pedagogical education they never asked me a question how i know the universe existed and next week i wasn't tying citizens anymore i was listening that was number one number two when i got older i went back to the transcript of the talk because there were writers who wrote down everything almost every word was written and i saw that was describing that the innocence of children is such that they don't know about the world from the new york times or from outside sources they know about the universe from terror so their view on the world is very ideal it's very pristine it's very pure it's very idealistic that was his point then in a long talk it was a rashi that he was discussing and later when i grew up i thought to myself maybe this was some form of uh a calling or a mission statement or an empowerment that you know when you travel the world travel the world one day and remember that your mission is to remind everybody to learn about the world from beresha's bhara lakima sashimaian visayas to really be able to see the world and ourselves from a divine perspective from the divine vantage point wow that is a good answer to the i don't remember what i asked uh that's that's great i also don't remember it was day trip i'm gonna pay attention so i learned then how to listen i learned i started to learn how to listen because to be able to repeat and transcribe the reb is hour-long talks you're talking about talks that went not for a half an hour it wasn't a rabbi sermon that has a joke in the beginning i don't know about the white shoulders right by finding here he does a joke in the beginning yeah but there's always a joke you know in the rabbinical school they teach you a joke in the beginning right in the middle you need a joke at least one or two stories yeah your glasses got to go off your class is going to go on hand's got to go up hands got to go down some drama some sadness some joy so okay and even then if the rabbi speaks for more than 18 minutes there's somebody on the board who's you know the kiddish is waiting but uh the rabbis fabregans were not following that trajectory so you really have to listen you have to learn how to really suspend everything and just become an open vessel that's amazing it's you're i guess a very interesting person because you have this rich background in the chabad world but also now you're totally i mean i don't know how many people are here but like you're very in the lit fish world you're out there in the non-religious world you're you're seeing a lot so my first question is what could the non-chabad world learn from khabar and and vice versa what could the chabad world learn let's say from the lit fish world world could learn from the litvish world predictability what does that mean in a literature everything is predictable you know when you're coming in you know when you're coming out you know what to expect no but you know it's always going to start a little late you know on one level there's more the litvish world could learn from the chabad world the lack of predictability and in what way that it could be good a good thing just like more chilled out not chilled out i think we all have to learn how to synthesize structure with transcending structure can you break that down for like a fourth grade level no but i'll try thank you predictability means you know things are very uh predictable yeah fourth grade level you got that that you got yeah there we go the lack of predictability you know when somebody said now we're going to engage in spontaneous dancing the lack of predictability means is the ability to really have that unique uh potential to live in the now to embrace the moment with full passion with full vitality with full pliability and flexibility and i would say you know both elements are so important in life the only thing is to be really a little more honest about the question it's i feel that it's really very superficial today in today's world to speak about communities in generalized ways you don't like labels not only i don't like labels labels are really a very fake and superficial easy but inauthentic way of describing uh the jewish people or describing reality it's nice when we could fit it in you're this community or that community what do you learn from here but from my intimate encounters and conversation conversations with countless people from all types of communities both in the orthodox world and the non-orthodox world i've come to discover how generalizations are really just an unfair if comfortable way of describing things because every person you really have to know who they are and what they're dealing with the fact that they happen to have grown up in this community obviously has an impact but it's really insignificant relative to tuning in to the person's soul and the person's challenges and the person's circumstances and then you see that people are really really individuals and when you go to a deeper space especially among the jewish people the external labors are much less significant than we usually like to attribute them or in the words of the balatanya his inimitable words in tanya venefish hashemis the inner consciousness of the jew is a piece of god so if i can really identify that the word labavich litvish modern orthodox yeshivish almost yushivish facing right facing left yes it's part of a cultural uh upbringing and certain this one has these food at the kids this food maybe there's some differences of opinion but it ultimately melts away in the presence of the true infinite depth of the human soul and the human brain so that's really where i try to live at least i try to live in that environment more i think with that idea like this concept of achtus just makes so much more sense it's so much easier because it doesn't make a difference if that person's different or that's great that's that's what it's about and it's real it's authentic it's not just a nice cliche you know this is degenerate this is the era of cross pollination this is the era of oneness it's the era the era of afters it's a beautiful svasamas swassema says that when yaakov left his home and goes to kharan where ultimately he would marry rahul and leia and rahul and build the twelve schwartem so the first story is that he takes from the stones right he puts his head down on the stones and then later it says the stone so rashi famously says that there were the madrid says that there were 12 stones and they got into a fight who gets the tsaddik's head so what did hashem do we all know the story right come remember fourth grade yeah yeah i'm still there yeah combined it hashem put all the stones there became one stone it was one heaven so uh the laboratory once asked one second let's say you have a mattress right but your head can only be in one place in the mattress so the mattress should still be in a fight not every part of the stone is getting the head and the answer i'll say in yiddish he says when you're one with the other you don't mind where the head is right a husband and a wife don't fight who gets credit for the beautiful children i get cred if it's a good relationship we're one unit this is our family we we we all get credit your success is my success my success is your success facebook says that when yaakov was going to build the jewish people and there would be 12 tribes with different personalities different flavors right different mahalhim as we would say in the yeshiva slang different journeys different pathways there were 12 stones fighting with each other who has the head who has the head who's the real version who's the real jew right there's me yehudi in israel me or your hoodie and then there's you hoodie in the froome world like who's the real jew and who's like you know who's the copy and who's the original that was the fight and everybody shall is told yaakov no no no no no no it's not going to work this way if you want to build claudiusroll and you want them to endure and you want to bring them from avramovinu to mashiach the stones are going to have to become one and it doesn't mean there's no 12 stones but it means that there's a true inner spiritual organic oneness and if if you're not going to live in that space if this nation won't be able to survive wow so let's let i want to take that idea and make it like practical so what what if there is you know people and they're just not seeing eye to eye and and unfortunately that's just what happens in class what happens in the world people i don't know if they like fighting but that's just the reality of what happens if i make a problem that's also how i know the world exists everything came into existence through his word so must be it exists listen the challenge is obvious but the challenge doesn't only exist in claudius all the challenges exists in every single family let's take marriage as a classic example do a husband and a wife have to see everything by tie are there no disagreements they should be the same person they'd be the same person if you don't know of a jewish marriage where there are no disagreements anybody you want to raise your not mine but but everyone else and besides mine right in our cases our wives are always right and that's why we're out of the house as often as possible right yeah but not everybody is that way right the point of a relationship is not that we have to agree and see eye to eye about everything it's that we have to be able to trust each other loyalty trust is the key in a good marriage i want to know that you have my back a thousand percent you want to know that i have your back a thousand percent that when we disagree it's not coming from hatred or negativity or quit per quote or vengeance i'm going to show you who's right or i'm going to win the argument i always tell couples when they come i say they're arguing about something i say you know what the conclusion is almost irrelevant i'll tell you the most important thing is what whoever wins the argument whatever you decide make sure the relationship isn't hacked we're going for pesach were you sending the kids to school which show you're not stepping foot into whatever it is you're buying a house here buying out important questions whatever you decide just make sure that the relationship post the conversation is intact because that's more important than the decision so of course there are disagreements the whole you spoke about that beyond me that you don't learn right oh i learn i do kingdoms yeah okay yeah so i thought it's maybe the show you know my robbie is here somewhere yeah you do it yeah i learn i learn right i don't do that i once heard i once heard i once heard from rabbi yadin steinsaltz of blessed memory he said you know jews have a streak of insanity and he said one of the things that kept jews more or less sane is gemara because what's gemara every page of gemara almost is filled with arguments nobody can see eye to eye can't be shamayam is hillar once in a while just agree they're always arguing always the whole culture of talmud the whole territory about pests based on arguments what does that teach us and the gemara says in aravind you'd gimmel and your gimbal is begin so it's on that daf and it's but they're opposite views and yet they're both the words of the living god because truth is manifested through many different medias and many different personalities and many different flavors but it's still divrela so it's really the ability to be able to see the soul to see the wisdom to see the depth in the other person to create space for their perspective and never to lose the loyalty and the trust and the dedication to each other and then everything changes you know it says in prequels for the sake of heaven is going to endure it's a strange statement you would think that if it's a machis it should ultimately dissipate and somebody once said something very profound dr uh gotta man he's they know the guru on marriage so he did 40 years of research maybe with 30 or 40 000 couples and he reached a very interesting conclusion he said they used to think that good marriages are marriages where the couples don't argue and miserable marriages they're always arguing he said now we realize that 70 percent are to be exact 69 of arguments between couples in a great marriage that they have in the beginning of their marriage they'll also have when he's 99 and she's 97 and they're on a hammock in palm beach in florida he's reading the wall street journal or he's listening or she's listening to your podcast or watching a why why clip the same argument that they had at chevy brooke 75 years earlier 70 percent of those arguments they're still having you know where do we go for pesach milk hex flashes venetian blinds down or up do we keep the light open do we keep the light close shut the light is it too cold is it too hot the only argument they don't have at that stage is if we're going to her mother for you because she's already on the oil of my emma's remember he's 99 and she's 97. but most of the other 70 of the arguments are there then i realized in a bad marriage you know how arguments end either i convince you you convince me or i stonewall you i run away in a good marriage you know how arguments end they end with the recognition that we can really see things different ways and they continue because the trust is the key the trust the loyalty i'm here for you you're here for me and yes there's different perspectives eluva elu we're fine with that that does not undermine the jewish people every person is different there's different ways as if of course there's a system of through which we reach practical conclusions which a couple of us has to have which we also have to have and that itself is discussed in sulhama that does not undermine us there's a beautiful again that mentions a beautiful swasamas he says the first two stories about maisha rabbenu parasha shmeis what's the first story he goes out and he sees an egyptian beating a jew to death what does he do he kills him he kills him goes out on the second day what does he see one jew is about to beat another jew and he says why do you do this to your friend and the man says oh you're going to kill me like you killed him and myself realizes that the story is known and of course they inform paris and he has to run for his life svasama says that gulos has two casualties one is anti-semitism non-jews that hate jews who hate jews there's another casualty jews who hate jews for the first crisis moisha found a solution he killed the entity killed the murderer for the second one he didn't find a solution he had to run away because the second one in a way is more lethal because it's the it's the toxicity it's the poison that comes from within and he says that second casualty of gullus in a way is more dangerous than the first because there's no identifiable enemy i become my own worst enemy we say pesach right so the expression there is a beautiful hasidic interpretation you know the one thing that threatens us that we're not one. that itself we are not one that is and that's what we in today's generation i feel this is you see everywhere and i'll be honest with you when i was growing up it was almost a popular thing to defame a particular community if i was a rabbi and i got up in a show and i spoke about a particular community fire and brimstone i would become popular today it's it is an expression it's not a s nobody wants it somebody gets up in the white show or somebody gets up in initial almost any demographic in the whole orthodox world and starts talking about a particular human just slandering them defaming them trying to destroy them verbally people will revolt in disgust and that's a tremendous tremendous evolution it's a tremendous development everyone is realizing that cross-pollination is essential to the food chain it's essential to the ecosystem and it's essential to the jewish ecosystem cross-pollination is not a curse it's a blessing so there's this idea that there's a lot of good going on in the world now maybe not maybe hopefully we're machia's gonna come very soon there's a lot of good but there's also this idea that you know people i've heard people express that there's not enough yeresha mime going on now um you know there's there's a lot of these talks about you know being positive and and things are good but there's also this idea of like are we going to you know water down down yiddish guy like would adam avinu look at us and be happy the eighth day speaks about it avraham i told you i'm not gonna sing you know that one right i am are we the children you have dreamed of right yes are we the shining star you saw at night so let's ask the marcuses what do they say i interviewed them they weren't uh so easy to interview they're great but they i think you'd give it a little better answer okay they're great don't get me wrong well you asked about a from avinu i mean you chose the right name i mean you you you really fed me with an answer i didn't realize that yeah it was a bad choice because no i want to hear the answer i'm not like trying to grill you there avraham was the paradigm the embodiment the archetype of of love and and affection you know look at the difference between nyach and avrom okay they both lived in a corrupt world hamas or hamas and god tells him to build an ark because he's going to destroy the world for 120 years why 120 years what does rashi say fourth grade uh so everyone's season building yeah everybody sees a building 120 years right that's a long time and they'll do truva hopefully right so he builds it 120 years it becomes a tourist attraction everybody wants to know what is this old man doing 500 years old he's an old man and he says there's going to be a flood god will destroy you you will all drown unless you do truva now i want to ask you a question after 120 years how many balichuva did nayach make your grandmother would say bapkus fs yeah zetto 120 years he's telling the world about the bible not one what did i have from afina do he opened up his home he gave people to eat and drink he embraced them with love three bedouins who come he gave them a lavish meal he served them he spoke to them he forbrained with them he sang with them he celebrated with them and what happened the meeri writes in the introduction to pirkei avas that more than half of humanity was transformed by avraham avinu the rambam rights and he'll deserve the first chapter avrom would go from city to city in the ancient world and he would hold huge press conferences talk to the masses and introduce them to the idea that they were conceived in love that there's a purpose to their existence that they're all integrated and they're responsible to each other now you ask what about yerushamma what about fear of heaven so the truth is as follows that uh and that's the night it became suddenly became the night of this face but i'll tell you about nepali it says in parish it's easter right after mountain terror it says the jews trembled and they stood from far and they were frightened so moishe tells them altiro don't be afraid because the reason hashem appeared is so that his fear should be on your face so this facebook says come on first you tell them don't be scared altiro in the same boss you contradict yourself talk about a contradiction imagine you tell somebody don't be scared but you know why god is here so that you should be scared in the same possibility you could look it up at the end of israel so he says there's two types of fear there's a fear that traumatizes you there's a fear that gets planted in your heart and you tell yourself i don't want a relationship with you i'm afraid i want to go as far as possible that's what happened vayam du mirach they were terrified they had what you may call god trauma it's too overwhelming it's so uncomfortable moshe said altiro if that fear is making you feel distant if you're feeling dread if you're feeling negative energy towards the reborn of shalin that's not a good type of fear that's creates anxiety and stress how many jews do i know i get hundreds of emails a week and many of them i can define by one word it's called dt divine trauma people that their experience their visceral perception of hashem is so negative it's so traumatizing the therapist in your shalom who told me he opened now a group i thought it was funny and then he said no it's real and i met some of the guys it's called sa shul anonymous imagine surely anonymous people who are traumatized by shulkers of things that happen i'm not going to get graphic but things that happen they can't step into show see he's open but they want they want a dolphin they can't go into a show so moisture says altiro you have to work on this type of fear there's another type of fear yiroshi alpine is a fear of ruining such a beautiful relationship that's good fear that's healthy fear that's beautiful fear irish is not i'm afraid of you because you traumatize me because i hate you because i think you're out to get me that's not good fear and that's the fear that our generation is allergic to there's another type of year of shamaya when you have an amazing marriage you're afraid to destroy it not because you're afraid of your wife or your husband because it's too good to be true when somebody loves you like crazy it's scary you know if nobody loves you in a way life is easier right when somebody really loves you it's vulnerable everybody knows what i'm talking about yeah yeah it's hard yeah because ashkenazim have a hard time with this no no i'm serious i have a hard time with this the vulnerability of really being loved really i don't mean i love you i love you i love you i love you his cake you know let's face it a lot of our grandparents who went through so much went through so much stalin hitler they couldn't love freely after not that they didn't love but they couldn't express emotions so much it was too it was too dangerous they saw too much pain they had to shut down a lot i had a grandmother a sadiques right i came to her house often she couldn't say i love you but she would give me food odd infinitum and it was all love she would fill up a plate this was before why why yes yitzchak s eat i ate i finished i had to eat another plate and then a third plate and then i had to take food going out i went out of the house i couldn't breathe but it was all love they starved so the way of showing love was you feed them an incredible generation so many of us don't know the language of love avas what do they say here in the white show we do both we have two minions hashem whatever you say avarab is even more intense ashkenazim get more emotional than just fire them because we say avas asylum but avaraba is like infinite excessive can i meditate and viscerally i don't mean with my mind i know we could do things with my mind we're very good we do gymnastics with our mind constantly but viscerally with my body you know liby of sorry iran can i experience that love can i really experience it's very vulnerable to feel love because it demands complete reciprocity and openness and if i experience that it's scary that's your shamayam that's the real yoshima i'll tell you an unbelievable void from your bazoosh of a nepali rebel is one of the greatest hasidic masters the brother of the malay malach the rabbit obsidian is buried in ukraine in a nepali he was a student of the margaret of mizritch and the seer of the blind decoys of leblind quotes him he says i heard this from my friend rip zuzia and he says something listen if i don't know if anybody else could say it but he said it it's printed it says at the end of massachusetts the last after the last mishna what's going to happen before mashiach comes back and one of the simon and one of the signs is people will become repulsed by those who fear sin so the world explains that the mishna means that before meshiach fear of sin will be laughed at if you have your shamayim you'll be scorned you'll be considered as dregs as garbage nobody's going to be interested in you anymore that's obviously a negative interpretation said the mishna means something else the jewish world will reject a judaism that's based prominently or predominantly on fear because they're going to crave vacus love intimacy that's what's going to happen so you see today yirusha mayan is the foundation of judaism but what makes it the foundation of judaism is that it's an expression of ultimate love and that's the type of year shamayim that today everybody is ready to absorb everybody's ready to absorb us if you could show me how i can have an amazing relationship with my spouse and with my god to the point that i'm afraid to ruin it because it's too good it's too delicious who doesn't cherish such a thing that's amazing i had a very similar type of conversation with rabbi kalash about today's generation and just being vulnerable what practical advice would you say let's say someone's listening to this and they're like i'm i'm sure everyone struggles this in some way but like i'm too closed i hear that and i want that but but how do i get out of my i'm too scared to become vulnerable like what could someone practically do yeah yeah that's a good question or to put it differently i'm damaged right what do i do about it so this is also a very unique quality of ikvis mashik of our generation because there's a very really interesting thing happening and i'll tell you how i'm seeing it and maybe maybe it's just my own perception but i think i think a little bit i have the finger on at least some people's pulse not everybody's obviously in many ways we live in the most comfortable generation of jewish history we live in prosperity relatively speaking of course that our great grandparents couldn't even dream of we're blessed in incredible ways i think it's the first time right uh maybe since schwein muhammad that we have an incredible combination in galos where half of claudia's role is living in eretz israel and the other half of claudia israel is living in countries that allow them to live freely as jews it's an incredible moment in history in golos as we await the ghoula our children have opportunity in terms of shelter security comfort again relatively speaking that my father grew up in stalinist russia he had his father arrested friday night during kiddish 1938 during stalin's purges my father was four years old and he watched his father being taken away by the kgb friday night in the middle of kiddish in a place called mamantov moscow it was four years old it affected my father's entire life we didn't have that growing up for many of us the crisis was we're the car keys now of course not to underestimate people's grief and people's loss and people's tragedies god forbid to underestimate any of it but generally speaking the blessings of our generation are incredible and yet what has emerged in the last few years is an explosion of anxiety and people ask me all the time rabbi why are where is this anxiety coming from mother is telling me why is my 16 year old girl anxious why because she was in a hotel for pesach because dick's comments took seven minutes right because she didn't have to squeeze do you remember the squeezing of the oranges i pesach two months before i was on the floor scrubbing don't tell the peso what exactly is she complaining about that's what they want to know what is my boy missing what was so miserable about his childhood what what do you know what i got from my mother do you know what can i tell you about my father's anger issues your father is a saint lagabe my father imagine a jewish woman saying that about her husband not parashat so people are wondering what's what's happening and yet we see this as a fact that there's a lot of a lot of trauma emerging and i feel part of it is that the rabona shaloylen wants our generation to bring healing not only to ourselves but retroactively to all of the previous generations because we know today with epigenetics that we carry trauma in our genes you can bequeath your trauma to your children your grandchildren through your genes which is a gevaltica scientific kiddish it was produced by a jewish professor at mount sinai hospital just a few years ago that means we carry the trauma of a thousand two thousand three thousand years we also carry in our genes the resilience the faith the wisdom the mysterious nephesh the amuno we carry everything and i think really a lot of children are simply experiencing things they got from previous generations and it's an opportunity to heal that's why it's coming out because before meshuggah comes we need pure vegas pure intimacy and there's no intimacy if half of my brain is offline because of trauma there's no intimacy there's no intimacy when i'm defined by fear there's no intimacy when i'm overwhelmed by insecurity when i'm overwhelmed by the need to freeze to run what do they call fight or flight there's no intimacy intimacy happens when i could be fully present and vulnerable with every part of my being my soul my brain my mind my body my heart so i say to all of us the only way we're going to be able to heal is when we all become vulnerable together and the most important thing you need is courage you need courage there is so much opportunity today for help there are so many models of therapy there are so many opportunities of healing there are so many different methods of healing the most important thing is have the courage you deserve to live a better life you deserve to live a full life many people live lives of quiet desperation many people's marriages relationships and lives are just monotonous and divorced devoid of real depth but you deserve much more and you're capable of much more so even if you suffered and even if there's many blockages and even if you're scarred and even if you're afraid i would encourage everybody who's listening have the courage to open up to start to search if one thing doesn't work go to the next be determined be aggressive be real be vulnerable be authentic and you will find you will find healing because the rabbination will put into our generation a lot of there's a lot of anxiety but there's equals there's extraordinary opportunity for growth and healing and let me tell you anyone who's going through this process i believe it's for one reason only because you're destined for leadership because the only people today who can really affect our lives are people who we feel that they understand us if somebody can look into my eyes and empathize with my pain i can trust them think about people who really changed your life and you will see it's not cerebral geniuses who are living in ivory towers it's people who have been through the ringer imaya who can really empathize if you're going through something it's because you have an unbelievable light to cast on the world and when you work that through you will become a source of incredible inspiration and empowerment for a whole generation wow that's a very good answer you could first thank you tell my mother-in-law because i could have more order um so when you're saying one of the profoundest letters i once saw in 1986 this is before it was popular there was a boy struggling with homosexuality this is 1986 so it's not 2022 you know right this was not disgusting it's a religious boy a from jewish boy and he penned a letter to the la bhava chereb of blessed memory about his dilemma and even though the rebel was then much older this is 86. the rebel was already uh just 1986. so that was in his high 80s and he wasn't writing so many letters but he wrote this boy a beautiful letter almost i think a three-page letter in english in english and i happen to see it years later and it's fascinating that in the letter he discusses neuroplasticity which in 1986 you know it was just beginning i don't even know you know about he explained how neuroplasticity works and how if they allow the proper research neuroplasticity will prove to be very helpful by the way it never turned out that way because politics dominates this field unlike strokes or other other issues here you know politics completely eclipses the science okay but that's a separate parsha but there's one paragraph there that i would say touched me in such a deep way and it taught me so much about how to speak to people i don't i never saw his letter but i saw the response he says you asked me why did god do this do this to you why do you have to go through this struggle so the laboratory never says i don't know you know i don't know the mysteries of life and why different people go through different things but he says i want to do i want to bring out one point that's brought in jewish books and safari and it may apply to you and if it does apply to you great if not not and the point he makes is as follows he says sometimes a person possesses inside his soul or her soul an infinite light that can change the world but it's so deep it can also remain dormant for their whole life and the only way you can access it is if you really have to work through lots of issues you really have to fight for yourself you really have to work through all of your vulnerabilities and traumas and blemishes and blockages only when by working them through will you discover your true potential your true essence and then you'll be able to own your light and you'll be able to actualize it so he says sometimes we're given struggles so that we should be able to discover who we really really are because when we discover that then all of history will be elevated as i was reading it i thought to myself wow you know if a boy would come to me or a girl would come to me and they're struggling you know very often we fall into one of two groups maybe the more liberal perspective the more conservative perspective the more conservative perspective is this is the way it is this is the truth you know don't deviate follow the truth and that's it and the other approach is you know empathy and more empathy and i'm and i'm so and with you know within each group itself there's so many different approaches the other approach would be yeah you know to feel the pain and to identify and i'm talking about within the from world and to empathize and to empathize even more and to be sensitive and to be mushy and to be soft and to be loving but i never thought of this third approach and the third approach that the rebel was sharing with this child is you know i don't see you as a tragedy i don't see you as a nebuch case i don't see you as this victim of a terrible tragedy and now i have to say you know either you know man up literally pun intended or i'm so sorry and i'm and i'm with you and there's a truth in each but what he was telling this boy is i'm not looking at your life as this horrible tragic negative story when i see you and i see your struggle all i what i really see is you have incredible incredible light and the only way to access that light is if you really work through all of your insecurities so i was looking at your problem or your challenge really as a gateway this is your path to incredible greatness the level of empowerment that we can give people that way when you really sincerely understand struggle that way is of a whole different magnitude is that is that approach how you personally are able to deal with i can't even imagine how many people are coming to you crying about whatever issues they're going through and and real issues is that how you personally handle all the soros going on i need to meditate i need to ground myself um so the first the first you say it is always empathy empathy empathy empathy if i can't feel you i won't be able to help i have to feel you it's a lot of feeling though a lot of feeling but that's the key attachment connection empathy empathy means really trying to tune in to what the other person is going through to the obviously to the best of my ability with the tools i have but that's the first thing and the person will feel it the person will feel it immediately that must come number two with a suspension of judgmentalism if i have an iota of judgmentalism in me i'm not fit for this job you know i could sit in my cocoon and judge the world besides me of course i don't judge me i judge everybody else if you really want to be here for people if you want to be an agent of healing we have to learn how to suspend judgmentalists judgmentalism doesn't mean i agree with you judgmentalism doesn't mean you didn't make a mistake judgmentalism doesn't mean you're a saint judgmentalism means that i'm sitting in a throne of judgment with a joystick deciding who you are without tuning in to all of your experiences your past present future you need a big heart you need a big big heart altadenas and to quote us for the fifth time tonight don't judge somebody until you reach a space and you will not reach a space that's a very real feeling that people will feel right away you know people criticize me i rightly feel if you're judging me or you're not judging me if you're judging me i'll build defenses if you're not judging me i'll be vulnerable at least i'll try to be vulnerable after those two foundations empathy and a lack of judgmentalism probably lack of realism comes first can come step three and step three is i ask myself you know maha shemaleke what does hashem want from me at this moment or in the words of mardukai you know they em here's a person who wrote an email to me or met me or poured out their heart how can i be here for them what can i do right now to help this person to empower this person and with that perspective i tried to bring and share this dimension which is always making sure that the person never ever sees themselves as just a victim of circumstances and that's really this perspective that he have articulated in this letter you're not a victim of circumstances you are an ambassador of hashem and the struggle is here not to destroy you it's here because through this you will fulfill your mission in the world so instead of looking at yourself in the mirror and saying i'm such a neb i'm a mazel i can't get anything right which we often do instead you paraphrase the words of yaisefatzadek should have been the ultimate victim said you guys didn't sell me you didn't sell me sorry they didn't sell them really who sold them how did he get to egypt how did he get egypt he went on a pacer program to egypt how did he get to egypt of course they saw them you didn't sell me god sent me the moment i could say even if somebody did x y and z to me i was not sold i was sent this is my mission this is not a bid the evidence i was sent into this place because i can bring light into this place it may be difficult and i may need to do grief work but it's a game changer i have a few lighter questions that i like to end off with why would you do that oh you're saying okay okay okay another two hours um but before we get to that i do want to talk about this is also i guess so more of a lighter subject but i don't think i've ever interviewed anyone who's uh introduced the president of the united states while they were the president donald trump uh what was that experience like for you hmm oh america went through a lot since then so it's like you're really taking me back to another gilgal okay but sometimes you gotta go ben mcgill goes right yes so the truth is part of the experience was surreal you know did you make a bro did you make the brah yeah wow yeah i discussed it you know there's an argument among parties if you make a brother on the president of the united states of america one of the big one of the big arguments is it's not a melech he's not a mellick democratically elected for four years but i spoke to a great pisces and he said i don't understand if a king becomes a king because he's a tyrant and nobody wants him then you make abraha and if a whole nation or part of the nation the majority nation elects him so for sure just because he was elected voluntarily so people actually want this president you know malchus in versus the vilnigan says this man shall end this by coercion but there's different opinions anyway so i i chose one of the views and i made a bracha there was something very moving i want to share that i saw from behind the stage you know i prepared this speech initially they told me you're going to speak for 10 minutes and then the president was in a rush and the previous event was cut short so as i'm about to go up they say the president is walking in so cut your speech to 20 seconds oh my gosh so from 10 minutes to 20 seconds because the president is here and his assistant was telling me uh you know he doesn't sit and listen to speeches he gives speeches right he didn't say the other half so so you you have i said but they asked me ten minute the white house said 10 minutes 20 seconds 20 seconds 20 seconds so i'm like okay i threw away my pages because there goes 10 minutes but then i told myself i said calm down you know and the president walks you know when the president walks in with a whole entourage there's a certain to speak and it's not necessarily about the personality of the president whether you like him or you don't like him it's about you know the cheer the the position right the throne president of the united states of america so as he's walking in i'm thinking to myself you know i'm not speaking for 20 seconds i want to give the president a message i'm speaking on behalf of the jewish people on behalf of eric israel on behalf of claudius raw at least a significant part of eritrea saul and claudius sorrow and i'm here me a day him lays because i see i don't care what his assistant told me i'm not going to speak for 10 minutes i'm not going to do a two-hour share so i decided four minutes i can get away with and the president will listen nishka fairly and i got up and i gave my four five-minute speech i told the story about the holocaust i spoke about hashem's promise if you bless whoever will bless avrom will be blessed whoever will curse of rome will be cursed i spoke about supporting eric israel supporting israel is a historical divine opportunity that will be remembered forever a few messages that i thought were really important you were saying it as for basically the president not for everyone watching all for the president i mean i was happy that the my friends you know from williamsburg and muncie and lake court and borough park and the five towns were listening but uh right you know we could sit and eat coogle together the next day but the president was there there was something else that was so moving as the president was walking in he was flanked by two people by two people avi berkowitz and his son-in-law mr jared kushner jared and one of them was wearing a yamaka both of them consider themselves orthodox jews and he walked into a room with 400 yarmulkes as he was walking in i was behind stage with him i shed a tear and i'll tell you why because i my i had a flashback of another scene some of you may know which scene i'm referring to 400 jews you know what i'm talking about september 1943. i think it was a few days before jim kipper 400 rabbis went to meet franklin president roosevelt to try to persuade him and plead with him to save whatever could still be saved of european jury and what happened roosevelt left the white house through a back door and wouldn't even meet the 400 rabbis and then i thought to myself 75 years later 75 years just two mortgages later the president is flanked by two people one of them is a yeshiva graduate and one of them considers himself an orthodox jewish material mitzvos on some level and he's walking into a room with 400 yarmulkes and i thought to myself such a moment in history you have to remember you have to be grateful for then i got up i introduced him he was listening very very attentively despite being donald trump you're a good speaker thank you his son-in-law says to me he never got such a good introduction and then when he got up he famously said i like him so uh if you like donald trump so then you like the people he likes right so they probably also like me not everybody likes donald trump right so not everybody liked me on that day at least hopefully they today they like me a little more i don't know um i did get some very very nasty mail from some of our brothers and sisters the world over some of them who felt that i have sold my soul to the devil and this was an act of pure narcissism on my part and i sold my mother and my father and my people and my god and everything that judaism stands for just to get a few moments of uh you know of fame and be on a whatsapp clip for the next two days to complain so uh i did get that not a lot but i did and you know i responded very respectfully and i said you know i can really understand somebody having a different opinion i'm really i'm not so naive but i felt it was the real right thing to do simply for hakara satov just for the fact that somebody canceled the iran deal where ahmadinejad and rawani were getting 150 billion dollars which would not be used to build hospitals and universities somebody just cancelling the iran deal 150 billion dollars to the hitlers of today's generation somebody who's 70 years after the holocaust in the presence of living survivors of auschwitz promised that all of israel would be exterminated in one day just for canceling the iran deal dayenu never mind from moving the embassy to jerusalem never mind for the clearing that the golan heights is the part of the eternal homeland of the jewish people you know liberating rebecca martha et cetera et cetera you may disagree with him on another 100 issues he may not like his personality but i felt that it was important and good for the jews to say thank you and express gratitude and encourage the president to continue in this path and when i had a few private moments with him a few private seconds with him as the crowd was applauding you know i told them i told him privately i said that i know how much pressure you're getting and i know that it's not easy but i want you to know that as a president of the united states if you continue to support the jewish people and to fight for justice and to fight for israel and to fight against anti-semitism and terrorism and bloodshed and violence and exploding suicide bombers who just want to destroy innocent people jews or arabs i said if you will continue that fight you should just know that the god of eternity will be here with you and you will be blessed for eternity and i think that meant that meant a lot for him i saw how moved he was and that was basically uh part of the experience it's a very cool experience so i want to finish off with a few fun questions um i said that once and then moshe weinberger was like crying giving the answer so it's not always fun um if there's one person in history that you could sit down with for an hour who would you sit down with [Music] you already spent some time with donald trump so [Laughter] no i i mean i'm very grateful to what he did for for israel and for for the jewish people but that wouldn't be my choice you know i once asked this question from somebody many years ago a very very wise and deep person whom i respected deeply and i asked him if there was one person in history you could meet who would it be and he looked at me and he said myself i would love to meet myself and i was taken aback and he said that's the only real person you're ever going to meet anyway and if you meet that person then you'll get to know some other people as well but if you don't meet that person then meetings with other people will be futile and i thought that was a very profound answer because i think that's really the person we each have to meet i think i have to meet me and you have to meet you because only when we really meet ourselves and it's not so easy to meet yourself sometimes much easier to meet other people it's so much easier of course you take a picture hang it up in the office i met him i met her to really meet me is really responding to my my soul to my mission in history so if i can one day meet that person i would be very blessed that's a very beautiful answer there's 613 myths of us and it could be that this answer shifts for you as of right now what is your favorite mitzvah what's your favorite commandment that you just feel it's yours it's your baby i love learning torah i get very profound spiritual and intellectual and visceral and emotional stimulation i also have a special passion for the mitzvah of laissand don't stand by when your friend's blood is being spilled it's very very difficult for me to watch when people stand by when injustice is happening in their midst i thought you're going to say something else also so that's why it's the awkward pause but that's um what do you think i'm gonna say i don't know i thought you're gonna explain like did something happen once that that that got you to say i hate when that happens oh things are always happening i just i'm privy to to stories and to episodes and to events where you know a mother will come to me a father will come to me or somebody else will come to me and describe a particular situation happening in a home or in a school or in a shull or in a community and i'm like why don't you call the police and like our shidduchim will be ruined why don't you speak up why don't you he's a bully we can't do anything i understand it i understand the fear i understand the compelling reasons to be passive but it's it's very painful for me and i think when the pastor says it means you're not allowed to be passive take a stand and if you have any faith in god it should be that by protecting the innocent your children sudden will not be ruined so i i wanna i'm gonna end off with one question but right now if anyone in the audience you have a question that you'd like to ask well it's really we'll connect you with the mic we'll do like one or two questions from the audience uh but right before that i'm going to ask you what's the worst advice you've received ever in your life oh what what's the worst or a bunch of the bad ones that i should not speak up about child molestation in our communities that was one of the worst pieces of advice did you did the moment you heard that did you know is the worst advice or took some time to realize that i knew that it's terrible advice i myself i have not experienced you know that that horrific crime at least not consciously that i remember you know um so i didn't know about it i really didn't know i possibly didn't know about it i was serving as a spiritual leader in a show in brooklyn years ago and then just you know people started to approach me in their 30s and their 40s their marriages were falling apart this one ended up in prison this one couldn't have intimacy this one couldn't function this one was addicted to this and addicted to that and i would start talking to the people and then one story after another story i saw that it's all traced back to the fact that their sexuality has been terribly terribly compromised through years of sexual abuse and i couldn't believe it because this whole new dark sinister demonic world opened up to me and i'm like nobody's talking about it you know this is 10 this is 15 years ago where 20 years ago sure you know we had wall-to-wall carpets and everything went under the carpet or under the rug and and you know the the many principles it's just like you know tell him not to do it again tell him not to do it again let him move to eric's strong brilliant advice right let him move towards you so what happened with kai and valder 20 years ago they knew about him 20 years ago they knew about him 20 years ago but nobody stood up nobody stood up to him so how many more young women and men were were destroyed because of that silence so i started to collect data because i didn't you know want to talk about things that are not real you know i started to ask and then find out on what's happening and then i realized that there's literally a systematic cover-up and not malicious simply people i can't say not most people i think were not malicious in terms of principles and rabbis and teachers they just didn't know better they didn't know about the effects so i wrote then a letter and i uh came out and i started to talk about it and communicate it and the backlash was very very intense i still remember a letter i received from a very prominent person and he wrote you have blood on your hands you're destroying people single-handedly hold on but why i mean maybe i'm asking from a 20-22 perspective but like why why would they say that because the perpetrator was not proven guilty were you believing a little kid who who's half drunk who's immature who wants to take revenge from the family you're believing four kids against this prominent man who's been in china for 25 years who's been running a camp where you were accusing a father of doing this to his children a guy i'll never forget and one person wrote to me is i know why you talk about this because you are a perpetrator oh god and you made a deal with organizations that if you will speak on their behalf they'll silence you they they will they will cut they will cover for you so he writes to me so i started to laugh but i was quite upset and i wrote back to him i said interesting if i would hear somebody speak out against abuse my initial instinct would not be to suspect him in doing it why is that your instinctive response obviously you know very well about this sugiya and that's your go-to place you did it of course i did it i said but you know what there's truva du chuva make amends confess be vulnerable pay for your victim's therapy go apologize become an example of somebody who learned from his mistakes and inspire other people that's what you should be doing instead of calling me a perpetrator i wasn't sure i was right but i felt it strongly and i felt it's an opportunity for me to try to help him actually i knew i was right when i got back his answer you want me to tell you what he wrote i'm dying to know he wrote two words i really would not say these words because i feel very uncomfortable but it's how i knew i was right he wrote back two words i wrote a very heartfelt email his two words were up yours that's it and then i understood that unfortunately i was right so what should i tell you there was then a lot a lot of ignorance and people really thought they can get away with it and let's face it there's people still today who get away with it despite all of the awareness and i understood then that if we as a community will not stand up to this with absolute conviction and unwavering clarity then we should take our entire religion and throw it into the dustbin because that's what we're doing if we don't see our first and primary obligation as protecting innocent children from people who literally destroy their lives and sometimes 30 years later they are suffering terribly i know them and we as rabbis and and lay men and wealthy people and and influential people and rabbis and rosh yeshivas and rebels and mashpeem and and all of us if this is not our primary duty then what is then we have no god then we have no traitor it's a mockery our religion is a mockery it was it was clear it's still clear to me and when people were defending this monster from israel who not only raped so many people but then killed himself right that was his last act of rape like now you feel bad for me it's the victims who are murderers that was the last sociopathic act of a sinister whatever you know it's not so important to describe who this person is now after he's gone but when there were people who grew up with terror who started to defend this person and there was in the newspaper zatzal zeiker zadek levroche right the day after someone committed suicide because she was raped by him and then you look and you say you know have you no shame have you really know god and then i realized that sometimes religion can become idolatry religion can sometimes be an instrument to empower evil and abuse and that judaism we are not allowed to be a part of because that's paganism well i'm going to finish off with one question but that was your light question [Laughter] rabbi weinberger was crying right yeah i should just call them the serious questions at the end if anyone does anyone have a i don't even know where the mics are but does anyone have a question that they'd like to ask rip why why there's a there's a mic over there so i've never done this before so it wasn't ready if someone's gonna ask does anyone have a question this is your chance okay we have son someone's walking up okay we can't see it yeah we can't say it's supposed to it's i think it's a jewish person i can't really see so well um hi rabbi hi molly fishbein um i just want to ask how much do you believe um and current psychology coincide interesting question how what do i think about the the synthesis or the hybrid between the world of hasidism the world of hasidis and current psychology very interesting question uh the fact is that generally the teachings of hasidis have reframed much of judaism in very psychological language or as uh rabbits worker i think once said that there was a time when judaism was focused on space v then after the corbin a big focus of judaism became on time shabbos yamtif times of davanning chakras in kabbalah it's called from islam from space it went to shan at the time and he says the basemtiv introduced the focus on nephesh on the person not finding god in a space or in a time but in yourself in your identity so since so much of hasidis was about cultivating the inner self and finding the divine vibrations that flow through the human psyche and human spirit and understanding how to work with your emotions and how to sublimate your emotions and understanding the relationship between your divine consciousness and your animal consciousness so very much of it became a focus on judaism that is internalized emotionally intellectually viscerally for example i'll give just one classic example the tanya postulates the tanya is considered you know one of the classic hasidic works by the barrabash almond by the altareb and he postulates that we don't have one brain we operate with four different brains or four different states of consciousness and he calls it nefer younis nefersa bahamus nefer chachless nefersel kiss literally means the biological brain the mammalian brain the rational brain and the divine soul the divine brain so you read it in the tanya and you're like okay interesting suddenly in the 1980s and 90s is an explosion of neuroscience for the first time we have cat scans of the brain and guess what cutting-edge psychology is you have to understand parts of your brain you have the stem you have your reptilian brain as it's called you have your limbic brain your mammalian brain you have your pre-frontal lobes and suddenly these terms assumed literally neuroscientific vocabulary so i think there's generally explores the inner world of emotions from a territory perspective so this tremendous tremendous amount we could learn from it in terms of psychology on the other hand the world of psychology often provides us with tools and data and scientific information that can help healing processes and i think the the combination between the two is incredibly incredibly powerful there is always the disclaimer that you have to understand that like all human sciences including psychology they're created by flawed human beings who sometimes have different biases and agendas so therefore we always have to realize that you know no system is perfect and generally science is always a search for truth but theories that were so cherished a century ago are discarded for new theories so that's also true in the world of psychology so we always have to have that humility and sensitivity of not worshiping a particular model that was created by a human being you know sigmund freud or his real name was shleimela freud is the father of psychoanalysis but much of the freudian model now is you know not taken so seriously so it's important also to have that humility and sensitivity that's a brief answer to a very interesting question is does anyone else have a question that they want to ask um this one how do we see it oh hi um so that's robertson langer yeah um so um i i know we speak a lot about um like child anxiety and i think it's very important that we speak about it a lot but um how do we raise children with less anxiety when we're living such fast-paced lives and we have such a lack of attachment with our children these days because you know we all have to go to work we all have to you know maintain a certain lifestyle um and you know i'm not um i mean i i have a babysitter at home you know there's we leave our kids with our babysitters wait hold on a second wait what do we do he's safe and sound don't worry um so yeah basically my question is like we're we're very very busy today and we're living very fast-paced lives to maintain you know what certain lifestyles and how do we yeah yeah it's a great question and you know how do we help create and raise a generation with less anxiety and i think you know in your question i think you indicated part of the answer it's one word that i think we should repeat many times it's called attachment attachment and attachment i think all of us our first and foremost responsibility is to be able to create conditions in our homes and families where our children experience the attachment they need and deserve to grow up with all the parts of their brains functioning seamlessly the reptilian brain the mammalian brain the limbic brain the prefrontal lobes all of them working together which only comes when there are the four s's as dr siegel discusses you know when they feel seen soothed safe and secure and i think despite our busy schedules it's important that the time that we are home and to make that as much as much as we can that time should be you know as often as possible to really provide them with that necessary attachment and what that means first and foremost is that we learn how to regulate our own emotions you know we have learned today that the greatest part of educating our children is educating ourselves you know used to be you educate your kids no no no no you educate yourselves do we mothers and fathers know how to regulate our own emotions when i can regulate my emotions i can co-regulate your emotions i can be present for you i can really be attached for you so when we deal with our own anxiety when we really work through our own anxiety which is hard it's easy for me to help my kid with his anxiety you know it's his anxiety what's bothering you you tati he won't say that but i'm supposed to know it right i said the other night before peso you know i said yakats right we break our matzah and we take the big piece and we hide it for the afique men and who finds darfur kaiman the children right it used to be the rich kids got a calculator or a parker pen the poor kid's got a danish today it's like a private yet or a private jet or a lamborghini or at least a tablet for the afikah but the bottom line is if not you know they'll call child services but the bottom line is the kids revealed afrikainen so i said the other day you know what we hide our children are going to reveal the matzah we put away and we hide under the couch and we do it very well they're going to bring it out to the open so our children trigger a lot of our anxiety and i think first and foremost we really have to learn how to regulate our own emotions how to really be anchored in a space of serenity of dealing with our anxiety of our stress especially when our children trigger us because then we can be here for them help them regulate their emotions and it's a game changer for life i had an interesting experience yesterday in my home my child missed school on sunday one of my children and then on monday one of his garments was wet and he couldn't find another garment so again he refused to go to school and my wife told me you know at another time i would have been so frustrated like you're going to miss school a second day because you know we'll find you whatever we'll work it out you know don't make a big deal out of everything and then she says but i decided that the most important thing in our times is attachment that my child should feel safe secure seen and soothed of course i wanted to go to school i want him to learn well i want to be successful but the most important thing you want is he should feel safe secure seen and soothed and i felt my wife told me that just by listening to him and embracing him even though there was a loss because he lost another day of school ultimately the pros were were greater than the cons and i found that to be very very powerful because you know we often get lost in the stress of the moment you have to go to school you have a test tomorrow we have to be here we have to be there and it's understandable and that's how we grow up you know you miss a day of school i had a teacher who was a pedagogical genius and he would tell us the only excuse i would expect except for you not coming to school is if you're attending your own funeral isn't that an amazing thing to tell seventh graders right this is where our self-confidence came from um but but okay we're not you know we know better but very often we get lost in the moment and it's really our own anxiety i'm not telling you to take your kids out of school and have them stay home for the rest of the year some situations maybe yes not all but my point is when we can uh respond from a place of much deeper serenity and trust and connection and attachment i think it transforms the inner psyche of our children that's a very beautiful answer okay i'm gonna finish i'm gonna finish off with a question uh you okay we'll also take a woman okay yeah go for it uh the first one is not so important hold on the mic is uh if you want to sing in like until the thing about now it's not okay you got lucky i did a song before now oh abraham maybe another thing we're good you could ask the question hold on hold on sorry i would like to know if biden came into the room would you make a break biden if biden came into the room yes would you make a brother ah that's a good question it's an interesting question if biden came into the room would i make a bracha no no it's a very interesting question um because somebody told me that he was in a room and he came into the room and nobody noticed that he came into the room and i actually felt bad because you know when president comes into the room usually it's like everything stops and for good reason most powerful person of the free world and and this this person the rabbi told me he was in the room and he said i i also felt i like mamash felt bad he said nobody noticed but i think if he looked that would be the proper thing to do and especially that would it would help the jewish people and to help protect the jewish people it's certainly a consideration i would not just say no and the reason i'm you know awkward a little bit about it is because i just don't get that presidential feel of malchus by the way the president president donald trump asked me what's the meaning of the blessing he wanted to know what i said because it was in hebrew so i couldn't give an act a direct translation because it wouldn't do much for him because you know brachas are very short and cryptic you know shannon like he gives his glory to flesh and blood like you know first of all donald trump has to believe that he's made a flesh and blood it's wonderful and there's other considerations you know there's a beautiful taz the tao says that for jewish kings you say shakhalak mikhwa dai and for non-jewish no son and he says nasan is he gives and khalak is it's a part because the jewish kingdom it reflects reflects hashems so i try to explain the blessing that the idea is that when somebody is appointed to a position of leadership it's a gift of god it's not something you own it's a divine gift in other words it's a privilege to heal the world to bring goodness into the world you're an ambassador of god that's how i explained to him the blessing which of course was very very flattering for uh for donald trump so again you know i would consult i would consult great halachic authorities you know the pros and the cons and then make a decision based on what i feel is you know the right thing that's a great answer that would be my answer but i wasn't asked to meet him so i wasn't asked to introduce him i think she has one more question go ahead the question i wanted to ask was something that's been bothering me and everybody thinks i'm not normal i think i'm very normal okay i wrote one for me i think years ago the fathers went to work they came home they learned they learned in the morning they learned in the evening they learned in the afternoon women stayed home took care of their children today every woman has to go to college it's a it's a prerequisite to get married what are you taking what courses are you taking are you good for my son to go to to stay in yeshiva for four years five years in kylo i don't think it's a good idea for children to be brought up by other people i think it should be like years ago where the fathers went to work there's no other stayed home and there's plenty of time to learn and this has been bothering me for a long time everybody thinks that i'm wrong they think you said they think you're not normal did i hear right i think that's what you said okay i don't think you i wouldn't use that word obviously but uh the point is i don't think uh there's an argument that it's an incredible gift and opportunity when a mother is there to welcome her children off the bus and can be there with children as much as possible and a father as well and i think each couple in today's world has to figure out the best way that they can be there for their children because i think what we know today is that attachment with our children is the most important priority in life there's a lot of drugs there's a lot of depression a lot of overdose a lot of suicide i hate you know to use these words but it's a fact there's a lot a lot of things dangers you know porn addiction and so many difficult challenges that teens and youth go through today because of so many different factors internally and externally internal anxiety and external circumstances and the greatest antidote to all of this is you know we don't have the answer to every problem but the greatest antidote to all of this is a deep deep relationship between parents and children and the deeper the relationship the more the immunity the more protection as i said the antithesis of addiction is not sobriety the antithesis of addiction is connection attachment attachment disorder becomes a great cause for a lot of alienation and a lot of trauma so therefore it's so important for every father and mother in whatever field you are whatever financial position to try to work out to the best of your ability obviously to create a situation where their children can experience the most attachment with their primary caregivers who are the parents and let's understand it i could send my child to the best therapist in the world to the best teacher in the world and it's amazing but what tati and mommy can do for a child nobody in the world can do for a child so do not neglect that opportunity and whatever you can do to enhance that you should certainly do and i think there's no greater priority than that than really being there for our children they are our tomorrow and they need they need our soul they need our presence they need our heart they need our attachment you know the jewish people you know we're there for everybody and some of us are very involved with the community and involved with other people which is amazing but we cannot neglect our own children it's just that they have to come first so you know whatever that means in each family i think take it seriously and and do really what you can and even more than you can to secure that attachment that's really beautiful it's for mothers and fathers as well mothers and fathers and and of course learning toyota is the oxygen of a jewish home davening is the oxygen of a jewish home your shamayim and abhishema is oxygen of a jewish home but for for all of that to be inculcated in our children they need that attachment and if a child if a father is just you know leaving the home constantly to go learn i mean it's an incredible thing to go learn and everybody should go learn and have sherman visiting the toyota but what you want that the title should be a torah that lifts up the home and infuses the home you know traders shouldn't be where i escape from home the rambam writes in that at the end of yum kippur the kyan goddale would put on his regular clothes the yayoid silabasa and he would go home and the mufasam say you know why is that part of obviously he would go home which should he go to the bowling alley wish the khan god will go after yom kippur you should go to the pizza shop i mean yeah he went home the rambla puts like a halal have a yoyotzilla base and what if he didn't want to go home what if he wanted to hang out in the basement for the night what if he wanted to go to his sister's house what if he wanted to go to a fabrian i don't know so i once heard from the a beautiful vert that the rambam was actually telling you he said you know the kind god was in the holy of holies he was in the holiest place in the world the end of yom kippur there's a halacha now you gotta go home it's not easy to go home you know the gutter comes home and his wife says can you take out the garbage yes the baby has been crying all day where were you oh and kardashian was that my problem the baby is crying and remember i know you fasted but please clean up after yourself i'm going to bed because other things to himself you know i was in kurdish kardashian i caused atonement for clients and then i go home and this is what happens i'm not coming home so that was the video how do you know yom kippur was young kipper if you go home how do you know you were in kaido shakadasha if you take it home because that may be the most powerful halal about yom kippur that after all the great highs for your celebs you have to go back home you have to bring it all back to the house i'm going to finish off this episode with you're actually going to finish yeah it's you mean i can go home i'm trying to stall for a time yeah i'm gonna finish off with with this question that you speak a lot in a lot of places literally around the world and the pentagon in front of trump everywhere and you say a lot of stories what's oh what yeah yeah uh what's what's one story that changed your life i've experienced many many meaningful moments and i've heard many very profound powerful stories i'll just tell you something that opened me up to a dimension that i haven't thought of earlier i was once invited to do a shabbaton a year ahead of time which is not the jewish way of doing things you know when the pentagon invited me they invited me two years before and then i knew they weren't jewish you know jews invite usually you know right before somebody called me in california and he said can you come tomorrow night to speak i said no i'm booked he says but i already put up signs that you're coming that's great so now it's my fault you know in any case people are interesting is wrong right he had so much better i said we're talking hashem not been talking that i'm coming to california tomorrow anyway so i got this invitation and i scheduled this chapatone and i even got my wife to come with me we sent our children to our my in-laws and my wife would come with me we're really looking forward we were about to leave the house we packed up and friday afternoon as i'm about to leave i get a call from the organizer who tells me that the shabbaton was cancelled friday afternoon was counted we had hundreds of people coming politics like politics you found out about the politics six hours before the shabbaton you didn't know about the politics a year ago politics it's ugly it's disgusting i'm like how do you do this to all the people coming how do you do this to me i mean it's just not mentioned this person tells me i'm embarrassed to be part of this organization but it's cancelled i was really really upset or to confess i was furious i was really furious for a few reasons you know we planned this and was all worked out i was also relying on the weekend financially whatever it was just a mess i was so upset i tell my wife i said yes this is really not nice but it is what it is it's cancelled so uh i wasn't going to have her or me cook shabbos it was already shabbos was soon i invited myself out to a friend for for the meal and we went for the meal to this person and we came home to our apartment we were living in brooklyn at the time on new york avenue but i have to tell you i was really angry anyway we come home my wife goes to sleep i go to the couch i'm reading i'm learning and i thought i'll fall asleep but i was not falling asleep i was very anxious so first i thought i was just anxious because i was upset and i finally fell asleep on the couch and three in the morning i woke up and my heart was pounding and i didn't know why i thought maybe something happened i ran to my to our bedroom my wife was sleeping she was fine something was bothering me i didn't know what like and i couldn't go back to sleep this was in an apartment building it's called the president plaza and i had an office on the fourth floor we were living on the first and there was light in the office and i had more books there and i wanted to check something up so i thought i can't fall asleep anyway it's three in the morning i'll go up to the fourth floor so i start walking up the steps friday night three in the morning and when i come up to the floor where my office was i see a teenager sitting on the steps and it was a very strange phenomenon he was sitting like with his head on his forehead just sitting on the steps and contemplating it wasn't something i expected so i sat down near him and i said good shabbos and he wouldn't answer i said good shabbos is everything all right do you need anything do you have a place to sleep can i do something for you what's bothering you no answer after a few minutes he says leave me alone i'm like what happened share with me i'm not your enemy what's your name do you need a place he stands up and obviously he was using somebody's apartment there because the door was open and he ran into that apartment and you know just my my instinct told me follow him and i followed him and he slammed the door but i put my foot in so he slammed the door on my foot but i got into the apartment and as i walked in he ran into the kitchen and i saw his hand was filled with and he put them in his mouth and i knew what those tablets were i saw the bottle and i knocked him i shoved his hand and most of them fell down and came out of his mouth and he started to wrestle me he's like get out of my life i'm trying to end my misery what are you doing get out of here and we literally started a wrestling match friday night 3 30 in the morning it was surreal he was punching me and kicking me and fighting me and i'm fighting back thank god i was a little bigger and a little stronger so i managed to triumph to be victorious and i pinned him down and after an hour he relaxed and i'm like what's happening he says the pain was just too much i decided to end everything and you you ruined my plans you ruined my plans we spoke till seven in the morning till seven in the morning he opened up he shared his life story at seven in the morning he he was different he was a different person he was really highly intelligent and sensitive brilliant person and very deep deep deep we spoke for hours and it was seven o'clock and i was giving a shirt at eight before davening so i brought him down to my apartment and i woke up my wife and i said esthy listen i have a wonderful guest here i'm gonna give my share i'm gonna dive in with the early fast minion i'll be home right away i just need you to be with him for a few hours and then i'll take over and i went to shul i did my shear i cut it i dive into the early minion pretty fast and i came home right away and uh i spent shabbas with him but sari shabbas he fell asleep shabbos i set him up with somebody who i knew was a real expert for this type of trauma and he really took him under his wings and today he's you know an extraordinary young bright successful person uh really a source of light and and honesty and authenticity and i remember with so shabbos thank you matsuri shabbas i turned to my wife and i said este do you realize if that shabbaton wasn't cancelled he would have been dead and then i became aware of something they canceled the shabbaton because of politics but god canceled the shabbatons so that this boy should be saved and from that moment in my life it taught me such a profound lesson you know things happen not always by my choice you get involved in things things happen and sometimes there's politics and sometimes it's not so nice and sometimes it's a little filthy and it's so easy to get entangled and to get upset and to keep grudges and to get frustrated from that story i learned so much that there is always another layer there's another dimension that we never ever know and i'm thankful today i look back and i'm thankful that they canceled the shabbaton even though it was not pretty because this boy's life was saved and i had the privilege of being hashem at 3 30 in the morning to literally save his life for me it really opened my eyes to always know that there is a deeper layer and you have to be open to that why why i understand why people call you rabbi wow wow thank you very much for coming out here thank you thank you thank you thank you jacob thank you thank you everybody for being here thank you everyone for coming okay you're great thank you you're also great that is more you just take a picture of us that was an incredible incredible time i i really really enjoyed it and i want to tell everyone to again go check out cedar media studios and marshava haskell they're incredible in the links below you could check them out um they'll take care of you both of them whether you're looking for marketing cedar media is their podcast of music you want to do karaoke they're there and if you want good insights and depths into torah you can check out mike chavez's classical he also has the daffy yomi show which is incredible which i did a daf yumi sheer video and i saw his thing after i'm like i should have included it next one part two so it's after the show er everyone left already and i'm just there with y jacobson and we're just we're just schmoozing about life and it's so interesting like i had this conversation with him he he was so on when we were talking and he was in the moment and animated and and then after i'm having this like heartwarming down-to-earth conversation with him like he's very relaxed and it's very interesting to see that you know a lot of times you meet these grand speakers and they're incredible but i love i love that those i guess private moments i had with him after to see like he's he's such a relatable great person yeah he could be this powerhouse of inspiration but it's also nice to see you know talking about him about his family driving talking to his driver making jokes and you know something was interesting to me his driver um the person who drove him there i don't know if he drives him all the time but he's driven with him a few times nice kassidis fellow he's like i know the world knows him as a great speaker an incredible speaker and as good as he is of a speaker he's even better as a human being and i'm like whoa uh yeah i this this the night was was incredible for me i i'll never forget it i i don't know it was the first of many until next time keep on living inspired living 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