Tackling Taboos #1 With Rabbi YY & Eli Nash: When I See How I Broken I Am, I Can Become Whole

so welcome all tonight Robbie why Jacobson and I will be discussing various taboos within the Jewish Community by taboo we mean taboo to speak about not taboo to do it's taboo to speak about these things they're happening but for whatever reason there's a taboo on speaking about it tonight is the first of a three-part series the second will be exactly two weeks from now on a Wednesday the everyone who registered to this event will receive um an email with information on that as well if you're watching this in some other format then follow up by y wire myself where we are followed either on WhatsApp Instagram Facebook wherever it is and we'll definitely be sharing information on um on the event itself tonight after this short introduction we'll focus on mostly the sexual taboos for this evening so some of what we spoke about sexual abuse sexual addictions infidelity sexual identity issues homosexuality so the general sexual taboos that exist on future discussions we'll talk about things it's a conversation that has been coming up for whatever reason in my life over the last few months parental abuse and other religious abuse and how someone is meant to deal with all of those things right there's trauma but when there's Trauma from a parent or a loved one or trauma from a within the context of religion or from a religious figure that adds a certain Dimension and oftentimes it's Taboo in a certain way to talk about then we'll also address some of the plants psychedelic healing plant medicines the format will be read by WHYY and I discussing these topics between the two of us followed by a period for question and answer there's a question and answer section within the zoom itself do not use the chat to put questions we won't necessarily see that but within the question and answer use those there's an upvote function so if we know questions are more relevant to a group of people we're more likely to uh to answer their questions I have Tyler here on the side of me outside of the video and as he sees later towards the end of this as we see he'll bring up some of the questions all righty welcome Ellie and thank you for bringing us together and thank you everybody for joining us and gracing us with your presence thank you thank you for uh thank you for joining us thank you for agreeing to uh do this with us I don't know that there's uh two of you that exist there certainly isn't two of you but I don't know that there's two that would there are two rabbis that would agree to a conversation uh of this nature so I'm grateful for uh I'm grateful for that I'm grateful for more I find that a privilege really a humbling privilege to be able to address this with you and with so many of our friends who are joining us so why is that why do you feel that this is important tackling taboos because tackling taboos there could be reasons they're taboos it's not without risk it's not without personal risk it's not without risk to um others we may be sharing some of these topics with so why is this important and why now the reason is because the Torah the first thing the Tyra says is not good you would think the first thing that Judaism identifies as not good should be sin maybe idolatry maybe another transgression against God but the first thing that deterior says is not good and boracious the beginning of Genesis is low Tove Lovato it's not good for Adam for a human being to be alone we weren't designed to live in loneliness and what I have seen in my own life and the lives of many people who I have a privilege to be in contact with on a daily weekly monthly and yearly basis is there is so much suffering and Agony that is happening in solitariness and loneliness it's hard enough for people to be dealing with the burdens of addictions of porn addiction of homosexuality of infidelity of of of of trauma of Brokenness on all levels compound that with the loneliness in fact there are many but there are healers who Define trauma really what trauma is it's not the event that happened or the events that happened even if they happened for many years it's rather the loneliness that was created as a result of that and therefore many maintain and I think there's a lot of Truth to that that the primary healing happens in the antithesis of loneliness and the connection of trust and empathy the very fact that we can sit together and we both feel that we don't judge each other and we don't and other people can feel that this is this is Google energy this is Redemptive energy this is divine energy that's what it is and that's where all he'll so that's where much of healing comes from right we're we're also we're hurt through people right is there could be physical trauma but that trauma doesn't usually attach to attach as much to us if it's not through a person right there was a a an enemy on the other end a monster on the other end is we're heard through people and we have to heal through people I remember the first 12-step meeting I went to there was a sign on the wall there were many signs on the wall but there was one side on the wall that I remember it said You are not alone and that was a message that uh profoundly important and hopefully we can convey that to the many people who are suffering from the various struggles we'll talk about this evening that they are not alone and in the Orthodox community you know this problem becomes much more magnified because shame you know there's a there's the religious expectations there's what a Ben Taylor is supposed to look like what a what a from religious ultra-orthodox Drew or even regular or what they're supposed to look like feelings that I'm supposed to have that I'm not supposed to have character traits I'm supposed to have struggles that are fine but struggles that are you now right in this community and I maybe even have children that I want to marry off and send into our institutions or even if I'm not married but I want to get married the stigma and the shame is overwhelming so not only am I dealing with whatever I'm dealing with much of my mental space I can't even be dealing with it because I'm dealing with avoiding the publicity the conversation dealing with the guilt and the shame so I'm not even dealing with what I got to deal with that's that's right this is sad this idea this idea can we challenge this idea that it's taken for granted that we do things for a shida meaning that we have to keep certain things because what are we saying we're saying my family has been phenomenally supported by family I don't even my wife also my my parents and siblings have been very supportive of me um speaking I probably would speak anyway even if they weren't not to discount them but because I know how important it is because I know I know this struggle I know how real it is every time I meet your mother she talks about you it's a glowing countenance beautiful beautiful she's one of my biggest fans for sure so but I do believe that the very first thing I did was I filmed the gust so I'm gonna give it up he probably is no Mrs Nash she probably is and she's and I will say she is the one who helped me um confront my abuser when I eventually did the person who's actually abused me she helped I gave up I had tried for four years and I gave up I thought okay I'm not going to get the support I need to make it happen and uh my mother brought out her Moroccan site and made sure that that her son got the uh the healing the law conciliation that was needed the Lioness went after the prey we got we got what was needed but I do feel and even if it wasn't convey even if it wasn't conveyed to me verbally that the very first time I put my story out publicly was a documentary put on YouTube called seven Orthodox survivors of abuse speak out and at the time I didn't know of any other person who was sexually abused who came out publicly I remember having the conversation then with mayor seawold Who had who was running Jewish Community Watch and I said you understand the problem here why everyone hates it hates you is the victims are faceless and the abusers giving a face so who's going to choose a black box or a face let's put our faces out there he said No One's Gonna Do it I said I'll do it will you do it he said if you do it I'll do it I said okay let's find others and we found seven people um who agreed to uh come out and we shared that after I filmed it it was in Brooklyn I was visiting Crown Heights after I filmed it in Brooklyn I came home to my parents and I said that or my mother was home and I said I'm just letting you know what I did I just filmed this she there was definitely a reluctance like it wasn't easy to accept like she got there there was definitely some and I felt like some of that was around this idea like you have yourself and others at the time I was single fathers who were who are not married like what are you putting out there and what's the chance that it affects them so my question is like this if we're if this is like a given that we hide certain things in order for shadukone to happen aren't we going into marriages with a lie so now what we're saying in order for two human beings to come together we have to lie to each other you're touching on something that's very very sensitive and very genuine and I'll tell you something you know to be very honest what I'm seeing today and I'm not saying this in a scientific way I'm saying this from anecdotal data but with hundreds and hundreds of people that most divorces that are happening today and there are many divorces are not because the husband and the wife are not compatible that's very rare most the voices are happening because one of them or both of them are living in active trauma and they're either unaware of it or they're not ready to identify it which means everything that we're hiding is going to emerge in the midst of the relationship in a very very powerful way so I say to my students constantly and they know I'm half joking but I'm half not joking see this is what I think the first date should look like okay get into the car hold the door open as she comes in sit down smile and say hi this is my trauma now let me hear about your drama now I don't mind if you talk about Israel and about lafa and about ice cream and about Seminary and when you went to Camp are you going to Camp your family you like spaghetti you don't like spaghetti all good then you should talk about it but what's really going to make or break the marriage is the Readiness of husbands and wives to be able to identify our most scary places my skeletons my ghosts my deepest fears my broken places and those are hard even for me to identify I don't even know about them you know trauma with capital t is often erased from the conscious memory so I'm triggered and I'm angry and I'm lonely and I'm running away fight Freeze fun but I don't even know I don't even know what's happening it happened since age four since Age Two since age one may be a pre-verbal memory so not only do we have to be sensitive to this I believe this is going to be at the Forefront of what's going to define the relationship Ivy will have an amazing marriage because you'll be able to trust each other in those vulnerable places where instead of you pouncing at me you'll actually be able to become an empathetic witness for me and me for my partner or we will kill each other and not even because we're bad people we're just four-year-olds literally trying to survive and and it's so sad it's so sad because you have good people and and they're trying and they're going to also good people for advice but I feel that today people are not educated on this level of self which we have so much information about can't give advice not as teachers and not as parents and not as mentors we we have to understand the inner world of Brokenness and it's a world it's a universe we have to be very humble about and you know I I I learned this every day I learn more and more and more and I'm I'm humbled by the by the by the knowledge I have that I get to learn every day from people and from books and from Scholars and from experts that I knew nothing about just and from experience and experience of course I'm saying the person I like for myself you know I didn't I didn't get a degree on in anything but I hear a therapist I was listening to this guy Benjamin tapfer on a podcast called mislabeled where he talks about porn and sex addiction and everything else and as he's talking I they asked him a question I his answer jived with mine and the way he was speaking meaning before he answered I almost knew what he was going to say why because that was my experience he was talking my experience the textbooks were describing an experience that was had as an individual so I think this is this learning is available to everyone every Rabbi every Mentor every teacher everyone who exists in this world now has a significant amount of their own personal trauma that they have an opportunity to work through and in the process understand another human being that much better we don't need to it's a gift Oprah just released a book with a doctor I forgot his name uh great great neuroscientist and therapist it's called what happened to you what happened what happened to you and and there's a line there the doctor says it touched me so deeply my wife actually showed it to me said stop looking at a child and stop saying what's wrong with you instead look at the child and say what happened to you and I say that with adults don't look at him or and say what's wrong with you what's wrong with you you're such a sugar you're such a disappointment to God you're you're such a bad person we missed the boat can I hold your hand can somebody hold my hand and say come let's explore together what happened to you and you know what we discover we discover then how much goodness there is in people and we discover how our most evil selfish horrible parts are really a desperate attempt for survival at an age when I knew not better you almost have to be thankful there's a you know there's a mission in Brothers love God with your positive good inclination and negative inclination there's all this discussion especially in Hasidic works that they ate Sahara one day is going to be transformed and when I grew up I always understood you know some some miracle the evil will be metamorphosized today we have the gift of understanding exactly what it is most of my evil traits and if I may say your evil trait I don't think you have evil traits but most of our traits that make us so despicable if we go deep deep deep down you know what we're going to discover this is a most delicious innocent Angelic two-year-old or six-year-old who desperately created this Persona simply trying to live in a very challenging world or challenging home wow I would add I would add to that that oftentimes there were Brilliant Solutions to very complex problems exactly before that for that moment exactly what the brain we see the the Divine Miracle of a brain what a brain does I know somebody recently somebody very close who did not have any memory of this his father almost cried when he told me the story his father and somebody else in his family raped him for years and he didn't know any of this he did not know any of this imagine he grew up with a complete mythical understanding about his father and his family he knew that he's weird but his his conscious brain erased literally erased all of it and he decided that he's a crazy and weird person and that's why he has social anxiety and that's why he's suffering from homosexuality and that's why he has a miserable marriage he's just and he was diagnosed as a narcissistic personality disorder borderline personality disorder Asperger's I'm laughing it's really a sad story and I was speaking to him the other day he found out through psychedelics and and a lot a lot of therapy and a lot of integration work it wasn't just a trip it was a lot of inner work but together with the plants together with psychedelics he found out what happened to him and uh and he told me the other day he says why I wanted to you know I wanna I want you to understand something my brain so desperately wanted to hold on to a father who was a good father that it made me believe that I am simply a crazy weird person so I should be able to live with an image of a father who's a protector so understand it was so important for the brain to say I have a father I have a father it's too painful to say my own father is ready to put a dagger in my chest so the brain came up with a whole different narrative and therefore it created a whole different and that you look at this person to say to him what's wrong with you I want to hold his hand and say share with me what happened share with yourself what happened and you know what that's unburdened we unburden all those evil parts that were never evil they just came across that way right you use the word that he desperately wanted to believe that his father was a protector but maybe it's more appropriate to say he desperately needed to like he needed that to survive his childhood yeah and that's the Brilliance the Brilliance that the mind can create the whole mythical reality to survive childhood and then later in life he wants to know why he lives in a fantasy world because he needed to he needed to he needed to a fellow I know all day he's looking for validation all day he will do anything to get a compliment to get validation it means the world to him and criticism is a death sentence and we were talking the other day and knowing a little bit of a story that he shared with me I said you know instead of feeling guilty this is what I want you to do I want you to Express gratitude to the part of you that needs validation because that is the only way you are living today intact you would have been suicidal you would have died from an overdose the amount of abuse that this man experienced which I know I know what unfortunately it was so profound he had no love in his life whoever he went to love was not available okay when you're four years old you can't tell yourself I don't need the world I'm a man I'm a lion I'm independent God loves me I don't need you you can't do that when you're four when you're four you need somebody to say I love you I'm here for you I'm going to hold your hand so yes you substituted love for the craving for validation could you thank it could you look at it and say wow thank you for helping me survive and now you can choose to actually discover a self that actually wants real love rather than fake validation so we have to actually be thankful thankful to all of these horrible Parts which became horrible but really as you said were brilliant brilliant mechanisms that allowed us to hold life together and that's why we're here today to tell the story and to begin the healing process correct you know I um anyone who's struggling with with porn addiction that reaches out to me for help at some point I'll advise them to write a thank you letter to pornography you said that in our last session also the last conversation yeah it's and it's very important and I think it's more than to the to the to pornography to the addiction wow because quite literally it's I mean for myself it was a survival strategy I mean we do have to be you know there was an email you forwarded me earlier today where someone said like let's address Solutions this time last time we spoke there was a lot of sympathy offered a lot of compassion and he said let's address Solutions so first of all I just want to say to ever submitted that that you can't address Solutions until you address the sympathy that is what's needed first is to come into a room of safety because before their safety there is no healing so that is always step one is to create a space where someone can feel safe to let their guard down and allow the healing to take place and then from there we can offer we can offer Solutions and understanding so it is 100 the appropriate way we can't just go straight into Solutions we can know the perfect solution for someone what's that saying no one no no one cares how much you know until they know how much you care so so correct me if I'm wrong because I don't want to speak for you and it's your own experience but I just want to summarize what I'm hearing you say about your life and I think what you shared part in our we had a Ellie and I had a seminar a few a webinar a few months ago about about porn addiction that really today when you abstain from this addiction it's it's because you can recognize you can recognize how it was simply a survival method and skill that was desperately necessary when you were a child and today thank God you don't need that survival that's I need anyone correct you know when I I read a bunch of books on addiction and you know explaining it and sometimes for someone else to put your experience in words so healing and I read this book I remember the author's name was Lance dodes but I don't remember the name of uh the book something about breaking addiction and he said someone acting out an addiction is the equivalent of someone who has their a limb trapped under a rock and they're cutting that limb off so if you're too focused and when I read this I said perfect like that it landed it resonated because you look at this behavior and you say what are you doing like how can you cut your limb off how can you be destroying yourself in that way and it does it does no one's I mean I'm not saying no one's watching pornography for pleasure no one was watching the amount of pornography I was for pleasure I assure you that no one was dependent on it in order to receive the pleasure that it was offering just a pleasure because at this point it was demoralization it was shameful it was so much about it that I didn't want but I couldn't stop until I looked under the hood at uh at what it was offering me so you look at this behavior and you say why are you cutting off your limb zoom out and see it's trapped under a rock so what should a person do and that's what I think for many many people it is pure survival and then understanding The Genius of that like the Brilliance what was my Brilliance as a kid that I was able to completely escape the discomfort I was in through a variety of different ways sometimes any pornography sometimes I didn't but to be able to just you know zone out to to detach right I dissociated I disappeared from the room I looked like I was there but I I wasn't there when it was more intense I needed pornography but when I wasn't I was able to to disappear in uh in other ways and now sometimes I have to remind myself no check in it's safe like it's okay we don't have to the that reaction will still will still show up sometimes where it's like hey you can you can disappear in a moment you can disappear on a moment's notice you know and if I'm living for 40 50 years or even for 10 years and 15 years with certain neural Pathways this is my survival you have to be compassionate with the fact that these skills will be triggered 30 years down the line this was the first 20 30 40 years of my life I can't expect and it was a great one and it was an amazing one you like the fantasy world that this guy created who you described like what a gift he had to be able to live in a whole mythical reality he was just there in la la land now it's hurting him okay great but it wasn't always hurting him and this is I mean the the reason I brought it up last time was hurting him but the alternative was death correct the alternative was death at that point and that's the right and now the job for us today is to create a safe enough space for him to say like you're okay if you if you look at reality today it's not going to be as dangerous as it was for a four-year-old it may be as scary it may not be as dangerous to respond in the same way that you have for 40 years or 20 years or 15 years when a similar threat emerges you could do it differently you could right you could also tell your parts that you're not four years old you're 17 years old you're 20 years correct you're 51 years old right we're in a different reality today and we can respond differently but you know one of the things I'm thinking about it's no mistake um I receive I was I was speaking to someone earlier today who was um 60 years old married for many years recently um had a mushroom psychedelic journey and recognized all the things he was doing in his life including cheating on his wife so this guy was over the moon I'm perfect I'm Healed I'm everything else one of the things he said can you please speak to my wife so she realizes that I'm different right I I said listen I said it's wonderful that you had this experience but she she had the experience of you for 25 years like for her just to let that go um isn't as easy as it was for you he's like I vomited all out I'm a different person I said first of all we don't know that because your experience was a week ago you're still on it so it's going to take more than that but more even if you are even if you really vomited it all out then it's done and you're not that person anymore we still have to recognize the pain and suffering that another human being experienced with this person for 20 25 years and I just want to be sensitive to that is that while we're being very accepting and loving towards the person who's causing pain and who's doing all these things we also have to recognize that while they're fumbling around in the dark um they're hurting someone else and again that was my uh I speak a lot mostly from experience and how did I come about to recognize that porn was a problem in my life because when I started dating my wife was the first time I really tried to to stop previously I had said I'm going to stop and I did different things but this was a real concerted effort to stop and I saw how powerful the uh the urge was the first fight with my wife two months into the relationship the first disagreement I right away was running there and now when I went there now I felt the shame did I cheat on her and the shame grew and grew and grew so much to the point that I ended up cheating on her with a an actual with with a person that infidelity and I saw how crushed she was from it So eventually yes it's fantastic I I get onto a healing path and I recognize my um my challenges but her pain is now this is her pain right I've passed something else on to her that is uh that's her pain and very real for for her to deal with and just because I've made a few changes doesn't mean she's on board and you know oh don't worry I said I'm sorry you know come uh come along for the ride I'm here so it's so important because very often you know addicts who are working on themselves need to know how important it is for them to give validation to their spouses for everything they put them through even if they were not malicious they were just traumatized that's true but if I amputate your arm either by mistake I have to be able to validate the blood and the death and and the horrible Agony that many of these spouses have been through for all these years and I would say that is also a sign of healing because part of my trauma is that I can't feel your pain I'm just trying to survive and if I'm really healing if I'm really opening myself up to emotions my own emotions part of that is opening myself up to your emotions and that's going to be painful I don't want to feel that because there's going to be a part of me that says you know what I don't want to deal with this let's just get out of and that is part of my trauma so you have to realize if you are resistant to really listening to your spouse and tuning into their pain that is probably resistance that is coming from a wound that I'm not ready to let go of I want to pause what you said something very powerful you got married and in your first argument wasn't married or was that we're we're dating and it's actually important to my wife I once shared on a podcast and she said it's important for her that when I share this and she understands that I share certain things publicly and I'm not I'm not a public person that's not my personality I do this because I see the struggling I see the suffering so you can have a conversation with everyone you don't know who it's going to reach and the people who need it the most are not the people who are reaching out they're you know watching this months later so it's important to my wife that I that I'm clear that this happened before we were married she asked me that so thank you so so just to pause that moment so you get into an argument and you said you you ran to porn immediately ran to porn yeah could you describe to us the emotional science of that what it felt like you're arguing with your with your bride with your girlfriend and what's happening So what had happened was is um we had gone on vacation together it's our first like a real long vacation and when we came back she expressed some displeasure I was my first real relationship and I didn't know I was like okay I'm gonna drag her along for my experiences right this is what I want to introduce to my friends I was so excited you know and in this period of time what's interesting is that I wasn't a little bubble where I wasn't watching pornography there was only twice in my life I started watching it started before pornography catalogs that showed up that showed up in my home and then eventually led to pornography but when I became obsessed with um pictures of mostly naked women I was 12 years old 13 years old and then it continued and progressed you know from catalogs eventually to pornography and eventually to um to real people there were two times in my life that I felt like I was free from it before recovery one was when I joined a community of an exercise Community called CrossFit somewhere familiar with so when it started coming on the scene early on I joined and I was completely immersed in this I was like wow what an amazing thing but the communal aspects the exercise aspects and for two or three months when I first joined I noticed that I wasn't watching pornography if I was it was very very infrequent and I was at someone who used was regular it was pretty much daily morning and evening like that you know so to go several months was you know that was pretty impressive the second time was right after I met my wife and in a period of day of dating at first I didn't feel the need until that experience when we came back from vacation and it was a long distance relationship she was living in California I was living in Miami and afterwards she shared some disappointment about different things I did on the trip and I was so hurt by it it turned into an argument and then from there was just downhill I didn't know how I'd have the tools to deal with the disappointment and suddenly this I guess Little Rosie so so much inadequacy right you felt like a like a loser like what that feeling was uh yeah I felt like I disappointed her I feel like I let it down I felt like uh I'm not a real man I felt like you know I'm I can't do this what I'm trying to do I was trying so hard to do something and I can't do it and this meant much more of I didn't do this is I can't do anything right and it felt you know we make it uh much bigger I often tell people Zone you went back to your comfort zone instinctively yeah I went to pornography and then I said okay it's not what's wrong it's a picture it's a video it's it's not cheating uh on her but then that secret sits there and is it is it not I don't know I didn't really discuss it with her so now I'm lying to her so if I wasn't cheating with 34 now I'm lying to her about something and it just kind of grew on uh on that often married people married people often asked me you know how they can avoid pornography it's so not good for the marriage and they're looking for school I say you know for different amulets and spiritual tricks and I said listen Maybe these are all good things but let me tell you the the best method if you can create an amazing marriage you're looking forward to come home at night she's looking forward to come home at night you're not fighting the pornography you have an amazing relationship you could talk about your Brokenness you could talk about your disappointments you could you could listen to each other and not run away from each other you know uh I once heard from a marriage therapist we did a workshop together here Muncie he said something so powerful he said this is how a conversation between a husband and a wife should take place when there are a lot of issues not the one there's no issues and who doesn't have issues he said instead of you know the the the the the wife comes to the husband and says you know I really want to talk to you about I need to talk to you now for an hour about personal stuff when I'm feeling you know and he's busy with work and and he he's trying to get his validation he's trying to make money he's trying to be productive he's being successful and she wants this conversation so the therapist was saying you know if you could tell if the husband can talk to the wife and tell his wife I want to know I want to tell you something there's a part of me there's a part of me that doesn't want to have this conversation with you so part of me that wants to go straight back to my computer straight back to my book so straight back to my phone or straight back to my Netflix whatever it is or my books or my gym there's a part of me that doesn't want this conversation with you it's scared it wants to be isolated it doesn't believe in emotional transparency but but I want the relationship with you and and the woman the woman could could say you know wow and there's a part of me that right now wants to run away from you and say I'm done you know let me call my sister let me call my therapist let me go do my yoga I'm done with you there's a part of me but I want this relationship the challenge is when the parts start talking to each other what hasidus calls the Clippers talk to each other my shells are talking to your shells rather than my eye my my liberated expanse of self is talking to yourself when we can do this for each other oh I don't need the pornography so so the marriage therapist's recommendation was to take the experience that the person was having of not wanting to be there separated from themselves and say this is not me this is a part of me that wants to do that it's a party but I'm here it's an important part of me it's it allowed me to survive for 39 years it's a big part of me it comes up every day but you know what I want a relationship I know I want to be a really I want a relationship I don't want to live in active trauma I don't want to have to freeze every time you confront me I don't want to have to get into fight or flight I want to be in a relationship but but there's a part of me that says absolutely no you don't want to be in a relationship and you know what if you need your wife if you feel that you need your wife you know what that's going to bring up it's going to bring up the fact that one day you needed a mother you needed a mother you needed a father you didn't have them you know how painful that was when you were four years old you told yourself I don't need a mother I don't need a father because he didn't have one I don't need anybody I don't need anybody you know what I don't even need emotions emotions are a stupid burden I'm gonna become an Einstein I'm gonna become a genius I'm gonna make a lot of money I'm gonna become a tomodacham whatever it is I'm gonna be respected in Yeshiva and I'll do well I don't need a mother I'm not a baby I'm not a baby if you need a wife that's coming up I need a wife I need somebody to hold me I don't want to go there so I say I don't need anybody but that those are very real parts that made me or us survive and now if we can have the courage to be able to identify them and say wow but you know what I need a mother I need a father I need a wife I need a husband it's very vulnerable it's vulnerable it's scary and and we need to be we need to you know we need to work together in this because you know if I share this with you and you tell me what a sick man I am I go right back into isolation right there is a vulnerability and there is an exposure that happens there's a therapist there's so much so much humility so much good will and the most important word is compassion empathy and a passion for ourselves and and compassion for the other I I know a fellow he sent me a whole email I mean but these are common stories I've heard this from so many people he has been sexually molested for many many years and he says the pain was so profound he didn't know about this he didn't know about this for decades the pain was so profound disassociation his words my soul left my body because if my soul would be in my body it would be too much so my body became a shell of itself and now you could do with my body whatever you want you can molest it you can rape it every night because I was not there he said and you know what I never came back I never came back so I processed the world not through embodiment but through a brain and he told me he says I am artificial intelligence I am artificial intelligence has a great job in a company he's a brilliant programmer he's a brilliant guy I am artificial intelligence he says I have no emotions there is the dissociative State it's very it's very common when I was very profound now you're in a marriage you're in a relationship right infidelity you can have sexuality you can have fake love without emotions foreign respect that that's the state I was referring to earlier that ability to be able to to leave your body in some some format that's the it's brilliant the strategy is yeah the strategy is brilliant yeah I go to porn I go to a club I'm cheating on my wife right it could be uh sexting what do they call it uh on WhatsApp on my phone or a physical virtual whatever it is this is a way of connecting without really connecting I don't have to share within with the prostitute or with my fake partner or with the porn scenes my emotions it's all on my terms I'm living in a vicarious relationship that is completely inauthentic and my survival skill is protected and I could look at myself and say I'm a piece of garbage I am the greatest disappointment to Judaism and and I think what we're trying to share tonight is the truth and that is yes you want to be able to stop but the only way you're going to stop is if you're going to have empathy empathy and compassion for what happened here because you're actually not an evil person you're actually a very very good person and when you could recognize the need you'll be able to really be able to forgive what happened and actually really move on in a very integrated way and this takes so much compassion we always have to validate as you said the sufferings be a person the person has been it's very very important um in fact we got a few emails after last session some wives said you know it's so nice so you give empathy to my husband the addict right what about 25 years of my life that was destroyed I was living with an addict this is so important very it's extremely important and I'm gonna give a very big round of applause for my heart to all the spouses who have stuck through very very difficult relationships and you're there for these people believing in their souls and and hopefully you know all of us will be coming around more and more but these spouses are are righteous righteous things I also also want to say on the other hand not on the other hand together with this is that you know each of us husbands and wives you know even if I'm married to an addict which may be very serious and I deserve all the validation it doesn't mean I don't have trauma you know I may also have some deep deep stuff that I have to work through and and you know just to say you're this sick person you know and I'm I'm perfect it sometimes Keeps Us stuck as well well that is sometimes the coping behavior that others have have learned is by saying that my problems are not such big problems so they can focus on other people's problems avoid their own and sometimes you know there's the trauma Bond there's a there's a reason why um there's a reason why two people connect it's not an accident who we marry and who we connect with and I think that's a it's a very disempowering statement to say that I cannot heal until my partner heals I've I don't think it's possible for one spouse in a relationship to heal without the other healing as well the connection is so deep it might even be that it's not possible for one person in the world to heal without the whole world healing that everyone is but certainly certainly with certainly in terms of a relationship itself it has to be the case that as one heals the other now you sound like the Messiah that's what the Messiah is supposed to say is that right whole world I gotta heal the whole world with a thousand people no I did a um I'll I'll tell you a story actually there was a a couple who came to me where the um uh the wife cheated on the husband and the husband wanted certain things from the uh you know the wife you must go to therapy you must do X you must do y you must do Z and non-stop non-stop non-stop you know and I had many conversations with the spouse that we all thought was the sickest right they're the one who cheated they're the one who needs the uh conversations and it didn't seem to go anywhere okay frustrated like slow progress two steps forward one step back two steps forward one step back and then finally you know I got an exasperated call from the husband like you got to be able to get through to my wife about X Y and Z and I said listen I tried I'm done I think it's time for you to do the healing it's on you now what do you mean it's on me they're the one who cheated I said listen I can't I we we've gone through we make a little progress then they go right back a little bit later they've done four or five psychedelic Journeys they've done years of therapy it just it seems it's it just kind of seems helpless at this point I think you yourself need to heal or figure out you know what it is that's keeping you in this marriage just do something eventually he agreed he's going to um he's going to do a a psychedelic Journey went did to ayahuasca and after a couple of experiences everything shifted the whole dynamic in relationship did and within a month everything that this spouse was asking the other spouse to do the other spouse recognized of their own accord that these are these are moves I had to make and after that experience I said we're doing it all wrong we're doing it all wrong we're running after the sickest people and saying you go heal we're normal we're okay and we're telling the sickest people you go heal and I think it's different I think we have to go to the healthiest people because obviously we're all sick right we're sitting in a soup of sickness so obviously we're all sick in different ways and if we if we get to a point of completely healed by the time we walk to the door we've picked up three illnesses right there's so much stuff in society I mean everything between social media between whatever everyone there's so much of it so the people who are the healthiest if they think that way then they should take responsibility as much responsibility as possibly we need to do the healing for everyone else and as we lift ourselves then they will as well but to keep keep running to the sickest people and say that they should heal is completely crazy I sat with Gabor mate the famous um trauma therapist a little while ago correct Holocaust Survivor and he shared about a tradition it's a tribe called the Lakota tribe and he writes about it in his new book The Myth of normal that when a person gets sick the whole tribe goes to this person to thank them because they recognize that the sickness that this person is taking on what is it it's a manifestation of the sickness in the environment and they're the one who's kind of taking one for the team this idea that we can have people in our community who are sick but we're okay is antithetical to everything it's not possible I have this question for you on a scale of one to ten with one being um with 10 being everything is great I can't believe mashiach is not running like here already everything is so perfect and one being it's an unmitigated disaster we need mashiach this moment or else it's where do you think we are as a society and I'm not talking about the whole world there's a Jewish Community one to ten ten being everything's amazing one being it's an unmitigated disaster where are we so I so I don't know maybe at the risk of sounding a little bit uh hallucinate hallucinating I I find that our generation has so many challenges but also it's at the threshold of a tremendous breakthrough so yeah I see all the the toxicity and and the challenges and the pain and the trauma but I also deeply feel that it's all swimming up to the surface literally there's a surface of history after thousands of years of epigenetic pain and and Holocaust trauma and Exile trauma an interpersonal relationships and and so many unresolved issues I almost feel like we were given the job of healing not only our own Souls but retroactively The Souls of our ancestors all the way back in order to bring history to a culmination so I find that the challenges are very dark but they're literally commensurate with an opportunity for for a you know a new Heaven and a new Earth a new consciousness that's what I'm feeling right so in other words I don't want to put words in your mouth an unmitigated disaster but you have a lot of Hope a tremendous amount of hope I feel that number zero and number 10 are very connected right that's my point you know it's it's not just alone you know why it's connected and this is right and this is my point the reason it's connected is because the ones hitting number one and zero are recognizing who's who's the ones who are who are recognizing the need to heal the people who are sexually abused the people whose lives were devastated by addiction but why does it need to be that way why do we need to wake up that's that's why I like this the story of the tribe why as a community if we recognize the connection that we have we say okay this is going on how many families are there that don't have a child who is sexually abused how many families are there who don't have a child who's addicted to someone how many families have who don't have someone who's struggling with homosexuality sexual identity or and many of the other um challenges So based on that we all need to heal so who does responsibility sit with the person who thinks they're the healthiest that's what I'm saying and we've also seen you know they call it the family the book The Family Crucible often you'll see somebody in a family who's seeing as the the schlemazel you know the loser they never got it together and really I look at them and I say he's the only normal one everybody else is camouflaging dysfunction they kept it together this one he couldn't keep it together he fell apart so he is the carbon he's literally the victim he is carrying all the bruises all the dysfunction you could see it on his face or on her face and his life or her life and we all point fingers oh you know you're the embarrassment to the family you know you're the you're the weird you're the weird the weird Uncle you know the crazy one with mental illness with uh with you know your third marriage whatever it is you know and and sometimes this person is really they're just holding up a mirror to all of us I'm saying right we often say that the addict is the most sensitive one yeah and that's why in the Lakota tradition they go to the person who got sick and say thank you thank you for being the most sensitive one who's alerting us all of us to the fact that there's an illness here how did we know covid was running rampant because certain people got sick right that's how we knew it wasn't because we got sick but we said okay we're going to respond in certain ways and I'm not condoning the overreaction I'm just saying the early stages of Kovu getting ourselves back to that when there was a contagion running through the community how did we know we knew because other people got sick and we kind of said in one form another thank you thank you for alerting us to this and now we we're going to learn how to protect how to protect us and I think drsky or others used to say you know addiction is not the problem addiction it's easy for me to say infidelity homosexuality transgender put in psychedelics drugs whatever it is that's the problem and then I could say and I'm the solution but addiction is not the problem addiction was the solution for another problem and that problem may be inside of me oh that's not comfortable and let's remember something else confusion is the house of healing who is confusion confusion is the source of healing where I know everything there's no healing all right comes from the humility of being vulnerable and allow myself to decompose and open myself to a deeper reality and many of us in the religious community have a religious arrogance I'm a scholarship I'm a big guy I'm a philanthropist I'm not confused but the world of healing confusion is Redemptive because confusion is the ability to say I don't know I need to learn I'm not going to protect myself by making believe I know everything it's an ignorance that enriches you a lot of us are very scared of that we're very scared of that so I want to connect this to a share you once gave which changed me you know there's some you learn something and some you transformed by it there was a share you gave um I wasn't there for it I saw it online about Jacob going through the Journey where he was um going to be going to war with as of so the way you set it up I think was something about face you were saying face a lot of times in the shame face face and The Siege but the idea was he was on this journey to fight asaph and he prepared for war right 400 men and 400 animals I think for gifts and then eventually when he meets asav he falls on his neck he's saying he didn't either right he didn't he never wore with him he didn't give him gifts what happened so you said the clue is in this journey went alone and he wrestled and in that what I understood from it is he wrestled with who his own identity who am I and he became Israel right this identity crisis that he had and the reason it was so healing for me to hear these words is that when I grew up the rabbis the even the rabba right the figures that we looked up to were perfect they were born perfect they died perfect everything they did was always perfect they were angels in human form who couldn't make a mistake so when I heard about our forefather Jacob from you who had an identity crisis and had to wrestle in a real profound way in order to be prepared for this next phase of his journey meaning his brother Asif that was it was profound and I wonder if others felt the same way I did that there was a certain perfectionism that we that we were um kind of set up for by the way we spoke about our role models meaning is a problem bigger than this that class that I gave got I received I think most feedback or one of the classes that received the most people from any other classes so you're not alone Ellie but thank you for sharing this but I just want to say I feel this is a pedagogical and educational mistake we make with ourselves and our students and our children and that is we ultimately give the message that struggle is embarrassing right and the real guys the great so what the greats Among Us don't struggle and that's why there are taboos back to taboos and it's so important to say you know taboos have a legitimate place in our lives we live in a culture and yes we live with religious sensitivities where we don't want to expose our six-year-old girls and boys to everything that is available in the secular world I don't need my six-year-old girl having to decide in the morning if she's a boy or she's a girl and not allowing to call her virula or khayala or SAR Allah because maybe she's going to decide to marry she's a boy and there's certain things we don't speak about in our house there's a way we speak there's clean language pure language because yes we want to educate children with a sense of Holiness Purity idealism connectivity but here is here is where the tragedy happens the six-year-old who was raped by his brother or by his babysitter or by his grandfather or by his uncle now when he's 26 he's not let it talk because he's in a very pure Society so the taboos which are serving such a productive and holy purpose for the innocent among us become a death sentence for those who are struggling and there are hundreds of thousands of struggling before marriage and after marriage and then we give this lesson that struggle is evil and if you would learn more or Daven more or say more to Helen or learn more gemara or give more sadaka or learn more Tanya whatever it is that every culture with its own books and and things that it extolls you know you learn that viewing me you learn mishna Brewer you learn whatever you learn and you're not going to struggle anymore that's a lie that's a lie and that's a that's that's that's antithetical to to the core of Judaism I would say the exact opposite the real great ones Among Us are the ones who found the Divine in the darkest of struggles they are the ones who teach us that struggle is your Vista to Greatness struggle your trauma is what is going to turn you into the greatest luminary in this world and it's a fact you and I know the people we will look up most to and we respect most to a people who when we share with them our pain they can look us in our eyes and we know they understand it right you and I both know that very well and it's true with all of us and I also want to say you know it's shared that amazing story but if I may add with all due respect to Dr mate who's an incredible person and whom we love and cherish and a good a good traumatized Holocaust Survivor the navi yashaya yashaya our prophet Isaiah when he wants to talk about mashiach his description is he is he is filled with illness and the gomorrents and hadn't describes the various illnesses that mashiach has and the question is like can't God send us a healthy Messiah like do we have to deal with such a sick person and this is the answer it's though it's it's an amazing idea it's those of us who are sick that are the source of our Redemption they hold up a mirror to Our Truth the ones of us who are perfect be careful be careful so how does this jive with the idea that maybe it's not true I don't know why I learned it that at Sadiq is born at Sadiq they're different they're different from uh the moment they're born so I don't know how to say this diplomatically but that is one of the most unjewish Concepts that exist every person is born to struggle and with struggle the question is how much in what way to what extent you're quoting from the Tanya but the one who taught it completely didn't understand it what the altered says is that some souls are born with certain spiritual gifts that if they struggle and develop themselves they are capable of certain spiritual Heights that are unique and unprecedented but their struggle is even deeper and when we say struggle you know for example we talk about um yasef right and it seems to be that the story with patifa that there was a sexual struggle in that story Alex seemed it seemed to be that are we when we say struggle are we talking about these the the base struggles that I've been describing on this on conversation you know we're with this excellent question I want to answer this question in the truest way and that is all struggles from the highest to the lowest levels are all interconnected meaning the trauma of birth is very similar and I say this with a lot of sensitivity to the trauma of sexual molestation to the sensitive Soul the trauma of birth is that suddenly I who was part of infinity is now separate and lonely you know how traumatic that is for a sensitive Soul the trauma of sexual molestation is I who was part of a family and part of a loving unit I am now isolated in the world undeserving of everything of anything do you know how traumatizing that is but understand that in a very very deep Place those two traumas are very very deeply connected so all of our struggles are all connected with each other the reason that if somebody bullies me or shames me in school or I feel like a loser for 10 years developmental trauma in my school where I understood nothing in class and I was the nice boy but I know that I was a loser and I was getting a 61 and the principal smiled to me and said you know you have good me dice you know that that basic level of trauma is basically a very very deep sense of isolation and loneliness and it's connected to what may be a very very deep spiritual struggle so we all share that struggle the question is only how it expresses itself that's in terms of the painful experiences what about the the desires the addictions though that aspect that aspect of it because so much of this is if if I was to tell if a student today goes to the rebbe and says I'm struggling I want I like I can't stop thinking about watching pornography right or watching movies on Netflix you know for um for the sexual scenes or things like that if someone is struggling with that there's the feeling that I had the feeling that I think many students in the Yeshiva system have or even after they left is that they're sharing a struggle that the other person doesn't have so what I want to know is like from a Jewish perspective when you say our role models right the highest people in society that they struggled okay I understand this idea that they've had pain and struggle and everything else yaakov had some sort of struggle on the um with a with an angel that was very very real right so real that he was left with a physical limp at the end of it because he can even win 100 it was something that he was a Mark that he was left with as a result as a result um of this but that's is that the same as saying that the urges the shameful um like that that part of us not just the pain but the urges that too is part of their experience so I think I don't I don't I don't think there could be a black and white answer for that I think it depends on the person I think some of our greatest struggled with exactly the same forms of struggles that we did and what makes them great is not that they didn't deal with it it's exactly that they did deal with it and they confronted it and you have it in Gomorrah and you have it in the Tanakh and I think to just exonerate all of them from it is is a terrible mistake but I would add even something more and that is there are those perhaps whose form of struggle may have taken on a different shape but when you would come to them Ellie or I would come to them and open your heart about what happened last night with you by your screen they would completely be able to empathize without judgment why because they may not have a struggle in that area that particular expression but but but the struggle is pain struggle is trauma struggle is survival it's not what not what's wrong with you it's what happened to you and they will be able to find in themselves in themselves that pristine pain that may be manifested in a very different area maybe manifested completely differently but they don't have to judge you in fact one of the most powerful stories in the Chabad world is that somebody came to the middle Arab who was one of the greatest spiritual masters of his day the son of the altareba and he opened up to him about necrophilia you know this necrophilia is one dead person this is acceptable relations with a corpse imagine I could cry when I tell the story what what well if I was a rep if somebody came to me if I get such an email somebody comes to me what would I do you know what he did right he stopped all his meetings with people and he fasted for three days and they heard him they heard him in his room crying praying meditating three days and then he opened up the door and he invited him back and he spoke to him and later he shared and this is what he said when somebody comes to me with a challenge I cannot help them if I do not find the same challenge inside of me and the reason is because if I don't shine the sound inside of me there's no empathy there's judgment and if there's no empathy there's no healing now here a man came to me and shared this with me and I'm telling myself if God sent him to me it means I can help him I can only help him if I'm dealing with it and I couldn't find it inside of me so listen to his conclusion which means it is so subconscious that I don't even know about it I had to fast I had to cleanse my system to figure out where is this inside of me this is called the hill unbelievable this is called a great person and you know what happened he said he found it and you wonder how he found it talking about spiritual greatness he said as follows I speak to audiences I teach them I Inspire them and sometimes I'm looking at my audience and they're not listening they're dead they tuned out you know they're adhding on me they went into another world you know what I do I continue to talk I continue to feed off their energy even though they're not here well and that is how he identified within himself this quality that now he can help this person it's crazy to say but from an energetic perspective there's a similarity we're so quick exactly exactly right so yeah okay that's what you're saying so some struggled with exactly what we're struggling with whatever those addictions look like but even though there are obviously those who who struggles took on a different shape but energetically they right away saw the connection because it's all connected and not only that you talk about porn addiction okay homosexuality infidelity when you were four how old were you when uh when the abuse began if I may ask eight years old eight years old at eight years old you weren't a porn addict correct at eight-year-old years old you were acute Angelic boy who was being exploited crushed manipulated and abused that energy some an energy was planted in you I promise you that energy was very pure that energy is what morphed into porn addiction so the great sadik the great person can see that connection he sees that connection and he could find within himself energetically that same energy with which another person is going to develop in the porn addiction therefore there's complete empathy so when if you would have to describe your struggle at eight it was not your struggle at 16 but it was and it would have continued and it did and that's what addiction does right it progresses it becomes more obvious but at eight years old it was a pure energy just trying to survive trying to could somebody love me could somebody notice me could somebody give me validation is there you know which I'm safe you know what's coming up for me when you're saying this is that there was a time where I fought very still I was working closely with JCW and I fought very strongly against um people sexually abusing children and others and I was anger I was angry and I you know we we spoke publicly and you and I spoke at certain events and there was a drive there right as as tame as I was and maybe I was Tamer than some others there was definitely a drive there that was there's this disgusting Sexual Energy that must be ripped out from people and I'm gonna go and fight it but you know what I was dealing with at the same time my own my own shame around my own sexual around my own sexual behaviors I was fighting it through others by saying theirs is worse and in some ways it was worse it certainly was less acceptable to society but was it much different is it much different and I think that it's kind of the reverse of what you're saying right in order to heal someone we have to find the connection in order to fight someone we have to we have to search for the disconnection and say oh you and I are different because yours went uh you're evil you're the sick guy you're the sigai you I'm gonna take down I'm I'm you know I'm the good one could you could you you meant you mentioned it twice I want to pause there for a moment you you spoke about homosexuality and you connected it to the abuse is this something you can share about a personal experience I I connected homosexuality and abuse okay I don't know that I did it on this um conversation let's talk about homosexuality for a uh for a moment so we put on the flyer that we'll be talking about different topics okay there was absolutely nothing that I got more feedback about than the topic of homosexuality none people advising me not to talk about it not to go there if I go somewhere if I go somewhere it's from personal experience I experience either with myself or with others I've spoken to what what do I know I don't have a degree in anything it's simply my life experience Ellie the best degree right Bessel Van Der kolk says I know I I watch the interview had with him he says my my patients are my textbooks right that's what we learn we learn from people and then you start seeing similarities than people and then okay this is this and that's that and the other thing so I don't think we should um fully address homosexuality in this conversation but I think what we should address is why it's such a difficult topic the amount of people who are struggling it's unreal the stories I hear people who are married with five kids but when they were 15 years old had a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender and they sit there till this day wondering whether or not they're gay whether or not this is their identity and they wrestle and they struggle and I'll tell you what's even harder almost every single person who comes to terms with this and says I need to work on it it is almost impossible to meet someone and ask them for help who doesn't have a bias there's um someone who called me a number of years ago and when he reached out to me he said I was I've been trying to get in contact with you for a few years which is unlike me it's not that easy to get a hold of me but it's possible he said for a few years I've been trying to reach you ever since I heard you talking about child sex abuse some early JCW events eventually it was only I think until after I did my talk on porn addiction that he reached me so it was several years and it was clear from the conversation he was asking me a lot of questions but he wasn't sharing something so I said tell me what's going on like what is it really what's really eating at you what's she really the guy was in his 40s from unmarried and I um I said there's something you're holding on to if I saw my own experience I've definitely heard it and I'm still standing so he said he said he's I've never been with a woman from a very young age I was abused by first I think his uncle and then his grandfather and then some of his siblings it was a a family with a lot of abuse he said as he got older 15 years old he was in a relationship with a 25 year old man he said he doesn't even know when the abuse stopped when real relationships took place and now he's in his 40s and he's only ever been with a man but he's from and that's his life and everything else so I asked him one question I said whatever's going on whoever you're having whoever you're having these relationships with is it too much is it too much for you so he said he said yes it is I said okay I don't know how to help you figure out what your identity is and what you're you know where it came from I have no idea but I know a place you can go to if you're obsessed with sex and it's too much you've had it up to here with it and I invited him to the 12 Steps meetings that I was attending and that I was attending what I've watched this man go through and I've developed a close relationship with is till this day trying to figure out who he is who he is in the story an orthodox to a gay person is it's his trauma is it this is that and he has yet to meet someone he has yet to meet someone who does not have bias he has yet to meet someone who when the moment he starts telling them his story like oh you must be a closeted gay man who's homophobic and you need to come out or oh you must be a traumatized or someone else will say oh you must be a traumatized um sexual abuse uh victim and therefore you're and therefore you're attracted to men so what I told him from there I said listen I have my own biases from my own experiences and my own you know for my own experiences my own stuff I had to work through as well as I don't know growing up religious and everything else I'm gonna do my best to keep my biases out of this the only thing I can share with you is to heal everything around it as little as possible focus on this thing heal everything around it and I said my belief and he's still on the path he's still on the path God bless him he's working hard heal everything around it and I said I hope that one day a beautiful flower emerges and whatever that is that you're willing to uh you're able to accept and I know even this that I'm saying can trigger someone Beyond how can you how can I suggest to someone that they accept this lifestyle how can I tell someone that they shouldn't run to this everyone has an opinion on the subject I don't want to go to it fully love your advice and I'll I'll add I'll add and I just want to say this to all of us the story I shared about the middle Arab a few moments ago that when somebody came to me had to find the issue within himself I heard myself from the laboratory probably two dozen times he did not say the details about what the issue was this is like an oral tradition in the Chabad world but the story itself that the midterley rebel would close the door and not see anybody until he found the issue in himself I heard from the laborator probably 20 maybe 15 20 or 25 times he would [ __ ] he would very often say it for me it's a Timeless lesson a person who ever comes to me or writes me an email or I meet somewhere and they ask me for advice about homosexuality about any other challenge they're having in their life the moment I go into a place of judgment the moment I'm allergic the moment I'm like get out of my life you weirdo you sick I can't help them I need to go into myself we hope and this is true with all of us I heard a therapist talking the other day on some you know big conversation with a thousand people about kids who who leave yadushkite and I was listening with my wife and I have to say you'll forgive me for being blunt I got nauseous and I didn't know I'm a sensitive person I feel I didn't know why am I so nauseous and then I realized there were two people on there was Sherman Russell and there was another therapist Sherman Russell is all empathy he's like one big piece of empathy he also went through a lot with his kids the other one was spewing ideas I couldn't hear them because I could not feel the empathy I just not there was like this Detachment you know you parents losers who didn't know what you're doing I'm the expert we cannot help anybody like that anymore it's simply energetically it doesn't work scientifically it doesn't work spiritually it doesn't work emotionally it doesn't work and this is hard we all need humility and again confusion is the source of healing the ignorance of it especially when it comes to topics like this and what I want to add about homosexuality and I guess our next session will be we'll we'll discuss it more right Ellie yeah I yeah before you say I just want to say that this silence that's around this topic and many you got a therapist who advise you not to go too far into it I got more than one reminder don't you're touching a time bomb yes do not touch this topic do not touch topic whatever you do you're gonna upset someone I just want a message to everyone who's playing any small part and keeping this silent any judgment or any fear on their part that as a result as a result of the silence around the subject the amount of suffering that exists in this topic is huge huge people who are struggling with so little hope because there are so few people talking about it and the fact that you have someone like me who spoken about my child sex abuse who spoken about porn addiction who spoken about infidelity who's spoken about a lot of different things on this topic I'm being um more cautious and more careful before I proceed is because I understand that as I go there there will be a price to pay there will be a price to pay and we have to think about that we have to think about who is benefiting and who is being heard from creating a world where we cannot honestly explore a subject exploration always happens with making mistakes you can't explore you don't dig and you find gold that's not the way it works you dig and you find all sorts of stuff scorpions and snakes and everything else before you find gold if we're going to explore this subject as a community as a society if we're going to explore this subject properly we have to allow the room for exploration without Perfection with bumping into some things that uh that we shouldn't and right now it's not there right now and we have to recall as a great African-American once said God no makes no junk if you're struggling with something it's not your fault it's not your fault it's part of the design of your life so it's not a Jewish thing to stigmatize this and say this is beyond the pale this is a genuine condition of your soul of your body of your of your isn't there a concept that the Torah doesn't speak I know it's the time to speak to fool so the third doesn't speak to to um not to Angels but uh to to the anomaly right oh don't murder who are you gonna talk to the rambam writes and his guidance is the common the common fact the common reality the The Human Condition right so if the terror is talking about homosexuality then it's saying that more than just that more than 50 percent of men could go there more than 50 percent of women could go there that's what it means I mean is that what I'm asking Tara arrived to diver the third talks to the majority that it's not so many of us talk about the subject like oh my goodness how could you as far as I understand in Greek societies people married with kids it was a you know hedonistic Society right there the um Elite in society all had married with families and everything else all had a male um I don't know like sexual Mis I don't know what you would call it but uh sexual male partner and I believe Aristotle even encouraged I believe certain forms of pedophilia where an older male had a child that he mentored sexually this was part of Greek culture and that's it when Toyota speaks about it it's speaking about something that was entrenched and is entrenched in in society I don't think you see this idea to give a dramatic number I don't think that's the point the terrorist says don't steal the terrorist speaks about lying Terror speaks about adultery because we commit adultery because some of us cheat I'd write no I don't mean that most go there I mean that it's something like for example right they say that men locked up in prison you put someone in prison for 10 years let's say someone who could have never imagined being with someone of their own gender but no touch no affection no anything for a number of years right things things can happen it's not we pretend it's this thing that like not me never ever and then we see someone else who's going through the same experience how disgusting how repulsive but if Tara arrived at Arbor then it's talking about something that under the right circumstances or the wrong circumstances depending on your uh your point of view peop many people can end up there so it's not something with this incredible shame around subjects is another thing that just destroys people doesn't help anybody there are men who turn to me I could I could say it may sound dramatic and it's not because there's no drama around this it could be every day once a week but constantly non-stop letters of fathers husbands teenagers people trying to get married in their 20s and their 30s people who are married who are struggling with homosexual and they don't have anybody to speak to and they finally open up to one person who's either dismissive vindictive judgmental blames them how can you do this right the word dismisses it in some way do a couple of things and everything will go away it's not a big deal right it's extremely important to be able to combine two points and that is absolute empathy absolute empathy always really tuning into who the person is and what they're going through on the other hand we don't have to fall prey to the agenda of many many many who wanted to romanticize homosexuality and make it the color of your eyes you know you have brown eyes I have green eyes he has blue eyes it's natural it's normal it's never associated with any trauma it's beautiful it's an alternative lifestyle which obviously the Torah doesn't believe but we don't have to take extremes you can have real real empathy and then really tune into a person's life story and say let's explore our life together like you said let's heal every every other area and you may be very surprised in a positive way to see the results of that and we must explore this more with tremendous respect and sensitivity and without fear of being labeled one extreme or the other extreme and I also have to say unfortunately scientific research in this area has been the weakest and the poorest because of the politics there is and that that's what that's what that's another part that's referring to is the bias horrible that's a horrible situation and I've asked many scientists about this including somebody who wrote a book on this homosexual and the politics of Truth a friend of mine the psychiatrist Jeffrey Satan over it's also a physicist and there's so much politics around this that the regular scientific research that has been employed in so many other areas over here it's like this is a taboo in the secular Community because there is a very strong agenda to completely disconnect us from any possible other issue besides it being the most normal expression of the core human self which I don't think is true my own right my own experiences have been I mean from my myself and others and keep in mind I I live in South Beach right the meetings I go to are in South Beach I've had gay sponsors gay sponsees Jewish non-jewish the whole the whole gamut so it's something that I've spoken to many people with and there is no there's if in in a setting like a meeting where people are completely honest and in South Beach where there's a sense that they are accepted right because it might be literally Rife I'm pretty sure my meeting like the meetings that I attended for many years the 12-step meetings were were mostly gay men and I say when I say gay men I mean people who have adopted the lifestyle of living a gay lifestyle Jewish not Jewish everything but so I'm I'm talking from that experience and there is no consensus there is no it's it's you're talking about sexual Dynamics which is so different person to person and so different within people year to year yeah so complex that contribute to it you know people love to say it's a gene you're born with it it's a dream that's it like your height please okay we're already going a little further in it than I um I just want to stand corrected because I may have come across wrong and I just want to apologize when I said you mentioned before homosexuality connection to abuse I didn't mean something about yourself I meant you were mentioning the fact that people grow up and suffer from homosexuality not that that I just want to correct that oh okay yeah yeah I wasn't uh I wasn't necessarily referring to a personal experience I wasn't not referring to personal experience either well when right came across and I apologize if it came up yeah when when we address it we're addressing wholesomely but I thought now before I address it let's at least address it's a big big challenge I have to say why it's such a big challenge who is being held by this who is being helped by this who is being helped by how difficult it is to talk about this topic and I'm gonna give people the benefit of the doubt many rabbis and therapists have spoken about this who told me they're scared they're scared you don't have to go to Rabbi therapist right here I'm scared right here I'm scared right here I'm scared what what is this what is we've spoken a lot and this topic has been around sexuality what what is this sex thing why is it so fraught with so much complexity and challenges and struggles sexual I'm thinking like abuse actually as a child in my case that was someone else's sexual desire is gone awry my porn addiction sexual desire gonna write my infidelity sexual desire has gone awry right right all of these what what is this thing what is this thing why do we need it why is it this why why is it killing a romanticize something that can be so painful and traumatic but I think it'll be helpful to understand and this is like really it's the core of Kabbalah and that is the energy of sexuality is the holiest energy in the world the energy of sexuality the result Rabbi Isaac clearly the greatest Mystic in Jewish history all of the Divine energies that interact to create the world he calls them intimate interactions on the spiritual levels beyond the human embodiment sexual the sexuality of human beings is the embodiment of of of the one of the deepest energies of the Divine that is at the core of existence which was all about love about a relationship about connectivity if God is infinite he's perfect there's no relationship and therefore what so because it's one of the most powerful energies then where there's light there's dark so I think in many ways it touches us the pleasure of it and the tragedy of it the blessing of it and the curse of it touches us on in our deepest places so then when it's tampered with you're not tampering with a pinky of mine you're not tampering with a skill of mine you're tampering with something that is essential to the formation of my identity and when it has its healthy Outlets and productive Outlets it is so meaningful and sacred and we have to respect that we really have to respect that right there was uh you're used to dismiss molestation and you know this Elliot it was not really right somebody once get over it get over it you know so telling a mother lost two children you know just get over it you have other kids when you tell somebody to go over something that really prepared with their very identity Bessel Van Der kolk told me he's told me something very powerful he said when you were if somebody was sexually molested at a young age before their eye was formed he says they're the very core of their identity is shattered there's no eye there's um already I had an identity and I had a dignity now it's painful it's sad it's crazily painful he says but for many people it's not painful it's more than painful the eye is not formed yet he says the very I is trauma oh he's saying okay he's saying if someone's sexuality was affected prior to them becoming a self so basically anyone in childhood then by the time the eye gets formed it's a it's a seed with a scratch on it it's a very difficult he said he said he said he said it's not you have trauma he says you are Trump wow I have trauma is already a blessing I have trauma okay I have trauma no I'm right I don't even know of an eye without trauma we need a lot of compassion for that I've shared with people that there's no way to understand this is just intuitive amount understanding there's no way to understand the damage of sexual abuse without recognizing a spiritual reality in the world because if you have a child who had a good childhood right from 0 to 15 and one time a teacher abused them physically the likelihood that there's significant trauma in this person is not high it'll kind of get melted away in that um and the rest of their experiences but this same person has a sexual abuse experience one time that'll affect them well into uh adulthood until it's dealt with it'll affect them so I to me it was like the only way to explain it is that the sexuality and the spirit of a person is connected and the sexuality is so connected so therefore it's therefore it affects them on such a deep level so what is the and you know why in in Tanakh the holy of holies in the basement is called hamita is the bedroom and what was there the two cherubs the male and the female gazing at each other why does God choose that image in every Yeshiva they would ban it but it's in the holy of holies on top of the iron with the Lucha is that Malaysia brought down the holiest things in the world why because essentially we're all one we're all rooted in infinite Oneness We Are All One literally and creation is an act of perceived separateness to recreate a Oneness with choice and passion and enthusiasm which is sexuality that's what it is and when you tamper when somebody tampers with my sexuality what they're violating is somebody but that's a sexual abuse side of things and what about the other side the urges the addictions and because sometimes people don't have the tampered and there's all these urges that go sideways and the infidelity like so many problems he says one of the most beautiful things he says the reason that sexuality generates the deepest pleasure in the world more than cheesecake and I like cheesecake more than Sushi and I like sushi even more the music and I love music and more than a good book and more than a good movie and more than a lot of great things more than you know we we enjoy the world but there's something about sexuality that is atomic it's nuclear energy and he says that's the moment that's the moment where we become Divine like we we're our most Divine that's why it's the moment when we create life if I'm an artist or a speaker I can't create life through a speech I can hopefully create an audience that wants me back but life life is created through sexuality in other words we are most Godlike in the moment of sexuality and God is the source of all pleasure so it's really going to our deepest and holiest moment and that's why we create a child from that a child is the greatest miracle in the world it's great everything else that I create is just a development but here you literally create a new organism a new independent life that lives on for eternity and when you stand face to face with God every detail counts and dysfunction becomes very very significant actually just added you know Jewish law discusses a lot intimacy and people often ask me you know do we have to really spoil the fun and then let young men and women explore their lives and I always explain to them if you would understand the meaning behind every law of you will see that it was all designed not to spoil fun but to actually to seize the moment to be able to allow a couple to maximize the opportunity within their intimate relationships because it's so so easy to get distracted it's so easy to go into a place of narcissism to go into a place of survival to go into a place of selfishness these are normal things I want to satisfy myself but if I can always come back to the relationship if my physical sexuality and my spiritual sexuality our spirit can merge it's a different experience it's meaningful it doesn't last for five minutes it lasts for 90 years but this takes this takes a lot of awareness and it takes a lot of work and a lot of healing and and we fail and we stumble and that's also part of it and we don't have to stigmatize ourselves you know there's a lot I want to tell you I know at least one Yeshiva the whole Yeshiva is watching this and they got a big screen maybe because others but there's a Yeshiva have to give credit to the administration they gave them permission these are teenagers who are dealing with all this and they're open about it and the Yeshiva they put a big screen so I just want to tell all these teenagers whom I love and I cherish you and say you know sexuality is such a profound and and Rich expression of self Judaism is not trying to spoil the fun what it is challenging us is to harness that type of energy in places and ways that really bring out the best within us and allow our deepest selves to celebrate relationships and for that we have to be sensitive who is getting our Sexual Energy when in what context and we have to have a compassion when we fail we have to have compassion there's a question I shared with you um a couple days before the event about someone saying maybe instead of cleaning up the mess you know the way maybe you can consider this conversation a lot of the work you do now that we can start it at earlier stages in the Yeshiva age and maybe some of the ways we're setting people up for failure so I guess this issue is an example of addressing it earlier on like why set people up for failure exactly so many boys are struggling so many boys are struggling and they're often taught that as we said before that struggle is evil and and the greatest people don't struggle and it's a terrible terrible crime against our boys and our girls Every Soul comes down to fix to repair to heal when I confess I heal not only myself I heal all of the previous Reincarnation of my soul I heal my ancestors I heal the world we heal each other you sound like now I'm kidding Debbie used to come he used to love to say a line from a book called Murray nine which is a Hasidic work that every Every Soul has a spark of mashiach and when each of us reveals it together the spark creates a flame and that becomes a collective Consciousness that redefines the Earth so it's true I should say your brother is sick it means how do you know you identified the spark of mashiach in you when you can speak about those things that break you and and for me that's such a rich rich idea so we usually say oh the mashiach in me is the perfect me no no that's the Exile me that's the fake mashiach that's the false there's always a false Messiah the real mashiach is the mashiach that can can can display struggle that's that's where my mashiach is and that's where I heal others that's why I heal myself that's why I find my greatness beautiful I want to I want to say something about what you're talking earlier sexual abuse and then ask you a question around um the sexualities you're talking about so your brother Simmons shared with me a sikha by the I think the rubber shop on the words and he has a talk online where he kind of takes like paragraph by word by word through it and if I understood correctly from that it's that the Brisa right the bris of someone right that the sexual energy is their completeness right are you familiar with the Sikh I'm referring to yeah yeah this uh can you explain that concept because I don't want to butcher it uh but it was very healing for me to uh when I when I heard this I imagine we'll be healing for for others as well because so many of us minimize abuse the reason it's painful when others minimize sexual abuse is because people who are sexually abused do it to themselves and so when someone else does that it becomes a reminder of all the many years that we did it to ourselves which is not the way to address things we don't uh we want to see what's going on we put it under a microscope we magnify it and then I would add that somebody who does not who did not either be was not sexually abused themselves or did not do real research and listen to stories of sexual abuse should not have the khutzpah to give perspective or advice about this because people who have been sexually abused the levels of suffering are unimaginable to people who don't know about it and it's not just suffering when they get married that too but the levels of emotional psychological anxiety incessant anxiety day in and day out for 10 20 30 years another person takes for granted walking into a wedding saying Mazel Tov and going home and for this boy or girl dealing with the social anxiety just one example a week before and a week after they're sick and that's just one little ramification of another million ramifications so to minimize these things without real empathy and understanding is simply despicable it's it's it's a it's unforgivable it's probably your survival skill it's probably your survival method that you have to minimize it because maybe something happened to you or whatever I'm not going to go there at the moment because I don't know but be be humble we have to all be humble about this you know it's it's a very serious the the I think that the secret of the rashab about about sexuality I would like to elaborate more next time I'm just gonna just say one point that he brings out there and he says that essentially it's a very very intense line essentially the energy of hasidis which is the energy of the balshamtov and the altered which is known as the terror of mashiachair is essentially the spiritual healing of sexual dysfunction in other words the raw deep spirituality of Judaism is essentially Divine Sexual Energy that's what it is and and therefore it is so so profound because it literally touches on your deepest deepest Divine core and when somebody plays around with that they're not playing around with something external they're they're touching they're they're damaging they're violating you're you're the apple of your eye the the purest part of your soul and we want what happened somebody played with with his uh right this is the minimization this one what's the big deal something happened to me 15 years ago what's the big deal but but that that that's a mistake and it's it's from a Jewish perspective it's a mistake because it's there's something very pure about it and that's why that's where we create life is Created from sexual it's not created from imagination from creativity from scholarship from meditation from prayer it's not created from the sexual organ my understanding is this is talking about sexual abuse right I just want to literally talk about sexual abuse is that the way the way the way I heard it is that unfortunately most of the talk they did not write down I guess it was very overwhelming and the writers were astounded this you're talking about the early 1900s the early 1900s this is not a talk from the 1980s so a lot of there is is it's it's hinted language so there's a lot of speculation but the key that he's bringing out over there is how how hasidis is the ultimate sublimation of the Sexual Energy the harnessing of it into a Divine into what it really really really is in fact he even has a line there if I'm not mistaken because I haven't seen it in many years my brother showed it to me many years ago it's been many years I have to look it up I'm going to look it up before our next seminar but I think there's a line there that somebody who doesn't understand this energy cannot understand the depth of Jewish spirituality interesting because it's a very it's very intimate it's sensual energy it's not it's not scholarship it's not artificial intelligence it's not science it's the core it's the core of existence and that's why Judaism is very sensitive to it it treats it as very very holy it's very very and that's why it's such a release by the way that's what if I'm depressed or I'm grouchy or I'm anxious why is masturbation such a release why why can't they drink Coca-Cola why can I just eat potato chips watch a movie no the guy has to masturbate six times a day why did we ever wonder the answer is masturbation is the greatest cover-up for the greatest anxiety because of its intensity because it's a fast release of the core of your soul so you're feeling all the energy and pleasure of your nashama but just completely misdirected and camouflaging the pain and numbing it rather than allowing my sexuality to be a Continuum of my healthy self rather than a cover-up for the pain I don't want to deal with but as a cover-up it's the best cover-up it's fascinating it masturbates for 25 years and not deal with anything and it numbs pain like nothing else even my phone is not as good so we didn't go too far into it but there was a sense from what you're talking about what it would look like to have healthy sexuality on an individual level meaning with a couple in a relationship and a deep intimacy to have a sexuality we didn't go too far into it but there was at least enough of a picture painted from a communal and Society perspective it seems to me and I actually believe that there's a study Yale or Harvard that did a study connecting I think pornographic addiction and religious upbringing and there was a correlation so meaning there is a sexual repression that creates some of the some of this dysfunction I I think there is this research paper I never um I I didn't go to it myself but certainly has been anecdotally proven like you said hundreds of times anecdotally proven hundreds of times that there seems to be a shame that the religious environment adds that contributes to the addiction itself so my question is in a few sentences what is a healthy sexual Society look like because uh we spoke about taboo so these are normally taboo is it taboo for protection but what does it look like in the healthiest in the ideal environment how are we dealing with sexuality as a as a society so I'll tell you a little story and it's it's such a beautiful story The gemara says the talmud says at the end of track that Yuma that if you if you uh emit semen sperm on the night of Yom Kippur you may die within the year and if you don't die within the air it means God loves you that's what the talmud says so there was a man who released seed in the night I am Kipper he had a wet dream listen to this and he woke up and he was horrified he's gonna die right so who did you come running to he comes running to the altariba he comes running to the alternate was one of the greatest authorities of his time the founder of Chabad the author of The Tanya how do we know the story the grandson of Islam never writes it and now to remember hears you know without the rabbit does he starts laughing and he says to his grandson or to another colleague he says this man never thinks the Gamora is talking about him it's wet dreams yeah because his body releases some onion cake bread not onion Kipper he started to laugh he's like he thought that the Gamora is talking about it he was talking about somebody who's in a state of consciousness that if it happens on Yom Kipper it's like whoa he says that it happened to you and Yom Kipper what's the big deal what happened to William Kipper I learned so much from this story like you have to know the context you know this poor man would live in fear not to represent it's fine you're going to live you're not going to die God doesn't hate you you have to know who you are yes your body sometimes releases seed now teenagers sometimes come to me they didn't even do it consciously it's in their dream they're already feeling guilty we have to teach people first of all biology is not evil your body is a wonderful tool it's a Divine tool that was created in the image of God there are things that naturally happen people should feel good about themselves number one number two this is at night even when there's situations where people get involved in this we spoke about this last time you know when I see somebody who was sexually bullied as a child or was exposed to pornography in Camp in sixth grade and fifth grade when they develop puberty and they're going to the Mikvah in the morning and they're seeing their friends and they're feeling all this arousal and then these poor kids are told that they're cut off from God then they're the most evil thing in the world and they don't know it's a terrible this kid when he was 12 you think he had a choice you think this poor kid who was sexually bullied was exposed to poor and maybe have been molested may even have been raped or whatever happened or even not some other stuff that happened but so the society is hypersexualized so everyone's getting a pretty poor education around sexuality be sensitive and we have to be able to tell people yes masturbation is not a good thing but it's not a good thing when you're in a position to make choices which means you know yourself you like yourself you love yourself you value yourself you see your Sensations you're not in survival mode you have expansive consciousness and then you can make a choice and then make the right choices so so if I unders if I understand how this relates to the question what you're saying is that in a healthier Society you gave the story of the algebra we'd be able to speak about these subjects with respect with sensitivity but to speak about it and it would be it would be the the all of the shame that surrounding it has to be eliminated I finished giving a Class A boy wants to see me we finish my he's getting married tomorrow night this happened a little while ago I say okay Mazel Tov beautiful he says but I'm addicted to porn already since age 14 and I'm 24 and I'm getting married tomorrow night I'm like you have to come the night before your wedding he says I was embarrassed I'm like how many of your friends are dealing with this he says I'm embarrassed to tell you you're not going to believe me I say how many of your click he says 97 I said you're exaggerating he says no I'm minimizing my point is so many of our boys and girls are suffering and they need people to talk to who can understand and be empathetic and direct them and also teach them that even in cases where you have no trauma and you're perfectly healthy boy and you make a bad immoral Choice okay right every show somebody who drives to shulon Shabbos a Drew is not supposed to drive on shoppers but they open the door of the Shoal and they smile and there's a Jew doesn't put on Phil and he gets welcomed Shabbos and there's a Jew Who gossips and the gemara says in Erica that gossip is as bad as as murder adultery and adultery and we let them in Show back to the homosexual issue somebody's struggling with something and suddenly they're now they're not they have to feel uncomfortable in our souls and if a teenager is struggling with something we're all struggling with something that's why we have to be here for each other that's what we have to help each other and I think when we can create that conversation mentors teachers parents now I'm not saying that it's a Mitzvah that the rebe or the teacher has to get up at the bean man give a sermon to everybody about this because sometimes there's different students with different sensitivities different backgrounds different ages so maybe it shouldn't be a public conversation maybe it should be an intimate conversation private conversation that's perfectly fine but it should be a conversation be a conversation and it should be a conversation and and people have to educate themselves what to say Don't just tell them it's not a big deal don't just tell them I also did it don't just tell him get over it you know because he's struggling with something and if there's a real trauma there and there's often a real trauma there tell them to get over it is is really unfair so people have to learn we have to learn how to listen we have to learn how to understand what's going on we have to learn how to guide people in this area with tremendous tremendous respect and empathy but the most important thing is not to make them feel stuck and they hate themselves because self-hate breeds catastrophe self-loathing breeds confusion and chaos self-deprecation and then and and the religious guilt is is is the greatest disaster for serving God in a loving way and for building for building a productive life and you know one of the most important skills all of us if somebody comes to you and you're triggered and you feel the need to push them away or to or to dismiss them or to be sharp with them stop be curious because you're dealing with life and death issues you're dealing with a very sensitive issue if I'm being triggered I'm responding from a place of trigger I'm not the right person to respond to this at the moment I need to do inner work so this is very very important somebody comes to me homosexuality you know trauma this trauma whatever it is a teenager his or her issues I may have my triggers that's fine I'm also a human being I got my traumas too but I have to notice it I have to take a deep breath and after that it's your drama it's not their traumas huh it's your trauma it's not they're trying meaning you have to do your work but I can't put it on the law I can't respond from my place of trauma we often project in our answers and and now this poor girl or boy thinks it's a religious answer because it's his teacher so he's giving the word of God right little does he know that his teacher is a trauma victim he's not giving the word of God he's giving the word of trauma so it's one traumatized victim to another traumatizer the teacher is now a four-year-old responding to a three-year-old I received an email leading up to this uh where someone asked can you ask Rabbi Jacobson I asked my my Rabbi and I want to try Jacobson the question also my cousin is a woman who's in a lesbian relationship and I asked my Rabbi is it okay for them to come over to my house for Shabbos but and the rabbi said no because it's not good we're responsible to educate our children and it's not good education for our children and I said what would the rabbi say I said I understand you want me to ask Robert Jacobson but what would the rabbi say maybe I can address this one what would the rabbi say about um if she was in a married to a man a relationship with a man and they didn't keep Shabbos and they came over on Shabbos and it was very obvious that they didn't what would the rabbi say they also can't come said no they'd be okay if they come so I said we don't need a rabbi to answer this question we don't you don't need a rabbi it's so obvious if someone is viewing not keeping Shabbos and homosexuality in a different category from where how does one one important for the education of the children and the other it's obvious it's obvious that it's the person's own the rabbi in this case his own call it trauma call it misunderstanding cold judgment you know lack of um he hasn't involved on this on on this issue that he's making a distinction where there is none unless you tell me there's uh you know I don't know the whole rambam but unless there's a rambam that says we should allow people who don't keep Shabbos around us but someone in a lesbian relationship and what does that mean yeah so there's really two issues you're 100 right that my house if it's open to the person who's driving on Shabbos based on the principle that even the khazainish one of the greatest Lithuanian Scholars uh says that we view most secular Jews today is what the rambam calls tonight which means it's not about judgment and vindictiveness it's really about you know not appreciating Judaism at least to a significant degree including religion what did most religious Jews also go in this category many many I'm saying if we was this you're absolutely right there's no distinction the one thing that I could understand is that if a person has children and they're young and assuming they're innocent which is not always the case sometimes parents think they are but uh you know I may not want my kids to have to know everything about homosexuality and lesbianism before necessary age but i s but okay so tell them don't kiss at the table that's exactly exactly that's a very legitimate thing if I have a certain home some people have you know very limited internet in their home or other procedures in their home where they really want to create an environment of of Purity and innocent and sacredness which the secular world today does not like so yes that's you know that's a wonderful thing and and when but that's true about anything it's true but that would be the same thing if you're saying Netflix if you're saying I don't want anyone in my house like that don't pull up in a car so I don't have to explain to my kids about people that don't and there are other jobs fine no problem if we treated everyone if we treated everyone who was homosexuality homosexual the same way we treated people who didn't keep Shabbos I think we'd be okay I agree we don't need the stigma we don't need the stigma these people are struggling in one area other people are struggling in another area right and and and the way we deal with it today is not by throwing rocks at them no Chabad house no Asia Torah Center no other kirov bresler whatever throws rocks at them right instead they bring them in and they smile the same is true with every other sin in the Torah they're struggling and here the struggle may be much much deeper because it's associated with a lot of deep deep stuff especially many cases of homosexuality that I'm aware of where you could see or I can't say you could see but it's very possible that it's associated with very profound challenges in their upbringing and in their sexual development and in trauma so we need much more compassion much more sensitivity much more 100 I do want to say if I'm experiencing stigma I have to look into myself I have to say 100 what's being triggered which is fine uh we're triggered that you're a human being but you know don't camouflage it as a sacred you know the worst thing is I have trauma well sorry wonderful don't turn it into the epicenter of Holiness right exactly there's a Brokenness there's a Brokenness there's a fear I'm afraid maybe maybe I'm allergic maybe something is being aroused in me something that I'm repressing you know these are these aren't normal things it's an opportunity to explore when you have a trigger by the way it's an amazing opportunity for growth if you don't have a chance so what I gotta work on I did a podcast called the value of trigger therapy are we still gonna have what to talk about yeah seminar two and three we were supposed to go for an hour I said we went for an hour and two hours and 15 minutes Ellie let's get some questions about the guy who's worse than me to the tank over here one twin once once we're in we're in um there was a thought I had but let's get to some uh let's get to some some questions oh one thing I wanted to say was that in the next conversation I would like to get to because people asked it last time get to some of the Practical solutions that I've um incorporated into my own life and right in order to distance myself from um from porn addiction and for other such sexual Obsession and these behaviors but one thing I do want to say which is relevant to the conversation dedicate to practical solutions to addictions and homosexuality I think our third seminar will be probably continuation of some of those stuff and psychedelics okay it makes sense to me I do want to say this just because it's relevant to our conversation here is that one of the essential components of um recovering from addiction is an ability to be gentle with oneself it's so so so essential I um I there's a guy I've known for a few years who's abused and other traumas has resulted in very severe physical ailments stomach issues and otherwise and up to about six months ago he was at home like unable to move unable to move unable to work unable to do anything just going to a doctor he was afraid to drive his own car because he can have a an attack in his intestines or something whatever was bothering him um on the uh on the road so over the last few months we've been communicating and he's obviously in a difficult financial situation I've been helping him with some of his doctor bills associated with these things and the last two to three weeks he's back at work and he's doing well better he's able to go to work and some of the physical ailments are there and as they ease up he's able to deal on the emotional things and the other day he sends me a long text message and he's saying how disappointed his wife is with him sexually because of A's physical ailments but B there's also emotional stuff he was sexually abused and he has a hard time being with his wife um physically and he she feels like he's you know he's not meeting those needs and everything else and he feels terrible and now he feels even worse because he hasn't even addressed it it's this issue that's been going on for a long time and he hasn't addressed I received this message I said my dear brother you have so much to celebrate you're out of bed for a few weeks and now you want to beat yourself up over another issue celebrate let's go to dinner let's have a party let's do something to celebrate the fact that now your physical ailments aren't there but instead you want to take a baton to yourself absolutely decimate yourself and then you'll wonder why three months later you're not healing again and now your physical ailments have come back and this is It's So essential that we're able to celebrate the successes I shared on our last conversation a relapse that I had on pornography after four and a half years sober I had it was the first time I shared it I shared it publicly it was the first time I shared that that relapse in the story and afterwards I got a lot of positive messages from it the skill that was necessary for me to get out of that and stay sober was to be gentle with myself and I had to figure out how to be gentle with myself in a way that I never knew because my first time experiencing it to be gentle despite the fact that people have publicly recognized me or I think people who have publicly recognized me for um dealing with his porn addiction well and for nearly being five years sober and in the 12 steps they celebrate years and you know five years what a milestone if it feels like a milestone year and I was nearly there in four years and nine months in I read up so I have all of these reasons to really take a bath to myself and had I done that that one thing had I done that today I would still be in um I would still be in the in that place this skill of gentleness is so important so essential if someone is sober for a long period of time they've learned how to celebrate small wins and they've learned how to be gentle with with with themselves when they um when they follow when they fall when they slip so so so so essential but we can talk more um just to teaser for the uh for the long conversation Tyler can we get some questions did everyone did everyone hear that hopefully not was that heard by everyone else repeat it it was it was a massage I I think we should get a question it was basically saying someone who listened to our last conversation after listening to that conversation um he said it was the first time he felt acceptance around his um sexual Obsession or addiction and since then he's joined the 12-step fellowship and for nine months I believe he's sober and feeling better and alive and so this statement was someone wrote it and it was upvoted as well but the purpose is questioned so so the question was and essentially I got the question um also in uh on Instagram leading up to uh leading up to to this is what do I need to be fully healed in order to enter a relationship this wasn't the language they used but on Instagram I got this question as part of this saying what questions do you have for uh Rabbi and myself it was do I need to be fully healed to enter a relationship and I said yes you need to be fully healed from the idea that there's such a thing as fully healed so what um I I think this is an important question because you touched on it you touched on it also with the the young man who said to you I'm 24 years old I'm about to get married I'm struggling with this right almost having cold feet like I have such issues how can I step into this this uh this marriage so the balance between the healing that is necessary before marriage and afterwards such an important question and I think the balance is as Ellie just said the only ones of us who are perfectly healed are the delusional ones among us who need a different type of healing the core is if I can really really see them see the parts of me that need healing and be actively engaged in repair and work and awareness and transformation and healing then you can have an amazing relationship in fact you can have one of the deepest relationships because as I said we said earlier you know when couples and partners and friends could communicate with each other bringing in the parts that need healing into the relationship becomes the most powerful relationship if you and I can only talk about things we agree with and we connect to and the parts of us that are wholesome and beautiful it's a fake relationship because my authentic my authentic me is hidden and your authentic you is hidden somewhere and and you know what it leaks out in other ways passive aggressive ways or other addictions so it's only when I could bring that if I could if you could bring it into the relationship then you're ready for a relationship if you can't bring it into the relationship you still need a lot of work but if you could bring into the relationship and and you need sometimes don't you know a lot of things we're talking about sound very good but you can't always try it on at home on your own we all need support systems all of us we need mentors we need friends we need good relationships we need therapists we need healers we need people who who we trust and we can be open with every one of of us there's not a single person in the world who does not need a good friend a mentor a best friend a spouse a coach a therapist whatever it is who can really really be there for you so you know I'm going to try this at home because things can become explosive because you know our trauma leaks out and all this functional in all types of places but if you have this support and you're working on it and you bring it into the relationship then you can have an amazing relationship there will be setbacks there will be failures you're going to make mistakes but if you can show up and apologize and be genuine you're going to learn from every one of your mistakes but you won't be able to fool people with this in other words don't lie because don't be deceiving that the relationship is going to Trump and overpower all the dysfunction dysfunction surfaces even in the most beautiful days and nights the night that you're having your wife had a baby the night of your sons bar mitzvah the night of your wedding the night of your wedding the night of your child's wedding don't think that this function just dies and goes to sleep forever it takes conscientious effort and sustained discipline every single day that's why in Judaism we Daven three times a day that's why we say Shema twice a day that's why we we learn constantly it's not in vain it's a daily battle for Transcendence it's a daily battle to bring my true self into my life and allow my parts to be guided by my true self and not to dictate my true self if you're ready for that and only you and God knows that I don't you could lie to me but your wife is going to figure it out fast then your relationship is going to be amazing if I answered that question from experience um obviously you know it's there was a there was at this period in time I wasn't living a from lifestyle at all so I don't know how to match this with the the lifestyle but um I shared the experience of cheating on my wife and then eventually from there recognizing the issues that I had and that I had to finally start facing some of them and being honest with myself and that's how I entered a 12-step program in recovery and that whole um that whole healing journey I needed a period of time where I was not in relationship at all zero communication no dating no zero zero zero zero and once I got to the place where I was no longer I no longer had such trouble being alone then I felt like I was ready to be in a relationship so till then I was I was demanding too much from the other person but on the other hand the kind of paradox is that there's certain healing that can't happen outside of a relationship at the at the risk of triggering all the therapists who talk about codependency there's certain things that we cannot heal on on our own and it's in the context of a relationship that's something that closeness that you know there was something that I was dealing with I literally woke up inside me in the last like probably about a month ago and I was dealing with the level of pain and sadness that I didn't know I still had inside me I'm like with all these years and all these psychedelic Journeys and healing and 12 steps how is this still there and what I what I'd realized in in working through it and maybe I'm still working through it is that the there was a level of closeness that has happened between my wife and I and the last couple of months through our own work that reminded me of a level of closeness that I haven't felt probably since I'm two or three years old because I haven't allowed myself to and and a pain from that state was reignited because of a closeness that I'm not now experiencing with my with with my wife so there's a it's it's kind of paradoxical a little bit right like this closeness now all of a sudden reminded me of a closeness I once felt where I was hurt and now I'm feeling hurt in this in this space as well and we're going to open up to these emotions I need my wife I need my husband suddenly I needed my mother I needed my father exactly when the Molester came I needed my name I needed my father I needed my father to punch him in the nose my father didn't he didn't know about it your father didn't know about it you know one of the Patrick Hearns who's the father of sex addiction right the first therapist who put his neck on his line on the line to say sex addiction is a real thing we can't it's not only alcohol and drugs that we can be as um addicted to we can be addicted to sex and he's like the reason there are 12-step programs as far as I understand is from this therapist Patrick Carnes and he said there's four beliefs every addict has across the board sex addict alcoholic everything else I don't remember all four but two of them I remember here was um I cannot be loved as I am it's one of them as I am I will not be loved so there's some jump that I need to make in order to get the love in the second which is so important is I cannot rely on anyone to get my needs met and every ad exists with this belief and because of this belief we go to things in order to get our needs met but what I found is that there are levels to be loved I don't deserve to be loved and I can't really know anybody for my real needs the first one I will not be loved as I am like as I am I am unlovable I'm too shameful I'm too disgusting to be loved I'm understanding I need to change myself in some way I need to alter myself in some way in order to be able to become a people's pleaser I have to become a genius whatever it is I have to package myself up yeah I have to package myself in some way Schwarzenegger or Albert Einstein or the baker no nobody will take care of my needs besides me I can't rely on anyone else to have my needs met and that doesn't mean your whole life story right is a execution of this these two things right right right and I think there's levels of this right there's which needs and when and then as I've opened myself up more and then in the relationship that meant there's a closeness that now gets reopened that was never there I've shut this part of my heart down you know at two years old now a sudden it's open now that now this need I that belief gets reignited I can't rely on anyone to meet this need it's like endless I think levels to this uh to this point but I would say if someone is asking that question if I may can I just want to say one thing and I can imagine right that as the as your relationship our relationships get closer and suddenly you open yourself up and your survival self your Reptilian Brain is experiencing a need that may not be fulfilled through your wife because maybe she's sharing a disappointment and a pain it's like I was I could never rely on her for the need and we want to really want to go back to where we were at eight years old and never relying and run away and I will never need you ever ever again because that's all trigger correct and yes he criticizes you the part of me that knows that I'm undeserving of of anything right and suddenly oh it's here again here again and she's the one who brought it out I'm gonna run away so so imagine the The Compassion the gentleness and the awareness we need to be able to stay in the game and say I'm 40 years old I'm 30 years old I'm 20 years old I'm 50 years old I'm safe I'm safe I could work this through I could talk to her or him about this wow that's that's possible thank you is there's a therapist my wife and I went to we did two all-day experiences with her and their experiences it's not therapy it's the closest thing I've ever experienced to a psychedelic Journey before psychedelics was a therapy with this woman it's also a holocaust Survivor her name is Haiti schleifer she's probably close to 80. I'm not even sure if she's practicing anymore and when we went there was my wife and I together and most of the work she says you face each other I'm going to sit here as your guide kind of work through things and she says this is her her philosophy is she believes that the person who is there to heal the other person is the spouse we found the perfect person on the planet in order to help heal us so as a therapist she's stepping in the way of this relationship say I'm not here for that I see couples together so I can facilitate the healing that can happen between the two the two couples and for the entire experience like part of it you're the couple is facing each other the entire time and she's sitting on the side so physically representing this is the person it's not her as a therapist she's a guide to make sure what she calls it and she says she's the MDMA you know what she calls herself she says I am Customs this one says I'm Customs I am here to make sure that your baggage doesn't cross over into their territory that's all but and then the healing can and and then the healing can happen so it's important says that 40 days before our souls come down right 40 days after we created there's a voice in heaven that says you know this guy and this girl is a perfect match what does it really mean it really means something so profound means this soul is going to be going through this trauma her soul is going to be going through another Trump they will be able to help each other heal their trauma yeah that's where the marriage becomes amazing on our last conversation our last conversation you shared I think you said that every soul before Every Soul before it comes down to the world is given its choices so I don't know if you remember then but I um I was asking questions I was kind of astounded by this idea so let me tell you why now I was shocked then um my first time I experienced mushrooms an experience that I had on it was that I was no longer a person I was in energy an energy of Soul a spirit something right that was clear that I existed but not as a as a body and in this I was excitedly speaking to other energies okay and saying hey why don't we do this you'll be my sister you'll be my mother you'll be my father you'll be there and we're all go going through this thing you'll be the first girl I like who breaks my heart you'll be the first you'll be the person who abuses me and it wasn't even all the details it was like this sense it was just this it was so healing after that experience it was like Wow every single thing I've gone through and every single thing I will go through I chose and I chose it to go through with the person you had agency that's what it felt like and it was so healing and then I was like wow what a beautiful experience I had like okay good you know this is my experience and was healing for me you know what's beautiful about psychedelics it speaks in the language like of that person like this is landed for me and very effective and affected me in just a beautiful perfect way and then I heard you say that there's a you know which basically says the same point I was like wow this is what a beautiful uh what a beautiful experience yeah I have to emphasize you know and it's just important to be sensitive because some people have been through such dark experiences in their life this is not to minimize or rationalize or romanticize the horrible horrible experience you may have endured on the contrary the point is to say that at the end of the day you're not just a victim of another morons or another sick person's you know sick desires even though that person affected you but deep deep down nobody can snuff out the the infinite light of your soul who was not sold into that situation but was sent because something in your soul has the power to use it as a catalyst for unprecedented growth not despite the pain because of the pain so not to minimize the sensitivity we all need to the horrible abuse that people go through and to stand up to criminals and not allow them to get away with murder I'm just want to say you know don't no thank you for saying that I appreciate it and it's not what you would be sensitive because you have your own story but I just it's important no but it could come across that way it could come across that way and that's why it's that's that's some of what I was addressing I'm saying it's a personal experience I have another class now okay good class so I have to take a break I know do you want to continue another few minutes with questions or we could just let's ask one more question and we'll go to uh and we'll go to that I'm saying you could continue taking questions okay I'll ask one more question and then we'll uh you know let's wrap it up let's wrap it up Rabbi we have we have two more of these March 1st um there'll be a second sign up please register will continue this conversation we'll get into some of more of the taboos Rabbi YY thank you so much it's an honor and uh you have to be able to sit with you and have this conversations work that you're doing not just with this webinar but a lot of other work you're doing thank you and thank you everybody for gracing us and for all your questions and and those we I know we didn't answer a lot of questions but there's so much help out there today there's a lot of help there's people you can trust not everybody but there's people who just reach out you could reach out to Ellie Nash you can reach out to myself reach out to other people that you trust well reach out to people who are experienced people know about this it's very important because you want people who you know can guide you in the right way and there's so much guidance today there's some right there's so many things available today there are a lot of tools there's this people there's so many different there's therapy models there's there's good books there's good people there's good groups you know there's but that is where it starts it starts with speaking and it starts with speaking with someone who you're virtually guaranteed a safe and compassionate response and from there we go and safety thank you we'll see you all thank you March 1st March 1st two weeks Wednesday night excellent thank you all thank you thank you thank you take care this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at www.theyushiva.net donate