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Rabbi Avi Berman, Rav Shlomo Katz, Rav Joey Rosenfeld - Am Chadash, Lev Chadash - Torah Efrat

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OU Israel Shiurim

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Shalom everybody. Good evening. A week ago, I spent the morning with Moatz. What a morning. A morning that we started filming the tishaba video that will come out this coming. A video that had one goal. to try to bring to a video what Cl is feeling this year. And I must be honest, I love every moment I spend with Replommo cats always, but Rip Schlommo this past uh time was really really very special. and uh literally almost almost being able to visualize beta mikdash on Harabites and uh hopefully the video will uh uh resonate with you as well and uh fill your hearts and that desire to see beta mcdash very very soon and I can't but uh thank uh Nina Zevi for going around with us in that very sweaty morning But uh well worth it. I got to see the preview of the video today Rabbi Schlommo. Unbelievable. So thank you very much to you to your Shir David for always partnering with us whether it's Yamat or it's uh inspirational evenings like today or videos to inspire the entire Jewish people. You have a very very special and holy kahil here. Um what we're doing here tonight is uh ultimately realizing that we sat here a year ago also right before tishab but a year ago when we sat here cla was in a different mode and if we would have sat here two years ago it would have been an even different road. I sat with Kahana just uh yesterday and I said to him, "Try to imagine what Araf Tishabove was a hundred years after the second beta mikdash." Jesus sitting on the floor crying. Some people still remember the zade who remembered beta mikdash but for the most part everybody sitting there had never seen beta mikdash they're sitting somewhere in a foreign country and then fast forward that 500 years and you ask yourself what change happened in that period of 500 years probably a few more pums probably some more Jews being beaten up. But the gullis got even darker. And fast forward another 500 years to 1100 years after the Kurban and probably more and the gullis gotten even deeper another 500 years you're already 1600 years after the Kurban and even Tidra didn't start going back to Israel start talking about the that went back to Israel And then fast forward another 200 years where you're 1,800 years after the and still gullis is very very dark and deep. So you go through a period of almost 2,000 years with very little little progress. Go back a hundred years from this kami mat shabas. Where were we a hundred years ago as the Jewish people in 19 in 189 sorry 1925 sitting on the floors somewhere in Europe or somewhere in the Middle East maybe some of us in America and then try to think of how much and the gula have moved forward in the past hundred years compared to compared to any hundredyear period before that just look at the last two years and how much progress has made how many miracles that barak was doing for us. So we're going to be standing and saying the exact same that we said 500 years ago. But it's so much harder to say that your shalim is shima. So much harder to say that your shalim is deserted without its children a so we have so much to thank for this coming yet we're still not there and that's exactly why we have this evening to be able to uplift all of our spirits to bring us to a place where we are ready we're focused we're tuned to make sure that we are in the right place for tishab because to miss a tishabove like this I wouldn't want to do that it's a tishabove that clearly has tremendous tremendous co to bring us to where we're supposed to be and it will because you're sitting here because everything is being recorded and going out together with the incredible staff from the U onto the YouTube channel and be watched by thousands and thousands and then go home and uplift your family. Last time it's coming Shabas. We have a whole Shabas to prepare for it. But this evening wouldn't be possible without the fun family sponsoring in memory of their incredible parents that I knew, loved, and still think about all the time. It's uh taking to the next level. So, thank you very much. Uh please thank you brothers who couldn't make it here tonight and your si wife and sisters-in-law etc etc. Uh the speakers that came here tonight from Rabbi Le to Rabbi Mharan to everybody Shir Smiles Rab Rabbit it's really the feedback I'm getting from people walking out of out of the shroom is just remarkable. So, thank you very much uh to Rabbi Sam and your team. But uh let's be honest, if it wasn't for the uh Yael sitting in the office making sure the graphics are great and Sam McCartney making sure that he's shleing everything together with my son and his friends and bring it here and the camera crew setting up everything and Leia overseeing the marketing and uh and the uh the rest of the U team and the volunteers uh it wouldn't happen. So uh thank you all for making this evening so meaningful to all of us and I look forward to dancing with you all on Sunday in >> beta mikdasha. [Music] I [Music] dou [Music] aha. [Music] Okay. [Music] Okay. [Music] Yazi [Music] Fore [Music] and everlasting Love I have loved you. For this I have drawn you with my love and everlasting love. I have loved you. For this I have drawn you with my love. The mountains will crumble and the hillside will fade away, but my love for you will not end. The mountains will crumble and the hillside will fade away, but my love for you will not end. By ma da da da da da da. Oh de Oh. [Music] Oh. Oh, you're there. Such beautiful harmony. Thank you everybody so much. You're looking at two brothers that are that are just aim drinking from the same fountains for so many years. If I have to describe what I feel whenever I hear Joey share his heart it's that is so sh right now when purm comes every year someone says that millas Esther means re revealing the hiddenness the the revelation of Esther everything that's concealed becomes revealed in purim so on tish above we have A and whenever I've had the privilege to to to be together, I always feel that uh the teras the words you're going to hear right now are are revealing the panas of what Hashem meant and continues to mean with that word migillas is is really the revelation of aya of of where are you? So, we're here and hopefully we're just going to get closer and closer and give each other kayak to tune in to the world that place before us right now and such a to share this moment with such a dear of joy. >> Okay. [Music] of Schlommo and uh and the wonderful who's out this late learning Torah at night. Praiseworthy are you. One of my favorite tales of Rabbi Aman's ancient tales. The 13th tale is a story that I often think kind of characterizes the moment that we find ourselves in repetitively over and over. What happens is is that there was a king who wanted to give kingship over to his son in his lifetime which is a unique thing where there's no anger, jealousy but rather sharing and he says you know you're going to be king and I want to make you king but on one condition the condition is that you have to remain joyous even when you descend away from your kingship. If you can remain joyous when you descend away from your kingship, then you're worthy to be king. And if you can't, then you're not worthy to be king. I'm king. I'll be happy either way. Because if you can't maintain your joy, then you're unworthy to be king. And I'll be glad you're not king. And if you can maintain your joy as you fall away from Malus, then I'll be even more happy. And then this king makes a celebration for his child on the day of the inauguration. in this remarkable show of loving kindness of a father sharing his kingship with his son and something happens an event takes place and very often in Rabbi Aman's stories it's a nondescript event it's not about what happened where how when it's whatever it triggers in the mind and so something takes place and everybody is forced to run away from the country everybody is forced to run to take cover in an urgency of life or death protection and everyone runs into the cars. But in the noise, in the chaos of this running away, there's a young boy, a 5-year-old boy, and a 4-year-old girl who get lost in the forest. And it dawns upon them that they're not going to make it. They need they need help. They're in tremendous tremendous need. And what they start doing because they're in tremendous need is they start crying out. And immediately upon crying out, they get visited by the strangest individuals. Seven different edigmatic sadikim. Each one with their own blemish. Each one with their own issue. The first one was a blind beggar, a deaf beggar, a stuttering beggar, a hunchedback beggar, a crooked neck beggar, a hunchback beggar, a handless beggar, and a legless beggar. And each day they provide them with sustenance. And the children say, "Please don't go. Please don't go. Right? We love you. Don't leave us." and they say, "We'll return to you again." Then these young children grow up and they develop what they need to do. And they become beggars of their own. They figure out their way in the darkness of the forest. They don't forget these seven adigim who came to visit them in the forest. But they live their lives until it's decided that this boy and girl should get married. The beggars that they've been hanging out with say they're a good match. It's a good shak. And so where do you make a wedding for these lost children? Where do you make a wedding for these children who got lost in the noise of the forest? So the beggars say to themselves, "We've got nothing of our own, but there's a king that's going to make a big sima. So we'll gather some of the leftovers. We'll dig a big pit in the mud. We'll cover the pit with twigs, branches, and garbage, room for a hundred people, and we'll make a there." And so too, that's what it was. The marriage of those lost children who had to run away as the result of some nondescript trauma after having learned how to beg their way through life they get married in the pit in the mud covered over by branches and as they're going through the chevraos surprise surprise each and every one of these beggars that protected them in the forest returns and they said here we are you thought I was blind I'm not really blind you thought I was deaf I'm not deaf etc etc one of the ways to think about this is that we're the lost children and we're stuck in the forest and we've run away after that which happens happens and we're crying out. We're crying out for the shivaharo. We're crying out for the sadik and we're crying out to save us to give us strength in the forest and he gives us strength day in and day out. But we're also getting closer to the time and the celebration of after being stuck in the forest where we are going to again get to make those shvas with those chevahim who protected us so much. And what I want to focus on is number one is that it makes a lot of sense for the wedding to take place buried in a pit in the mud. It doesn't have to look beautiful. We don't have to figure out how to get it together in order to celebrate. We'll celebrate and that's how we'll get it together. But second all something takes place and this is the shift that I want to talk about in terms of kadash and not to take it too long. These children, these lost children had the capacity to see beyond the first appearance of these enigmatic creatures in the forest. They were innocent enough to not notice the blindness. They were innocent enough to even after noticing the blindness to not be bothered by the blindness to still have a belief in this blind person. And so too with the deaf person and so too with the stuttering beggar that the children had the openness. The children had that patience to accept what was being given to them with open eyes, without ridicule, without late suns, without making fun, without mockery, without an attempt to tear apart or to break down, but rather to accept, to receive the goodness that was being offered. And that was the secret of them learning how to be a beggar. A good beggar is someone who's willing to receive that which is placed in front of them. As Schlommo said, if the moment is this, then we must partake of the moment because we're beggars and we have nothing other than that which is being given to us. So the shift of mind to be able to see in that which looks ugly, something that's very beautiful, that's the shift. Tishab is a time of cultivating empathy, cultivating empathic joining for our brethren, our sisters, those who look different, feel different, are different. It's about cultivating empathic joining for the nuda of aadeshu that is buried within the stuckness of our own selves having compassion on that and that's the whole secret empathy is the secret the le basar the new heart is an open heart that allows ourselves to see the pain of the other person and to take responsibility in terms of what we can do to alleviate the pain of the other individual. The huga magic and the balatana brings this at lean. He says that there's a strange puss that we have to really grapple with that it's Jacob Abraham. The house of Jacob who redeems a but all the point out the chronological order is backwards. Ara came first Jacob came after. So say Jacob was saved from the shis and the balan brings it. What's the mid of Abraham? The mida of Abraham is and love loving kindness. We all know that love dies. Love falls apart. I can't love the other person. I can't love myself sometimes. I can't love the people I'm meant to love. How can I love the people who are opposite to me? Love falls apart. Love does not drive all things. Is the revelation that there's always been love? But love falls apart. So what does one do when the love falls away? When we can't spark that joining. So that's the mid of the mid of Jacob is compassion, empathy. That when love dies and we can't find a reason to care about the other person, we can join with the other person and realize that we're both just human beings trying. Rahmanus is empathy and compassion redeems fall in love. And that's what we have to do. We have to learn how to empathize. We have to learn how to realize that each and every person as different as the story is is very very similar. The mash of said Hashem created a hospital. He could have created anything but he chose to create a world that looks like a hospital. But why? And the mashk says something very simple. So that we can learn how to have compassion on one another. Because if we're all in the hospital, then we can learn how to care. And to end with one teaching that really blew my mind the first time I saw it and I think is something that we have to keep in mind every time we see other yid and especially when we're focused on the suffering of others and what we can do to try and alleviate it. Instead of trying to fix it, we can sit in it and recognize that we're not so different. And in that joining of that sitting silently with even though we're not talking that itself is already the says as follows. The the voice of your watchmen are going to join forth together and they're going to sing because we're going to see eye to eye in the return of God to What are the watchmen? The watchmen are those who watch out over theirronos. They look out and they see the of the in the world. They see the suffering and they're sitting in their own isolation wondering when is this going to be fixed? Am I the only one who sees how broken things are? Am I the only one who is aware that this is not the way things are supposed to go? And that safit in their own isolated chambers of the mind and they contemplate the deficiency. Their heart is yearning for that healing that is going to come. The ni is coming to say that in the future the voice of these individual watchmen who are watching theos in the world they're going to join voices together in the future that the individual experiences of suffering and stuckness will be joined with everybody else's individual experience of suffering or smallalness and it's going to be an eye to eye type of vision. So the says he literally writes this what's going to happen After redemption arrives, we're going to encounter one another and I'm going to say to I'm going to say to you, my brother, you're not going to believe the deficiency, the stuffness that I had to struggle with, and now I've been saved from it. You have no idea what I went through, and you have no idea the miracle of me getting through it. And his friend is going to look at him after listening and he's going to say me also. I also went through this. I also went something through this. I also was struggling. Each of us were then together we're going to sing that we're not only going to be joyous over our salvation, but we're going to be joyous over the other salvation. And that's a heart of flesh is a heart that forget not hating others. We have no right to hate other people but to care enough about a person to be happy for them to not operate from a perspective of scarcity that says their success equals my loss but rather to say there's enough for each and every person. It's a tailor made thing. Their victory is not taking away from mine. And at that point, that's the Yeshua that's going to come from each and every particular person joining together to realize the unfolding. That's the secret of empathy. The le that's what we have to do upon ourselves. The mitzvah of the says that it's really about realizing that we are the same. We're different, but we're the same. And in that empathic joining we can open our hearts in our communities in our homes to ourselves and we can uh we can bring redemption if we can empathize with others pain hashem can begin to empathize with our pain and the pain of the and gullis and when that is awoken so we see we're going to see what happens. >> Amen. Amen. [Music] Oh yeah. [Music] Sh I [Music] meanche. [Music] I see [Music] the be I Hey [Music] Ben say the [Music] Oh, I be [Music] I be [Music] I [Music] say it. [Music] We live the [Music] hello king. It bech. [Music] I [Music] may foreign [Music] Oh, I Amen. [Music] I [Music] will do. Oh, mechan. [Music] A [Music] colorech. for [Music] So we would want to mention again big thank you to everyone that may helped make this evening happen and like Burman said before and how the theme of tonight will be is like that this whole direction that we're going to this is the last final touches just the last final touches as I told you about how the energy has to be towards this we're winking to each other and we shouldn't be able to say shalom to each other in Shabas. But at least for tonight, we say shalom to each and every one of you. And thank you for being with us. Everyone, thank you very much.