Addicts, Sensitive Souls, and Other Spiritual Seekers | Yom Kippur

This is a special class, right? Um Preparing to do shiva. Yeah, preparing to do it to shiva. Okay. Because Yom Kippur is coming. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, you know, one time there were three priests. They got together and they went on a retreat. And uh just by themselves. So, one of them says to the other two, he says, "You know, we're all taking confession. Confession is good for the soul, and we're always listening to confession, but how often do we get a chance to unburden ourselves? Why don't we all confess to each other about our sins?" So, the other two say, "Okay, fine. No problem. You go first." He says, "Okay. Um I have a big drinking problem. I'm always drunk. Parishioners have no They have no idea, but I'm always constantly shicker." Second one says, "You know what? I also have a vice. I'm always gambling. In fact, I take from the collection plate and I run to the casino and I gamble away the money." The third one starts to walk away and leave the room. They say, "Hey, where are you going?" He says, "You know, my sin is gossip, and I have to make a few phone calls." Okay. So, one of the big prayers of Yom Kippur that we say is the Al Chet prayer. Al Chet means for the sin of and then we go through the aleph-bet through the uh Hebrew alphabet and we enumerate all types of sins that start with every letter of the alphabet. In fact, double. Aleph aleph, bet bet, gimel gimel. One of the uh confessions is Al Chet she chatanu u'fanachnu v'yeitzer hara. We ask God to forgive us for the sin that we committed before him through or with the yeitzer hara, the evil inclination. Okay, so here here's the question. Simple question. What does it mean we ask you to forgive us for the sin that we committed with the evil inclination? Aren't all sins committed with the evil inclination? Right? If it wasn't from the evil inclination, then where did they come from? Obviously, every sin comes from some motive of the evil inclination. It's not the good inclination that's making you sin. Or maybe they just needed they they they came to Yud and they couldn't think of two good ones, so they just threw that one in and they said, "You know what? That applies to all of them, so yeah, put it in there. Print it." You hear the question? Yeah? It's a simple question, right? It's not a complicated question. So, I'll tell you a story that I'm sure I've told before. It's one of my favorites. But, uh it'll help get our minds in the right space to be able to understand this question better and to answer it. There's a story about a chassid, a father. It's really a story about a father in the times of the Alter Rebbe, the Baal Hatanya. He was a a simple villager. He uh He lived outside of the the Alter Rebbe's village of uh Lyozna. And he had a son who today we would call at risk. So the the father went to the Alter Rebbe and he unburdened his his his soul and he spoke about what was heavy upon his heart and he told the Alter Rebbe he has this son who's at risk. So the that he's getting involved in all types of things that are not appropriate for a Jewish boy and he's spiraling further and further. So the Alter Rebbe says to the to the father, "You get him to me and and I'll take it from there. You got to get him to me, but you do that and then I'll I'll take it from there." So the uh father goes home and he's thinking to himself he's got to he he has one job now. What does he have to do? Get his son to the Alter Rebbe. How's he going to get his son to the Alter Rebbe? If he's going to tell him go to the rabbi, there's no way. It's not happening. So uh he comes up with a bright idea. As mentioning, the boy was getting into things that were not considered so wholesome for a Jewish boy. Maybe this what I'm about to tell you doesn't translate culturally very well to New York 2019, but uh the boy was into riding horses. And uh that was not considered aidel. That wasn't, you know, refined behavior. No, to to ride a wagon, that's one thing, but to to get on a horse and ride a horse like a jockey, that's sort of crass. But he was very into it. The boy was very into it. So the father says to the teenage boy, "I need you to run an errand in this in the town, the bigger town, Liashna for me. So, he made up some type of errand that the boy should run for him. He says, "Can I take the horse?" And of course, that's what the father had in mind from the very beginning, that that would lure the boy to running the errand. So, he says, "Fine, you can take the horse." The boy says, "Great, then I'll go." So, he gets on the horse and he rides the horse. And um he arrives at the uh the Alter Rebbe. The Alter Rebbe confronts him, he sees him. And he says, "Young man, what do you have there?" He says, "This is This is my horse." He says, "Tell me about the horse." He says, "Oh, this is a very fine horse. It goes very, very, very quickly." The Alter Rebbe says, "Yeah, what's what's so great about that?" He says, "Well, you you don't understand. If you have a nice, fast horse, then if you're going somewhere, you get to where you want to go much sooner." The Alter Rebbe says, "Yeah, I suppose that's true. But but what if that same fast horse is going the wrong way? Then you also go off track much sooner." The boy says, "Yeah, that's true. But when you realize you're off track and you want to get back on track, you also get back on track faster, much sooner." The Alter Rebbe says, "Yeah, that's true. Once you realize that you've gone off track. Once you realize. He said it in Yiddish, "Ven er hat zich." When he realizes And all of a sudden the boy realized that the Alter Rebbe was having a conversation with him on two levels. It wasn't just about a fast horse. He was talking about the boy. He was saying somebody who has a fast horse within him, an internal fast horse and drive, a passion that uh causes him in theory to get to his destination faster. But if he's going off track, right? Then somebody who has greater passions and greater greater um fervor, if he's misguided or if those if that passion is mischanneled, then he's going to go astray much faster, right? But then, if he'll realize if he'll realize that he's on the wrong track and he'll want to correct himself, then he'll come back to the proper way much faster as well. So basically the Alter Rebbe was telling him a story about his life. Here you are, you're this talented, motivated, passionate young man. Because of that You know what they say, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall," right? So the more potential you have for good then the bigger your straying or the the more the the the farther the farther from the path you end up when you stray. But also when you do teshuvah, when you return and you get back on the right path, you'll also do that with an with exceptional passion and excitement. So, what does it mean? We ask Hashem to forgive us for the sin that we committed with the yetzer hara. Remember that old ad campaign? I haven't seen it in a long time, but I remember when I was a kid, a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Yeah? Oh. A yetzer hara is a terrible thing to waste. Yeah. It's a fast horse. If it's off track, yes, it's getting us off track faster, being that it's a fast horse. But if it's on track, and if it wants to do teshuvah, and if it's being appropriately channeled, then it's all of its power is for the good. So, what does it mean we for- we ask God to forgive us for the sin that we committed with the yetzer hara? What that means is we say, "Hashem, we're sorry for all of the missed opportunities to rechannel our mischanneled energies." When the yetzer hara is being mischanneled, the fast horse is taking us quickly off course, what we should have done is use that as an opportunity for teshuvah to get back on track. There's an interesting expression in the Gemara. Hashem says, "Barasi yetzer hara, I created the yetzer hara, the evil inclination. And Hashem says, ub'rasi Torah tavlin. But I also created Torah as tavlin." Tavlin literally means spices. But in this case, it means like uh uh medicinal herbs. It means a a remedy. It's an interesting expression. I created the evil inclination, but I created medicine for the evil inclination. You could read that statement to mean Hashem says, I created medicine so that if you have a sick yetzer hara, we can heal him and make him a nice, healthy, strong, robust yetzer hara. If you don't understand the purpose of a yetzer hara, that sounds very scary. The yetzer hara is my enemy. But if you understand, no, it's just an energy. It's mischanneled, but if you can rechannel it, which is the very definition of teshuvah, to reclaim that which had become misappropriated by negativity and reincorporated into positivity, then yeah, we want to nurse the yetzer hara back to health, so to speak, and have it become a force for good. This is basic Judaism. We say in the Shema, you should love Hashem b'chol l'vav'cha, right? Not b'chol lib'cha, b'chol l'vav'cha. And the sages explain that the two bases, technically it could have said lib'cha with one base, but it says l'vav'cha. With the angels, it does say with one base, cuz an angel doesn't have an evil inclination. But with humans, we have two inclinations. So, b'chol l'vav'cha, to love Hashem with both your hearts, with your good inclination, which that's the easy one, and also with your negative inclination. What does that mean? It means to reclaim it, to rechannel it. Okay, now I want to tell you something. I'm going to go a little bit deeper. So you're saying the yetzer hara is a good thing? The yetzer hara is potentially a wonderful thing. Depends how you use it. You got to use it. Yeah? I'm just confused. I think when you're rechanneling it and you've gone to the yetzer tov, I would think that's the yetzer hara, then the yetzer tov. No, the rechanneled yetzer hara is not the yetzer tov. The yetzer tov is the yetzer tov. like wanting to rechannel is coming from the yetzer tov. No, the partnership between that. So, it's like the difference between letting loose a bull in a china shop or hooking up a yoke on the back of the bull and now it's pulling the plow or it's pulling a wagon. It's a beast of burden. So, if its energies are unchanneled or mischanneled, it's destructive. But if it is being harnessed, then it's a force for good. It's like kung fu. Or like some martial arts where you use their power to help you. Like jujitsu or judo. By the way, you know the difference between karate and judo? Karate is a eastern form of martial arts and judo is what you make bagels with. Hm? It's no longer doing its job? Right, it's no longer No, but that's the point. That's its real job. No, you thought the yetzer hara was here to ruin your life? Hashem didn't create anything to ruin your life. He only created things to help you serve Hashem, which means to have a good life. What's a good life? A productive life, a life of service to Hashem. It's all here to help. It's all Everything here is an asset. We just have to reclaim it and use it in the right way. That's It's all strategy. I'm going to go a little bit deeper, I said. In the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, the Alter Rebbe's Shulchan Aruch, he says something very interesting. Something actually that somehow I didn't notice until past few years. Never noticed it before. In uh Siman Tov Resh Chaf Alef, 621, if you want to look it up, it's uh Halacha Tet Vav, 15. The Alter Rebbe says that on Yom Kippur, anyone who cries for the Bnei Aharon, for the sons of Aaron, the high priest, he says, "Yadid D'mo'is." The tears, literally, he sheds tears, will be forgiven for his sins. You know, in Judaism, you have shiva, 7 days of mourning, God forbid, 30 days, 11 months for the end of kaddish, the 12 months for the yahrtzeit. The sons of Aaron, when did they pass away? 3,300 some odd years ago. Why would anyone cry? Why who's continuing to cry? Remember the story? The story's like this. Let's Let's recap the story. Aaron had four sons. Eleazar, Itamar, Nadab, and Abihu. After the Jews left Egypt, they received the Torah. Then there were the the two tablets and then the sin of the golden calf and then Moshe went back up on the mountain and he came back down and then there was Yom Kippur, there was forgiveness and then Hashem said according to certain timelines. Now now build a sanctuary, but build a Mishkan, a physical place and basically that happened Rosh Chodesh Nissan. The if the the Jews left Pesach, right? 15th of Nissan, 15th of Nissan. So basically a year minus two weeks, two weeks short of a year after leaving Egypt, they they inaugurated the Mishkan, the sanctuary, which was this portable center of worship that they had with them in the desert. And anyway, there were eight days of inauguration and if you remember the tragedy which happened during the inauguration inaugural period of the of the Mishkan is that two of the four sons of of Aaron, they entered the Holy of Holies with a strange fire and they were consumed. Their souls were consumed in a fire before Hashem. That's how they died. After they died, Moshe says to Aaron, Moses says to his brother Aaron, I knew I knew that there were going to be some deaths involved in the inauguration of the of the Mishkan. But I I didn't know who it was going to be and if I had to guess, I thought it was going to be either you or me. Because I knew that some holy people were going to die as part of the inauguration. He says a college. He says I know told me was from the word college close because by those who are close to me a college I will be sanctified. So says I knew that the most say I will be sanctified by those who are near to me. So I figured either you or me. Now I see these two boys. They were really near to you. They were I mean to they were really near to them. So here's the question. Classic question. Were these two boys to dig him? They were close to him. Like like my says to Adam that they are. Or if you look at the narrative are they two rascals who went into the temple into an area they weren't supposed to go into carrying fire that they weren't supposed to be carrying. They broke the rules and they got zapped. So they were holy or they were they were rebels. Somebody saying yeah. Holy rebels. Holy rebels. Thank you. You know that in Judaism if there's a question is it this or is it that the answer is yes. If you look at what the kind writes about the already. The kind has a famous who is a famous Moroccan sage and he wrote the pure and holy Mishnah. When he describes how Nadav and Avihu died before Hashem, the way he describes it is that they were consumed with passion, a fiery passion for God. To the extent that they couldn't handle that passion. And it carried them away. They They were carried away by their passions. And maybe they went too far, maybe they went where they shouldn't have gone, and maybe it was a strange fire, or you could read strange fire, an unusual passion, an extraordinary passion. And when they stood before God, that was it. They didn't have any desire to remain in their bodies. They didn't want to be separate. They just wanted to be one with the one. And that's it with with that fervor, that excitement, they were just drawn into the oneness and left their bodies behind. So, in other words, who were these two boys? They were two sensitive souls who were passionate and excitable and maybe didn't know how to properly contain that excitement and it ended up being their undoing. It was tragic. But, their rebellion, if you really, really trace it to its core, is a holy rebellion. They were rebelling against this world. They didn't want the world. They wanted to be one with Hashem. You know, there was the the Hebrew poet, Ahad Ha'am. And uh he was married to a relative of the Rebbe Rashab, the fifth Chabad Rebbe. So, he once met the Rebbe Rashab and he remarked I should before I say his remark, I'll tell you regarding Nimrod, King Nimrod, it says he What was his sin? He was He knew his master, meaning God, and he purposely rebelled. I mean, he did it out of spite. He knew who God was. He knew God was the master and he rebelled out of spite. So, Ahad Ha'am remarked about the Rebbe Rashab that he is Yodea et ha'olam u'mekaven limrod bo. That he knows the world, meaning he's he's not He's not just some uh bottling sitting in Yeshiva who only knows his books and he has He knows nothing about what's going on outside of the the the walls of the the Beis Medrash. He's a worldly guy. He knows what's going on. He should be enlightened like me. And yet, he purposely He He renounces the worldly things out of spite. He knows. He's smart enough. He's worldly enough. He's sophisticated enough. He could be part of this and he renounces it out of spite. Who are these boys? These were boys who said this world They were angry. They were They were They were disillusioned. By what? What was bothering them? What? The limitations. Limitations, blah blah blah. What limitations? Physicality, a body. It's making them sick. Who Who Who Who gets sick from the limitations of the physical body? I mean, that's That's the human condition. That's everybody has that. What That's not a problem. That's reality. No, that That didn't That's a problem. These were sensitive souls who were bothered by the idea that they should be separate from God. That was intolerable. And it made them nuts to the extent they did something they probably shouldn't have done. They should They did They definitely shouldn't have done. And yet, when after the fact that they did it, Moshiach says, "You know why they did it? Because they're so close to Hashem." So, who who were these kids? These are the kids today who everybody thinks are rejecting God because they are uncomfortable or disillusioned with organized religion, and they're the most spiritual ones among us. And this has been going on since time immemorial. Unfortunately, today right now we have street drugs that are very, very fatal. So, the ODs are worse than ever. So, now all of the sudden we have a problem. We don't suddenly have a problem. We always had a problem. We always had sensitive souls who found life in this world intolerable, who were seeking something higher, seeking a perfection, and were self-medicating as a form of escape. That was always happening. Now all of a sudden people woke up because the street drugs are are so uh so deadly. I I want to show you I wrote this book 10 years ago. God of our understanding. Okay. I just want to show you something from this book. There's uh it's it's the subtitle is Jewish spirituality and recovery from addiction. A lot of people misunderstand what the book is about. The truth is it's just a book of Hasidus. That's all it is. It's Hasidus, but I translated it into the language of a certain modality of addiction treatment. Specifically the 12-steps approach, which is a spiritual approach. Historically what's the the source of the 12-steps approach? It's very interesting. People don't really know about this. Although the 12-steps approach is spiritual, you know, higher power. Addicts have to find a higher power. Um it actually has its roots in the medical community. Specifically the story is like this. There was this uh rich privileged New England Wasp People still use that term Wasp, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. named Rowland Hazard back in the 1930s. And he was a drunk. Anyway, his parents got sick of bailing him out. So finally they sent him to rehab. They didn't have rehabs back then. What did they do? They sent him to the best psychiatrist in the world. Well, one of the two best. They could have sent him to Freud, but thank God they didn't. They sent him to Freud's ex-student, Jung. You know that Jung was a student of Freud and they had a falling out. You know why? Jung said that spirituality was indispensable to to mental health. And Freud being Jewish couldn't afford to admit that. So they sent him to Jung. This young man, Rowland, he spends a year under the treatment of Jung. After the year of treatment, he leaves and before he's on the boat back to America, he finds himself in a tavern and he's drunk again. He comes back to Jung and he says, "I've been here for a year. Am I un you know, am I incurable?" So Jung tells him, "You know, the truth is alcoholics like you rarely recover. Rarely does it happen." He says, "I have a theory though. See, there are very rare occasions where there is seemingly spontaneous recovery. But I've been studying that on the rare occasions when it happens and trying to find a common thread. And what I believe is common to all of these seemingly spontaneous uh stories of recovery is a vital spiritual experience. That was the term he used. A vital spiritual experience. I mean, it's not just a spiritual idea, but something that a person lives. Something that after you've gone through that, you know, there's before the experience and there's after the experience. Two different lives, so to speak. And he says these experience are such are so powerful, what they do is they cause rearrangements of uh ideas, emotions, and attitudes. Which I think is interesting because ideas is Hochma Binah Daas and emotions is Chesed Gevurah Tiferes and attitudes is Netzach Hod Yesod Malchus. Very interesting he used those terms, ideas, emotions, and attitudes. And anyway he says but and once that's all changed it's like you're a different person. Right? If your ideas, emotions, and attitudes are changed then it's like a personality transplant. Just to to interject in the middle of the Young story, but I remember Rabbi Dr. Twerski once was talking about sitting in on an AA meeting and here he hears a guy who says a guy who's been sober for 30 years, mind you. The guy says, "The man I was used to drink. The man I was will drink again. Thank God I'm not the man I was." Meaning it's not that I used to drink and now I don't. I used to be the guy who drank. Now I'm a different guy. If I would be that guy, I would drink again, but I'm not that guy. I'm a different guy. So Rabbi Twerski says, "From that he understood what the Rambam says that a baal teshuvah is a different person." Doesn't mean I changed my behavior. It's not I'm a different person. So Young says, back to the Young story. So Young says to Roland, "I know about these vital spiritual experiences and I know that they have this effect and I was actually trying trying to induce one in you and clearly I failed. But here's what I'm telling you. I don't think medical science has more to offer you. I think the only path is a spiritual experience. So I recommend you try to get one." So he went back to New York and he fell in with a bunch of guys from the Oxford Society. These were guys who were trying to practice to trying to practice first century Christianity. That's how they called it. I have a friend, Father Tom, who's a Jesuit priest. So I always joke with him. He's also big into the recovery community. So I always joke with him. I said, "You know the Oxford Society, they were trying to practice They were trying to go back to Christianity as it was in the first century." I said, "They were so close. They should have gone back one more century." They could have gone back to Judaism, right? But anyways, he found these guys and they were very serious spiritual seekers and he hung out with them and they were into um reliance on God and prayer and meditation and restitution for harms done. And he followed their spiritual program with spiritual spirit simple spiritual program and he found himself relieved of his alcoholism. Basically, what Young told him would happen happened. So then he got excited and he um Oh, the Oxford Group, their thing was that you had to share it. You know, you have to give it away in order to keep it. So he was looking for somebody else to share it with. He ended up sharing it with a guy named Edwin Thacher who'd been arrested on a drunken disorderly. And uh then they then Edwin, or they called him Ebby, he had his spiritual experience. So they told him, "Now you got to find a guy and pass it on." So he says, "Oh, I know a guy who was a real boozer back in World War I, Bill Wilson. He lives in Brooklyn on Clinton Street." So he went to Bill and he told Bill he found God. Bill said, "I ought to chase you out of here talking like God." He says, "No, it's not a religious thing. It's a personal relationship with God. You know, it's your higher power." Anyways, Bill chased him off at first, but then he had his spiritual awakening and then uh Bill was on business in Akron, Ohio and he met a proctologist named Dr. Bob Dr. Bob Smith who was a big alcoholic and he told Bob about his theory that had been taught to him by by Ebby who had been taught to him by Rowland and and then Bob got sober and then they said we got to pass this on. They went down to the hospital and they found the guy who was strapped down because he was he was drunk who was arrested and he was a uh He was a a lawyer from Kentucky named Bill Dotson and they shared it with him and one by one by one by one. Okay. Anyways, basically the story is within just a few years the program really really took off. They ended up writing a book codifying their spiritual program and uh So now cut to like 20 years later 25 years later and somebody I don't know how it happened but somebody said did anybody ever tell Carl Jung that we based our program on his advice to Roland Hazard back in the 30s. And they were like, "Oh no, nobody ever told him." So Bill Wilson wrote a letter to Carl Jung and basically said, "Hey I've got this group Alcoholics Anonymous like we have like 100,000 people already who have done this program. We want to thank you. We based it on your advice to Roland." Happens to be Carl Jung answered the letter and it was one of the last letters that he answered then he fell ill and he died. So really was it the last moment really almost to even get a response. That letter I heard about I heard people talking about it and I always wanted to find it and then finally I found a really poor facsimile of a facsimile somewhere online and I included it in this book. And it's interesting when I when we printed the book, I needed to find out who to get the rights from. So, actually I contacted the Young estate in Switzerland, and they told me they don't have the rights to it cuz they only have the rights to the German language letters. And this one is in English. So, I said, "Who do you go to?" They said, "Go to Princeton University." So, I went to Princeton and I asked them, "Can I have the the rights to the letter?" So, I I wrote them a letter. They wrote me back a letter. Yeah, okay, they they gave me the rights to the letter. I said, "Now, can I have a good copy of it?" They said, "We don't have it." I said, "What I thought you said that it's yours." They said, "No, we have the rights to it, but we don't have the letter." After the book came out, there was an article in the New York in the New York Times, and the lady who runs Stepping Stones up in Bedford, New York, which is the summer home of Bill of Bill and Lois Wilson, she has the archives. So, she wrote me, and she says, "I have the original letter." So, she Okay, after the book came out. Anyways. So, here's Carl Jung's letter to to Bill Wilson. I don't know. Is it possible, Rich, can can you get it on this at all? Is it Yeah? If I Let's see. If I hold it there. No, that's okay. Really small? Okay. Then we'll add it in. All right. So, he says, "Dear Mr. Wilson, your letter has been very welcome indeed. I had no news from Roland H. Okay, this is 25 years later. He doesn't know what happened He doesn't even know that the guy got sober, let alone he told somebody who told somebody who started this movement where they took Young's advice and applied it for 100,000 people. And I had often wondered what had been his fate. Our conversation, which he has adequately reported to you, had an aspect of which he did not know. The reason that I could not tell him everything was that those days I had to be exceedingly careful of what I said. I found out that I was misunderstood in every possible way. Thus, I was very careful when I was talking to Roland H. In other words, Young saying, I had this theory that the answer to the addiction problem is spiritual, but I almost didn't tell him because I'm sick of being harassed for it. Cuz everybody gets on my case. So, I almost didn't want to You know, what do I need it for? So, I almost didn't tell him. I was very careful when I talked to Roland H, but what I really thought about was the result of many experiences with men of his kind. Listen to this. And think about what it means. Who were really close to Hashem. Bikur Ivai and Kodesh. With these two boys, these two sons of Aaron, the ones who were the rebels, the ones who did what they weren't supposed to do, the ones who couldn't deal with life in a body, the ones who wanted to become one with Hashem, these were the ones that Moses himself testifies on and says, "These are these are the close These are the ones close to Hashem." Listen Listen to this. His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness. Expressed in medieval language, the union with God. So, basically, what's the diagnosis? These are people who want union with God. And it manifests that desire, it manifests itself on a lower level as a desire to self-medicate. A need to escape reality. But what is it really? It's a desire for union with God. And there's a footnote. And this this part is handwritten. Young wrote a little footnote number one. And at the bottom of the page it says, "As the heart, h a r t, which means a deer, panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Psalm 42:1. You know what that is? Ka'ayal ta'arek al afikei mayim kenafshi tzadka elacha Elohim. So, the diagnosis from Carl Jung of alcoholism is Ka'ayal ta'arek al afikei mayim kenafshi tzadka elacha Elohim. That he's yearning for a higher unity with God. But how does it come out? Self-medication, escapism. And this creates the horror, right? That's the real motivation behind the yetzer hara. So, a person who thinks the yetzer hara is there cuz it wants to live it up and enjoy this world. No, that's not what it wants. What it really wants is union with God. This sound shocking? Does it sound counterintuitive? Does it sound incomprehensible? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but we know it's true. There's a By the way, I'll just skip to the very end. He He writes at the end, "So therefore, the the helpful formula expressed in Latin is spiritum contra spiritum." Spiritum is like spirits, like winding spirits. But spiritum is also like spirituality. So spiritum contra spiritum. If you use spirituality, you'll antidote the need to self-medicate. Cuz what what is the person really looking for? They don't want to get the numbness from the bottle. What they really want is that feeling of wholeness with unity with God, and they're just looking for it in the wrong place. If you give them what they really need, then they don't go looking for it in the wrong way. So there's a Hasidic parable. That there was once a man who heard a song. He heard a song, and when he heard this song, everything felt okay. He was at peace. And he only heard this song once. And after it finished, it was done. And all he could think about was that feeling of wholeness and peace that he had experienced at the time of listening to the song. So what did he do? He started searching and asking people if they knew the song. But he could barely hum a few notes of it. He could barely get it started. Nobody knew the song. So then he started going to concerts, anywhere musicians were playing. And he would listen to all kinds of music. Would sit through song after song after song after song. Cuz he's hoping maybe one of these days he's going to hear that song. And he wandered from town to town, from place to place. And he never heard the song that he was looking for. That's the parable. What's the meaning? Meaning is the soul starts off in heaven. And reality, the meaning of life is very clear. It's all about God. It's all about oneness, wholeness. And everything is right. Everything is good. Then the soul comes down to a body and it's separated from that. And it remembers that there was this feeling. It remembers the feeling. But it can't exactly remember what caused that feeling. It can't remember how the song goes. It remembers that there was a song. It remembers how the song made him feel, but can't remember what that song was. So he starts looking for it. He looks all over. He looks for it in in all types of distractions and pleasure and experiences, adrenaline rushes, relationships, chemicals, anything. He's looking everywhere desperately for that feeling again. He wants to have that feeling again. But everything he tries of this world as an attempt to recapture the feeling from the real song, and in the end it never measures up because it's not the song. What was Jung saying? He was saying, "You can't tell people who know already that this world ultimately is not as it should be. You can't tell them be comfortable, grow up, be an adult, become disillusioned like the rest of us, and don't be bothered by the fact that you're not one with God." Be like a good proper religious Jew who's not bothered by the fact that he's not one with God. You davening three times a day, you don't have to be one with God. And they say, "No." They say, "I I don't want your institutionalized religion. I want the real thing. I want a connection. And I'll know it when I have it. The proof is in the pudding." One of the reasons I called this book God of Our Understanding, by the way, is because of a story I heard from a guy who 70-year-old guy, 20 years sober, and he says like this. He says, "When I was a little kid, my zayde, he was the religious one. My parents were already assimilated. My zayde used to take me to shul. And I had a very special warm feeling going to shul with zayde. But my parents, they they weren't into any of that. They were more interested that I should do well in school, go to good college, go to law school, and I did all of those things. I became a lawyer. And he says, "I was doing what I was supposed to do, but morally, ethically, I was bankrupt. And I became a good addict. And I burned my bridges, divorced twice, finally hit bottom. And he says, "I come into this program and they say you got to find a higher power." So, higher power? I found my own higher power. Found what we call the God of my understanding. I found the God of my understanding, he says. Right? Like Abby told Bill, it doesn't have to be any anyone else's God. You find the God of your understanding. So, so so he said, "I found the God of my understanding. God concept that worked for me on a personal level." He says, "And I did that for a year, and I stayed sober. And I did it for 10 years, and I stayed sober. I did it now 20 years. And I want to tell you something. If I would have met the rabbi," he said, pointing to me, "back in my active addiction, I would not have been interested to hear a word he had to say to me. But I want to tell you more than that. Even if I had met the rabbi after I found the God of my understanding, my first year in recovery, I would not have wanted to hear anything he has to say to me. In fact, I'll tell you even more. If I would have met him If I would have met him last year, 19 years into my recovery, I would not have listened to a word the rabbi has to say to me. But now, where has my journey taken to me taken me to? Is I'm talking to this rabbi, I'm putting on t'fillin, I'm saying Shema Yisrael, and I realize that I had to become a drunk, hit rock bottom, lose everything valuable in my life, find the God of my understanding in AA, so now I can finally come back to the same God that my zaidy used to daven to in shul. So, that's why I called the book God of our understanding. I mean, you start with the God of your personal understanding, vital spiritual experience, and then bring it into Yiddishkeit. But it doesn't work the other way around. So, the sensitive souls who are yearning for a personal relationship with Hashem, and we're telling them here are the rules and the regulations, they're not satisfied with that. The solution is not to brand these people the rebels. Or if you want to brand them rebels, at least understand that rebel is not a dirty word. There was a Litvisher bochur who went to the to the rebbe in the 1960s. He asked about a growing a beard cuz that wasn't his custom. And the rebbe was encouraging about the beard. And um one of the things that their conversation led to was the rebbe saying, you know, in the '60s, who had beards? The hippies, right? So, the rebbe started saying to him, he says, you know, what they say outside of New York City, what do people say about the hippies? They're a bunch of Jews. The hippie movement is another one of these diseases the Jews have brought upon us. The rebbe says, but this was always the way. He said, back in the '20s, if you would ask, who's a socialist? They would say, a Jew. If you would ask in the '40s, who's a communist? They would say, a Jew, right? But what's the truth? The Jews are always part of any revolutionary fringe, countercultural, anti-establishment movement. You want to know why? Why do you think that's so? Cuz they're the potential. Because we understand this cannot be what it's all about. You're going to tell me, two cars in the garage, white picket fence, and I should be satisfied? You're going to tell me, live a regular life, be a regular person, just do what you're told, and everything's good. No. They're chasing something bigger. Not something It's not something bigger, the biggest, the biggest oneness, unity. So, if you try to buy me off with anything less than unity, it's not going to work. So, what's the solution to all this misguided yet to utter? To realize what the yet to utter really wants. The fast horse that's taking people off track really is the same fast horse that can get us back on track that much quicker. But for these sensitive souls who find the world entirely how does one go about being healthy then? They're ultimately right. We should all be dissatisfied. We should all want more. But we're functioning and we're coping with So, who's functional and who's dysfunctional? The person who says, "I can tolerate living my life as a good religious Jew and being an entity separate and apart from the unity of God." That's functional. We call that functional. And the person who says, "I find existence as it is intolerable to the extent that because I don't know where to find true unity, I'm self-medicating as a form of escape." We ask, "What what's the solution?" The only solution is we got to give people what they're really looking for. And when you see a fast horse and you see a nice, healthy, robust, passionate misdirected young person who's who's who's setting the world on fire, you should understand something. That rebellion is coming from a holy place and it's not going to be satisfied until it's given the real goal that it's that it's that it's searching for. Yeah, but what if We we we we have to talk about God. We have to talk about God. I don't want to EVER HEAR ONE MORE TIME a kid who grew up in an Orthodox family come and tell me that the first time he heard people talk about God was in a church basement at an AA meeting. I don't want to ever hear again someone say they went to 10 years of day school or Yeshiva and they heard all types of rules, but they didn't hear people talk about God until they went to a church basement meeting of an AA of an AA group. I don't want to ever hear that again. You want to know what children we need to do as a community? Talk about God. Talk about God. Talk about your personal relationship with God. Talk about faith, not as a as a as a as a doctrine, but as what we live with, as something personal, as something the a God of your understanding. Don't talk about God from the books. Talk about the God that you relate to, the God that you live with. That's That's That's what I'm saying. But then But then there is a Torah. Of course there's a Torah. No. And there's also a ratzon Hashem. Of course. So, I can be an adolescent all my life and rebel and not like rules, but at the end of the day I have to mature, to grow up, to realize Go see what works. We're killing them with the rules. Give them God and they will be And you want to know what? It's not even a theory, it's true. Find anybody who went away and came back. Find the recovered addict who became frum again after he got over his Yeshiva PTSD and these are the frumest people. These are the people who really daven. These are the people who really do mitzvahs. Of course we want to bring them back to Torah, but you have to first connect to what they're looking for. You cannot push the the the organized religion agenda to the exclusion of a personal relationship with God. When you find a personal relation with God, then everything falls into place. These people become the most firm people. They become the most firm, the most sincere. If you don't believe me, you don't have to believe. Let Let me just wrap this up because we're going to go gone over time. Bottom line. Every one of us can apply this for ourselves. But I I also want us to remember on a societal level, there is a crisis. There is a crisis. There is a crisis in the observant community. And those people who are OD'ing are only the canary in the coal mine. You know the canary in the coal mine? It's an expression, but where it comes from a real thing. The coal miners, when they open up a new mine shaft, there's a gas that's invisible and it's tasteless and odorless and it's deadly. So, they bring a canary. The canary is tweeting along in the cage and then all of a sudden the canary is asleep in the bottom of the cage. What does that mean? He Right. So, then the miners clear out of the mine shaft and they leave. Now, let me ask you, is the canary a toxicologist? He's just sensitive. More sensitive. So, the canary dies from the same thing that kills everybody, he just dies sooner. So, the kid who's OD'ing, he dies from the same thing that kills everybody, he just does it sooner. We were given There's a part of us that we were given that cannot be satisfied with normal. We cannot be satisfied with anything normal. We are radical. We're utopian, we're dreamers, we're idealists, we're perfectionists. We want nothing less than oneness with God. And when as long as that desire is frustrated, no good can come from it. Don't try to push it away because it only becomes more and more dysfunctional the more you try to push it off. The only solution is get that fast horse back on track. Use it in a healthy way. And then you'll see the people who are the the the disenfranchised of our community when they come back, they end up being the role models. They end up being the people that everyone else wants to be like or should want to be like. So let's just get some priorities here. There is a crisis. It's not the opioid crisis, that's a symptom. There's a crisis of spiritual bankruptcy. But there's something that can be done about it. We have the tools. We have the information. We have we we we have the treasures. But again, I don't want to ever ever hear again one more kid whose parents paid tuition to send them to a school and for them to tell me that they didn't know about God until they went to an AA meeting. I never want to hear that again. in the home. Never mind that they go to school. You can't blame the school, start in the Blame the school, blame the family, blame the community, blame the school, blame everybody. Yeah, you're right. Blame ourselves. Everybody's on one I'm a rabbi, I'm at fault. If one person got under my nose and didn't hear about God from me in a sincere way, then I then I have a I have a share in in the blame. But let's put it in a positive way. Takes a village. So, every single one of us, as a parent, as a member of a community, as a member of a synagogue, as as as as someone who sends if if you're sending your children to a school all these different connection points that you have in the community are opportunities. They're all opportunities. So, so let's use them and and and look at the most vulnerable as a as a canary in the coal mine, as a symptom of how healthy our communities are. Don't look at them as nebbach, oh, this kid. No, that's that's You want to know how healthy we are? Look at those who are the most vulnerable, the dreamers, the idealists, the perfectionists. That's the indication of how healthy we are as a community.