Preparing for the Jewish Days of Awe - Library of Torah Thought - Rabbi Benzion Klatzko

[Music] so i'm going to start off with something that those who have been on the akiva trip will appreciate they'll appreciate the moment of it and it is my way of seguing into how to approach uh the el the rosh hashanah the young kipper that's coming up so i keep a trip for those who are watching on torah anytime and other platforms the akiva trip is a trip where people who come with various uh backgrounds uh they come to israel and sometimes to poland as well they come to learn and grow and look and feel more their connection with the almighty and part of what i'm hoping is that people will want to invest more of their time after the trip to learn more about their judaism because the truth is a week in poland or two weeks in israel while it's definitely time well spent it's hard to really say that that's going to um be the feather in the cap that we're wearing on our head the rest of our lives we need something more substantial and we need to own our own personal investment and uh that's that's my hope my hope is that it's a taste it's a time the word for taste and reason is the same the same um word in hebrew the tom the dover the taste a little taste uh but there's a much there's much more to it so it was on the last trip and the trip was i would say two-thirds of the way through we were uh we were at the bedouin tents which means that we were um we were uh going to spend five days in first camping out there in the south then going up to tiberias to tavaria then going to the spot for shabbat and then the trip winds down and i was speaking to some of the students uh at the dinner which is usually a very nice dinner in the bedroom dance and i was speaking with them and the feedback that i was getting was while rally this has been a really nice trip it's been nice you know there's maybe there's something that you know an idea i could take from it and and we were going around the table and you know that we had broken up into different tables and i was at one table with maybe seven or eight students and hearing their feedback confirmed to me that i i didn't feel like i was getting through to my students and the trip was two-thirds of the way uh through and to be honest it was my second trip of the summer and i also hadn't been feeling that great on the trip and maybe i was not giving the students my everything i thought maybe i could be giving more and because of that the message wasn't um it wasn't getting through the way i had hoped i i needed it to be alive and i didn't feel it was alive so at the dinner in the bedwin tents i went around each table and i said i'm going to be giving a short talk in another room right adjacent to the uh to the dining room everyone please finish up dinner and go into that room and i've never done this before usually we go from the dinner we go to find out how the bedrooms make their coffee and that's very nice and then we have a bonfire and the whole thing is very lovely but we never i never quite did this and i and the students they came into the room and i looked at the students there and i said you know what i want to tell you something i feel like i'm failing you i feel like what uh you have come for i have not provided there is so much in my heart and i need to give it over and i feel that time is running out i can hear the ticking of the clock and then i told the students you know we're here in the bedouin tents and there's a lot of birthright groups who are here and they have come because they wanted to they wanted to enjoy israel and they're gonna do the same thing we will tonight basically they'll go stargazing they'll have they'll have a barbecue they'll have a bonfire i told my students and then they're gonna go on and many of them the truth is most of them are going to go on to live not just secular lives but they'll probably intermarry and their kids or almost certainly their grandkids won't even identify as jewish and i i told my students the statistics of how many jews today in america identify as jews whose grandparents are great whose great-grandparents were jewish and as i said it i began to cry it was a little bit of a shocking moment i guess for myself because i wasn't expecting to do that and the students were sitting there with their jaws uh dropped [Music] and it was a turning point in the trip i feel and the urgency that i wasn't able to express in the first two thirds of the trip and we had some great times and singing and a beautiful abdullah and sheeran that urgency only came through when i was as authentic as i was able to be and not just go through the motions of okay this is what a nike trip looks like but to actually uh to actually speak speak my heart so because of that um i figured we'll start off with this idea we'll start off with the urgency of the month of elliot there's a certain urgency and i'm going to describe to what that urgency is we have a finite number of ells in our life ello is the precursor for the day of judgment this is when we prepare ourselves we sit down with our lawyers we formulate our arguments we decide how we're going to address when we're in court how we should look up look down steer the jury in the in the face look down look contrite uh look remorseful look defiant uh we're preparing there's a lot of preparation that goes on because the day of our son is the day of judgment we need to prepare to be prepared we don't want to wing it when we come to court we really want to know what we're doing and we want to have a really good clear picture of how that's going to look and we have a finite number you know thank god i'm 54 years old and the number has been dwindling every year that's how life works and there are some elo's where i really feel like okay i'm putting in the due diligence and sometimes in ello the month of ello this month i feel like you know what time is taken and i'm not feeling the urgency i'm not getting it yet and i don't know how to wake myself up and i don't want it to be contrived i don't want it to be fake i want to really feel the mo the moment that's coming up i want to feel the magnitude of what it means to stand staring at my deeds of the past year what it means when the creator looks at me and says klatschko you're getting older let's see what kind of year you deserve it could be a year of blessing it could be a year of goodness it could be a year of health a year of not just a year of of bounty or god forbid the other kind of year and if i really really believe that that's what's at stake of course everything would change everything would so what's happening is that since i go through the same ritual year after year and i'm used to the high holiday period coming and i hear the chauffeur i dip the apple and the honey i'm used to it so after a while i looking at it like wow everything is riding on me getting this right after a while it just becomes rote and that's very scary because i know that when the high holidays are upon me i will feel it i know that when i'm standing in shul on yom kippur with my kitthelon i know i'm gonna feel it whether i prepared or not i know i'm gonna feel it and then i'm gonna regret why i wasted the month before everyone feels if you come into yom kippur you hear the khazang singh and khon nidre you scream hashem kira everyone feels it to some degree but when we wait that long to feel it and then we tell god i'm gonna change but we haven't worked on changing until then it may seem disingenuous it may seem insincere so why don't we just say okay you know what these are things i want to change why wouldn't we do that and the simple answer is that we've done it before and it hasn't worked we've we've resolved to do certain things in our life whether it's shabbat or kashud we're not speaking lash nahara or learning what we've resolved and it lasted perhaps sometime and then it dissolved from resolve to dissolve it dissipates and we don't have confidence that it's going to change and we know that god knows the future so we make these calculations in our mind and say well i'm going before a god who knows that even though i say i'm going to change he knows i'm not going to so why stand there as a bold-faced liar as somebody who's a hypocrite and say i'm going to change when god knows i'm not going to i may as well just say i can't because i'm speaking to god it's not like a person i could convince them i'm going to change give me another chance but god knows the reality so why why pretend i'm fooling god i'm actually being righteous because i'm being honest in front of god i'm acknowledging god knows me and knows the future so he knows i'm not going to hold on to it so why bother that's the battle that goes on inside of our minds since we're standing in front of someone who's omnipotent who's omniscient who knows understands i can't fake it and i can't fake myself so i want to share with you the most difficult question we ask ourselves on a daily basis it's actually the hardest question and it is the question that we ask ourselves again and again and again throughout our lives and the question is what is my value do i have value i look in the mirror am i a valuable person what's my value so i come into a room and i have a good voice so my value is my voice i'm a good singer that's my value i'm a good looking guy that's my value i'm very clever i'm very smart i have a high iq that's my value i'm a i'm a doer i get things done that's my value throughout our lives we walk around daily hourly every minute question what's my value my good husband my good wife am i a good friend what's my value it's the scariest question that we can possibly ask ourselves what is our value the yate sahara the evil inclination has a beautiful tactic to get us to mess up in our lives and the tactic is to tell us you don't really have value you eat you drink be quite merry because tomorrow you'll be dead and no one will remember you and you'll have a tombstone and that tombstone will be weathered and the letters will be erased and it will be illegible in 200 years and in a thousand years from now it will be as if you never existed on earth so you may as well do what you want have the enjoyment that you want because you have no value for us to think that we have no value is the scariest thing that we could confront it's one of the reasons that when we think about the magnitude of the universe and how many millions and billions of light years across the whole thing is that it can cause us to lose hope to devalue ourselves out of all the galaxies out there hundreds of billions maybe trillions of galaxies and each one of them with hundreds of billions of stars and there are almost an infinite number of planets around those stars god cares about me one of eight billion people wandering around for a few years on earth how does god care about me i have no value so our value comes from other people you have a good voice you're strong when i look in the mirror i give myself value even though what i'm attributing value to are more character traits that i have versus my integral self you know this past week queen elizabeth passed away and what's really interesting is there was a lot of mourning out there you know whenever you happen to see this video uh on whatever platform you're watching just be aware that this was the week that she passed away and what's interesting is that although there are many many people really the world over who are mourning the death of this monarch the reality she had no power she couldn't execute anyone she couldn't start a war was really a figurehead whose job was to go like this and to go to charitable events and yet the world appreciated having a queen elizabeth and i was thinking you know this is the kind of thing i think about a lot like so what exactly she was a monarch isn't the entire idea of a monarchy an archaic notion it's died in much of the world america doesn't even have a monarch why would we even why would we even care about a monarch and i'll tell you why i think it speaks to the average person the monarchy at least in great britain is the concept that god endowed a person with special divinity special godliness they are ordained they are consecrated not because they're strong and not because they're pretty they are just ordained because god likes people so in this monarchy god ordains the queen but we are charmed by the notion that you don't need money to wield power she does have a lot of money the royal family has plenty of but it's not the money that gave her the power and it's not making policy judaism believes the following judaism believes that single person particularly every jewish person is a monarch every person is royalty every person is ordained by god it's it's a notion that we have a hard time with because we connect royalty or status to power power and status are connected and demand so if you have a billionaire rules over a company comes into a restaurant gets the best seat the reason he's being shown status is because he's got money the money or someone's a famous actress so she comes in to um an event and people go over the paparazzi take pictures of it it's this that creates that just being ordained with divinity for the sake of being ordained with divinity is a foreign notion certainly in the united states there's got to be a reason now the truth is today with with with snapchat and instagram and tick tock you could be royalty because you have a lot of followers a lot of like but even that you got to earn it or you can buy likes you know there's but there's a way of earning earning it you can't just be royalty because your royalty but in judaism you could be royalty because god made you and if god made you that answers that eternal question that you keep asking yourself what's my value when you walk around and you feel down about yourself you forget that you're a prince or princess which means that every one of your days is a day filled with a royal obligation to represent to best to shine to glow to sparkle that's your job your job is to represent god on high and it's not because you're strong or clever or good looking and it's not your accomplishments on a resume and it's not how long your linkedin is and how many friends you have it's you for you and you for you is royalty and we got a glimpse of it this week when queen elizabeth had all these millions of people who are mourning her yes she represented well from world war ii and how she gave encouragement but who are you to give encouragement you're not telling people into battle you're a figurehead you're not you're your royalty is not connected to your power it's an example of how loyalty could stand by itself without needing to be connected to fame or power or glory or status that's that's an amazing idea that's why we make a bracha over a king or a queen it's a it's a very very big deal to be able to just walk around saying i'm royalty if you can do that then you understand that royalty gets a second chance and that every day that you act as a kinder queen is a stand-alone accomplishment so it's true hashem knows that eventually you're going to mess up yes hashem knows it just like when i wake up my children to come to to go to shore to go to school i don't think for a moment that from now on the rest of their lives they're gonna wake up on time i don't think so there'll be days that they don't wake up and i have to nudge them and wake them and like come on let's go that doesn't make the day that they woke up less of an accomplishment today was an accomplishing day you woke up on time okay maybe tomorrow you're not going to wake up on time but today you did thumbs up for you you represented hashem you're you're awesome that's the first thing to understand every single day is a worthy accomplishment and not because you you have any status as far as your your power not because of your prestigious because you're born into royalty and perky elvis says people are considered dear because they're created in the image of god that's it that's all you needed to do and then it says the jewish people are extra special because they're called children of god now let's speak a little bit about how we how we approach elo so in elo we start doing things that show that we're on our way to tesua and as elo and rosh hashanah come closer we have simone which means signs let's speak about those signs we'll blow a shofar each day each morning our actually blowing chauffeur not just on rosh hashanah we're going to dip things in honey to show it so sweet on rosh hashanah we're going to eat the head of a fish the head of the caves of a lamb we're going to do a simon we're going to eat a pomegranate lots of seeds we should have lots of yolk lots of merits but one thing we can't forget is that at the end of the day it's not about the signs but it's about the change in action let me tell you a little story there was a husband and a wife who were going on vacation to cancun that a glorious time they come back two weeks later only to find that their house has been broken into and lots of their items personal items have been stolen and they were distraught they lost family heirlooms they lost things that were priceless and the wife turns to the husband said you were the last one in the house did you make sure that the house was secure did you make sure the windows were closed yes did you lock the windows yes did you set the alarm absolutely did you have the video cameras going yes i did did you call the alarm company yes i did and then she's thinking what how did they get in and then all of a sudden she thinks to herself and says what's happening did you close the front door oh yeah yeah i forgot he did everything but closed the front door so you know what they did they waltzed into the front door they took what they wanted sometimes we could do every little nitty-gritty thing we'll we'll lock the windows and we'll go we'll call the alarm company and we'll get fingerprints so we'll close we'll have the lights on the timers turning off and on and on but if we don't close the front door if we don't do the basics the yatahara is going to walk in and wreak havoc so we're going to do these simon these are very important but we have to understand that it's the actions the closing the front door can mean closing our mouths not speaking or not saying things are dishonest not speaking something called nibble pet which is things that are disgusting that we shouldn't be speaking about we should be refined we should be princes and princesses on our trip those of you that were on our on our keepership one of the rules that we start off with is no swearing on the trip now one of the people on our last on our last trip says he loved that we started off with that rule it set the tone for the kind of uh group this is going to be and he's a teacher and he came back and he said on the very first day he made that one of the rules no no cussing is it that that was very meaningful to him no cursing it's a big deal so that's point number one now we're gonna hear the chauffeur and the chauffeur is supposed to wake us up but we need to understand in a deeper way the shofar so i'm going to tell you a nice story there was a man and he came to a town and in this town where he was staying for a little bit there was a fire and ceases fire and this is again in the 1800s you know before telephones before cars here's the the he sees this fire it's burning in one of the houses and all of a sudden people went outside and they began to blow on their horns and one horn led to another horn and soon the fire department of those days came with their water and they put out the fire and the person said wow i get how that works when there's a fire blow on the horns the fire department comes and it puts out the fire i gotta bring that to my town where i live i'm going to bring this great idea and he tells his town when he returns that in the town the edges come from when there's a fire they blow horns and it puts out the fire and the next time there was a fire in town everyone came and they began to toot on their horns as they blew their arms they're blowing and they're blowing and the fire is raging and the fire goes from one house to the next to the next and soon the whole town is burnt down and as it's burning they're blowing their horns and they're confused we don't get it we're blowing the horn why isn't the fire going out it makes no sense we're blowing our horns he goes back to the other town and says i don't get it when you blew your horns the fire went out we blew our horns and the whole fire balloon had a little fire and the whole town burnt down so the person from this other town said of course silly it's not the horns that put out the fire the horns are just a reminder they're just a sign they're a symbol they're a calling for the fire department to come and put out the fire but if you just blow horns nothing's gonna happen and so with rosh hashanah coming up and we listen to that chauffeur and there's a there's an art form by the way to listen to shofar you don't just listen to the sofa there's a way to listen to so far where you close your eyes and listen and you let that sound penetrate your heart in the deepest way it's it's it's an art form you have to listen to that sound and picture in your mind your heart being ripped into two and shaken to its core and if you do it right if you could visualize it then the chauffeur will actually work it will work it'll shape you to your core but it's not the shofar that makes the chuva the chauffeur is just there to remind us that there are things that we need to change in our lives but if we just listen to shofar but we continued the same as we did before then it's nothing it does nothing it's playing a show friend uh it's pulling a trump and a horn and the whole town burns down i'm gonna tell you a story so i enjoy art i collect art and one uh day i'm bidding in an auction it was a live auction i was bidding online and my wife comes in and she says well oh can you just want to speak to me about something i said can you give me one more minute it's one minute one minute left left of the auction we're bidding we're bidding okay we won and she looks at me and she says oh amazing gun what did we win i said um i don't know if you're going to understand they don't say that to your wife i don't know if you'll understand she said tell me tell me she said are you sure she said look anything you buy i bought also right so uh what what did we buy just now i said okay i'll tell you i'll tell you we just bought a hair clippers it's a hair clippers it's a not an electric one you it works with uh almost like a scissor action but it's a clippers and it's a clippers that comes from auschwitz and it's marked off with auschwitz markings it was one of the clippers that were used to clip the hair of the prisoners before they were gassed and we would take i would take those clippers and you know i wanted i wanted to own that pair that's why i bid on it and she said why would we want clippers from auschwitz sort of a morbid thing to own so i said there you know you know how we eat honey together with our bread our kala with an apple on rosh hashanah you know how we do that we actually have honey every week in my family of honey every week right just like we want a sweet new year we also want a sweet new week well how does that work we want the sweet new weeks i'm eating honey like so honey is sweet so this is so my year is going to be sweet how does that work the answer is that a simmon a sign is actually a tefila a sign is a prayer when i eat an apple and honey i'm not just eating something sweet i'm acknowledging that hashem you're the source of sweetness and i know that if i'm on a sweet new year i have to turn to you so a sign that you're the one that i need to turn to is by dipping an apple or bread into honey it's not the apple and honey it's the fila hashem just like ani is sweet so too you're the one that creates sweetness please give me a beautiful and sweet new year a simmon is a thila a cinnamon is it and everything that we do on rosh hashanah which are should be as numerous as seeds are in a pomegranate that's a thila hashem scrutinize my actions and uncover my hidden good motivation that maybe even i wasn't aware of shenanigans let me be fruitful and multiply like a fish that has many many children let me have many children as well it's a tilap they said you know we have a time called the three weeks and during the three weeks we don't cut our hair we mourn we mourn the destruction of the temple the three weeks happened a few weeks ago we don't cut our hair we're in mourning we're sad and when the three weeks are over we get to cut our hair again and very often i don't have a beard and therefore those three weeks when the stubble begins to grow in it's a little bit painful the skin's not used to it and i'm really excited to be able to shave the problem is it's a little bit disingenuous it's missing meaning you know why because we went through three weeks and the basal migration is still not built we went through tish above and yet the baseless hatred remains and hashem may look at me may look at us and say classical what are you so happy about the fact that you could shave that you could take the haircut you haven't solved anything you haven't accomplished anything all of a sudden like oh wash my hands all done all finished so that's why i bought these clippers it's true it's true i am shaving i am taking a haircut after the three weeks but my first haircut i use these clippers the very first clip i use these clippers because i want to tell hashem the following it's true that we haven't rectified everything we need to but it's also true it's also true that we haven't abandoned you it's also true that we have been like sheep to slaughter with everything we've been through we haven't forgotten you look at these clippers look what i'm cutting my hair with we've been through auschwitz and still we believe in you and still we pay allegiance to you and still you're our god and we're your children please don't forget us it's a fella that's why i bought these clippers and there's deep feelers that go on in our simone before interesting when we eat the head of a fish and we say let us be the head guess what is interesting about the head of that fish it's severed from the body we want to be the head we want to be the light up to the nations and whatever the nation's done they've severed us yeah you're the head you're the severed head you're the head that's uh that's dangling you're the headless horse like you're just all by yourself and hashem we say we want to be the head even though the pain of trying to be a light unto the nations has been nothing but scorn and ridicule and persecution that's the deeper tila it's a game-changing idea we don't want to just just want to be dead we want to be the head even through the difficulties we want to have many children even though they've killed our children even though a million and a half children were slaughtered by the nazis we still pray shining the nibika duggan people say to me how many children do you have my students just to say how many children do you have i say uh 11 thank god 11 children and i've had children say rabbi aren't you worried about overpopulation like slow down rabbi population 11 kids when are you gonna stop and i tell my students you know when i'll stop i'll stop at six million that's when i'm gonna stop not until every jew has been replaced because that's hard fila share your booze if we are saying we want our deeds to multiply because our deeds mean we're connected to hashem and we have shown the light of torah to the world okay let's let's be practical so great we want to get close to you hashem we are children of royalty we represent we are ordained we've been coordinated we've been designated we are royalty but i don't feel like royalty okay i'm gonna make commitments and eventually they're gonna dissolve okay every day is by itself something unique something special something powerful but i need motivation to get to that first step so i want to go through a mind exercise with you forget about waiting for the motivation to change sometimes we feel like we need motivation to change we need something to shake us up something dramatic something traumatic something that will remind us of life and death but instead practice the following ask yourself the following question if you were motivated if you were let's say you were what would be the first thing you would want to change let's say you were motivated you're not motivated good but let's tell you what would be the thing you would change if you were motivated what's the first thing and take that thing and say you know what hashem i'm going to do something even better than changing because i'm motivated you know what i'm going to do i'm going to change when i'm not motivated i'm going to improve something without the motivation just because i want to get close to you and i'm not thinking about death i'm not thinking about your mommy son i'm not even thinking about you my den okay i'm not there yet i'm not i'm not in the mindset of call nigeria but i want to change because i love you it's not out of fear it's going to be out of love and then eventually i'm going to get to that point where i'll be motivated and maybe i'll pick on more things but what would i do had i been motivated that's what the focus on if i'd be more careful about shamira so a9 which means what i look at when i'm motivated to change so do it now do it now when you're not motivated it's a hundred times more noteworthy it's a hundred times more meritous if you could change when you're not motivated than when you are lots of people are motivated when they see so many flaws a lot of people are that's that's great it should be that way only the great people are motivated on principle that's what we can do that's our that's the that's the crown jewel of connection to osha my wife asked me to do something i'm not understanding the logic and maybe i'm not even feeling the love right now neither of them not the love not the logic but it means something to her so i'm going to do it nonetheless that's huge and with that in that merit we're going to be motivated because we have a rule sonius outwardly showing our desire to change has the amazing ability to motivate within us the desire to change so we have a shortcut we have a life hack in how to change what a relief until now i thought i have to wait until i'm motivated now i realize the opposite if i could change when i'm not motivated then oh my goodness by the time motivation comes i'm ahead of the game and i've proven that i'm willing to do it out of love for hashem the opposite of how we always look at it i wait to be shaping up and i don't have to wait the change is waiting for me right now so that's how to do it and then the last point that we'll make last point we always speak about baby steps baby steps it's like a famous thing and an outreach or your parents great you're a dane we'll say take baby steps if you take uh take very large steps you're not going to be able to hold onto them you're going to fall okay we all know the concept of babysits but think about a baby taking baby steps when a baby takes a baby step think about it just from a baby's point of view does a baby expect to fall if you look at a baby's face when it realizes it can walk it is so exciting every time it walks it is convinced it's gonna look and then it pops on the floor and then it gets up all excited his hands are bouncing it is convinced it's going to work the beauty of baby steps are not that you're going to fall the beauty of the beauty is that he that each time you think this is the time i'm going to walk and eventually the baby walks and the baby doesn't give up and even though you as the wizard adult you as the parent look and says oh that's so cute one steps take two steps okay it's gonna fall it's going to take it it's going to take time but the baby doesn't know that the baby gets says this is the time so i tell you take baby steps yeah take small steps but take optimistic steps take steps with those bright eyes of a winner those bright eyes of somebody who is convinced and can and can convince himself and maybe even to the point of convincing god as if that were possible that this time it's this time is for real and if you keep doing it one of these times you're going to walk i'm going to wish you each a beautiful rosh hashanah a meaningful young kicker an elo of groove not because you're inspired but a groove because you're principled because your royalty and if you grow one day if you grow one hour and then you fall that hours in the books no one can take it away from you if you grow in a day it gets put in a lock box it's put away from you for oil and oil oil and violet it's always yours that day even if you fell chad it will fall seven times and get up you're the kind of people hopefully i'm the kind of person who can fall but like a baby i get up again with bright eyes and say i'm gonna do it this time and then one of these times it's really gonna happen thank you so much