Rebbetzin Tziporah Heller GOES VIRAL "Building Your Own Beit HaMikdash" www.yiboneh.com

Welcome ladies. We're a little late, but slight delay. So, Rabbitson Heller is internationally known as an outstanding scholar of Jewish studies as well as a gifted lecturer. Many of you know her and that's why you're here. So, this is her Torah fan club and we're just welcoming you, Rabbitson. Hi, it's so nice to see you. I didn't think I would know anybody here. So, the when we talk about rebuilding our own base of migdash, there are a few things that we have to say by way of introduction. One is the whole concept of base of migdash is very foreign to us. There's nobody here in this room who even could dream of what the base of migdash must have been and I'll tell you why. Rambam says something interesting. He says human capacity is only to envision something that has some basis of of your experience. So, here's his his example of this. There's anyone who's seen a bird and anyone who's seen who's seen iron could envision an iron bird that flies in the sky like a plane but oh, he didn't say like a plane. An iron bird that flies in the sky, but if you've never seen metal and you've never seen a bird, it would be outside of your range. So, we talk about the base of migdash, we're talking about something that's out of our range. Our experience is such that there is a wall that separates the material world from the spiritual world that can't be broken. So, even though academically we know it, intellectually we know that the person next to you is somebody who if you were to say, "Who is this?" the answer would have to do with their soul, not their body. But we see them as a body. This is how we are. We see ourselves physically. The base of migdash was the only place that ever existed in which this wall that separates physical and spiritual existence was wasn't there. You could see the stones and you see the soul of the stones. You could see the metal and you saw the soul of the metal. So, the experience of going into the base of migdash was one in which because that wall came down, it changed the way we saw anything. So, the base of migdash was a magnet. So, I want to take you back and talk about the history of the base of migdash briefly and then a little bit about by Tisha B'Av and then we'll go right into our topic, which is what to do with this. So, when Hashem created the world, it says that he took the dust of the earth to form Adam's body. Not the dust of earth or not earth, but the dust of the earth. It's very specified. So, Rashi brings us two chapters, two explanations from the Talmud. One is that he took dirt from all over the world to make the human body. And that's indeed why there trace metals from all over in our body, which is a a question that biologists still ask. The other thing he says is he took earth from where the altar would later stand in the base of migdash, from a common mistake. So, Mahara explains these are not two separate ideas. These ideas are one idea, which is that the place of atonement is universal. The place of the the of atonement is made of earth from all over. Then rather enigmatically, Rashi continues and says that the reason why earth had to be used from all over was in order that human beings could be buried any place. That was we observe animals could die anywhere. They could be the earth the earth will absorb their remains. So, why does a human being need sanctified earth to be buried, special earth that corresponds to his body? So, the reason is that even though we see the body and soul is completely completely separate, they're not. When it says that humans were made in God's image, this applies to our bodies as well. Everything about our bodies, even simple things like the fact we have two ears and two eyes, but only one mouth, is meant to tell us something about ourselves. So, in the base of migdash, so that's my introduction. So, now let's look at the base of migdash. The base of migdash as you know means sanctified house, but the fact is that it wasn't even though when you look at the pictures of the base of migdash, you see this huge white building. The base of migdash was in fact a series of courtyards ending with this large building. So, I have a courtyard and then and anyone can go in the the courtyard. Another one that's more exclusive, only Kohanim and Levi'im. Another one that's more exclusive, as by Yisrael. And then finally you get to the entrance of this large building, which is called the Dvir. Only Kohanim and only when they're there for a reason. And then you can move into the room that's called Heichal, which is divided into two, Kodish and Kodish Kodashim. The room that's called Kodish has the menorah, the sacred table, the incense altar. Then there's a curtain and behind that curtain is Kodish Kodashim. And Kodish Kodashim, I want you to hear this clearly. In the second base of migdash, you know what was in there? How many of you know what was in there in the second base of migdash? Nothing. The ark had either been taken off to Babylon or buried. So, there was a stone there, but that's all there was. Nonetheless, even though there was nothing tangible there, it was considered the holiest of all possible places. And the holiness was attained in the second temple year so much that if you would study the history of the second temple, you find there were so many Kohanim Gedolim is because the person had to have the spiritual fortitude to be there even a moment, otherwise he would die. It's a hugely holy place. So, what you see is that we move from a place that's accessible to more people into a place that can't even really be described in human terms. There was nothing that your eye could have held onto and say, "That's it." So, what does this have to do with kedusha and what does this have to do with our building our own base of migdash? The word kedosh in Hebrew means separate. Separate from what? Separate is always from something. Separate from what? So, the answer is separate from anything that limits you. So, I want you to think about this for a moment. All of us are limited. There's nobody here who's unlimited. What are the things that limit us as human beings? I'm putting this to you. I'm not asking rhetorically. What keep What limits us? What makes us Our minds are limited. It's something to think about. We can't know everything. We can't retain every bit of information. We have limited access. So, we're limited because of the limitations of the intellect. What else? What else limits us? Mhm? Physical limitations. I don't hear you. Physical Physical. We're only going to live so long and no longer. And our bodies can only do so much and not more. Is that true? It's true. We're limited by time. We're limited by space. We're limited by subjectivity. So, kedusha means not denying those limitations, but rising above them and taking the body with you. So, there's a mitzvah in the Torah, kedoshim tiyu, be holy. So, what are you supposed to do with that? You can't say, "Okay, from now on I'll know everything. From now on I'll live forever. From now on I could, you know, Superman, you remember him, right?" Okay. Faster than the the most superhuman What are you going to do with that? You can't get past limits. So, there are two there are two responses that the commentators make that are well known. Rashi says something that nobody in this room will like. He says that what limits you the most in terms of being able to take your physical body and bring it into the world of unlimitation, non-limitation, is by having extraordinary extraordinary willingness to make lines that separate you from any possible act of promiscuity. So, he says what takes the soul and lowers it to having the limitations of the body is everything that relates to promiscuity. So, it means that your emotions become tangible, physical. Your heart becomes finite. Everything about you becomes devoted towards physical experience. That's what Rashi says. Ramban disagrees with him. He says, "Wait a minute. We already know not to indulge in these things." And he says, "No. To be holy, you have to separate yourself from all of the things that are permitted that limit you. Don't be drunk on kosher wine. Don't be a glutton on kosher food. Don't drown in materialism." But that doesn't tell us how to be holy. It only tells us how to not be unholy. So, neither Rashi nor Ramban answered their own question. They just said, "Here are the limitations that keep you from being holy. Don't be promiscuous. Here are the limitations. Don't be materialistic. But, how do you yes be holy?" Let's say you can clean the slate. Then what? How do you become a holy person? And when you look at the Beit Hamikdash, it's called the place of holiness. What you see is apparently the pathway to holiness is becoming more and more inwardly directed to come to this holy place where there's nothing to even look at in the time of the second temple. And in the time of the first one, there was just the altar. So, now we have the main topic that we have to discuss, which is what does this have to do with us? So, often times when you're talking about how do you discover something, this could be in science, this could be in the process of therapy, those of you who are interested in therapeutic methodology, you have to first get past all of the stuff. Do you know what I mean when I say this? Not this, not this, not this, not this, but this. You have to go through this. So, similarly in the path towards kedusha, Rashi and Ramban told us how to get rid of all the stuff. Okay. What destroyed the Beit Hamikdash is going to tell us what the stuff is that you have to get past. So, I'm going to first talk to you about Beit Rishon and then Beit Sheini and then us. Beit Rishon, when you read the books of prophecy, you'll see that the prophets were consistently consistently railing again and again and again against idol worship. And I worship this idol and that idol and and when you read this, you feel good. You know how there are like commandments in the Torah that make you feel guilty, like the ones against speaking lashon hara? Then but they had don't throw your child to the Molech. That's marvelous. Okay. Never even like never even even when they were teenagers, I never even thought of doing that. So, you know, that's a good commandment. Um So, you you know, you're reading Yechezkel. Yechezkel is so dramatic, you know, like all of this like horrific punishment that's coming to those who worship idols. You go, "Yeah, that's what happens to those who worship idols. Okay." But, uh there's more to it than that. We also have railing against violence. We also have against promiscuity. But, I want to tell you what the Gemara says and this is about Beit Rishon. It says that they lost the zechut avot. They lost the merit of the forefathers. That's hard to picture. And I want to I didn't say it correctly. Tam was zechut avot. It was finished. They used it up. Zechut isn't something physical. You can only use up something physical. You can't use up jealousy. There's always more jealousy in the world. You can't lose up use up affection. There's always more affection. How do you use up zechut avot? So, here's how Maharal explains it. Zechut avot lives where? In us. There's not some abstraction called zechut avot. There's something in you that's like Avraham. What's like Avraham in us? Everyone in this room, and I could say this with absolute security, even though I don't know some of you, I don't know most of you, um we love chesed. Now, somebody here could say, "Personally, I don't love chesed. Maybe she thinks I love chesed. I don't know." So, I'm going to I'm going to give you another word for chesed. What chesed really is is heading towards a goal by going beyond yourself. All Jews go beyond themselves. We have no choice. It's our internal makeup. We go beyond our limitations. So, one form of chesed is being kind to each other. Another form of chesed is tefillah where you're going beyond self and going and speaking to God. Another form of chesed would be be going beyond self and pursuing any real ideal. These are all chassidim. So, the Gemara says we lost the Avraham within us. Could you lose that? You could. Not completely. It goes into galus. It goes into hiding, but it could leave your consciousness. How do you do that? So, there's an equation that's made. Okay, and I'm going to spare you the equation for a minute until we talk about Yitzchak. It says we lost the zechut of Yitzchak. What was Yitzchak's big zechut? So, you talk about Yitzchak having midat ha gvurah, being a person of great strength. So, what kind of strength are we talking about? We're talking about the ability to be totally devoted. Totally devoted to Hashem. To the point that you'll fight any battle to do Hashem's will. So, there were times in our history, how many of you here are Ashkenazim? Chacham So, um you all had ancestors who could have made their lives extremely easy by saying one sentence. You know what that sentence is? I believe in him. And they didn't. So, sometimes the yetzer hara is the part of us that's strong has an external enemy and we met that enemy head-on. Every single one of you is a descendant of people who made choices such as this. And what is that parallel? Wait a minute. We'll talk about Yaakov. Okay, Yaakov. Yaakov's main trait, as you know, is truth. How could truth be a trait? Chesed could be a trait. There are people who are very empathic by their natures and who do acts of kindness. They would go beyond self in many different directions. But, how could what's how is truth a trait? A lot of us don't lie frequently. Well, many of us lie less frequently than we used to. So, I want to tell you what truth is because we have um a mistaken idea of what truth is. Truth is the whole picture. So, it's not verbal accuracy. You could verb you could be verbally accurate and not be telling the truth. I'll give you an example of that. Who was Hitler? Hitler was a vegetarian. That's verbally ac- That's verbally accurate. It's not the truth. That's not who Hitler was. Okay, so from that perspective, Yaakov could see the entire picture. And the proof of that is that he could give each of his sons a different blessing. They were very different from each other and very different than him because he saw the truth in each of them. So, as I said, I will tell you in a moment what this has to do with anything. I will. If you're like Avraham, if you move beyond self, there's no way that one of the sins that the prophets were talking about could be in your repertoire. That sin would be promiscuity because all promiscuity is exploitative. Now, I want to make a point here because men and women are different in this regard. When you tell a man promiscuity is exploitative, do you think they agree with you or disagree with you? They absolutely agree. When you tell a woman promiscuity is exploitative, what do they say? No. I want to be beautiful. I want to be desired. I want to be beloved. I want to have somebody in my life. But, what they never say is I want to rise beyond self. And that's the nekudah that's missing when you're talking about promiscuous relationships. If you have Yitzchak within you, if you have Yitzchak within you, you can't serve idols. If you're that devoted to God, you can't serve an idol. But, nobody here, as we mentioned already, serves idols. In the Gemara, there are two traits that are presented as being analogous to idol worship. Do you know what they are? Only two. There are so many bad traits. Anger because the voice of anger, have you noticed this yet? It's always It's like Did you Did you ever live next to somebody who's learning the piano? Okay, so I remember when I was when I was a child in America, my neighbor was learning the piano. They were little girls. And they would play the same song again and again and da da da dum dum dum dum da da da dum. Do you remember this? Okay, and Okay. So, anger only knows one song. It applies that same song to every life situation. Here's the song. This isn't the way it should be. It should be the way I want it to be. Give me an example of something trivial that a person could get angry about. Traffic. This isn't how it should be. A person should be able to get from Har Nof to Baka in less than an hour. This is not how it should be. This is ridiculous. Somebody should write a letter to their congressman or whatever one does in Israel. Give me an example of something major. Something major that's wrong, that is wrong. Um, having Losing a family member. This isn't how it should be. I shouldn't be alone. I shouldn't be lonely. I shouldn't be Okay. Terror. This isn't how it should be. Right? But it's the same It shouldn't be the way I don't want it to be. So we apply it to the Holocaust and we apply it and we use the same for ingrown toenails. We We don't know another So this is everything should be the way I want it to be is self-worship. Okay? If you're Yitzchak, you don't worship yourself. Okay, if you're Yakov, and this is what's going to take us with significance, which we're getting to. You see the truth. If you see the truth, you can't murder another person. Now another mitzvah that you can feel good about is not murdering. Get up in the morning. Didn't murder anyone today. No, no, no, no. Another good day. Yeah. Okay. Um So the Halachic definition of murder, by the way, is killing somebody who's of no threat to you. So we certainly didn't do that. Okay. But there's again only one thing that's considered analogous to murder. What's that? Humiliating someone. Okay. If you see the truth of someone, you can't humiliate them. Somebody said lashon hara. Lashon hara is considered to be more severe than murder. You can't speak lashon hara against someone unless you've lost track of the truth of their godliness. But that was the first temple. How many of you think here that we've rectified all three of these things? So a good question you could ask is why did God let us come back and build the second temple? Because we didn't. So the second temple was built not in the merit of the avos because we lost that and you can see we haven't regained it totally. It was rebuilt in the merit of klal Yisrael. Which means even if this person isn't whole, that person may be more whole and together together zechut avot still lives within us. Could you see where this is true? So I want to give you examples of this. Not everybody in this room is perfectly kind to everybody all of the time, I'm sure, because we're all human. But klal Yisrael is full of chesed. Is that true? Let's have examples of that. Come. Let's hear who we are. Some chesed in the characterized klal Yisrael. The amount of gemachim you have. The HarNof phone book has something like 120 pages. 26 of them are the gemachim. Okay, we see it's we What happened to A and B? It starts with G. No, no, no. That's just the introduction. Tell me some more chesed that we do that are unique. Would you find that in the Manhattan phone book? You would not. Know some more kindnesses of klal Yisrael. Let's hear. What? Packages of food. Who was in Nepal after the calamity? Who was in any place in the world after the calamity? Who's worried about the people in Gaza starving to death? Trust me, not the Syrians. Okay, clear? We have this as a group. We don't necessarily always have it individually and purely. Klal Yisrael has Avraham. Klal Yisrael has Yitzchak. We're very devoted. We have the ability to do what Hashem wants of us. What's the proof of that? What's the proof that we have spiritual consciousness of who we are as people? We're here. We are here. Nobody is here in this room for any other reason than a deep feeling of loyalty to something beyond self. Isn't that true? And this isn't only true of you. This is true of all of those Israelis who push to get on the bus, who talk lashon hara about. Every last one of them is is here because something within them says you could be here. Every one of us has a certain sense of truth. And every so often it comes out. I remember the events of last summer during the war. We were so united. We all had a sense of this that we're in it together and there's no one to turn to but God. I remember um a certain radio moderator whose name I will not say because I'm trying to be careful. Some of you might have heard this interview. He said, "You religious people are saying tehillim. But you're a fringe group. Real is the real Israel isn't there at all. Don't you know that?" He was speaking He said this to Rav David Lau. You know what he What what Did I Do you know what if you know Rav Lau answered him? He said, "I don't know what real Israel you know, but I was with the other Israel, the one you don't know, in Tel Aviv last night where there were 20,000 people in Kikar Rabin saying tehillim." These aren't people who otherwise be living in Bnei Brak. He didn't say that, I did. Okay, so he's tactful and refined. Okay, so um This is who we are. So why was the second temple destroyed and what are we going to do about it? So the second temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam. Now that also can make you feel good about yourself. No one gets up in the morning and says, "I want to hate somebody for no reason whatsoever today. Let's open the phone book. Okay, who could I find? Olive? Okay, Olive, why I need Nobody even called Olive. That's who I'm going to hate. Okay, no. No one thinks they hate people senselessly. Americans are in denial about hating people at all. But certainly not senselessly. So we're going to redefine hate and we're going to redefine senseless. What does love mean? Give me a reasonable definition of love. Caring for someone. Okay, so that's why you could use this word for many different levels of love, right? Caring for newborn is different than caring for a spouse. You can care for a neighbor, right? Okay, it has to do with caring has to do with closeness and concern, right? And I want to thank you, nobody felt it necessary to say love is never having to say you're sorry. Okay, so um Hate is not caring for someone. That's what it is. Hate means you don't care about someone. The Hebrew word for cruel is achzar. Achzar is two words that have been put together to give you a concept. The words are ach, meaning only, and zar, meaning estranged, a stranger. Hatred means when you see other people and when you look at them, you see a stranger. You see somebody who you don't care about. So what does chinam mean? So chinam means without just cause. There are times when you have to estrange yourself from someone. If they're a threat to you, you have to estrange yourself. But there's lots of hatred out there and again, hatred doesn't mean hatred. It means lack of feeling concern and empathy towards people just because they're not us. That's what sinat chinam is. Now those of you who know me know that I don't speak from notes, but I have something here that I want you to to learn with you. It's um a perek from It's a perek from Tanya and then I'm going to take it in a whole different direction. So starting in the middle of the perek because of time limitations, what he says is that if you want to love someone, you have to realize that their struggles are the same as your as yours. What does that mean? Okay, so when a person looks at themselves, I'm going to give you an exercise now. I want you to go back to the worst moment in your life in a moral sense. I want you to go back to your worst moment of defeat, when you really did the wrong thing in a circumstance where you should have known better. I'm not going to ask to share. 60 seconds to think of your worst moments. Does that feel the one? You've all come up with things? Okay. So, if you had to revisit that place, you were forced by some unseen hand to revisit that place, and you could press a button and make that everything would be different now. Would you press that button? Okay. So would everybody else who makes bad choices. So, when you're talking about seeing the truth in another person, that means learning to get past defining other people by their bad choices. So, um I want to make that I want to make very clear the difference between this and situational morality. Here's how situational ethics work. Were any of you Russian? No. Who looks like this? Okay. One person. It has to be somebody. Okay, so there's somebody here especially note they probably know that in the bad old days, okay, um people who did things that the government viewed as oppositional sometimes got sent to this vast northern area that they were called the Gulag. The Gulag was an unenclosed prison. There was no need for enclosures because there was no place to go. Frozen tundra in every direction. People were sent to the Gulag. Children were in the Gulag. Okay, sometimes as punishment to their parents, sometimes taken with their parents, whatever. Okay, a child in the in the Gulag had to be a thief. A child could not survive there without being a thief. Could you see where that's true? They didn't have the strength to work. They couldn't survive in the mines. They had to steal. The children became animalistic. The children of the Gulag were like little animals. The kind of animals that you don't want to wake to find or wake up and find in your bedroom. They could kill someone. Okay. Now picture a child of the Gulag ending up in Israel. And one day, they're in school and uh the teacher left his wallet her wallet on the table for a moment. Is that wallet going to get stolen? A hundred chances out of a hundred this wallet will be stolen. Okay? So, how many of you think that this child is really guilty? The child's not guilty, but stealing is still bad. You understand this? So, we're not saying stealing is bad under some circumstances and okay under others. No. Stealing is never good. The child is a victim of his environment and the proof of it is that he steals. Stealing is a tragedy. So, when you see other people do things that are wrong, you don't have to redefine wrong as right. But what you do have to do is be able to say this person is wrong, they lost their battle. They lost it. You don't have to redefine failure as victory. The same way what? The same way I lose my battles. So, this way of thinking of other people, where you could identify their battles and your battles as being one. You're fighting the war, let's say, what are some real challenges that people in this room have? Let's be real for a moment. What are some real challenges we face? The immense amount What? To be a mensch all the time. To be a mensch all the time. Dealing with health problems without without hatred towards anyone, without anger at anyone. These are real problems. Give me two more. We have economic struggles and again there's a moral component there. You have to be able to deal with economic problems without an bitterness, without anger, without stealing, without whatever. We have our issues. Somebody out there has different issues. Their issues are not dealing with anger in the face of economic struggle. Their issue is not any of the things you mentioned. Somebody out there may be coming from completely different place than you and their issue will be not closing other people out of their lives. Or their issue may be um not being physically violent when they don't know the words to say and their rage against a spouse or against a child has overwhelmed them. And you want to know something about these other people? They're going to fail sometimes. Want to know something about yourself? You're going to fail sometimes. So, you could either love them because you feel the pain of their failure, or you could hate them by disassociating because their failures are not your failures. They have different failures than yours. They belong to a different club. That's what sinas chinam means. Sinas chinam means you you hate someone, which means again only not feeling close and empathetic because their failures are not your failures. Okay, so why did that destroy the Beis Hamikdash? It destroyed the Beis Hamikdash because the in-fighting and the craziness was almost like it is today. Okay, so I'm going to just give you two instances of that and then we'll get a bit even more positive. Okay. Um You all know the Kamsa and Bar Kamsa story, right? So, I'm not going to repeat the story. You know the story. But if I was writing the story, the way I would have called it, I would have titled it the way it is in the Talmud. And the Talmud says because of Kamsa and Bar Kamsa, the Temple was destroyed and everyone was sent into exile. I would say because of the host, everybody was sent into exile. Why Kamsa? Who was Kamsa? Who was Bar Kamsa? The host wanted to invite Kamsa. By accident, he invited No, he wanted to invite Bar Kamsa. By By example, he invited by accident he invited Kamsa. Bar Kamsa didn't even do anything wrong. He wasn't even at the party. How could you possibly say that the Temple was destroyed because of him? You've all opened your mailbox and gotten somebody else's mail, right? Okay. So, Maharal explains that the word Kamsa was probably not anybody's name. Kamsa is this. You take something, you say it's for me. It's stingy. It's stingy It could be financial, could be emotional, could be spiritual, could be verbal. Are there people out there who are stingy? There are. You would think that that saying thank you costs a fortune. Okay. So, Kamsa and Bar Kamsa are names that are given to people whose main trait was saying it has to be for me. Now let's look at the party. Let's say this would happen to you. You arrive at a wedding. How many of you ever went to the wrong wedding? Am I the only one who ever did? You get there and you're like you're pretty sure it should be on a Tuesday night, but like everybody here looks like they're at Bar Mitzvah season. Gosh, this couldn't possibly be Kelsey's wedding. Okay. So, um you know, you're at the wrong wedding. Well, are you going to stick around anyway? No. If the person said you're not invited here, but like there are place cards for every table. There doesn't seem to be one with your name. Are you going to say I'm I'll pay you half the wedding? No. The only way a person would possibly do that is if their momentary need to say I'm right somehow you made a mistake. I should have been invited. There must be a mistake here. They didn't put out the cards. What are they doing? You know. It's all about self. Okay, when you when you're absorbed by self, there's no room for anybody else. That's Kamsa and Bar Kamsa. The political parties of this of that era were the same as the ones we have today. Did you know this? Note that if you read Josephus, if you read Josephus, which is a good read anyway, okay, there are three main political parties. One were the assimilationists who actually called themselves the friends of Rome. Those are the people who thought that if the Jews were more like the predominant civilization, then everything would be what? Hunky-dory. Okay, then there were the extreme nationalists. And then there were the ineffectual religious parties. Has anything changed at all? Nothing. Okay. We're still stuck there. Okay, so how do you get out of it? Okay. So, where is my page? I have this down to three simple steps. These steps were put together from various significances for him by a a rebbetzin in Monsey, Stort. Rebbetzin Jacobs. So, here are the three steps. You want to know how to rebuild the Beis Hamikdash? You begin with these three steps. First one. You have to be able to look at people when you see them and say everyone is part of me. Everyone is part of me. So, you know why you say that? Because it's true. So, the famous story in the Gamara about the man who was going on a sea trip and he bought a cabin. He has a cabinmate. He hears noise. He gets up in the middle of the night. The cabinmate has a drill, a hand drill. He says, "What are you doing?" He says, "What do you care? It's my half of the boat." Okay, this is uh you you can't be like this. So, when you say everyone is part of me, that doesn't mean that's not at all the same as saying everyone is exactly me or even like me. The allegory is that we're like the human body. So, when you look at the human body, even the toenail is as much part of the body as the brain. Is that true or not? But, the function of different parts of the body is different. The brain doesn't do what the hand does. The hand doesn't do what the digestive system does. Everyone has a different mission. But, you're part of the whole. When they came back to Israel to rebuild by it Shani, they knew this. We've lost this. So, it means there's somebody out there who's living a life that's totally different than yours, who you may disagree with for political reasons, for religious reasons, for personal reasons, but they have a different mission. And once you appreciate that, it's okay. Okay, um Okay, next. Here are some logical outcomes from saying everyone is part of me. Think of giving only 10 seconds for this one. Think of people who you dislike. You'll never go to a Torah lecture or any other prince teacher will tell you to do this. Think of people who you dislike. 10 seconds. Come up with a couple of people who you dislike. How many of you couldn't think of anybody who they dislike? Good for you. Two people didn't. The rest of us are honest. No, not really. Okay, so Now that you've singled out this person, there are probably good reasons for your disliking them. It's not nobody is seen us keen on I just feel like like disliking someone today. It's either what they did or what they are. Is that true? And there could be overlap. When you realize that this person is part of you, like your hand is part of your body, then if you say, "I dislike this person because of what they did or what they are," what you're saying is there's a part of me I will never accept. Because that person is part of me. So, when you went back a few moments ago to your bad moments, you remember this still? What did you do in the wake of the bad moment? I don't want to know what the bad moment is. I want to know what you did with it. When you have moments of failure, what do you do next? Resolve not to do it again. You make good resolutions. But, when you're still feeling very bad, you probably eat chocolate, go to sleep, and and vent to a friend. Okay? You can see this? You don't jump out the window. Okay, so be that person for somebody. This person who you don't like what they do and you don't like who they are, realize they failed. Have compassion. They have a different mission. They're not supposed to be living your life. Have enough compassion that you could help them through their moments of failure. Okay, next. Um You know how people will say Pretend Okay, here's a game to play. Pretend I couldn't come tonight. I'm still I'm still stuck in traffic. Okay, yeah. Actually, I wasn't even stuck. We were lost. But, in any case So, um pretend Here I am lost or stuck in traffic, either one. Okay, so who could they get to come? Gosh, it's a problem. So, instead of getting me, they get the Baba Sali, recently risen from the dead. Okay? So, here Here So, here I am now I'm Baba Sali. Okay. And I tell you that I can I can see all of your pasts. Now, that with him this is probably true. Okay. So, would you all be fascinated to know what he would say about you? Okay. So, people will say yes. But, suppose it really happened. Now, remember I'm not being Baba Sali. The point is that I could see you. You're stingy. You're dishonest. You're And I'm going to go through the faults of Obviously, what I said isn't true. Um the faults of everyone. Would you still like me then? No. We don't really like to know the truth about ourselves, and I want to tell you why. The Gamara tells us that before a child is born, it has to make an oath. The oath has clauses. One of the clauses is to eat sadik for a team of a shot. You have to be righteous and not wicked. And until the child makes the oath, it can't be born. So, in the back of everybody's mind is a desire to see themselves as good. I'm okay. So, people who live terrible lives redefine good. But, they'll always want to say on some level that they're okay. So, what does that have to do with anything? The fact that you want to see yourself as okay and this other person is part of you means you have to change the way you talk about them. Don't speak lush and hara. It's about yourself that you're speaking. Don't make accusations. They're accusations ultimately about yourself. Okay. Next. So, step one is see everyone as part of yourself. So, I want to bring this into reality a bit. Picture of a situation, a domestic situation. It's very easy to, you know, um where Let's see something that would really aggravate you. You tell a teenage child that It even It only helps to call them a teenage child. That makes it a little bit better. Okay? Tell a teenage child or somebody in their 20s, um "I expect better of you. I expect that when I talk to you, you could tell me the truth." And their answer to that is telling you another lie. Could that Could get Could that be terribly upsetting? Could be terribly upsetting. So, here are two avenues you can go to. One is, "I can't believe a word you say. You're a liar. What is wrong with you? How do you expect to have a relationship with anyone?" Okay? That's choice A. Okay? Choice B is thinking for what this Put yourself in the shoes. This child is so insecure, he can't tell the truth unless it'll make him feel okay. I have to make him feel safe. Okay, clear? It's a choice. Now, that choice doesn't mean lying is good. Doesn't mean it's okay. It doesn't mean it's okay. It means it's not good, but because this child is part of me, I'm going to help him get out of this. Okay, um People are going to fail. So, when you look at people who fail, who who steal, who were violent, who do who do terrible things. Could there be Jews who do these things? There could be. Okay, so you have to internalize it. The way you feel towards him is a measure of how much you care for the act of all Israel. So, I want to tell you a story about Rabbi Levine, who's one of my big heroes. So, he appointed himself the the chaplain of the prisons in the '20s and '30s. Now, this wasn't a real job. It isn't like the British hired him to be a chaplain. He appointed himself as chaplain. So, his job at first was a job in which all his congregation were real criminals. They weren't um You know, they weren't good people who failed. They were like rapists, murderers, you know, like the the works. And then later, when you get towards the late '30s, early '40s, they the neighborhood changed. Okay, instead of having criminals, they had people who were arrested by the British for opposing the British rule in Israel. So, they tended to be like very idealistic young men, very different than his original congregation. So, a man murdered his wife over him Kemper. My sister was over a a ridiculous quarrel. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the British. The prison population rejected him. They didn't want anything to do with him. They put him in sort of a hay room. So, the British didn't He stopped eating cuz he was depressed. I mean, you would be depressed. Have a life sentence and people are treating you like an outcast. That's depressing. So, um the British didn't want him to die in prison because it would make them look bad. So, they brought Reb Aryeh into the picture. What did Reb Aryeh say to this person? He didn't say, "Oh, you must have been like so upset that you didn't realize what you were doing." No, that would have justified murder and that would have put him that that's like saying to someone, "From you I expect nothing better." Which is that's not loving the person. That's patronizing. It's snobbish. It's like he didn't go there. He said, "You did something unspeakably evil. Hashem put you in prison. He gave you the opportunity to do teshuvah." "When you do real teshuvah, you'll be as holy as the highest tzaddik." And that took him out of his depression. So, now I'm going to give you a relatively contemporary version of the same story. Maiseh she haya, there was a girl in the bagel shop terribly depressed and out of it. And I saw this, but I didn't know what to do. You can't go over to somebody and say like, "You look out of it. Like you look like you're, you know, you're you're orbiting. What's the story?" So, um, you know, I was just like watching her. And one day she came over to me after a class on teshuvah. And in the class on teshuvah, reading the Rambam, I said a person could do teshuvah on anything. Those are the words of Rambam. So, she said, "I did something that nobody could do teshuvah on." What's the stupidest thing I could say? Come on, let's hear. What? Okay. So, she told, you know, she told me. She had an affair with her brother-in-law and her sister found out. Okay. Now, what am I supposed to say? So, I So, she said, "I can't do teshuvah for this." So, I didn't know what to tell her. So, I said, "I have to think more." I went to one of the rabbanim at Neve without identifying the girl in any way and I said, "What should I tell her?" So, she she said, "Take her to Reb Simcha Wasserman." Do any of you know who Reb Simcha Wasserman was? Uh, such a remarkable person. He was the the son of one of the gedolei dor of pre-war Europe, Reb Elchanan Wasserman. And the three months of his father's shadow. If I tell his story, it sounds like he had a terrible life. When he would tell his story, he would say he had a wonderful life. So, his father, who he was totally devoted to, was killed in the war. He survived. Um, he he would he married, they had no children. Okay. He started a yeshiva in Paris where many Jews came after the war. It failed. He started a yeshiva in California. It failed. He started another yeshiva in California. What do you think? It failed. He came to Israel, opened a yeshiva, and Doesn't it sound like a terrible life? Here's how he would say it. I had the zchus of my knowing my father for so many years and I can take this with me forever. And I made a yeshiva in Paris, all the bachurim who learned in there, but it was time for me to move on. Hashem made it that I knew it was time for me to move on. And in California, I had three yeshivas. So many bachurim, you know. God bless him. He saw all of his failures as successes because they he really did help people wherever he was. So, I didn't know much about him. He would come as a guest speaker to Neve every so often. So, I remember the first time I saw him. He looked like Santa Claus when he was old. I don't know what he looked like when he was young. He was small and round and white beard. And he came with the like notes like this. He didn't even begin reading them, which I haven't either actually, but he began to cry. He said, "You girls are so beautiful. You're so wonderful." What is Okay, God bless. It's very emotional and he was completely sincere. So, this is who the rav at Neve told me to take this girl to and it sounded like a good idea, especially since I didn't have any other ideas. So, he lived on Rechov Sorotzkin. I still remember this day. And as I got off the bus, like here's Rechov Sorotzkin deep in the Bible Belt, I'm thinking this is a mistake. He's not going to be able to relate to her. So, but I'm there already. I went down. He lived downstairs. Knocked on the door. There's his wife. Who does she look like? Mrs. Santa Claus. Okay, you know, she's a little round, an apron. Okay. A little tichel, big smile. And she yells, "Reb Simcha, we have guests. Some girls from the seminary came." I thought this girl was going to faint. Okay. So, she takes us into the living room. The living room looks just how you picture it. Like you see like embroidered things on the arms of the overstuffed furniture. Okay. There are tables with glass on top and pictures under the glass, the whole works. And then she takes us into the kitchen and she says, "What would you like? I have coffee and I have cocoa because some people like coffee." And this girl is like she's the the nicer she is, the more the girl is I mean I really thought she was going to die. I mean when it got to the chocolate chip cookies, I just hold on. Hold on. Get a grip. So, then we go into his study. Okay? He smiles and he says, "And what can I do for you girls today?" Is she going to say anything? Nope. So, you know, I have to talk and I didn't want to like I didn't want to say what So, I said, "Well, you know, this is a girl and she goes to seminary for ba'alas teshuvah and you know, things sometimes happen in the past and um Well, this happened. See, her sister got married. What's the worst thing that he could say now? Mazel tov to the musician by you. Okay. Okay. And I said, "No." I said, "No." And um, the brother-in-law was like a very attractive man. He got As soon as I said that, he got the whole story. It was short. So, he said, "You're the teacher kid?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "And you don't know the Rambam?" And I said, "No." He was short. He had a little ladder that he used to get the books on the high shelves. Takes out the Rambam and he's he to the laws concerning murder. So, what's a person do if they murder someone? What do they do? They can't bring the person back. So, they have to dedicate their their lives to making a parallel contribution to the world. If they took a life, they should save lives. Okay, clear? So, he said, "You did a terrible act, an act that's defiling and impure." Okay, no patronizing here. You have to devote your life to doing something pure. He said, "I want to you'll marry and when you marry, you should get a job. And when you have a job, this isn't just for your family. You should put aside money to help build a mikvah." And you know what? She did. But I want to tell you what made this story mean something to me cuz I didn't know that that would happen then. This was the closest I have ever seen to techiyas hametim. He revived the dead. So, what I mean by that is she was emotionally and spiritually gone and he revived her. So, this is what happens again when you see people who are wrong and you can feel compassion towards them. Last step. Okay, so the last step on her list is if you want to um if you want to like people, you have to be able to be committed to living what she would call the good life. I want to read what she wrote. When someone causes us pain, remember the blow is from Hashem. The person is just an agent and whatever happens is for our good. If this becomes our natural attitude, you can't hate. You can't harbor grudge. Forgiveness comes easily. The natural consequence is that we enjoy a good life free of the weight of anger, envy, bitterness, and nickel-and-diming accounts with others. What she say? The hardest thing to deal with when you feel hatred towards someone is if they've done you harm. Because we have this tricky little psychological mechanism. If I feel okay about him and he did me harm, that means the harm he did me isn't real. So, if the harm isn't real, then what's my pain about? You understand this? People think that if they can't blame someone, then the event didn't happen. People want the event to be validated. Yes, he did me harm. Imagine a child who comes from a very abusive home. Okay. Physically abusive, emotionally abusive. And they suffer all sorts of issues within themselves because of this. A good therapist will try to first before anything get them to realize they were the victim and somebody else was the perpetrator. That's basic. People feel if somebody says you could forgive, that they don't understand the pain. Once you realize that everything ultimately comes from Hashem. It comes through people, but from Hashem. Through people, they make their bad choices. But from Hashem, everything is different. People have the ability to walk through life and say, "I'll meet the challenge of whatever Hashem brought me." Instead of I'll spend the rest of my life in an bitterness and in anger against this person. So, I'm going to conclude, which I probably should have done a while ago, but that's life. Okay, I'm about to conclude so that's the good news for many of you. Okay, um with the a story of Reb Nachman, at least a fragment of a story. And this story some of you may know, it's the story of the tam and the chacham. So there were two children who grew up in a certain shtetl. One of them was a tam. He He approached life as it is. Everything is from God, everything is to be met, was simple. The other one was sophisticated. He had to deal with things in terms of his own feelings and logic. They grew to adulthood. They went in different directions. The more sophisticated son went to Warsaw. I'm making the story shorter than it normally is. Went to Warsaw. He saw the big city. He got a job in a store. He thought that he was really something but then he goes, "Nobody thinks a clerk is something. To be something you have to have a profession." He studied medicine. After he was a doctor, he goes, "People don't really think the world of doctors. There are thousands of doctors. You have to be make real money to get people to think of you." So he began to save his money that he earned as a doctor, make big investments, he got serious money. Went back to the shtetl to get married. Now in the meantime the simple son said, "Time to earn a living. Got to look for a job." And he took any old job. Okay. Now there was no He felt strongly with the sophisticated friend that he had to um He had to find a wife who had a similar background, which is why he went back to the shtetl to get married. There's no hotel in the shtetl so he stayed He's staying with his old friend, the tam. So here's how the tam would live. He would get up in the morning and he would tell his wife, "Wife, could you pass me my coat?" And she'd say, "Which one?" And he'd say, "My fine silk coat that I wear to shul every day." And she would toss him his old wool shmata coat because that's what he owned. And she And he'd say, "Great." He'd come home. She'd say, "What do you want for breakfast?" He'd say, "Well, if you ask what I want, I think I would like freshly squeezed orange juice and maybe some blintzes and a little side salad." And she said, "Well, what you earn, what you're getting is herring and bread." Okay? And he'd say, "Great." This is the tam. Skipping some episodes. The king was very curious about both of them. How could they maintain a friendship? He wanted to meet them. So he calls for them both. They're both summoned to the palace. So the sophisticate was sent a sophisticated messenger to call him. He said, "What's in it for the king? Why is he bringing me to the palace?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "Did the king give you instructions himself?" He said, "No, I'm I got through the secretary." "And where did the secretary get it from?" "One of the administrators." "And where did he get it from?" "The one in charge of the household." "And where did he get it?" "So how do you know there even is a king? You never met anyone who ever spoke to the king." So they sat together and they devised a theory, there is no king. People just made up this story in order to control us. There's no king. And they became very highly reputed in intellectual circles until a way to assert yourself was said, "Believing what you're saying is like believing in the king." Okay. In the meantime, the simple son got to the palace. And the king interviewed him. He sees everything that he would want as a minister. He's straight, he's honest. He doesn't know court matters, that could be taught. Okay. Now, going back to the sophisticate. He gets to the royal city. He has, you know, he hires the convention center. He's lecturing against the existence of the king but one of the people there was a man who owned the main hotel of the city. He said, "I just saw the king last week." So he reported him. And the king had him sentenced to what was the worst sentence in that kingdom. They had a pool that had quicksand in it. So the criminals would be thrown into this pool. And if they they couldn't stand and they couldn't sit and if they would sleep they would drown in the mud. Now in the meantime, the simple the simple friend had become minister of justice. And he was examining all of the files of the very severe cases. So he looks at his own Who was sentenced to the quicksand? Looks at the file. He says, "I want to meet him personally." Goes to him. He says, "Is it you?" And he says, "It is." And he said, "Why are you here?" And he said, "Because in this kingdom you can't tell the truth. All I told was the truth. There is no king." What do you think the simple son said? "I've seen the king's face this very day." So that's more or less how the story ends. But the reason I'm telling you this story is if you want to rebuild the base of the king in yourself, you have to learn simplicity. You have to learn accept to accept things and people as they are. You have to feel compassion for them. You have to see them as one of yourself. You have to not be allow your disappointment in them to color your compassion. You have to draw them back to you with love. And I want to tell you something. It's relatively easy to do this with people who are less than you. It's much harder to do this with people who are more than you. Did you see where this is said? Learn to do this with people who are more than you as well as people who are less than you.