Seeing the Truth About Our Children

so first of all thank you to gdalia for the introduction for the welcome and yeah it was important to me to be able to be part of the weekend in some limited capacity i'm i literally came in just for this talk and i'll be heading back right after but you're in a good place right now you're in a very good place and uh whatever it is that you've been looking for if you keep your eyes open this shabbos i'm sure you'll find it or at least you'll find the direction to start if you haven't yet found a direction to start or if you've started in a direction and you need kizok to to continue what i'm saying is there's a lot of wisdom a lot of inspiration a lot of his look a lot of encouragement a lot of clarity clarity yeah at at this place with these people in this time so i'll join in the clapping because you're not clapping for me okay so the talk tonight actually there are many times i get up and i talk and i didn't even give the title for the talk sometimes i didn't even know the title for the talk but that that's not tonight tonight actually i i gave the title if gedalia asked me what to call it i told him how to see our children and if i can do anything tonight what i want to help you [Music] to start doing is to have maybe a better vision of not only your child who is the official reason why you're here but of all of your children and really of all of us who are hashem's children how to properly how to see each other there was uh a shul chabez vallero not vote air this week's voter but shaw's vaida when it's uh the al-qaeda so the rav got up and he said at rocha about arcadis yitzchak about how avrom went to go shacked his son and was big nissayan so afterwards there were a few pasha tayden who were discussing the ravsdrusha and they were very simple jews and they were trying to figure out how old was yitzhak during this story that they just heard and we we know he was 37 but they they were pasha tayden so they were they were trying to figure it out from context so one of them said you know i think he was a little kid because his father said let's go and he went he didn't ask questions he just went he was a he was a child then another one said you know what though remember he was helping to carry the wood so he had to be strong he was grown up i think he was he was an adult and then another one said you know what maybe it's in between maybe not a child maybe not an adult i bet you yitzchak at the time of the academy was probably a teenager and the two other simple jews turned them and they said now couldn't have been a teenager why not because if he would have been a teenager at the time of the okay though then to shaktham would not be such an asylum so and this is a universal joke teenagers are universally difficult and uh some teenagers more than others teenagers are not yet adults they haven't found themselves but they're not children you can't just move them along you have to convince them you have to debate with them and they have answers they have arguments this i'm just talking i'm talking about regular parenting of teenagers is challenging because they they're finding their identity they're it's actually healthy it's necessary everyone has to at some point figure out who they are on their own so they there's a little bit of separation and very very rarely does that separation happen gracefully usually as they're learning to find their own identity there's a certain awkward stage where they're you know they're fighting too much they're rebelling just to figure out who they are separate from their own family of origin and that's why the teenage years are always oh no not always but generally universally commonly the teenage years are just difficult all around and by the way i'm not just talking for the parents you know it's difficult to be a teenager and again i'm talking about regular adolescence it's you're you're you you're going through all these changes physically socially you have new opportunities new responsibilities your brain is starting to work on a on another level where you can actually think philosophically so you keep yourself up at night worrying with new whole new level of worries being a teen is you know you have all the existential dread and like you start worrying about what's the point of it all and i it's it's difficult to be a teenager difficult to be a teenager it's difficult to be around them difficult to be one it's difficult to be a teenager and then of course you have there's there's an old expression that the jews are just like everybody else more so so then there's the teenager squared you know an extra dose of teenage itis and so the separation and the confrontation and the conflict and the establishing my identity and how i'm different from you it gets compounded it becomes even more exaggerated and what i want to ask you to do is i want you to think about the teen in your life and i want you to try to remember when he or she was a baby when they were lying there in their crib and you were watching them and kvelling look at this precious beautiful child and i want you to ask yourself what happened from that time until this time that the felling and the nachos and the pride and the excitement and the love and the passion changed into frustration and annoyance and disappointment and heartbreak they grew up okay they grew up somebody says they grew up why is that fair that because they grew up i have to change how i feel about them when they were a baby you were able to be proud of them for no reason what did they do as babies that's how they didn't annoy you what did they do to actually make you proud what does a baby do they lie there they spit up they make in their diaper there's they cry and they cry at three in the morning they don't care they have no guilt yeah you you think they're happy to see you they're they're passing gas they're not happy to see he smiled and he's smiling and yet you're so proud of them look at this perfect baby this bundle of joy and so i want to know how come when we're babies we're perfect bundles of joy and then when we grow up everyone's getting annoyed with us and in order to not have people annoyed with us there's all these things we have to do to earn their approval think about the pressure now when i was a baby i i didn't have to do anything i didn't even have to wake up and people were happy with me and now all these expectations that i have to do in order to earn your approval to earn your smile when i was a baby i got your smile for free i didn't have to do anything to earn it and now the default is if i'm not earning your smile then i'm i'm an annoyance i'm an intrusion causing you agmasnefish don't think i don't know it i know you're losing sleep over me what happened so i want to tell you something i have a theory about this it's just my theory i noticed that there are two times in life when everybody is good when everyone will say that you are good there are two times in life ever cooler made him you're good so the first one i already said is the aforementioned when you're a baby all babies are beautiful all babies are wonderful at least to their parents to their parents and the other time when you die dead people are all tad you see this all the time oh you're so good so basically what does that mean the only two times in life you get a free pass is when you just got to this world or you just left it everything in between you got to earn your keep and we're watching you and we'll decide whether or not uh we like to have you around but if you're a baby if you're just born you just came to this world nobody's judging you they're not deciding whether or not you get to be here you get a free pass you get to be here and if you just died then you're good also so here's something that occurred to me because i thought about that a lot and and here's here's what i think i think that the way we view babies and dead people is actually correct it's actually correct and it's the whole span of time in between that we get it wrong and i think the reason that we get it correct is because if you think about who am i who am i what am i really i'm a neshama piece of godliness how could you not love on the shaman how could you not enjoy being in the presence of a neshama thinking of a neshama picturing anisham so what happens is when we first came to the world and we just got our body i i think i think we're all sort of aware of the fact a neshama has just come to visit us and so i think part of the pain that babies have is that we sense this is a neshama and then it also explains why when people die we also think favorably of them because now they left their body behind now all they are is in the shama and i think we intuitively get it right at those two times at the very beginning and the and and at the end but what happens is in the in between we start looking at each other as not under shamans not our true selves we start using other criteria to identify each other so now instead of saying you are this godly holy being that has graced us here in this world with your presence now we're starting to look what kind of grades are you getting in school what kind of personality do you have are you cute are you funny are you amusing are you able to put on your coat and get into the car quickly or do you make me late see when you're in the shama we're not thinking about these things everyone is good but you spend a little while here in elam gaza in this physical world and people start thinking that you are a whole bunch of stuff that's just superficial that's really not the real you and then your nachos in me becomes very conditional on me doing those things well so i've got to get good grades and i've got to be obedient and i have to be able to get dressed quickly and get into the car without making mommy late and if i have any struggles here in this world i'm causing people pain and annoyance and and i can feel it i can feel it i can tell you're losing patience with me so when we talk about parenting extra challenging children i think what we have to begin with before we speak about that as a parsha unto itself i think we need to visit the foundations of parenting bachlao do you see your child as in the shama are are we human beings having a spiritual experience or are we spiritual beings having a human experience you know i was me long before i came to this world the real me is eternal infinite everlasting holy incorruptible incorruptible if i believe in yemen kipper i believe that i believe the real me what we call the yehidus the core identity we believe that's incorruptible my nephesh could get a little bit dirty my ruach even my kaya we believe that there's that core identity in all of us which is pristine and pure and holy and remains so at all times i mean that's what we believe can we start to see that in our children can we start to see them as beautiful and perfect because they are neshamas and their neshamas are beautiful and perfect there was a rav in sfas fatman he said avort there are three things in toyota that are called difficult caution hard one of them is is a nace of shall adam making a living it's called hard it's kosher it's difficult to make a living another is uh shidduchim it's called kosher kriyasyamso and then the third thing that's called difficult chris yams of itself so those things are called difficult so rafatman says lera these three things which are called kosher which which are called difficult should not be difficult at all because by each one of them we find something striking that they're all set up beforehand so that was set up already serious the missouriness was set up already that was set up before before the baby was born kris yamsuf was set up already when the abhishem made the yam he made it out tonight he told them at 2448 years from now there's going to be this nation beneath and they're going to come through and you're going to suspend the laws of hydrodynamics you are going to go against your nature and you are going to split for them and that was a condition at the moment that the yam was created so look at all of these things are set up beforehand what's kosha so he explains like this you know what's kasha he says when was a person let's start we'll go one by one the first one was the names of shalom persons parnosa is money when was that set up and the day is between rosh hashanah and jim kippur he says take a look at a guy in the days between and yom kippur is very very different than the rest of the year whatever level he's on the rest of the year these days as serious he's on a higher level he's more careful and you look at him the heaven are yid very holy but then the avista comes to find him to give him his panoso in heisman where's that guy i can't find him where's the guy they're during it i don't recognize you're the guy you don't look like the guy and that's only in heisman imagined by kislev by tavis same thing with the shidduch the was made will milo so they introduced the huss into the kala and they said i should have but then they came down into the world by the time they met each other they'd been in this world for a while a little wear and tear and they don't recognize each other that's what's caution by the because they get these the shamanistic wrecking you're the girl that i met in heaven you don't look like her anymore and the same thing with kris yamsov chris yamsev when the eden came out of mitzrayim they were in memphis that's not a joke mem tesharituma means they did everything in the book that could damage your soul they were at the brink of spiritual extinction to the extent that there was even a kittruk from alohe at the time of christians they said what are you going to do a favor for them halal their vedas daughter that these ones the mitsurum serve of a disorder and these ones are hidden there's no difference there also did look at that look at these jewish people look at the midst from side by side i don't see any difference between them you understand what that means that are saying i'm looking at these jews you told me about and they look like mitzrim and now the sea is supposed to split the sea says you showed me a picture 2448 years ago this doesn't look like that picture and so it's kosher to convince the yam no no this is them this is them so i'll add a fourth kosher and it's kosher for the exact same reason as those other three when you saw your child when they were a baby they were perfect you didn't have to think you didn't have to tell yourself how to react to them it was instinctive it was instinctive this is my baby i'm failing but what happened is they became unrecognizable and you said this isn't who i had nachas from it's not the same kid this isn't the same baby anymore and you know what's kosher for you and no one's going to be able to tell you this you have to tell it to yourself you have to sit down have a talk with yourself and say you're wrong this is the same baby this is the same bundle of joy nothing has changed and just like when they were a baby they got your unconditional love because they're nothing unearned they didn't do anything but it was automatic and you didn't even have to think about it so today look at them and automatically love them without them having to earn it why i'm a religious jew you're telling me to just give approval to people who are not living up to our standards oh you're such a religious jew so do you believe in the shama if you're educating your child in the way of torah do you believe that torah is real and that the shamans are real a little spirituality you have so why do you think the baby was so lovable what do you think evolution programmed it into you that parents it's biologically advantageous that parents should should be kind to babies or do you believe there's an abstract do you believe that there's something real that the spiritual world is real do you believe that it's enduring and it's true and do you believe that you were able to sense on some level the purity and the beauty and the perfection of this neshama when they first arrived in the world and all that happened is the days went by the weeks the months the years and you got fooled and you started looking at the packaging at the outside at the body at the personality at activities the behaviors and you forgot to look and see the truth and this this is just you know you can only say this to yourself can i be truly spiritual can i be truly a jewish parent and see my child as a soul and it's caution of course it's caution it's difficult but that's your job and i want to tell you something mommy and tati really you're to do this for every single jew if you know what it says in panima satora about it really means you're supposed to see every single jew as in the shama but we're just telling you do it for your own kids there's a story in the i was told it was given water this is good professional setup over here they put the water under the podium take a drink make a broccoli okay there's a story in the gemara nidarim uh you know the daughter is about nidora about vows so when somebody makes a nether one of the things you you do i mean if somebody makes another they're obligated to keep it but it's also a mitzvah to get out of it but there's a way of getting out of it you have to be showing you have to go ask only can release you from the nether so it's talking about there um how to do this to find this passage without getting in the whole uh talmudic discussion here basically a means that the hohem identifies some piece of information had i known it bashas the nether if i would have known that information when i made that vow i would have never made that vow a guy makes a vow i'm never going to eat milks ice cream is milks i didn't know that i thought it was only cream cheese i don't know okay so then release them from the vowel so the commodore there talks about a guy they had a shidduch for him and uh he didn't want it and uh basically the reason he didn't want he had shallow reasons for not wanting he didn't like her looks so they kept bothering him so he says guys back off and his family kept on recommending it so finally he just said i'm making another okay so later on they brought him to rabbi ishmael the tana and they wanted to get him out of the nether so what did i be schmall do this is a remarkable story maybe ishmael took this girl and he gave her a makeover it says he dressed her and he gave her jewels you imagine that atana takes a girl and uh here's the credit card go out shopping make yourself look great and so this guy comes with a ishmael and while he's there abhishem brings out the girl and now she looks unrecognizable and uh ishmael says to the guy he says is this the girl that you swore that you vowed never to marry he says no not that girl which of course released him from the vow because had i known at the time i don't know how she felt about that but that's that's not the point of the story the point of the story is the gemara then says at that moment started crying the ammo and he said revenue is hein all jewish girls are beautiful elohua neos but poverty men mars their beauty we know in kabbalah the neshama is called it's called the daughter it's called all the shamans are feminine even us guys the shama is actually a feminine word sharma so it's a lash in the keva and it's married to hashem that's what the whole ishvaisha paradigm in shir hashiram is all about so nishamas are all called jewish daughters that's the inner femininity of of the jewish man is he having a shaman the sham is a family cole benoit's israel noise all jewish daughters all jewish souls are beautiful but aneus but poverty what poverty go look go look at the poverty no i'm not talking about the that we can't pay bills we're probably bhagashmi is the richest generation of jews who ever lived including even the heyday of slaimamella because even then if you were rich what could you buy an extra piece of fruit what did they have today we live like kings i'm not talking about that kind of a neos i'm talking about the horrific things that happen in this galas i'm talking about the horrific things that happened to jewish children in this gullis things that we can't even wrap our minds around how such things could happen in this world and every time we think that we've expanded our capacity to accept how crazy the world is we get challenged another time we find that no it's even crazier than you thought and we're at least we're grown-ups seemingly we're we're a little bit more used to it we have a little bit more coping mechanisms a little more experience or at least we're a little bit more jaded so maybe our cynicism protects us but these are children these are souls who just arrived in the world they're holy they're pure they're innocent and this aneus this poverty of this gullis minivalton it admires their beauty and now all of a sudden you're looking at this beautiful jewish daughter we're calling all collectively all souls jewish daughters and you say nah not for me no not so not so attractive was crying he was crying he was weeping that somebody failed to see the inner beauty of one jewish girl if there's anything to really cry about you want to really weep you want really something to cry about we need to cry about our own inability to recognize that what was beloved about this child when they were a baby in the crib is just as beloved about them today and to be a little bit more spiritual and a little less materialistic a little less physical a little less caught up in things of this world and try to see the neshama this child is a beautiful pure precious holy neshama and if they don't look so i right now so that's not a reason to reject them to the contrary the compassion goethe it's an even greater cause for pity for mercy that such a beautiful creature a godly being came to the world and had to suffer through what it suffered through so we should have only greater compassion but to reject to write off to even give a hint of dissatisfaction disappointment pain we have to see the truth about our children we have to see their souls and you're going to tell me i don't see souls and i'm telling you that as a mother as a father you're gonna have to and you will and you did you did you did you did you did you've done it already you did it already you saw them as a soul you didn't tell that baby in the crib i don't even know if i like you grow up learn to speak a few words we'll go out for coffee i'll find out if we hit it off you didn't say that you looked at that baby and you said you're perfect you're everything you're everything you're everything you don't need to do anything more you don't need you don't need to do anything you just need to be be you and i love you and i'm proud of you we need to be able to say that to our children today because if you're really a religious jew if you really believe that there's something called a soul then i need you to look at your child and say you don't need to do anything to make me love you to make me proud of you now i know this is a sticky discussion because i'm fully aware of the pushback i'm fully aware of the questions that people ask well really you're telling there's no value and in schmidt you're telling them they don't have to do anything they're they're they're accepted even if they don't do anything so let me try to explain this in a simple way says in uh ton of yahoo cod two things came before the but i don't know which one came before the other i know they both came before the world but i don't know which came before which and what are the two things that came before the world actually the first russian homicide precious bass racist bishfield-basras which are both called racists so the world is created for the sake of jews and for toyota so jews and toyota were the reason for creation not part of creation well jews jews aren't part of creation no that's that's the body but i'm talking about the real you the soul that existed before creation and toyota existed before creation toyota is not a bunch of laws that respond to the realities of the world it's not like you know city council gets together and says we have this intersection that's very congested and we're going to pass a new law that we're going to put a uh a stop light we're going to put a third lane on oak street like that's how human laws are you respond to the conditions of this world and you come up with a rule tita is the exact opposite they're not rules that respond to reality they are rules that create reality like desire says about iso alma the abhishek looked into the title and used it as his blueprint to create the world so i know that torah and jews both came before the world but i don't know which of them came before the other so says the ton of leo kiss when it keeps on saying that all these things in torah are addressed to these jews who is it talking to they must already be there okay this is mystical i don't even know what you talking about stuff before creation and now you get hair splitting into in in things before creation which one is more before what do i need this for i'm going to tell you what you need it for because the tony deville explains without whether marshall gives a muscle over there and it says it's a martial malek boss of a dumb very common martial in ghazal a physical king it says he had children and he hired his uh avid zucking his elder servant of the house to be the malamad of these children to teach them to teach them pleasant ways of conduct and good behaviors so says the ton of yohu who's the king the who's the king's children the eden what are these good conduct rules that the teacher is teaching torah he says that's what it means which one comes before which it's not that the king had a bunch of rules and he's like well who's going to follow these rules i better have some kids it's that the king had kids and he said and now let me give them rules that will bring out the best in them someone following this not too mystical push it yeah pressure so overcame therefore what does this mean toyota and jews both come before the world but of the two jews come before tyra what does this mean it means that toyota is there to be meshamish to serve that a jew should be able to be everything that he can be and bring out his best scratch that a little bit deeper what does that mean when a jew does a mitzvah when a jew lives al-pitera that's not what makes them a jew that's not what makes them the child of the king they're already a jew they're already the child of the king the midst is how they express who they already are and will always be even if they don't act in the way that their father set up for them to act because after all the end of the day a child will always be a child you want to be really religious i'm telling you today is not what makes jews jewish today is how jews best express their jewishness and of course we want every jew to keep tayag mitzvahs because that's how the jew expresses most fully their essence but don't reverse the cause and effect and think that it's doing the mitzvahs that makes them who they are they are where they are and they express it by doing certain things so if you look at a jew and a jew as a jew as a jew as a jew always was and always will be and they're not acting like it don't talk to them about what they're doing or not doing talk to them about who they are who are they really who are they you gotta know before you tell someone who they are you gotta know who they are who is your child who is this beautiful baby this perfect bundle of joy and the shama a perfect nishama who doesn't need to do anything to elicit your absolute joy that didn't change it just became kosher became difficult but that's our job that's our job close your eyes imagine that child as a baby and remember how easy how intuitive how natural it was to cherish them don't let go of that don't lose that because that hasn't changed outer stuff changed physical stuff bodily stuff circumstances of being in this world and i want to tell you something also i know that there are probably going to be many sessions about trauma and it's very important to understand trauma because when somebody isn't acting like themselves there's usually a really serious reason for that when somebody is divorced from their own essence there's really a reason for that and i mentioned that there are horrifying things that happened this in this gulles unthinkable things that happen to children and all of those things are traumatizing i want to tell you something also you may not realize but for many souls embodiment itself is the trauma maybe you have an extra sensitive kid who's uncomfortable existentially uncomfortable just being here in the physical world you know these are the kids i mentioned at one time at the crisis center i came down where to uh was that schenectady yeah and and i told everyone there when i was a kid i used to fall down on the on the ground crying because the tags in my in my undershirt were bothering me and you remember that obvi that everyone was like the tags like half the rooms like the tags like oh yeah they knew about that yeah yeah you know the kid who's who who can't the kid who's off spilkus at the at the dinner table because uh his siblings chewing too loud yeah yeah you know about that uncomfortable in your own skin imagine imagine how that feels right and and of course that's not that's not all children but there are definitely children for whom embodiment itself is the trauma and just being in the physical body with all those stimuli the sights and the sounds and it's it's it's like an assault it can be you have to think about it for a second imagine if i came in here and i'm trying to talk and there's a a parade a marching band coming through and people are you know banging on drums and playing trombones and there's clowns uh cartwheeling you know imagine trying to enjoy yourself in such a you know it's it's it's an assault to the senses so yeah there are some extra sensitive neshamas they never really really settle down in the body and so embodiment itself can be the trauma or the part or a part of the trauma i think i think that's important to realize so you have a child and the child is causing you sleepless nights and they're causing conflict in the home and maybe embarrassment and disturbances and tension what i want you to realize is that child is the same beautiful perfect soul that you saw them as a baby and part of the healing not part the foundation the first step the prerequisite you can't go further without this the beginning of the healing is to take a step back from your own reactivity to what's happening that's triggering you and go within and get spiritual and i want to tell you something all parents know that if you're not naturally inclined to spirituality parenting will force you to be and when you're doing extra difficulty parenting where it's extra cushion it's extra difficult it'll force you to be extra spiritual but what the extra challenging child needs from us is the same thing that all of our children need from us in fact i want to tell you something in a certain way it's easier to do it for the extra challenging children and i'll tell you why because with the quote-unquote normal there's no such thing as normal my mother told me there are two kinds of people in the world normal people and people who you really know right they read the they're from australia oh they sound good from australia they sound good right um see even quote-unquote normal kids what happens is their place in your heart goes from unconditional the way it was when they arrived in this world as pure pristine nishamas and then it becomes conditional becomes based on their pleasing you and being good and listening and obeying and doing well in school and then what actually happens is even the kids who we claim to have nakas from were only having nachas from things that are secondary to their true identity which is not a terrible thing on its own but when it's divorced from having unconditional nachas from their true essence then basically you're going to tell me this is based on yiddish kite how is it based on yiddish kite when the most basic essential idea that a neshama came to this world and hashem is that that's not the basis for your obvious israel of your own child no your obvious israel and i put it in quotes because not even obvious israel is is based on the fact that he knows how to obey he knows how to get on get his coat on quickly and get into the car he knows how to get good grades in school how how is that obvious at all how's that loving him for his essence it's not it's the opposite see i i want to explain something there's such a thing called nakasuru hashem says when when the eden do my will i get nachas from that and that's a real thing obviously when somebody does good things you're proud of their accomplishments but i want to tell you something that's not the only nachos and it's certainly not the most fundamental maches it's secondary like i said the marshall from ton and villio the children were the children before they had the torah the most basic narciss that we have from a jew it's just that they are who they are and the abhishek says this about us the abhishek says this about us he says that the jewish people are my si the jewish people are the work of my hands to be proud of these polar means to be proud of the ebister is proud doesn't say that he's proud of what you did of your mice him no to the country he's proud of his my sin my say yoda david says my actions the abuser looks at him in the show he says ah i did good that's cold i started using this term a year or two ago and i'm going to keep using it until it doesn't arouse any reaction anymore until nobody lifts their eyebrow when i say it unconditional pride and i'm insistent upon the term unconditional pride and i'm gonna keep saying it until nobody misunderstands it nobody has trouble with it and and i'll tell you something 10 years ago if you would have said unconditional love people would look at you like you're crazy that became normal okay so i'm going to tell you something and it's very soon unconditional pride is going to become normalized well certainly when mashiach comes and the whole world is going to see that the abstract has unconditional pride in bene israel then then that'll be a pretty clear proof but we're we're doing it already we're we're living already here and we're talking about and experiencing unconditional pride know what that means unconditional love means i'm saying it's distinct from unconditional pride unconditional love means i love you but i can't stand you get away from me you're causing me pain i can't look at you and maybe even because i love you so much it's so hard for me to look at you right now unconditional pride is it is a joy it is a pleasure to be in your presence and i don't even have to say if i have to say it i shouldn't even you can't fake it when somebody walks in the room who you're happy to see and you light up there's these micro expressions person knows immediately when you walk in the room you know if you're wanted unconditional pride means just like when you were walking down the hall and you went to go peek on your little baby sleeping in the crib and you open the door nobody told you to smile from ear to ear you just open the crack of the door and you're looking at your little precious bundle of joy what did he do he didn't do anything he's asleep he's being he's being who he is and that itself it's a pleasure to behold so now when this same kids 15 16 17 18 years later he hasn't come out of his room all day maybe for days finally in the middle of the shabbos meal he emerges what's he been doing god knows what but we can guess and he drags himself begrudgingly to the shabbos table and he looks how he looks do you light up and the shama just walked in the room i'm asking you if you really believe that any of this is real talk about yiddish if you really believe it's real not just a cultural thing then you have to believe in a neshama and when a neshama enters the room you light up and you can't fake it they know that you're seeing them again the way you saw them when they were a baby and now all of a sudden even though their friends were coming to pick them up and now they have a little bit more time to hang out because they're not itching to get out of a place where they know they're not really wanted a place where they're causing agma snefish a place where they're hardly tolerated they know that their presence is causing you joy that's the greatest thing in the world to hang out in the place where i know i'm causing people joy just by being there what do you think they're trying to get hanging out with their friends what do you think they're trying to get with the boyfriends and the girlfriends and those relationships they're trying to be in a place where they feel wanted and unfortunately in many of those places where they think they feel wanted they're being used and it's exacerbating the shame and the guilt and the isolation so for god's sake you be the one who makes your house the place where they get the reaction of joy approval nachas pride [Music] i told this story two years ago when i was here and i'm going to tell it again i was speaking to a father he came to me he was talking to me about his uh i think he was 18 at the time 18 year old son who hadn't been in yeshiva for i think the better part of a year maybe it was already a year and he was supposed to be working but that didn't really happen and so he's not learning and he's not working and he's basically just hanging out in his room with a smartphone and uh you know and uh so the father tells me i'm walking by my kid's room and he happened to have the door open i saw him i saw him sitting there he's just sitting there just does nothing with his life and i walked in this is what the father tells me i walked in i said to him don't you even want better for yourself and i want to tell you something i have compassion on that father and i know i know he wasn't trying to stick a dagger in the boy's heart but when you see someone who's clearly not thriving not in yiddish obviously they want better for themselves clearly for whatever reason they're incapable right now but he comes in he says don't you even want better for yourself now i wasn't there i only heard the father's account but i believe him he says to me that my son responded to me and said you're never proud of me now i thought that was remarkable because actually this child even though he just got the dagger in his heart did a remarkable job of articulating his emotional needs in that moment i and that's that's incredibly vulnerable because you know you're being judged you know you're a source of disappointment and to be able to go out on a limb like that and to say you're never proud of me that took guts so the father says to the son that's not true remember two summers ago when you were a counselor in camp i was proud of you now if you don't know how bad that is that's you take the dagger that's already in the heart and you twist right that would be like a woman tells her husband you never say you love me he says no no i distinctly remember april 12 1987. that's i told you then that i love you thanks okay so he says it was probably two years ago you were counseling camp and the kid says to the father are you proud of me now and i said to the father said please what did you say to him he says i told him no now thank god people here are gasping but i'm going to tell you something not everyone here gasped because some people are listening they're thinking and it's actually very normal to think this well what do you want him to say the kid isn't learning he's not working he's in his room 23 and a half hours a day except for the half an hour he comes down to raid the refrigerator between 3 15 a.m and 3 45 a.m he's in there 24 7 with the smartphone doing god knows what although we probably could figure out and he says are you proud of me right now i mean no what and that's what the father said to me says because i get i gasp but i said and he said what do you want me to do lie and i said to him you're a religious jew i don't understand how can you not be proud of him when hashem is proud of him he says hashem's proud of him he didn't i don't think he put on philly in months said to him the work of my hands to be proud of that abrister looks at every jew and he says i'm proud of you not because of anything you did that's a second thing and i said that already i made it to that there's something called i'm not pretending it doesn't exist of course it exists i get nakas from who you are and i get knockers from what you do but which comes before which the what you do is only valuable because of who you are does that make sense to you do you know i mean i'm a laboratory i've gone on many street corners with philly and asked jews excuse me sir are you jewish would you like to put on twilight and i've gotten turned down many many times i want to tell you something if i would go to oklahoma and go to any town in oklahoma i could stand on a street corner from dawn until dusk putting on tv with they would love to do it but it has no value why not because putting on filling doesn't make you jewish putting on philly is something that a jew does to express his essential jewishness so the action isn't what gives the person value the person is what gives the action value so there are two things from who you are which is unchanging because who are you who are you a jew a neshama does that change it can't change so i'm and am i proud of who you are yes and are you always who you are yes so am i always proud of who you are yes there's a second thing called am i proud of your actions but we we act like that's the only way to have nachus but you didn't do that when he was a baby you didn't tell him get up and do some tricks for me learn a few words and say something cute for me when he was a baby you were in tune with the reality that this is in the shama that doesn't have to earn your approval or your nachos or your pride was given automatically and you were right you were a hundred percent right then and just some things happened that made us get distracted by some secondary issues and and we forgot who they really are and it's kosher it is kosher it is difficult to see someone as they really are when they don't present as who they really are and and when the yamsuf said these are not the jews you showed me he wasn't trying to be a troublemaker he didn't recognize them i want to tell you something the end of the day that sea split because the jews no matter how they looked coming out of israel were those same precious souls that existed before the world and your heart will split your heart will break open and the and the clipper caution the ice the self-protection that you had to do to survive to cope to deal with with the bush and the pressure and and the heartbreak and the worry and the sleepless nights you had you get some calluses you get some scars that's going to open up that's going to open up that's going to open up because you're going to look at your child and you're going to say haven't you ephraim in yellow this is a beautiful boy and then the alkane may i look my guts are opening are melting my heart is melting for him have compassion on him but you have to see that he's the same being beautiful precious cherished delightful shashoya means delightful and then homo may i then my my my scars on my heart so open up the melt away i'll have a soft heart again to this beautiful child and we all deserve to be seen this way every one of us deserves to be seen this way and maybe sometimes i think that the reason that the amish has caused so much of this to happen is to force us to learn how to start seeing each other this way when a child who's not yet giving you things to be proud of what they're doing forces you to get in tune with their being and then you could do that for everyone you can do it for your other kids you can do it for your spouse wouldn't that be wonderful to be in a marriage where your spouse is delighted to see you not because of whether you made money not because of whether you took them on a trip not because of how you look not because you smile and agree to what they say but they're delighted to see you because you are you wouldn't you feel won't you just breathe a sigh of relief knowing that you were in such a safe relationship where you are seen and validated and cherished just for being of course you would and i want to tell you something also i think a shabbos like this is a taste of that too because over here it's probably the most non-judgmental gathering in claudius and when you're here it's funny because you see people i'm not going to be here this shabbos but you see people throughout the shabbos at first when they meet each other you see they do the the rituals that they do out there where they have to like project the image the image that they worked very hard on developing that earns them whatever social credit you know like in china they have the social credit system yeah so we also have a social credit system you know and it determines a lot you know what schools your kids get into in shidduchim and after yeiner and all the good stuff and then you see by the end of the shabbos a bunch of neshamas people just being not having to earn the right to be present and you know why i think that happens here because there's so many people in this room who have that practice who've learned how to do this you didn't have a choice and and there are people who are different stages of of the process you know some are still trying some are still insistent that i can withhold nahas from a neshama in order to leverage their behavior and if that's where you're at i can't tell you to artificially accelerate the process maybe that's what you have to continue going through and if it works by the way wonderful but i think a lot of people who reach this point are already ready sometimes they call it being sick and tired of being sick and tired like you know what i'm done okay good so i got something all you who gave up you're ready to just surrender i got something for you it's called the truth the truth is your child is an infinitely unconditionally worthy beautiful precious soul who you automatically light up for when they enter the room that's all they ever were and that's what they will always be we have to reach inside of ourselves we have to get back in tune with ourselves we have to bring out our own souls and look at them soul two soul one soul recognizes another soul can you imagine how your whole home will change when this child in pain forces you to start seeing souls and then before you know it you'll walk out of the house and you'll start doing it for the neighbors yeah that nick you'll see oh he's a soul and go to shul that guy is talking get him no no he's a soul you go to the store a guy cuts you in like no it's also a soul out on the on on the highway you're driving road rage no it's a soul i really do believe in some way and it's not to explain it because only the abuser knows these things but you can see for yourself that the deep spiritual work that is demanded of parents of children in pain causes these parents eventually to become the most spiritual people that we have in our community today you are the people who see souls and very very very very soon meshech is coming and the whole world's going to see the truth and we're going to see how beautiful all of us were all along [Applause]