Rebbetzin Slovie Jungreis-Wolff: Elul A Time for Spiritual Renewal

thank you so much i want to first thank robbie for always making everything that seems impossible possible and i know you've been very patient waiting here so thank you also for your time this evening is nishmat i hope i'll pronounce it properly but michelle misha ben esther and refuse shalema david ben mazal eliahu ben raya rahel thank you for inviting me here tonight and again thank you for your patience i know the hour is late and we will begin a young woman called me the other day and she said to me i think hashem forgot about me i said what did you say and she began to cry and she said i think hashem forgot about me everybody around me is just moving on and i'm stuck i'm stuck where i am i think hashem forgot about me is that possible do you think that's possible on rosh hashanah we read these words the hashem khad and hashem remembered sarah you think hashem forgot about sarah do you think it's possible that this young woman is right could hashem have forgotten about her why do we say hashem remembered sarah [Music] hashem never forgets anybody and think about it we say hashem sarah we don't say hashem zakhar at sarah what does that mean hashem cut every day when we darven we speak to hashem we say thank you for for my soul that is what that is the with you the peak hadoon is a deposit hashem does not mean hashem remembered sarah no no no you see every single person listening here tonight has in shamayim in the heavens above a spiritual bank account and every single time that we do a chaser we do a mitzvah we darven every tear that comes out of our eyes every pain every time we open our hearts to another person every time we study torah we put a deposit into our account [Music] means that every single day sarah email put deposits into her account and on rosh hashanah do you know what happens my friends the accounts are looked at and for the right time the account becomes activated hashem opens the account so surreymenu teaches us that on rosh hashanah all those deposits that i made every single day nothing goes to waste if you think hashem doesn't see if you think hashem forgets hashela and who knows who knows which tephila which act that you do or say is the one that will open your account this rosh hashanah so tonight we are going to discover together how to create a picadon a deposit in our spiritual accounts as women from soro immediate because saryaminu could have very easily given up did she have an easy life absolutely not did she ever give up absolutely not in fact suri emenu had three brachot she had three blessings in her o hell in her tent and tonight what i'd like us to do is discover how to bring that bracha how to bring the blessing of sorry emanuel's oh hell of surya menu's tent into our own lives as we approach rosh hashanah so where do we begin the first bracha the first blessing of sari menu's o'hall was the blessing of the lights sorry [Music] for shabbat lights were lit from one shabbat to the next that means that her home was always filled with light how do you do that how can i do that how do we create light in our home from one week to the next you can go into the most beautiful home decorated by the most famous decorator but if something is missing if that light is missing you feel what you feel kosher you feel darkness it can be the most beautiful furniture you can be in the most amazing restaurant but if there is hosha if you feel if you feel darkness the food doesn't taste good the house is not beautiful and you're missing the light so how do we find that light now [Music] which is called the holy tongue because it's it's the language of hashem has tremendous secrets in it take the word because to have light means that there is light and joy so there's a connection between light and joy if i want light i need joy if i'm miserable forget it there is no light in my life there is no light in my home there is no light in my heart how do i do it how did sorry it made you do it take the word bisimha and you turn the letters around you mix them up and you know what word comes up my head do you know how to create samha it begins right here i must be mentally strong i cannot allow dark and negative thoughts to overpower me because as soon as those little thoughts start coming oh you'll never be able to do this it's impossible you always mess up nothing ever works out for you those are words that create darkness inside of me and you know what the biggest thing is when it comes to peace if i have peace inside of me if i have peace with the people around me i can be i can be with joy if i'm an angry person if i'm a bitter person if i feel resentment if i feel that i have a grudge against somebody there goes my samha and here again we have lashon kodesh listen carefully because we take the word and it can also spell the word what does that mean [Music] to forgive do you know what it means if you cannot forgive somebody i have spoken to people who are schlepping you know what it is to be a schlepper schlepping carrying a heavy load on them on their shoulders for years and it wears you down because you're angry and you're resentful and something that happened years ago a teacher a parent a friend something in camp 10 years ago you're still angry you still see that person you can't look at them i spoke to a woman the other day she told me she doesn't talk to her sister the two don't speak for years their children don't speak they live in the same community they cannot look at each other talk to each other wish each other a shabbat shalom sit at the same table together i said you know what this is stuff of the beit hamikdash this is kamsa and barkanza do you know what that's like did you ever go traveling remember the good old days when we would travel right on a plane and you go to check in your luggage and some people they come and the luggage is stuffed and the zippers are you know breaking and they put down the luggage and it's overweight and then they have to take from this luggage and put to that luggage and see what to take out and then you see there's some people and they just come with their luggage and they just walk and they zip right through security when you have resentment and a grudge and anger against somebody when you cannot forgive somebody do you know what that's like it's like schlepping that heavy luggage around and it's always overweight and it's always weighing your shoulders down and you have to make sure you don't see that person you have to make sure you don't think about that person but the whole day you're thinking about that person and it gets you so upset shemaja means that we forgive let it go because when we let it go do you know what we're doing we're really helping ourselves when i hold on to anger when i hold on to blaming somebody else i'm hurting myself i'm carrying inside myself this terrible load that does not allow me to breathe when i was a little girl every yom kippur i would go with my brother to have yom kippur with my bubbie my grandmother and my said my grandfather and my zaydi was the rav he was the rabbi of the shoe of the synagogue my zadie was the most beautiful man he survived bergen-belsen he lost he lost so much in the holocaust but with everything i never heard my sadie lose his temper i never heard my zayd erase his voice whenever i would see him he would always have a smile and he would always place his hands on my head and give me a bracha give me a blessing and he would cry erev yom kippur as we would come into yom kippur my zadie with his long white beard would put on his white kettle and his white yamaka i looked at my zeta and he looked like he looked like an angel of god before yiskar every year isaidah would stand up in front of the arun kodesh and he would say today height is yiskar he would say in yiddish today there are people sitting in this room fathers and mothers not talking to children and children not talking to parents brothers not speaking to sisters and sisters not speaking to brothers neighbors not speaking to neighbors friends not speaking to friends if these neshamas if these souls that we are about to remember for yiskar would be able to come back for just one day for just one hour what do you think they would do they would look for the people in their lives that they've loved they would look for one more conversation one more moment one more hug but now it's too late for you it's not too late ma make peace before it's too late if we want to make a deposit in our spiritual account that can shake the world that can open up our accounts and activate our accounts to bring zhuyot to bring merit to us shalom remember zadie's words make peace think of one person choose one person that you've had maybe some difficult words with that you've lost connection with somebody who's very lonely somebody that you know could use a phone call somebody that you maybe are harboring a little bit of resentment or bad feeling with somebody that you've grown apart with it's before rosh hashanah give a call just to say i'm wishing you shanatova create a deposit create light have your shabbat lights go from one week to the next how that's number one number two what is the second bracha of sorry the second brachav sorry is that her khala was fresh from one week to the next now what does that mean it means that you go to the best bakery and you say i want the challah that's going to stay the freshest from one week to the next because just in case i want to eat it next chops of course not what does that mean that her khala was fresh one week to the next you know what it means to have fresh chala means that your portion is fresh meaning that your life is fresh that nothing is ever boring your life is not boring your portion is not boring you haven't lost your passion you don't look at your portion of life and say to wake up in the morning and say i what's our first words when we wake up in the morning i know so many people the first thing they say is ay hashem i can't i can't when we wake up in the morning think of sorry in maine sorry mean you could have so easily have said hashem it's not fair my life is not fair here i am i follow my husband avraham i should be the teacher of jewish women everywhere i have no puppy i have no grandmother who taught me torah i have no rabbitson i have no school i have no bait knesset i have no shoe i'm all alone in this world i ask you just for one baby and then hugger comes and in a second she has a baby in a second and she makes fun of me and then all the women come and they say mama sarah sorry menu teach us how do we raise our children and they come with double strollers and they come with their bugaboos i have nothing nothing could she have said it's not fair but instead sorry menu teaches us that our dough our must always be fresh to always see the bracha in our lives because every single person sitting here every single person listening has bracha but you know what happens and this is our world today we live in an if only world we go on social media and we go on instagram and we see everybody's photos and everybody's pictures and everybody's whatsapps we say wow look where they are look how great their kids are if only if only i'd be on that vacation i'd be so happy if only i'd have that husband i'd be so happy if only i had that job if only i had that kitchen if only i had that life if only i could go shopping the way she does i'd be so happy if only i could do what she's doing and we're so busy looking at everybody else's bracha that you know what happens we never see our own we never see our own and that's how our allah becomes stale our isa our dough loses its freshness so sorry menu teaches us that no matter the challenge that you go through in life and let's not kid ourselves everybody has a challenge because life is all about a challenge as my mother would say life is a test if you live you love and if you love sometimes you lose and it's difficult and we have disappointments but if all we do is put our eyes on everybody else's happiness or we think that they're happy because when you look at the picture you don't see the before and you don't see the after [Music] then we lose our chance at having bracha in our own lives look around here right now could you imagine a year ago having this scene we should all be crying right now with joy we shall be saying that you have kept us alive that you brought us to this moment in such a year of covet this year pesach i don't know about you but i was sitting at the seder with my husband and the children that we were supposed to be with were not there and i remember my son who lives in eretz israel came back with his wife and their little baby and normally when i would see them after not seeing them for so long i would hug them and i would kiss them and i would give them my bracha and this time because of covet they're outside in their coats and i'm inside and we just wave and wave and then i take my phone and they take their phone and we're talking to each other this distance on a phone with the glass between us and then when it's time to say goodbye and my son is in the car with the baby and his wife he says mommy a brother a blessing so i come out to the car and over the window i place my hands [Music] and the glass is stopping me and i give my son and i see as he drives away the tear trickled down his face and the tear trickled down my face because we don't have the ability to touch each other do we even understand how precious it is to give abraham to give somebody you love a hug to sit together here it's amazing how precious but we forget the whole world has changed but have we changed in the beginning maybe but now it's the same old same old and we forget how to appreciate just sitting with somebody that you love [Music] so the second bracha is the bracha of the dough to appreciate our lives it should never be stale having a friend having family having life every breath of life my goodness do we understand now how precious it is to breathe when we went through a year where we see people who can't breathe [Music] and now we come to the third bracha and what is the third bracha of sarah every time you would walk by the o hell the tent of saribandu do you know what you would see you would see above her oh hell above her tent only her tent nobody else you would see an anon you would see a cloud and you would say what's that cloud doing hovering over the tent of surrey menu do you know why she had a cloud and anan over her tent because imenu had connection she had connection with her what was her connection [Applause] that because imenu went to the mikvah she had the zakhud she had the merit to have this annan this cloud above her tent now i know that not everyone sitting in the room is married but this mitzvah of mikvah is so important and so precious to every single jewish woman because this is the future of israel it's not a man's midfield it's our mitzvah so whether you're married or you're single we have to understand this mitzvah because we each have to carry it in our hearts and know that the ezra every single one of us will have this this merit to be in a mikvah so let's take a few moments just to speak about how to create this connection and why there is this connection do i know the reason for mikvah do we know the reason it's a hulk a hoax means that only hashem knows the reason i can think of the koha the energy the power the good that comes with this mitzvah but i do the mitzvah you know why because hashem said and if i do a mitzvah because hashem said then right away i have a connection how beautiful is that what is a mikvah if you go back to beret if you go back to the beginning of the world virua [Music] and the spirit of hashem the ruach of hashem was hovering above the deep that means that the whole world was covered with water the water of the mikvah is connecting us back to that original water and as you saw on the video when adam hari shone when the first man messed up and he was sent out and banished from gun aid and from the garden of eden do you know what he wanted to do he just wanted to go back he wanted to reconnect he felt so terrible so how do you reconnect how do you go back how do you reinvent yourself he basked in the waters in the rivers that flowed from grenada he was the first one ever to bask in the water of the mikvah the mikvah gives us both physical and spiritual cohort powers and energies let's talk about it for just a moment [Music] a little music is always good let's talk first about the physical years ago every tuesday night my mother robertson esther young rice would have the largest gathering of singles in the world in new york city there were 1500 singles i mean it was the most amazing sight the line was packed out the door and finally once my mother said you know what i need you to come me and my sister-in-law because we have to make shidduchim you have all the singles in the room studying torah you have to make shidduchim i can't do it all myself so we would go every tuesday night and we would tried to make shidduchim and there was one young man and every week i would point out another young lady and he would always say no no finally i said to him listen this is crazy every week you say no what do you need what's missing over here what do you want and he said to me i'll never forget he said he said when i see her i want it to be electric i said listen to me my friend electric has burnouts blackouts brownouts you lose electricity you have outages that's not life my friend and such is marriage the things that you thought were so cute you get married and you're like it's driving me crazy laugh i thought it was so cute it's not so cute that sense of humor the way he eats i thought it was a door it's not adorable or sometimes things get a little boring i have women call me all the time i don't know i'm bored in only the brilliance that hakadosh can give us the master of this world gave us an opportunity number one to teach couples to appreciate each other and even more so to teach men to appreciate their wives you see for two weeks a month you my dear husband are going to appreciate my mind and you my dear husband are going to appreciate my words my thoughts my emotions you're going to look at me and see me but you cannot touch me and you will anticipate our time together so that every month there is a feeling of electricity only hashem only can create something so incredible to recharge a marriage every single month to help us appreciate to be appreciated not just for the physical but for the emotional for the spiritual for what i say for what i think for what i am for what i bring to the table hear me see me listen to me that's so awesome and then we come to the mystical and the spiritual power of mikvah and that is also such a tremendous tremendous you see the word mikvah is mem which is for the number what cave what does cave mean hope why 40 and then what is mikva all about when a woman goes into the waters of the mikvah first of all we return to that through which we've come into the world it's not about my designer dress or my not designer dress it's not about the heels or the flats it's not about my bag it's not about my manicure it's not about the makeup or the lashes you know what it's about just the way i came into this world pure between me and akadeshwara between me and hashem and when i do submerge into the waters of god and aiden those spiritual and mystical waters i have the opportunity to daven to pray for anything and those prayers are so holy i can pray to open the hearts of those that i love i can pray for shalom by it for peace in the home i can pray for my children i can pray for other people's children i can pray for parnassus financial success i can pray for bracha i i can pray for her to israel and when i finish i add the prayer and they say may you be your will hashem did you build the beta i can pray for mashiach these are the prayers that hashem that the world is waiting for it's the prayers of women that we never give up we never give up so we go back to our original selves it's not about what we cover ourselves with this dress or that dress and and this hair and that hair and this makeup and that makeup it's just about how hashem created me so pure and then we come to mem cave 40 hope you see every mikvah has to have 40 saya of water the measure of 40 measurements of order what else is 40 in the torah so much do you know that when an embryo was formed on the 40th day the features are formed the mabul the flood was for 40 days and 40 nights when moshe went up to the harsinai to the mount sinai before getting the torah for how many days and nights 40 days and 40 nights how many years were i'm used to all the jewish people in the desert you got to know it now 40 years so much flooding why because 40 is all about re-creation and when i submerge into the mikvah there is a power there is a koak there is an energy i don't know it is beyond me it is mystical it is spiritual but there is a power of recreation there is a power of hope that no matter what happened this past month and no matter how down i am and no matter how depleted i feel i come to the mikvah and i start all over again there is hope hope for life hope for peace hope for reconnection hope to recreate myself this is a spiritual secret [Music] and when siri eminu was the very first woman to plug into the secret this the presence of hashem became announced on top of her own health we have this power today 2021 isn't that amazing all the way back from surrey mania to us today and it never died so i'd like to end with this women we women as we approach rosh hashanah we must know that we have this tremendous power of hope the redemption will come it says because of women who don't give up you cannot give up because as long as there is hope there is life you cannot give up hope not on israel and not on ourselves as we come to rosh hashanah no one should say but you don't know what i did you don't know where i was there's no such thing hashem is waiting for each and every one of us to come home take two steps take one step hashem says take one step to me i will take two steps to you especially now during elo because we women no matter what do not give up hope and we say every day li david hashem or evie is she hashem is my light and my salvation how do we end hashem hope to hashem be strong and have courage in your heart vika hashem and hope to hashem the same word like mikvah hope and the word mikvah if you turn the letters around spell coma which means to rise what's the connection and why do we say true times kaveh hashem hope to hashem be strong and courageous hope to hashem because if you have prayed for something and you have tried so hard and you feel as if you have not been answered david who wrote the tehillim group the psalms he knows the feeling and do you know what he says don't give up my child i'm leaving you my words and you think you're not answered and have courage in your heart the cavial hashem and hope again to hashem and again and again and again and keep pounding on that door don't give up hope because you never know which act that you are doing will be the deposit that will open up your account so i end with this incredible incredible story i want you to take home with you when my mother was a little girl you know she grew up in a city in hungary called seget and my zaydi my grandfather was the chief rabbi and my baby called mama was the repetition and as the nazis were taking over hungary the city of seget became a ghetto they were refugees who would come every single night knocking on the door from other places there'd be a knock my uncle described it to me just the other day they'd say who is it they won't even give a name they would just say i'm a jew [Music] and the door would open my uncle told me that he never knew at night where he would be sleeping in their home in their apartment because it was so filled with refugees and the beds were always given over so he'd be sleeping on the floor my mother would be sleeping on the floor they were just little children and one day a young woman came she had been recently married and her husband was shot in front of her eyes and now she was pregnant she came pregnant a young bride five months pregnant and she stayed with my grandparents and came the day that she went into labor so what do you do what are the nazis gonna do where should she give birth in this crowded little apartment mama my grandmother said we have to bring her this woman into the shoe because the nazis won't come into that shoe and that's the only place that we have space so there in the shul was set up a hospital bed they found a bed schlepped it carried it to the shore and mama my grandmother delivered this young woman and she had a little baby boy eight days later the baby needs a breast my uncle remembers describes it to me where should they do the breasts it's so dangerous they go down to the basement where the mikvah is it's pitch black they light candles and the people who were there start screaming no don't give him a breast you're killing him why should people recognize that he's a jew no breath but mama my grandmother and my zeda insisted on the breasts and this little baby boy he received his bris in the ghetto of seget sometime later this young mommy and her little baby were taken away to the concentration camps they were taken to a concentration camp where my grandmother's father harafzvi herschel cohen who was also a very famous rabbi in hungary was now there came a moment where the rabbis of that concentration camp were given an opportunity that they were bought somebody bought them for cash that they could leave and my zeta my great-grandfather said i'm already an altar rebel i'm already an older rabbi i'm going to give my seat to this woman and her baby this woman and her baby went out they were let out on this truck of rippers and this woman ended up marrying one of the rebels who was much older than her but she so wanted to be a part of this holiness and she came to america she not only married this rapper but that rebel passed away and then she married another rebber and this baby grew up to be the celebra in williamsburg and when mama my grandmother was nif terrace when she left this world and we were at her final at her leviah and it was quiet in the room in walks a magnificent dignified stately rapper and he asked if he could say a word and he went up to the bema and he said [Music] mama this rabbitson delivered me brought me into this world risked her life for me and i came here to give hakarat to give gratitude and two years ago i don't know why i just decided you know what i want a braha from this rapper and so i called up the rabbits and i got the number i traveled to williamsburg i went into the room and there was the most beautiful magnificent face shining where we speak of light reflecting torah inside and out and i asked for abraham and i received the brahma from the salem rebbe who was a baby in the ghetto of second women never give up because you never know you never know picado everything we do is a deposit hashem never forgets shalatova and a good goodbye thank you