Rebbetzin Slovie Jungreis Wolff - How to Deal with Pain and Loss Through the Power of Emunah

good evening everyone welcome if we could ask everyone i'm sitting on you in the back rows everyone if they could please sit in this first area over here on the right middle or the side would be really appreciated everyone should please move up um tonight's very special year we have the great honor to hear from rabbits and slovenian ice wolf it's being the dec the shira is being dedicated to we want to thank everyone for joining us in person everyone it's also being streamed right now online anyone's watching right now or is in person right here they could share the link for for to anyone who for every reason couldn't make it in person um the link is if i write it down and text it to people org slash live c h a z a q dot o r g slash live l i v e again c h a z a q dot org slash live cause i don't live and uh we want we um we wanted a few short quick announcements i want to thank obviously the shure rabbi nasir of bait l for opening his doors always for the community we actually there's actually a very special um event this sunday night uh drug and addiction awareness event right here kazakh is partnering together with emmett and i moved him for a very special program 8 30 p.m this sunday night in this building right here the bait everyone is encouraged to attend and we wanted that we want just a quick word about the great work of kazakh that only organizes events and shiron like tonight but but organizes right now organizes 12 sunday programs after school programs for jewish public school students including in this building right here beta l on sundays as we know there's thousands of hashem there's thousands of jewish public school students in our neighborhood and we should um all if anyone knows that anyone was a child in public schools should definitely reach out to kazakh so we have to give a jewish education and uh we want to thank uh rebecca joseph i think she's very random applause for amazing work as well as timing is for tremendous work and that's why we're here to hear tonight it's our great article fun packages [Applause] good evening everyone thank you all for coming out tonight the beauty of being part of am israel is that we come together in both happiness and more so and tragedy may tonight serve as a merit for the beautiful neshama of lil namdar alaya our mission tonight is for each and every one of us to make it upon themselves to do a mitzvah in hessed in the name of a a pure nishama that was taken away from us so soon i hope that tonight will motivate us and ignite something in us to make a change in her zahoot the small positive shifts can make the greatest waves i would like to thank for the amazing organization for giving us the opportunity to come together and for the work that they do for am israel may we go from strength to strength tonight we have the privilege to hear from the inspirational author lecturer and role model rebecca rice wolf who can offer all of us the comfort and strength please help me welcome rabbit since lavi young rice well thank you so much and i'd also like to welcome those who are online this is truly a very difficult talk for me to give and when robbie called me from khazak and i'd like to thank hazak for this opportunity it took me a moment and i gave a sigh because really ma nomer daber what can we say my daughter-in-law from you shalom called me last week after this terrible tragedy and she said to me mommy what do we do what do we do mommy we're going through so much as a dar and everyone is so filled with pain and sorrow and now this and there's so much may roan and covet and i mean do we have to list all the tragedies what do we do mommy and then we had a conversation i received the call to speak here tonight and i relayed that to my daughter-in-law yael and she said to me mommy why don't you just tell the women about our conversation because it gave me so much comfort to know that you can find khizuk and salas and from the torah if there's one thing that i've learned in my life growing up in the house of my parents and especially from my mother it is my mother would always teach that to me turn the pages everything's in the torah we can't go wrong if we go back to the torah we're not the first to go through pain through goat to go through anguish and suffering and heartbreak but the question is really for us how do we respond and as my daughter-in-law said to me mommy what now what do you do now so tonight i ask you to journey with me journey with me back into the life of yaakov avinu yaakov ovino who went through tremendous pain and anguish and suffering and heartbreak jakov who was told that his son josef was devoured by a wild beast who was handed the coat the kisonus possum of his son and cried and cried when he saw and said that he refuses he refuses to be comforted till the grave yaakov avinu said till the grave this sorrow and this pain is going to be carried in my heart fast forward yaakov avinu hears that this boy his beloved son yosef whom he thought was dead is now alive yaakov avinu travels down to mitraim and the torah describes that encounter of all encounters for the very first time and i want to go back into the pasuk so that each of us understand and feel exactly what yaakov avinu felt and yosef he comes he sees his father from far in goshen comes up he sees his father after not seeing him after all this time after all this heartbreak after being thrown into prison after going through all his nisionos in its rhyme after being the only jew in mitzrayim and he falls upon his father's neck and you'll see if weeps and he weeps and he weeps and yaakov what does he do six words that's it how's it possible what happened to all the emotion what happened to all the pain what happened to all the heartbreak what happened to all the trauma what is the torah trying to teach us in that moment of challenge what did yaakov avinu think and what is the legacy that he gave us until today we his daughters bait ya akov that's who we are we're his daughters what is it that yaakov avinu wanted to teach us to give us what's his legacy what's his gift what was he thinking the moment that he saw his son yo safe he saw that yosef was royalty second to the king in mitzrayim he saw that yosef was exotic the only one in the torah called it sadiq yosef had sadik because he remained loyal and faithful to all the teachings of his father of his mother that's yosef and in that very moment yaakov avinu felt pain and joy sorrow grief and all at the same time and all the emotions just collided he was so filled with so much inside of him do you know what he saw at that moment he saw a din he saw judgment he saw hardship he saw pain and he saw rachel he saw compassion he saw goodness he success and at that moment instead of just falling into all of that emotion and trauma he took all of that feeling that was inside of him and he called out my israel hashem compassion goodness elokeno hardship pain heartbreak hashem but it's all one it all comes from one source hashem compassion that means that sometimes i don't see the plan and i don't understand what's happening and my heart is full and my soul is breaking but at the very same time i say hashem eloquenu hashem i accept upon myself all ma the legacy the responsibility of being a jew of living and dying with ammunition with complete faith in hashem in my god in my torah in my people that's what it means to be a jew to live with the faith of knowing hashem and to know that with all my life with all my heart with all my soul so what yaakov avinu is teaching us at that moment is number one when you have emotion do you know what you do my dear women when you have tears when your heart is breaking don't just leave it at tears don't just leave it at being broken-hearted and sobbing and weeping on your pillow do you know what we do nation sid carniels righteous women who brought us out of mitzrayim and who will bring us out of this galas this long and dark goddess in tagula we davin we open up our tehillim and we use our tears to break through the barriers of shamayim how do you know that you've had a good workout when you go to the gym you sweat reverse teaches us that you know when you cry that you've given your neshama your soul the greatest workout possible your tears are the sweat of your neshuma of your soul now imagine taking that sweat and opening up it to hillary crying out and saying my israel [Music] hashem there are times of joy hashem there are times of sorrow but i know with emunah shalema just as yaakov avinu knew that it all comes from hashem and i have that faith and i have that amuna this has been the mission statement of amusrel for thousands and thousands of years this is who we are this is our oxygen my full name is i was named for my bubby the rabbit since she was the rabbit sin of a city called natadvar in hungary and eyewitnesses have told us that in her very last moments in this world she was taken away to the gas chambers of auschwitz in her arms she was holding her grandchildren but the last words that she ever uttered were the words that yaakov avinu uttered my israel hashem hashem no matter what i go through i have the amuna and i believe everyone listening here tonight everyone sitting in this room or everyone watching at home must know that the only way that you are here and i am here is because we've had bubbies and sadies grandparents whether it be in bavel in babylonia in rome during the crusades in morocco in syria in egypt in hungary in russia in slave labor camps in siberia it doesn't matter where but our bubbies and zadies who came before us did not give up their faith and their ammuna that's the only way that we are here today because we are the daughters of yaakov who never gave up and they understood this there will be pain and there will be hardship and we don't always understand but you know what we say we say the shema because we believe we have that emunah and on a personal note i must share with you that in the very last months of my mother's life over and over my mother would say to me and to my siblings kindred children i know what i see the world is on fire and we are sleeping was five years ago before the anti-semitism that took over our college campuses in our world before the pandemic before all the chaos and i didn't understand and over and over again my mother said to me kendall i know what i see the world is on fire and we are sleeping get the jewish people to say shema and i didn't understand get the jewish people to say shema how why and then last week after this tragedy i heard something incredible that this beautiful nishama liel this young sweet nishama who touched so many lives in her life and after her neshama left this world one of her final texts was to her friends to say remind me to say the shema is that not a message for each and every one of us so i ask that all of us take upon ourselves in the zuchut of this nishama who is tragically taken in this of all of us trying so hard to think how do we get through the pain and how do we get through the sorrow to take upon ourselves every morning and every night and if we already say the shema to take a moment and say before we say the shema and quiet hashem i take upon myself now kabbalat with complete faith i believe hashem and i take upon myself the responsibility to be a jew just this morning when i was davening these words jumped out at me we are so blessed we are so lucky we're so happy we're so fortunate why you and i i'm talking about us because you and i we have an incredible legacy an incredible gift an incredible urushion incredible inheritance and do you know what it is ashreinus we are so fortunate we're so blessed because evoker in the night time and in the bulker in the morning we say two times a day israel has [Music] do you know what that means arab is not just the evening erev is the arab of our life when things seem very dark and difficult and vocar is the morning when the sun is shining and you feel that everything's going your way do we say the shema only in the bulkheart do we say the shema accept our moon only when we feel that things are going our way yaakov taught us hashem in the night time and in the daytime this is our legacy in our yarusha this is your koa this is my koa this is the ko havam israel but i want to ask you my dear women from where did yaakov avinu get this goat where did he get this energy from where did he get this understanding from where did he get this this strength from because if we can understand that then we can understand for ourselves how to tap in to our spiritual dna to the koa that each and every one of us has but we don't even realize that we have how to recharge our spiritual batteries so before yaakov was coming down to mitzrayim he had a vision vayomi elokim israel hashem spoke to israel and who is israel if not yet in his highest state the mariahlila in a vision of the night vayomer and hashem said yakovyakov yakoviyakov because hashem loved him so much hashem used his name it's language of love when you use somebody's name by yo muhine and he said here i am hashem ready to serve by omar and hashem said hashem the god of your fathers al tira yakov don't be afraid meredith mitsurama from going down to mitzrayim i'm going to make you into an incredibly huge nation and also i'm going to come up with you my friends why was yaakov avinu frightened and how did hashem give him the hammer and salas if we can understand that then any time that we feel frightened we can tap into these words because hamish is alive is alive it's not just yaakov avinu it's you it's me it's all of us this is our story why was he frightened yaakov avinu knew at that moment that he was going down into gallus and when you go down into galas it's so frightening what's going to be with me hashem what's going to be with my children how are we ever going to get out of this hole this pit this whole shot this darkness this pain this suffering the hardship has shown what's going to be what's going to be on the word israel our seven little crowns and the balturn tells us something that we really have to think about he goes through seven hardships that yaakov avinu went through the seven hardships that he went through the hatred of asav lovan's trickery the battle of the angel of asav the tsar of dina the loss of yosef the taking of shimon in mitzrayim the separation of binyamin shiver ye paul zadek seven times at sadiq falls but what that come and he gets up yaakov avinu actually took all of these different hardships and you know what he did he made crowns out of them from the darkness comes the light that's what we have to do when we find ourselves in a place of hardship from the darkness comes the light and as i was studying this and absorbing this because hashem said tiaco vavinu yaakov my son my child yakov understand that as hard and difficult as all these hardships were you got through them you got up and just as you went through all those hardships and all those heartbreaking times but you made it i'm with you and you're going to make this too so as i'm studying this a pasta comes to me and it's a puzzle for michael and it's so beautiful i want us to think about this as we think about lyell and we think about all the pain that army israel is going through both as a nation and personally don't be happy my enemies when you see everything that we are going through kina faulty because i have fallen comte i'm going to get up i promise you i will not stay on my knees because when i sit in darkness hashem orally hashem is my light he has a vision in the night and he's trembling he's terrified hashem says just as all those hardships were resolved i want you to take this message with you forever and ever and the message is this that yaakov got from hashem al-tira don't be afraid when you go down to mitzrayim anokhi raid in this is a promise not just a yaakov it's a promise to you it's a promise to me it's a promise to all of us everyone has their own personal mitzrayim which rhyme comes from the word tsar i'm choking i can't breathe i can't breathe and hashem says don't be afraid because i'm going to go down with you emo your heart is breaking hashem's heart is breaking too hashem sees every tear hashem feels every pain it hurts hashem too godless hurts death hurts grieving hurts a lack of shoulder bias hurts any pain that we experience hurts and it hurts too but we have to know the only way that you and i are here tonight is through nissan and miracles look at me i shouldn't be here my parents my grandparents went through horrible destruction how many how many did we lose in my meshbach in my family aunts and uncles and grandparents and great grandparents and cousins an entire daughter and if you would ask at that time who will be in 2021 standing will it be hitler yamashima and all the nazis or will it be the jews their children and grandchildren who will live and who will die would we ever have imagined that amy's robe would be flourishing the way that we are today would we ever imagine that we would stand in yerushalayim at the kotel it's miracles why because hashem promises i'm going down with you but just as i'm going down with you my beautiful kindred my children i'm going up with you too and that's the first message there's one more message i want us to go home with tonight before yaakov avinu leaves this world he gathers his children around because he knew that he was dying and soon his neshama was leaving and yaakov called to his children and understand when the torah says his children that's you that's me by yomer and he said hey come together [Music] i'm going to tell you about the days of mashiach i'm going to tell you when mashiach is going to come kinder children listen to me before i leave this world i want to tell you you're going to go through terrible gullus terrible darkness terrible the afopiachi is mameya and even though you're going to wait and wait and wait and you'll think he's delayed him called you're going to wait and he's going to come and you're going to see meshiach but at that moment the shrine left and yaakov avinu lost the ability to relate to his children and to us the date and time and year that mashiach would come so what did yaakov avinu do and why did that happen he gave us a final message [Music] us you and i he come to gather together come together join together how do you call do inhale but say the same as he comes through the same letters when you make your khala and you bring it together you know what you're really doing you're creating israel come together the way that you make your holiday come together because after it comes together it rises this is a message for us hiccups who come together don't look at each other's differences enough with all the fighting and arguments and locusts sometimes you walk around sometimes you know sometimes i'll be in a supermarket and you just hear conversations coming out of phones he said that she said that the teacher did this and what's happening above us for what for what what are we accomplishing what are we doing there's so many in this world who hate us and we should hate each other what does every parent want you sit down to your shabbos table what do you want you go on a vacation you're driving in a car what do you want just get along just get along the minute the kids start fighting in the back seat everything goes south you can have the most beautiful shabbos table with the greatest desserts the most incredible striker rewards sushi cowboy sticks the whole thing cigars every community has their thing but if you're fighting at the table if you're fighting at the table nobody wants to be there we want to invite hakadosh to our table so yaakov avinu is telling us this is how you're going to do it he comes to come together stop fighting max shalom tonight you go home call somebody that you know is hurting do it for am israel do it for the hell do it for gaula vishimo and hear each other shimou beneako hear each other my children give each other a voice don't knock each other down he's talking to me he's talking to you hear me right now because i'm talking to you so what is it that we need to do not long ago i was invited to speak in a community and after my talk there were 10 women who asked if we could have a conversation we sat around a table it was a great night and at the close of that conversation one woman raised her hand and she said do you mind if i ask you just one more question of course i said she told me and she told all of us that she has a child a little girl with special needs and every single night at one o'clock in the morning at two o'clock in the morning at three o'clock in the morning at four o'clock in the morning at five o'clock in the morning her little girl can't stop crying she puts her back into her little bed and then she cries again and again what do you say she said to me what can you tell me about this little girl of mine who's always in pain and her mommy who's always in pain what can i say and then i look around the table and you know what i see i see something that was the most beautiful sight every single woman sitting at that table is crying tears when amy's role was finally taken out of mitzrayim the posix says the gum anisha mati and i also heard the cries of am israel what do you mean also a kareshbar who said that the moment that i saw that each of you were crying for each other then i could hear your cries and i can cry for you too the moment that each of you and each of us can daven for each other and feel each other's pain as if it's my pain and it's not your pain the moment that those barriers and separations come down and you could sit at a table and every woman is crying for this woman that's a moment of kabula listen to me why did hashem cover the date and not allow yaakov avinu to tell us when mashiach is coming because it's not about the date and it's not about the deadline and it's not about the character of the day or the calendar do you know what it's about hashem wants us to find from each other if you and i could leave tonight and cry for each other if you and i can feel each other's pain if you can take one person's name who needs a shidduch who needs shalom bias who's waiting for a baby to hold in their arms who needs a refusal who's struggling with parnasso is there not enough pain in this world if we can feel it that's the key to goula and that's what yaakov avina wants to us to know so i close with this my dear dear friends we began tonight with speaking about the power of shema on the day that my mother arrived to bergen-belsen she was so so frightened terrified covered with lice her head shaven what will be starving will we ever get out of the skin freezing and she was just a little girl she put her hand in her pocket and she felt a paper she took out the paper and what did she find my sadie my mother's tati had put in my mother's pocket the page from the sitter that said she my israel thank you so much thank you everyone for joining us and um the tonight should not be the the um the just for coming to this amazing show which is a tremendous merit but we should all have all the men's fault that we're gonna do bracha as rebecca said an extra mitzvah we're going to do and have in mind um the name lyell dino better friendly dina by the frame and thank you everyone for joining us tonight