Purpose of Mourning - Rabbi Chaim Dalfin

good morning good day to everyone today is your giant thomas give us thomas it begins the three weeks the hardest time for us uh jewish people it's the mourning period and uh an intense three weeks and as usual hasidas has an interesting way to deal with it and look at it of course not to show them exclude and all of the details that are obligatory uh halathically but the attitude and the mindset that hasidis offers can be very uh rich and helpful when you have to deal with a morning situation it reminds me when um uh there was a uh a door a girl uh her mother of a family or she was the oldest of the family her mother passed on i think in the late 70s and she was very distraught that she wrote to the rebel letter saying here she is the oldest daughter she now has to function like a mother to the younger siblings and they have lots of children quite a few children and um and she would you know the the letter was a very very tearful morning type of a letter and it was you know written to the rebbe sometime during the year not not in the very beginning and that eva answers her in a full page letter in english and what i remember from the letter is that eva says um just as uh not morning at all is not proper mourning too much is also not proper now of course this is has to be this it's a blanket statement and that needs to be you know thought about and discussed with a rabbi and a spear you know a good friend what that means exactly i wouldn't because we're not talking now about how logically but what the rabbit said in that letter was that you know hashem gives us periods of mourning because those periods are the exact and precise amount of time that we need to get over a particular morning stage so whoever said that there's the first three days and then there's the seven days and then there's the 30 days and then there's the 12 months each of these four periods is a certain stage in the morning period and of course the most intense is the first three days and the next seven days next amount of days to seven and then the 30 days it gets less and less although one still is in mourning it doesn't mean that six months down the road you're not morning you are mourning but the intensity and the response to the morning what what what halacha is dictating is that it it shouldn't be that way now of course you know when it comes to feelings of the heart it should or shouldn't really doesn't apply if someone is god's a bit ill or someone feels elated then like the out that episode and you get this regarding giving to dhaka what's the halloween you're supposed to give 10 and the mother says when it comes to twenty percent uh um uh are you give him more than 20 um so someone wants to get 30 percent is he allowed to according to according to it together i love the queen maybe you're not you can take whatever that amount is seriously if by giving more than 20 spiritual remedy for the particular ailment that you're in then then you should then you should then you should then you're allowed to so this this is something that uh that he says over there so the same thing here when we say that there's morning periods it's true oh as a general reality it's true but if someone if someone is is uh feeling that they they need this to for their mental health for their spirits but for the spiritual health when it comes to spirituality the rule doesn't apply but otherwise other than that other than the spirituality situation the rule does apply so just as the rabbit told this uh this girl this teenager that she's mourning too much and she has to get on with her life and she has to be an example for her younger siblings we apply this too to our situation now our situation when it comes to three weeks in a way in a way even if you're living in there just rolling even if you're living that in the old city living yeah okay so you could see the walls of jerusalem you could see you know more of the memorabilia but but the fact is that it's 2 000 years it's so so long ago that that it's kind of uh foreign to us yes and i said yesterday that under each hope would break a glass and it's all true but nevertheless what we encounter daily in daily life is much more real to the average person so hey the question is you know how is it that we we bring in a morning period into our lives because when halakhah says that these three weeks is a morning period you are to feel this way it's not just not about you know showering during the nine days and doing this and doing that and not taking haircuts not listening to music those are all technicalities to help us feel a certain way so in other words what's the objective most of these three weeks the objective seems to be to um to um the objective is to to feel sad so you have to ask yourself a question what's the what's the psychological total view on making yourself feel sad what benefit will there be from feeling sad that's one question next issue is like the rebbe says don't feel too sad because if you feel too sad you won't be able to function so the second question is what's considered too sad and what's not considered to say what is the overall purpose of feeling sad when i can feel happy so that that's what i want to explore today these three ideas it's really one idea but i hope i you know clarified where i'm coming from where casitas is coming from on the overall issue because we don't tend to think this way we just tend to think oh i can't uh no more haircuts no more swimming no but this whatever whatever the hell of us are for the three weeks and the nine days so the rebbe introduced i think he was in the 80s maybe the late 70s i forget now he introduced an idea that on each fast day it used to be the custom going way back that the rabbi the rove of the show or the maggie of the community would say divrei kevushi kushin means words of comfort sometime during the 24-hour period the leader of the community of the congregation would sermonize and the sermonizing was for the purpose of comforting people so what we understand from this is that the purpose was not to berate the people it was not to scold the people and say you better do chuva if not you're going to burn and and you know and all that that you know was the style of the maggie you heard of a magic the preachers we call that preachers where they would come into a city and they would literally in the show and they would so berate the the crowd and the crowd was sincere and they cried and he made people cry and this was a style used in europe with certain communities in particular and it was called maggidus preaching i recall parenthetically i recall in the mid-seventies here in borough park on rabbi shalom you must have heard of him they called the magi of yerushalayim i think so he was in town and someone said or i saw a poster that the market of jerusalem of jerusalem is going to speak so you know that caught my attention i had never really heard a maggot you know we don't have here today mcgee so i thought this is going to be really a uh a washing machine experience i'm going to get all washed out and it's going to be great for my for my ego a real true experience the play was it was at the base yacht on 46th street and 14th avenue i remember and the place was packed and he definitely was entertaining very entertaining but i didn't walk out crying and nor did i see anyone crying so the magidos the maguidos has also changed post holocaust where you know the maggot either he himself doesn't have the craft and ability to do it or he does but he chooses not to nevertheless what i'm saying is that divreic fusion kavi that the rebel spoke about that they used to do way back is not madidas it's not preaching it's a sermon if you call it a sermon of sorts but the purpose is to comfort the orientation was very different so that's an important thing to understand and the rabbit then said we need to bring this back to our communities and dereb himself showed an example until then on a fast day any fast day the ever never spoke you know it was a regular fast day you know he darvened and you fasted but from that time on we spoke about this old minute that has been forgotten and lost and not done and he started to implemented it he implemented every single fast day we knew there's going to be a talk after minh a rabbit with darwin normally means 3 15 in the afternoon so although there were only a few hours left whether it be in the winter whether it be the summer you know the bulk of the day has gone but there ever spoke and sometimes you could speak for a half an hour to an hour 45 minutes a long a long sermon its purpose being crucial so one of these uh talks that the rebel gave on shiva awesome yes sorry just a quick question so the weather he would and these days let's say like a day like say [ __ ] he would dive in the rabbit would dive in like 3 15. yeah what time would he speak uh we finished year three saturday let's see a quarter to four 20 to four was a regular dominant with christopher right and after elena after the hold on everyone stayed in their place and he stayed on his fema and he turned around they instead of facing the wall turned around they had a podium they put a mic there and he spoke and and what happened after he spoke everyone went home to their merry ways and hopefully they thought about what he said then they did something about it the point it was always or most of the time after menthol and minha was always 3 15. he kept he kept saying it the reason minko was 315 was because of the yeshiva the buckaroo 770 buccaneer 220 is the end of the first fader in the yeshiva right 3 30 officially begins the second saving so the book room have to go to eat get take a breather and by 3 15 they were back they were able to dive in and then 3 30 they went right to learn that was the idea why i think i think why it kept it at 3 15. the reason for the morning i read recently why did he start 10 o'clock this is the question i'm sure that uh people you've had people have asked you why does khabad start so late avenue right and the rabbit the reason is because the free the cadaver started at 10 o'clock believe me the rebel was up much earlier he could have died earlier but he was so committed to his father-in-law and and now you can say gonna ask a question why did the previous rapper start 10 o'clock so a layman's answer would be is because of his health he came to america he wasn't a well man and you know until he got up until he got prepared or whether he even he was up whatever it was seemed like it took it took a while for him to to calm himself and get to himself and some days was harder so i think at 10 o'clock was a p a time again that that he was ready at the time and the rabbit took that he said if that's the case we're starting at 10. you know and if there's a better answer fine that's as far as i know and i recently did fine but that of course means you have to say krishna before and try to finish uh you know before montfila you know anyway that's another discussion i don't want to go into that now but i do want to say that khabad labavich is not lightheaded about montfillers on krishna that's a fallacy that some have you know accused lavabitch of and and sometimes it definitely seems that way i'm not gonna you know lie to you and be foolish absolutely and some people do too you know they get up late in the name of being the hostage and dabbing along they they just dive in into the afternoon and they miss this montrealer you know if you're dabbing earlier and it goes over there's one felix the rabbit has letters um saying that that's if you start with the minion and you dive in that way it's acceptable but the preferred way is to of course to do this month so it's important to know that because this is a question that people ask dolphin when you say sponsor though you're talking [Music] you know fourth hour the fourth house the fourth hour the fourth house the preferred way right i meant i'm just okay whatever hawaiian says that's all cuts out is already i think it's secondary time right right no that that that's why i'm asked i don't mean to i don't mean the sidetrackers i'm all asking because because it's true we all get i mean i don't know about the obvious emotional i get asked this all the time right and so the problem is that if you'd start that at 10 o'clock there's no way you're going to make the fourth hour you're not going to make montreal right okay so the answer is why do we start happening 10 o'clock because you should have been up for seven o'clock learn to consider this for two three hours hundred percent you know and and and and absolutely if you didn't do that then our school here in boro park starts 9 30 and we're finished 11 30. uh i would say that at least probably three quarters of the year those that want to makes monthly like you know um close too that's because okay but in new york because of the way the time zone is it's probably easier to do that than here right here right right okay let's go back to what we're discussing so anyway so that's what the rep so i want to share with you uh a general thought that the rabbit shared on today's day about you zion thomas srivastava thomas what it means and hopefully this will answer some of our questions today five things happened and we'll focus on one of the five happened in our history and the the thing that probably is most known some of the others are not known but the social network just mentioned five things happened according to the xiaomi even the sixth thing happened so the it's here the city walls were were breached uh the enemy were able to make a hole a dent in the wall and get it you son of a tavis you know what what what did the enemy do so much bubble they surrounded the walls but today not only were they surrounding the walls they hoofka and then on tish above they destroyed they burnt the base amidos what is this what is the idea of hoof here so the gemara says that the wall the wall the walls of yerushalayim represent the tiger why do the walls the chimera represent the toyota because what does the flamer do obviously tall wallet protects it protects from the enemy coming in and you know when you put up a tower and you're able to see so the wall is a protective measure to protect the city so too the learning of taita is a protection for the jewish people when you learn taita when you learn taylor titu protects you from many many problems and issues why because taylor tells you what's proper and what's not proper so if you learn and you understand then you study and you then follow what the titus says you're more protected just as if you have a better and taller and stronger wall you're more protected from the enemy what happened ashibo tamu's the wall was breached the toyota was breached you allowed a hole to be made and tight what does that mean that means that you are you allow a a compromise it might be a little hole in the wall a little compromise but that is the beginning of a large alar a large a large whole which gets worse and worse and worse and leads ultimately three weeks later to a destruction of the bassam english and that ever explains in the secrets in the biblical and the words of comfort of shivasamatamus how important it is to realize this at the beginning the first of the three weeks today that letting a little hole get through the wall can lead to a full destruction of the wall and which happened so too with tito if you make a compromise in the toyota even an iota of a compromise it ends up in it ends up being no good this was his overall message as far as the problem the issue and then ever spoke about the the safeguard and the remedy for this problem is to not allow compromise in the early 1950s there were individuals who in the name of tara started doing kiruf outreach and some of them had written to the rabbit they had a relationship with the rabbit and the river got wind he was told that they are they're allowing men and women together taruva is some are listening singing to to groups and then women sing as well which is kaileesha and there were such issues that were happening and i want to make it clear because people think it was only happening in camp ramai in chicago or new york you know it will only happening in you know in in modern orthodox conservative institutions you know here in the catskills i don't know if you guys know maybe abby knows but there were there were hotels you know those days the hey they grossingers the high view pioneer hotel i mean the catskill the porsche belt this was like i mean you know the casino what was there one called neville neville neville yeah neville yeah neverly all of those who frequented most of these places no no not most places but everyone here which was a which was froome and not from and i know i know one of the owners you know he comes from vision succeed and i'm talking to him i can hear that you know that sneers wasn't great and they were from but the whole you know the culture in in the in the catskills in the summer it wasn't maybe as bad as venice beach in california or you know florida but it wasn't it wasn't great i recall when the red you know the river was against going on these vacations he really was and but he wasn't against it like you know because you're going to do a sin he didn't really it just said like you know you're going to have a vacation and then you'll need a vacation when you come back because you're so knocked out from schlepping and driving and and and all the stuff and in those days please understand we just stood people didn't have houses today people have nice luxurious houses but you know i went one time i'm here 23 years there was one time i went for four weeks when my children were young i i said i mean when i was a boy my parents took me to to the bungalow several years but i forgot it you know i i left that world so when i came back here one time i took the children family there and after those four weeks i made myself a promise until i have a house there which i don't i'm not returning because the schmutz and and the noise it was so not a vacation it was it was it was total notification at least not for me so the rapper spoke about this and he was sarcastic and when he would laugh at his own kassidin who during the summer they would run to the country so the rabbit wasn't a proponent of you know running to the country but nevertheless the the casket was full of these people and uh there was a breakdown and that's my point it wasn't just by the non-religious people was by the front people too and the excuse was you know we need some respite and we need better air and so the rabbit during the 1950s there were certain topics that he spoke a lot about from 50 to 60 if you look into his talks if you ever have the time and you flip through pages you'll see that there were certain top but for example one of the topics you spoke a lot about was about tactless you know topless means what's the bottom line because the yeshiva bakarim and their parents more their parents were saying what's the bottom line of sitting in yeshiva when you're 19 20 21 22 get a life go to college go out to work make a mention out of yourself prepare yourself what are you sitting in either the expression fetching a bike pressing the the bench and the rabbit spoke a lot against this attitude and and it was called tacos in other words this has been this thinking of what's the topless what will i have from sitting yeshiva that ever said comes from the clipper it doesn't come from kedusha a person needs to learn and fill himself up with tied up and today it needs to be till 21 22 23 i'm talking about the 1950s and the rebel and like other rappers and other russian shiva were all pushing bahrain to stay staying yeshiva and this was a very big push and it took a lot of energy and i i think we could say overall they were much leah in in accomplishing this that was one topic another topic that the rep spoke about was the hollywood kitchens and wall-to-wall carpets because you can hear it he used to be sarcastic and laugh about people that spend so much money because they must have wall-to-wall carpet or a hollywood kitchen so he was sarcastic about it and his point being is like you're putting yourself into flavors into debt so that you you should have and and then you would say and you're gonna tell me the excuses your wife you yourself would not have wall-to-wall carpet that you wouldn't spend the money on that but it's because of your wife there ever said yeah are you really being truthful or do you also appreciate the wall-to-wall carpet so you know okay maybe your wife is looking at you more right i can hear that i can see it but nevertheless if if it's not the if it's causing financial hardships don't do it and that was by the way a general sheet that the rebels were coming to him in america he told my own father-in-law when he asked him once could he come from australia so he said he used the money for tzedakah and he did and he didn't allow the next year my father-in-law was smart so before he asked the rebbe he gave the equivalent amount of a ticket to sadaka and then he told the rabbit that and then the river said you can come but these things were going on all these years so what what am i getting getting at is that that um oh so there are a third topic so like i mentioned two things we spoke about a lot in the 1950s a third thing was compromise and this was because in the name of trader people were making compromises and some of these people were people who had a connection with it and who meant well but there ever took a very a very strong line and you know i know some of you might be thinking you know the barbecue is so progressive so open-minded and so happy i had a gentleman here yesterday you know and he said oh he got you know he says i i i can i not he's not i'm not fully from because i can fully identify with khabar that i'm looking to get married one of her bad girl who's open-minded and will work will grow with me he says you know in the leapfrog community that i that i i see over where i am they don't smile much and they're too tough i can't relate to it so the word on the street is you want you want to feel good go to khabad you know they make you feel good which is true which is true but but it's it's it's a feel good based on torah and if there's a breach in torah in any way shape or form there's no room for that feel good now the difference is khabad's not going to say you're a sinner in your bed you know that's not the approach but the river was so strict and really in a way you could say like narrow-minded you know i mean old steeple he didn't make he didn't accept any compromises and you could be the biggest cosset and give the most amount of money to his charities to his institutions it didn't fathom him fathom him and i yoda because he was an ish ms and isha torah so the third topic which is relevant to us is that little compromise now to balance the difference between a fanaticism and a compromise requires a lot of sacral this is where the dust the chabad the dust the gas of is so important how to balance and you know on one hand not to make a compromise and to be and not to allow the wall to be breached at all and at the same time to make room for a situation that warrants a situation and i believe if we if we you know understand the issue and we think about the issue and we consult with someone else about the issue it could be your own spouse it could be you know a friend there must be a rabbi whoever it is then usually you'll find a method that is not compromising yet not being fanatical where you hurt another person or you hurt yourself you know there were students in yeshiva who had great minds and great memories and they decided they want to learn all of shots i knew one such student he like could repeat he had a photographic memory and he decided to join the kleisenberger forever right because seal halberstown of blessed memory he started a program called mithal hashas which is to learn shasta either in a year or three years you know i think maybe two three years to do that you had to learn pretty much most hours of the day tomorrow you know and this fellow decided to do it and never he had a breakdown a nervous breakdown and he wasn't the same ever since he read his nail amendments let him have a lifting gun you know there are sometimes for the sake of not compromise we hurt ourselves we heard others for sure but the questions so how do you balance how do you balance the two the answer is if if you're plugged in and you and you follow titan you talk it with someone else yeah advice advice from a yoast i don't mean are your age you know a friend a counselor it can go a long way because we are subjective and to find the objective truth and approach gets muddy murky so so when you share it with someone else and you hear how they respond to it it can be a very good way for you to see a balanced approach but again this does not mean to say that allow the compromise see there's a difference between i'm going to make the compromise or i'm not going to stop something or someone from making a compromise if they need that because people have weaknesses we all do and we're well intended we we you know attention we we mean well but sometimes we don't have to cut you we don't we don't we're just not there so there's a difference i'll give you an example the rebbe like many others didn't appreciate when you took pictures of them in europe that was the biggest like taboos taking pictures you know that right that's why in the hop it's high in picture you see he's walking with his head down and i think at one point if you look at the video you see it goes like this if you take a look at the video it's online they have you know the movie he's like covering up his faith because he saw a camera or something pointing at him the overall attitude of your of the european that upon him etc was not to allow pictures nope america is all about pictures pictures and fame and glory that's that's the culture especially today i mean the come on and look we're benefiting from seeing each other so there's so much my such ver so many advantages to learn tighter with pictures and and videos and sound and all that so i recall that there were times when for to take pictures of the rapper and he didn't stop them but it doesn't mean to say that he enjoyed it okay there's a difference between not stopping someone and and and and uh allowing them to do their thing for whatever reason and yet you yourself would not initiate it so maybe that's a a practical answer to the balancing of not making compromises and a very rigid you know view but this is an ongoing thing so i conclude with the following this attitude of of seeing that the three weeks on one hand we need to really make the wall stronger take a look at where in the wall there might be cracks and make the wall stronger and at the same time understand that the purpose of the wall is for us to grow and come out healthier and that is the mess so the purpose of mourning here this is to come out stronger if the purpose of mourning leads you to more depression more melancholy more angry anger and more um you know work more upsetness and all that then you have to stop the morning then your morning is not a justified morning so yes we're mourning these three weeks and yes the base amigners will destroy the image hashem it won't be this year the purpose of the morning is to make us darker stronger and that's and and and the way you do it is by not allowing a breach in the wall that was this is the overall uh idea that there ever presented several times and shiva also thomas that i think is um a way to deal with other issues in our life you know when god forbid someone loses someone in their life or when someone goes through a hardship you know there's it's not just about losing a loved one but even going through um losing a job you know whatever you know there are reasons when we get very shook up you know so this is this three-week period is the focal time to give us the kayak to deal with these issues and again the objective is moisture to become stronger not weaker okay my friends we're going to start a new mimer with the chef michelle i'll let you know which mime i'll take a look i um and um sunday sage doesn't have an easy fast and only arts on sloping programs