Rosh Hashanah: The Sound of the Silence - The Secret of Prayer & Shofar - Rabbi Menachem Nissel

Today's class is one of many introductions that we're going to be doing about the basic fundamentals of prayer. Those of you that were here 2 weeks ago before I went to America, I explained that we're going to be learning until Hanukkah the ideas behind Sefirah and then after Hanukkah Hanukkah we're going to learn actually how to govern. Today's a philosophy class which we're going to connect to Rosh Hashanah to understand a little bit about the essential nature of what Sefirah is all about. You're sitting comfortably, you're ready for this, we can do this? Okay, we can do this. So, I just want to begin with a story that happened to me on Friday. Little bit crazy story, I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. But last Shabbat last Shabbat was my mother's Yahrzeit. She died when I was a child and she's buried in Har Hazeitim on the Mount of Olives which today is considered a very dangerous place. And the only way that you're supposed to go there is what's called in Hebrew with Livoy. Livoy means you got to have a couple of soldiers who are accompanying you. So, I don't know what happened but we got Livoy. There was a two young men and they jumped in the car in front of us and they said the normal way of getting to Har Hazeitim we cannot do. We have to go down to the bottom of the valley and then up round the side of the valley we'll go through about half a dozen Arab villages and towns and neighborhoods and eventually you're going to come out at your mother's Kever where your mother's buried. Okay, so I'm not going to tell you we weren't scared. My son was driving, I was sitting next to him but everything went okay. We got there, I governed, I told my mama take care of the family, look after us in heaven." And then afterwards, the two people who were doing the voy told us, "You know that we're being paid to do this for exactly 45 minutes. So, in about 10 minutes time, we're out of here. So, follow us quickly." So, we followed them quickly, and they went down into the valley. Basically, if you know where the Kotel is, so we were coming from the other side of the old city, deep deep deep in Arabsville. And then at a certain moment, they turned around, they gave a wave, and said, "Goodbye." And they left us stran- They left us stranded right in the center of where all the Arabs were coming out from the Al-Aqsa Mosque. So, we saw the signs, Al-Aqsa Mosque. We see literally it's like the end of a football game. Thousands of people coming out in our direction. The traffic was going like 2 or 3 mph. And we're stuck in traffic, and we're surrounded by Arabs. Now, we did not know this, but they had just heard a speech from their um rosh yeshiva, or whatever it's called, the imam, who told them to incite them against Americans. So, I'm British, so I'm probably not included. But my son's American, and they were coming out in their normal angry selves. And um yeah, we found out that they tried to stab someone right a couple of yards from where we were. And didn't make it to the mainstream press, but it was the right there in the Arabsheva reported that after prayers, they found some fellow, and they stabbed us. And we were basically surrounded by Arabs. And Yaakov Yisrael, my son said to me, "Abba, stop panicking." Cuz I was panicking. "Daven." That's it. This was the atheist in the foxhole moment. And it's a I took out to him, and I said, "You know, Hashem, this is it. There's actually no reason why, according to the laws of nature, we should come out of this alive. This should be like a classic lynching happening over here, and that's it. We would not be having this class. So, I was davening like crazy, and for about 5 to 10 minutes, I cannot remember having been so terrified as I was on Friday afternoon. Um the story has a happy ending cuz I'm here. I'm alive. We made it out. They decided, I guess they felt sorry for us, or we just looked too pathetic to be lynched. Um but for some reason, we came out alive. And on Shabbos, I had yahrzeit for my mother, and um uh we made a kiddush because I had a granddaughter last week. And she was named on Shabbos after my mother, which was beautiful. And um we made a little kiddush. And here we are living happily ever after. The bottom line is is that this is one of thousands of stories that I can share with you about the power of prayer. But um there's no question about it. Friday afternoon, round about 2:00 in the afternoon, I just got off a plane. I just I went straight from the airport to my mother's kever. And this was like crazy. This is like crazy crazy stuff. So, um this year, if you stay with us, we're going to talk a lot about the techniques of prayer, how we daven. I'm going to begin from a random place in Halacha. I'm going to read to you in front of me. This is the Shulchan Aruch, siman kuf aleph, sif katan bet. The Shulchan Aruch, the code of Jewish law, brings down the following law. I'm going to read it to you in Hebrew and translate. Lehispalel belibo. Prayer should not be done in your heart. Ela levad, ela mechatech hadvar besfasav. You have to pronounce the words with your lips. Umashmi'a la'ozno belachash. You should say it quietly so that your ear can hear you. Velo yashmi'a kolo, but the person next to you should not be able to hear you. So, here we have a law in Hilchos Tefillah that says the following thing. When a person prays, you've got to verbalize it. It has to involve the power of speech. You cannot just think prayer. Now, obviously, when you're praying, you're supposed to think about the words. And obviously, when you're praying and you think about the words, and the words make you think of other things. For example, you say, you know, "Mati asur, K'sh Baruch Hu, you're the one that free the slaves." And then you think of someone that you know is in prison, so that's good. That's healthy. That's normal. But the actual words of prayer have to be said. They have to be pronounced. So, um you cannot pray by thinking, you have to pray by speaking. That's a halakha, that's a law in Shulchan Aruch. No wiggle room. No wiggle room if a person davens by thinking the prayers, so the Mishnah Berurah, the Chofetz Chaim, um in his commentary, the Biur Halakha, he brings down from the Magen Avraham and the Nefesh HaChaim, which is a philosophical sefer of Chaim of Volozhin, that you have not fulfilled your mitzvah of prayer. Mitzvah to pray. You've got to pray every single day, and um a man has to pray three times a day. If you want to fulfill your mitzvah, you've got to say something. It doesn't mean that it's nothing. If you're thinking prayer, it doesn't mean you've done nothing at all, but you have not fulfilled your mitzvah of prayer. Why is it that prayer has to be verbalized? Anybody know? What's the big deal? Why do you have to verbalize your prayer? Cuz speech is power. Cuz speech is power. Anyone want to add to that? Okay, makes it more real. It makes it more powerful. So, yes to all of the above. I'm just going to add a little a twist in understanding the nature of prayer. And to understand the nature of prayer, we have to begin by understanding the nature of humanity himself. So, here we are. We're humans, and the Torah actually tells us what little boys and little girls are actually made out of. So, I grew up with that awful lie, you know, that girls with sugar and spice and all things nice, and it's just not true. If you want to know what you're really, really, really, really made out of, so open up Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, and there you will see the actual recipe for how to create a human being. Two ingredients. And I'm reading you the verse over here, Genesis chapter 2, verse uh verse 7. The Yitsha Hashem Elokeem et Adam. God created man. Let's pick on you. So, Ariel, who just walked in 20 minutes late, um Sorry, I was in the meeting. We're It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. So, I just want you to know what you're made out of. Um two ingredients. Ingredient number one, afar min ha-adamah. You are a piece of dirt. Okay, so those of you who think that, my God, this rabbi is so, so rude. We are all pieces of dirt. Which means next time you're on a date and a guy says to you, you know, you're a piece of dirt. So, you just answer, Ariel, right on, brother. No, you say Genesis You say Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. Right on, bro. Okay, we're all pieces of dirt. It's fine. I'm cool with that. We are pieces of dirt, but that's ingredient number one. Ingredient number two is, quote, "The Yipach b'apav nishmas chayim." God breathed into us the breath of life. Okay? Now, so you are made out of two things. You are a piece of dirt, Ariel, and you are Hashem's breath. Let me translate that to you into Rabbi Nissan's language. If everything that God created in this world could fit into this room, you are the floor and you are the ceiling. You are the lowest of the lowest, and you are the highest of the highest. What is the highest of the highest? Hashem's breath. Where does Hashem's breath come from? His essence. Okay? In the world In the words of the Zohar, the holy Zohar brings down, "Man de nafah me de lay nafah." When you breathe, you breathe from your essence. When I go So, that breath comes from my lungs. So, a little bit of my essence has come out into this world. When God breathed into Ariel, so a little bit of Hashem went inside of you, which means you are created in the image of God is not a metaphor. It's not a metaphor. There's something very real about it. There is something essentially godly about humans. And there is something very dirt-like, which is of course not today's class, but we are the highest of the highest. We have Hashem's breath inside of us. And we have this lowest of the lowest, this piece of dirt, which uh it's not for today, but that piece of dirt can be activated and can be elevated. But, that's what makes you you and me me. Now, let's take these two ingredients. Let's preheat to 250. Okay, put it in the oven, take it out, and what comes out next? Let me read to you the end of the verse. Vayehi Adam l'nefesh chaya. Man became a living entity. So, now, señoritas and señoras, I wish to tell you that there's a translation of the Torah written by a man called Onkelos. Onkelos himself was a famous story about how he converted. He was a probably amongst the greatest converts of all time. He was a nephew of the Caesar. Um today is not the time to talk about his greatness. His translation is considered the the translation of the Torah. And his translation has layers upon layers of depth. In other words, you study the Targum Onkelos, the translation of Onkelos, you study it with the same same um gravity that we study a Mishnah or the Talmud to try and understand the deeper level of what the Torah is trying to teach us. What is the translation of the combination of these two things turns into a human being? Says the Targum, "Vahavas Adam, a man became ruach memalela." A spirit that expresses itself through speech. There we have it, ladies and gentlemen. We are the creature that speaks. That defines how the two parts of us are inner dirt and our higher spirit comes together. In other words, when I'm speaking to you now, I am actually using two ingredients. I'm using the power of breath and I'm also using the power of my body because speech Anyone here studies speech? Speech therapists, where are you? Statistically, that goes so Name Name me to me the parts of the body I'm using as I'm speaking to you. You're using your larynx. Larynx. Mouth. Tongue. Your mouth, well, each your your teeth. Teeth. Tongue. Lips. Your nasal cavity, your oral cavity. Nasal cavity. Whoa, okay. Nasal cavity. You know, think about that. Tongue, okay? So, we just mentioned the what? Your forehead even the Oh, your forehead? It resonates the sound. That's the Hungarian method. No, that's not That's not Are you serious? You use your forehead? Yes, like there are like holes in your forehead, so Okay, so this is freaking me out because there's probably something very deep about it cuz your forehead is where your brain is capped. There's no question about it that speech is a combination of Hashem's breath and your piece of dirt coming together. It comes together in the power of speech. So, therefore, when Maimonides, when the Rambam defines Adam, he calls us medaber, the creature that speaks. Meaning, at the famous famous Maimonides, the Rambam says that God created four levels of creation. He created what's called domain, the inanimate world. He created sameach, the world that is alive but cannot move. That's basically what we call the vegetation world. The third is called animals. It's called chaya. Animals are alive. Animals have hearts, have brains, can express themselves. But then the highest of the highest is called Adam, which is medaber. Medaber is that awesome combination of Hashem's breath, the highest of the highest, and our physicality, the lowest of the lowest. Next time you look in the mirror, remember how awesome you are. You're this incredible incredible combination of the highest possible thing we can imagine in creation itself, that Hashem put a little bit of himself into creation, it became part of man. And at the same time, the lowest of the lowest of the lowest, our physicality, our animalism. Uh today I learned something new. Your forehead is used in speech. Your your tongue, your voice box, every single part of you that comes together to make speech speech, that is what makes us into what's called a medaber. Let me add another layer of depth. One of the words for a leader in the Hebrew language is a dabar. A dabar means a person who asserts himself. The word dabar clearly intimates in the word that a person is a leader through the power of his speech. Which means if you want to run something, or organize something, if you want to be a leader, so it's found in your speech. Which means in our speech, we have man's ability to sort of speak conquer the world. On every single level. If you want to If you want to It can be in a beautiful way, and it can be in a a way. If I want to see something extreme, on the same planet, at the beginning of the last century, there were two people. One was the Hafetz Chaim, the holiest man in Europe at that time then was the Hafetz Chaim, the holy Hafetz Chaim, and the other, I apologize for saying it in the same breath, was Hitler. May his name be obliterated. Both of them were famous for their mouths. Hitler um was a spellbinding architect of evil. And with that, he literally he literally caused the death of hundreds of millions of people, including the most sadistic, awful things that the world has ever seen. Everything goes back to one man and the power of his speech. The same planet, there was a man called the Hafetz Chaim, who wrote a book called Shmiras Halashon, how to refine our speech. And there are probably people in this room who study a little bit of Shmiras Halashon every day. It's a beautiful thing to do. And Jews are always working on refining our speech. On Yom Kippur, when we ask Hashem for forgiveness, approximately 1/3 of the requests that we make to Hashem concern the refinement of the power of our speech. So, we we're really obsessed with the power of speech, but it can be used in two directions. So, uh God willing, when you set up your beautiful home, so you and your husband are going to build a house through speech. Obviously, you build it through love and communication, but communication needs that power of speech. You can't express your love for each other without it coming out through your mouths. So, the mouth is man's ability to assert itself over the world around them. And now I'm going to say to you um rabbinical language, but this is of course the punchline of my class, is that what's called the dibur, the power of speech, is man's malchus, is man's royalty. It's what makes us into kings. What makes us elevated over the animal kingdom. The power of humanity to be the kings over the planet, hopefully for the good, unfortunately most times, I don't want to say most times, but very often for the bad, we wreck our planet, but we can also make the planet beautiful. Is that the roots of that power that man has is not the hands, the hands are always a function of speech. It always begins in speech. When you want to create something, build something, it can only be done with human beings getting together, cooperating, and that is done through the power and then you use your hands to build. But it begins with speech. So therefore, when the Rambam says that we are the medaber, man is the speaking creature, what he's saying is is man is the kings of the planet. We run this world. We are the the rulers of this world. Everyone's with me? Anyone questions at this point? Can I take it now a level deeper? Well, let me just summarize what I said over here. Um we started off with a question. We wanted to understand exactly why is it that speech has to be verbalized? And now we've learned something very deep. Our ability to verbalize is our our ability to express ourselves as kings. As power plays. As the ability to influence. As the ability to change the world and to make hopefully something better, but you have a choice. Man has free choice. Also, we can do something evil as well. Okay. So now we can understand the essential nature of prayer. And I'm going to give you now um and we're going to go over this throughout the year, the Menachem Mendel definition of prayer, and you're going to write this down. Morgan, write this down. Okay? And guys, this is my This is my definition. And um you know what? You don't have to You don't have to agree with this. It's my definition. Never read this anywhere. It's my It's how I understand what t'fillah is. T'fillah is the Hebrew for for for prayer. Prayer is defined as the following way. Prayer is You know what? You guys go first. Prayer is a way that you connect with the sun. That's beautiful. Okay, that that that that goes. That's fine. Go for it. Um prayer is I'm going to jump over that. It's both connection and it shows appreciation. Okay, so you're already pointing out there's different types of prayer. There's prayers you can praise God. You can thank God. You can sing to him. But the point is is that when the rabbis talk about prayer, they focus on one thing and one thing only. The essential nature of prayer is man showing his vulnerability in front of God. Is man showing his dependence in front of God. And therefore, I define prayer as the created, that's us, standing in front of the creator, that's God, and saying, "I cannot survive without you." The bottom line of everything we do in the world of prayer is an expression that I cannot survive without you. I shall I need you to fulfill my task here in this world. If we are soldiers in God's army, we're saying to the general, "We cannot fight without your help. We cannot fight without you giving us weapons, without you giving us direction, without giving us a plan." We are saying to Hashem, "We need you." If you are an athlete, so you go to your coach. If you are a musician, you go to your conductor. Hashem is the great king of the kings. He is the one that chose us how to live our lives. And now we can understand something incredibly incredibly deep. Every time I pray, I take my three steps. I stand in front of Hashem and I say to him, "Whatever you're saying, whether you're asking to understand a class, or if you're understanding to be able to to be able to earn a day's living, or somebody is sick and you want them to be better, Or you're davening for your people, which you should do. You're davening for the Jewish people. Or you're davening for humanity. Or today you can add you're davening for America. They need a lot of prayer. It doesn't make any difference. Whatever may be, whatever you're praying for, you're standing in front of Hashem and you're recognizing the following thing. I am powerful. I am very, very powerful. I have the power of speech, but you God, you're the king of kings. So, I may be a king, but I'm completely and totally dependent on the king of kings. By the way, you notice it's an incredible, incredible honor to Hashem. It's an incredible compliment to identify him as, "Hey, I'm a king. I may have the power of speech, but when it comes to you, I recognize that I'm nothing. When it comes to you, I recognize I cannot cross the road safely. I cannot lift a finger. I cannot put food into my mouth. Everything I do here in this world is all a function of your will." A little bit deeper, if that's okay. Just a little bit deeper over here. Um who has a talent? What's your talent? You can sing. Okay, it's beautiful. The flowers that bloom in the spring tralala that you're like an opera Do you got like regular regular Okay. Yeah, you have a beautiful voice. Okay. Now, I'm going to ask you the following question. Um Two people walk into the room while you're singing. You're singing to the best of your ability. The first person to walk into the room is grandma. Well, you probably call her Bubba. What do you call her? Bibby. Okay, figured as much. Okay? And she says to you, what's your first name? Bella. Bella. So, Bibby says to Bella, "Okay, it sounds like something out of the Twilight Zone-ish, but whatever it is, um says, um you know, you have the most beautiful voice ever. Really, every time I hear you, I feel like I'm hearing music from heaven. Does that make you feel good? Yeah, but she wouldn't say that. Tell me to be quiet. Okay. Okay, we're not going to get into the kishkes of your uh person. Where is it? Where are you from? Bukharian. Bukharian. Okay, we're not going to get into Let's talk about a theoretical grandma. She's like crazy over you. She spoils you like her. She loves your voice. And she come Okay, now I'm going to ask you something. At the same time as grandma walks in and compliments your voice, um Adele walks in. Those of you who don't know, Adele is a is a singer. And Adele walks in and she says to you, "Bella, that's it. You're just incredible. Like, you're the voice of the future." I would be like, "Thank you." Okay. Which is a bigger compliment? My grandma. Why? Cuz she's important to me. Okay. I hear that. I hear that. That's a beautiful moment. Sabrina? Adele. Why? Cuz my grandma has to love me. That's my point. That's my point. Thank you very, very much. Okay? So, in other words, if you are your You know, I mean, obviously, your cheerleaders out there are going to say that you sound beautiful. But if you have someone who's an expert in the field, someone who really, really, really understands the power of speech or the power of singing, and she says you have a beautiful voice, then that's a real, real honor to you. That means you've got something. And I'm using that as a primitive parable to explain to you why it means so much to Hashem when we praise him and we thank him and we say we're dependent on you. Because we are kings. And we are kings. We have the power of speech. We have the power of expressing ourselves. We have the power to rule over animals. I know what I'm about to say that um is completely destroyed by The Lion King and whatever is out there today. I'm a little bit out of touch. But The Lion King, we seem to be there as a malchus in the animal kingdom as well. But the truth of the truth of the truth of the truth is there's only one king in this world and that's mankind. Only we can really mess up the planet. Animals do not mess up the planet. You leave animals on their own, they will take care of themselves in a harmony. There will be a um it's a Lion King moment. They will have their circle of life and everything will harmonize. What did I say it right? And everything will harmonize and everything will work together and we'll all live happily ever after. But man with who has the power of speech, we can going back to ancient times we can build a tower of Babel to drive God out of this world and therefore it has to be destroyed by taking away their power of speech all the way to the 21st century where we see so much evil unleashed and they all begin unfortunately they all begin in mosques or in churches, especially in medieval Europe in churches and with people speaking and people getting the mass the masses to say to do evil things. It begins with the power of speech. So we've kind of answered our first question. I'm going to take it a little bit deeper but we've kind of answered our first question. Why is it so important that speech is verbalized? That tfila is verbalized. Why is it crucial that you don't just think your prayers, you have to verbalize your prayers. Because on the deepest level, every time I daven every time I stand in front of God with my little prayer book, I'm actually saying to Hashem the following thing. I'm saying to God you should just know I'm pretty awesome. I'm pretty amazing. I'm actually a king. I'm actually in your case I guess a queen. Whatever it is that it's okay to be a queen. It's like you know, just watch Frozen. There you we can do all kinds of crazy things. You are a queen. You have the ability to assert yourself. You are a very important You are created in the image of God. You are someone that can assert yourself and do all kinds of things. Every person in this room has talents, has the ability to to think, and and hopefully you can build and you can build a family and you can make the world into a better place. But then you take your three steps and you stand in front of Hashem and you use that power of speech that makes you so powerful and you turn over to Hashem and you say, "It's nothing. It's actually nothing when I stand in front of you cuz it's all a function of your will." That power of speech comes from your breath and your breath is what gives me that ability to have any malchus, any royalty. So basically I'm taking that royalty and I am giving it back to the source. I'm saying my kingship is a function of the King of kings. The only reason why I can speak in the first place is because I have this power of breath that comes from you. And this power of breath that comes to you, I'm now giving it back over to you. I'm saying it's all yours. So in a sense, every time you speak to Hashem and say I'm dependent on you, you're bringing a sacrifice. Obviously it's just a metaphor. You're bringing a sac- you're bringing a carbon. You're saying that part of me that has malchus, that part of me that is speech, that has power I'm giving it back over to you. And that's why it's so important to express your prayers through the power of speech because there's a deeper message you're giving to God. That which makes me so awesome and so incredible it's all yours. I'm giving it back to you. Okay. Now comes the fun part of the class. Any questions till now? Sorry. Back to the four levels, what was the title of that? Again, Maimonides says that humanity is level number four. It's called domain sameach chai medaber. Inanimate, animate, alive, and speech. The Kuzari The Kuzari famously added a fifth level, which we're not going to talk about now, which is a Jew. But that needs to be explained and it's certainly not for now. Yes, ma'am. Um when we learn about the story of Hannah and how she davened That's the source of this law. Hannah had to verbalize. She couldn't think her prayers. We learn the idea This is the the Talmud brings this down, right? In the Gemara in Brachot, that we learn the source that tefillah has to be verbalized comes from Hannah. Good. Okay, yeah, we'll throw it in. This is a ladies' group. Yeah, we learn it from a woman. Every important law of tefillah, of prayer, is feminine. I write about it in my book, Rashi Lev. I have a whole section of Hannah where I actually bring this idea out. Okay, now let's let's take this whole thing a little bit deeper if we can. We're coming up to an extremely awesome day. Actually, it's two days. It's 48 hours. Which is going to define a whole year of our lives. How it's going to bear out. Where we are actually partners in recreating ourselves from scratch. For 48 hours, we argue out with God using the power of speech. And we tell Hashem, we want you to recreate us recreate us for the year 5777 in the most positive way possible so that we can go out and fight your battles. Let me just translate a little bit what I just said over here. What we do on Rosh Hashanah On Rosh Hashanah, we stand in front of Hashem and said, "Remember the first Rosh Hashanah. The first Rosh Hashanah, you created man." How did you create man? He stood with the angels and he had a base in. You had a law court and you asked the question, "Shall I or shall I not create man?" It's a day of judgement. It's by definition a day of judgement. It's by definition a moment when the question, "Shall I or shall I not be created?" comes out or not. So, we have to argue our way out for 48 hours. We're given a chance to explain the case that got you give life, but not just life. Life can mean you can be plugged into a machine you're alive. Life means to flourish. Life ultimately means to express ourselves to the maximum way that we can. To be who we're supposed to be, to bring out our inner essence. To be as proactive and as accomplished as we possibly can. So, we're standing in court for 48 hours, we're arguing our case. How do we argue our case? What do we actually do? The what? Show evidence. Exactly. Yeah, you have to speak out the evidence. What's my evidence? My evidence is is that when you created man, you had a certain vision of what man should be. You created man as a king. You created man as a powerful creature. You created man as the one that has dominion over the animal kingdom, which in turn has dominion over the vegetable kingdom, which in turn has dominion over the inanimate. So, man can control the world. And then what do we do with the world? Till you get outside. You made a perfect world, cover the small, and then we give it all back to you. We say it all belongs to you. So, Rosh Hashanah is a crazy, complex, and nuanced day. Cuz in Rosh Hashanah, you have to make yourself into a king first. And then you turn the king of kings into the king of kings by declaring him. We are kings and you are the king of kings. How do you make yourself into a king on Rosh Hashanah? It's a tricky It's a tricky It's a tricky journey. For example, anyone over here in this room, if you need to get a haircut, so the best time to do it is before Rosh Hashanah. We learned this from Yosef. Yosef Hatzadik, according to our tradition, this happened on Rosh Hashanah. He got a haircut before he stood in some in front of Pharaoh. He got to look groomed. You can't look messy. You got to dress. If now's your chance to go and dry clean your outfits. What kind of clothing should you wear? Not fancy and not casual. Clothing that makes you look regal. It gives you a sense that you are you are something important. Clothing that makes people take you seriously. That's the clothing you wear on Rosh Hashanah. I have no idea what's going on in America. I just came back from America. There's a I You're probably going to laugh and go, "I mean, this is You're so out of it." But that I just noticed there's a new fashion where you buy pre-ripped jeans. You actually pay money to look like you've just been having like a struggled with a tiger. You know what I mean? Like the whole thing. So yeah, yeah, you pay extra. It's like that look. Well, you probably know about these things than I do. You probably own a pair. No, I don't. Okay, I'm sorry. Okay. But the point is I have no idea I have no idea these things work over here. It's crazy stuff. It's crazy stuff, but that's it. But on Rosh Hashanah, you've got to look your best. On Rosh Hashanah, you have to behave your best, which means it is a mitzvah to have a festive meal on Rosh Hashanah. It's a very unique festive meal. It's a festive meal where where we bring out everything that is beautiful about Hashem's world. All as the cabalistic books say, all the fruits of the garden. We turn it into a siman, into a good omen for the new year. As if we're going back into the Garden of Eden and we are Adam and Eve before the original sin in their full royalty and their full power. And then what do we do? We stand in front of a Kodesh Baruch in front of God and we declare ki ain lanu melech ela ata. You're the king of kings. We may be kings, we may be regal, we may be powerful, but when we stand in front of you, nothing. By the way, I want to throw this in. On Rosh Hashanah, you're not allowed to say anything negative about yourself. God forbid you should bring up any of your sins on Rosh Hashanah. There's a special day for bringing up your sins. It's called Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, you bring out your dirty laundry. On Rosh Hashanah, you hide it. On Rosh Hashanah, you are positive. On Rosh Hashanah, you stand in front of God with the with the possible you, with the theoretical you, our perfection. We express yourself in the highest form. So, you're not allowed to mention anything negative. Okay. The only problem is is that um Rosh Hashanah is a day of judgment. And a day of judgment is by definition it's a little bit scary. So, if you know that your life is in balance, I'm not going to go deeply into this, but the last 12 months, a lot of good people were murdered. A lot of good people died from sickness. Including friends of mine. Whatever it is, whatever it is, I want to go into this sad things, but uh I have a friend of mine that was murdered, Mickey Markin. Whatever it is with his family. And just terrible things have happened in the last 12 months. So, it's very easy for me to get up and say you stand there as a king and I say you're the king of kings. But at the end of the day, it is scary. The last 12 months, bad things happened. And those bad things were decided last Rosh Hashanah. So, we got this balance. On the one hand, we got to be kings and make the king of kings. The other hand, we know there's something very, very scary going on. Hashem is deciding for every person in this room and all our loved ones, every teeny weeny itsy bitsy little detail of the next 12 months. It's still going to happen. That's it. When Rosh Hashanah is over, it's incredibly incredibly hard to change that decree. You have to Yom Kippur right now. There's all kinds of things that the books bring down. Rosh Hashanah is when it's easy for you to try and direct it into a positive way. So, how now are we going to survive in Rosh Hashanah? So, the Torah tells us, I'm going to give you a magic sword. Whatever it is, a saber, some kind of a thing that's going to defend you against the dark forces that are out there. And that magic sword, that magic saber is called a shofar. That's it. The Torah does not tell us anything about Rosh Hashanah except for here, I'm giving you your weapon. This is how you fight. You fight with a shofar. Nachmanides says that Rosh Hashanah is a Yom Hadin, a day of judgment, but Rachamim, with mercy. That mercy is that we have the power of the shofar. So, somehow or other, as my son said when he was a little boy, if you can show the blowfer, it was a joke. Get it? Show the blowfer, the blow of the sho- If you can show the blowfer, you're in a good place. There's something magical about the shofar. There's a whole essay in Parshas Emor from Rabbeinu Bachya, where he describes the shofar as a signal. It's a great secret that only the deepest of the deepest and the most cabalistic of the cabalists can possibly understand how by just blowing a shofar, somehow or other in the higher worlds, we can make an impact. Those of you that have a machzor, your your your Rosh Hashanah prayer book, some of them before you blow the shofar, you have readings from the holy Zohar. You don't mess with the Zohar. It's a movie. But, the Zohar brings down all kinds of extraordinary fantastic things that are happening in the higher worlds when we blow the shofar. So, what can we relate to the shofar in our own little worlds? Well, guess what? There's something based on this class that we can identify with. And that is the following. The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 26B talks about the shape of a shofar. As you all know, the shofar is a ram's horn. It doesn't have to be. It just says blow a shofar. How do we know it's a ram's horn? So, the the Talmud brings down that the custom is that you should blow a shofar that is in a curved shape to remind you that you have to be in a sense of humility at the time when you blow your shofar, at the time when you stand in front of God on Rosh Hashanah. The idea of a bent shofar, the idea of a ram's horn, one of the ideas that has to be bent to show, in the language of the Talmud, "Come at the kive in The more that you are bent over, the more powerful is your prayers. Says Rashi, "You know why is it important to be bent over with a shofar? Kavan de latzvila u'l ha'askias Yitzchak ba'al tvei mali." Cuz Rosh Hashanah, and now I'm going to translate it the way that Rav Hutner translated it, cuz Rosh Hashanah is the shofar is an act of prayer, and it invokes the Akedas Yitzchak. Akedas Yitzchak was that moment when Isaac was bound by Abraham and brought as a sacrifice, which means that man is prepared to give up everything for Hashem. But it's also latzvila. It is also an act of prayer. So, Rav Hutner was He was a great rabbi from the last generation. I never saw him, but I was at his funeral. I missed seeing him. A lot of my friends studied with him. Rav Hutner said that Rashi's teaching us that shofar is an unusual mitzvah. That shofar is an act of prayer. It doesn't invoke prayer. It doesn't cause us to pray. It is actual prayer itself. Which is weird. Because no one ever says that sitting in a sukkah is an act of prayer. No one ever says that eating matzah is an act of prayer. Those are mitzvahs. Shofar is a mitzvah. It's a commandment. Why is shofar an act of prayer? And I apologize because I don't normally give very, very deep classes. I Your brains are going to hurt over the next few minutes. I really apologize. But I want you to hear this. I want you to understand a very, very deep idea cuz Rosh Hashanah is literally round the corner. Reb Footnick explains the following thing. Every time that I breathe and I say words of prayer I'm taking my mouth and I'm taking Help me again. My teeth, my tongue my larynx and my Hungarian forehead. Let us not forget that. I am putting all these things together. And I'm creating speech where I'm actually communicating. As I'm talking to you now, I'm using the same speech as I do in prayer where you can hear me and you can understand me. Says Reb Footnick it is possible to raise your prayer so you cut down in your physicality and you focus more on your spirituality. That's called call. What does call mean? Call means voice. Voice means where you are expressing yourself without words. When you say shma kolenu, God listen to our voices. That's called a primordial scream. That's the sound you make when someone pushes you off a cliff. You don't say, "Excuse me, second. anybody help me, please?" You go, "Ah!" You're screaming your head off. People understand that that expression is coming from deep down inside. It's just a call. It's just a voice, which is your breath without using your tongue and without using your lips and without using your forehead. You are just using that call in its purest form. But now I want to ask you a question. What would be if you had 48 hours where you are literally fighting for your lives? And not your life, your parents, your brothers and your sisters and your loved ones, everyone that you care about. You're fighting and you want to have the best year possible. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could do the following thing? Imagine I could strip away everything physical from the power of speech. So, I'm literally giving God back that breath that he breathed out to me on the first moment of creation. And every year that first moment of creation comes back, imagine if I could say to God, "That breath belongs to you." Hanashama l'Ach The neshama belongs to you. That, my dear ladies, is called shofar. The shofar is prayer in its purest form because nothing more powerful than the shofar takes the actual breath that God breathed into us and gives it over back to Hashem. And said, "It's all yours. Everything belongs to you." Hanashama everything is yours. I'll tell you a little secret. And with this I'm going to close this class. When you listen to the shofar, try and focus a little bit on your breath. Those of you who are yoga girls, you know what I mean? You can do this easily. A little bit, you know, you notice you breathe in and you breathe out and at one moment you stop. And it's over. Game over. For 120 years, we function as humans through the power of breath. On Rosh Hashanah, we say that breath belongs to you. We give it over to you. I'm going to tell you a little secret, and with this I'm going to end. The moment you give your breath back to God, that's the moment that you become infinite. That the That's the moment when it is possible for you to die. You can no longer die anymore. That's the moment when your physicality ceases to be anything than just clothing to your your essential essence, which is your soul. And you give that back to Hashem as if to say, "I am just an extension of you." The servant of the king is an extension of the king himself. Just like the king is all powerful, and the king is infinite, that moment when we give our breath back to Hashem, we become nothing more than an extension of his will. That's the moment when man conquers time and space and physicality, and we become ultimately we become which is a taste of the world to come. That place where we become an extension of Hashem himself. I'm not really really explaining myself. But I'm showing you that on Rosh Hashanah, when we give everything to Hashem, ultimately that means that our physicality is just nothing more than the clothing to our true essence, which we give back to Hashem. We become an extension of Hashem himself. At that point then, Hashem has no choice but to give us and our families and our loved ones a xc v'chasima tovah, a beautiful year. And that's my blessing to everyone over here. Wish you all merit that incredible feeling that our breath is his, and with that Hashem in turn will give us and everyone that we care for and our people and all of humanity a beautiful perfect year. Thank you for listening.