To a Young Woman Seeking Friendship | Letter #23

all right good evening uh we are in the home stretch of 30 letters and 30 days we just completed three weeks um we are on letter number 23. yeah and uh tonight's gonna be a little bit quieter than last night last night we were broadcasting live from the sea kids shabbaton in Stamford Connecticut and I was sitting in the lobby while all the kids were running around so yeah tonight we're back in soulword studios and uh won't be as exciting but it'll probably be easier to hear tonight's letter is a letter to a young woman um she's in seminary she has a problem she wrote to them about she's French or she speaks French that's what I know for sure from having read the letter um everything else let's read it together and see what we can figure out together based Nissan Brooklyn by the grace of God the 12th day of Nissan meaning the day after that of his birthday 57 19 Spring of 1959. Brooklyn blessings and greetings customarily addresses a woman an answer to your letter is seminar you write that it's it's been a while I don't know what a while is and I couldn't tell from the rest of the letter but it's been a while that you've been learning in seminary valama is there and nevertheless even though you've been there for a while you haven't been able to make friends with the other students so it comes out that you are alone you're lonely and this understandably affects your mood so this young woman wrote to the rabbit basically saying that she's lonely she has no friends and uh she's sad about that I think we can all relate to this problem I think this is a universal human problem maybe some of us have never struggled with this but I think loneliness and uh more than just loneliness but the feeling of not even being able to find anyone else to connect to I think that's something that we've most of us have struggled with at different times and I'm not going to claim that this what the Reba is about to say is a solution for all similar cases uh but it was what the Debbie recommended to this young woman and I think um there are many insights to be gleaned okay so here's the dev is advice is Allah so first of all generally you should consult with your teachers which one of the students would be best to befriend and then you should make an effort to befriend them so first thing is speak to the teachers you know that's one of the advantages of being still in school you know this is a I don't know how old this girl is she's in seminary you know she's probably 18 or so 19. so she's not a little kid but she's still in school and she has the advantages of being in school which means she can go to the teachers and say hey I'm lonely I need to make some friends you have any recommendations you know and to be nice that if if an adult could do that if there was some type of Faculty that you could go to and be like yeah which one of my neighbors is a normal guy who should I start talking to right we don't have that but you're in seminary you have a faculty and they know all the students and they're going to give you good uh guidance so that's the first thing okay that that's more practical now we're going to get into more of the psychological advice in general the advice on how to make it easier to make friends because even when you have that list even when you have the targeted lists that the faculty makes for you oh go make friends with this person this person this person okay fine now I know who I have to go try to be friends with but how do you do it okay so whatever says the general advice for how to make it easier to make friends he lives by name it is to meditate now just stop right there before we even find out what we're supposed to meditate on I just want to point out that the laborator ever says the key to making friends is meditation you don't want to use the word the word meditation because it makes you imagine sitting on the floor with incense and humming and with your eyes closed okay thinking call it thinking it doesn't matter the point is that it's a mind shift it's not like that I was going to give her a tip like oh these these hacks some click bait title say these three words to the next person you want to befriend and watch what happens it's not this is not the it's not some cheesy click bait uh life hacks this is a mind shift this is a way of rearranging your current view of things and opening up the possibility for new perceptions so that Eva tells her to go think think deeply to be Miss binding on what okay I'll tell you Usher ain't Adam Charlene behold hamailis a you should meditate on the idea that there's no such thing as a person who is perfect and has all positive all of the possible positive qualities no one person contains all of the possible positive qualities that a person could have and therefore everyone is to some extent incomplete and she meaning the letter writer is is one of those incomplete people I thought that was very interesting to to reflect on the fact that nobody has all of the Milas everyone's imperfect including oneself meaning to say everyone around me is imperfect and I am also imperfect I I I think part of that is to take away the the the judgment how can I dismiss anyone else for the crime of being imperfect when I'm equally as guilty of being imperfect I think that's part of it but as the number goes on you're going to see there's something deeper as well about remembering one's own imperfection but I think at least at the outset that's part of it it's like don't be so quick to uh write people off for not being perfect when by the same logic you would have to write yourself off okay so think about the fact no nobody has all the Milos including you is in other words you also are imperfect Ed therefore you should not demand or even you shouldn't uh yeah demand I think is good you shouldn't demand that your friends of your friends that they should be perfect in every way in every manner so that's the first thing is the key to making friends is being more tolerant of others imperfection that ABBA doesn't use the words I'm about to use and I want to be careful not to say something that that ever purposely avoided saying but I'll just put it out there loneliness often um feels like inferiority nobody likes me everybody hates me and there may be some aspect of that to it at the same time there's usually an element of arrogance as well in other words [Laughter] everyone has been been disqualified as being a potential friend for one reason or for another and uh that's that's arrogant to dismiss people because of some imperfection they have now it doesn't feel like arrogance it feels like the opposite feels like um I have a very low self-opinion I'm lonely but uh there is that aspect of it debit doesn't use the word arrogance but it's sort of alluded to so hinted to a little bit in there you know you don't tell somebody who's already abjectly humble to meditate on their own imperfection so clearly there's an aspect of uh what we might call arrogance there I I was also thinking when I was looking at this letter about a letter that we had I don't know a week ago the letter to the Yeshiva student remember that letter uh to the newly observant young man who had a similar issue um he was complaining that he didn't like the other bacharam in his Yeshiva remember that letter and um that ever told him similar a similar idea which is nobody has everything nobody's going to have all the qualities so I think that of his example there was so from the guys who dolphin well pick up the Avenue from them and don't don't don't pick up there the way they learn the guys who learn well but they don't dive in so well okay so from them pick up how to how to learn and don't look so much at their dominant and so on and so forth so this is a similar idea and uh that have a very gently very gently without even saying it explicitly basically says you know you gotta come off your high horse and stop judging people that's the first step okay the light and furthermore another thing I share hey are sages testify foreign that Jewish girls are beautiful where's that from by the way that Eva says our sages testified to thee idea that benice is so nice hey Jewish girls are beautiful it's verbatim the words from a passage in the gamada from it's an incredible story with an incredible uh moster Haskell an incredible teaching uh I'll tell it very much because but as I mentioned it's in the tract in the datum which means vows and it's about vows a young man made a particular vow he was being pressured by his family regarding with a particular young woman he was not interested because he didn't think she was beautiful so to get them off his back he made a nether that he's never gonna marry her so now that's that nothing to do about it now there's another but uh what happened is hmael uh he got wind of this and he gave this girl a makeover can you imagine such a thing a Tana a holy Tana giving a girl a makeover says he beautified her how she explains you gotta uh jewelry and nice clothes a real makeover and then he called the young man in and he said I would like you to meet somebody and the girl walks in dressed to the nines and uh whatever Ishmael says to him is this the girl that you vowed never to marry and the guy says no not her if I wouldn't know this is what she looks like you know no so uh I should have went through and it says Shaw at that moment cried he wept and he said Urbana Jewish girls are beautiful but uh harness poverty Mars their beauty and of course the story of speaking also on the most superficial level but it's uh it's a spiritual idea as well which is that all benesus that means the nishamas is a feminine word and it's a feminine entity and the shama is uh is a girl it's a princess actually she comes from her father's Palace and she comes down into the world into embodiment and there's a little wear and tear there's a lot of wear and tear embodiment takes its toll and living in a physical world of concealment takes its toll and after a while this pristine soul is unrecognizable and it doesn't look so pure and holy and what you need is a w schmelt to come and give you a makeover and to ReDiscover and to expose your natural beauty that was hidden there and was intact all along so no matter what a Jew looks like whatever condition they may be in when you encounter them you have to know that you get down to the Core you get down to the reality and you're going to find something perfect something worthy of of of awe and adoration and if you don't see it it's because some external Factor some superficial cause is temporarily obstructing it but it's there it's always there so the lab is basically giving this girl a lesson in Ava Cicero and he's saying you gotta understand every single girl in your Seminary is a diamond they are all gems they are all wonderful they're all perfect okay I understand the way that they present as souls and bodies with uh with an animal soul and with the circumstances of their of their embodiment Journey thus far and all the wear and tear that that takes and yeah I understand not everybody looks like a diamond at first glance but you gotta you gotta be able to know that it's there and you have to be dismissive of the faults you have to overlook the faults you know the adapter of was known as the eye of Israel and used to say you could find obviously thrall in every word in Torah so someone once said balak 's the name of a Jew hater how do you find Ava cistro the love of your fellow Jew in the name of a person who hated Jews you should love your fellow as yourself so they said hold on a second if you have the is with starts with a VAV not with a vase you know bollock is bass or Bass same letter and kamerga starts with a half not with a koof so two out of the three letters are are incorrect like if you spell it fanatically but incorrectly yeah I guess you could get view after but only the Lama is actually the right letter there so two out of the three letters are are wrong in Bullock if you want it to be via so the actorov said yeah exactly when it comes to the after you can't be so fussy okay so two out of the three letters are wrong make it work okay so at any rate the dev is telling this girl you got to see past the problems every one of these girls is a daughter of the matriarchs and so certainly they all have many many virtues foreign and with the time you will come to recognize these qualities you have to know that they're there you have to know that they're there but you'll find them you know the story about when uh zombie at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and he brought a group of college kids back in the 60s and one of the college kids was being saying oh what's the point of Arab who needs a rabbit and uh Zaman wanted to jump into the ground he said he wanted to go home and jump in the ground he was so embarrassed but the debit was very cool about building like took it very much in stride and he was like well I could only tell you about me about you know about my rap like meaning you want to know what's what's the purpose of it but I can tell you my relationship with my rabbit with my father-in-law and that ever proceeded to explain I'll tell you about my father-in-law you know you know what a rabbit is a soul geologist what's a soul geologist well what's a geologist before we say what's a soul geologist what's a geologist so they've explained that there's incredible wealth in the ground in the earth there's there's Treasures which is uh Treasures which are very rare and and uh valuable but you don't just dig anywhere you need a geologist to uh to tell you what you're digging for and where to dig so that ever said every single Jew is full of spiritual Treasures of good qualities of of Sterling qualities but you need a soul geologist a rabbit who knows what to dig for and where to dig he knows what qualities you have latent dormant hidden within you and he knows the method how to bring it out from you so that I've been speaking as someone who is an expert in finding positive qualities in everyone and he tells this young lady if you know that the good qualities are there then in time you will discover them you will come to see those good qualities value day is and through your friendship this one blew me away you taste of gambishly Musa he will also increase your own perfection that's profound remember I told you earlier that I've been told her to meditate on the fact that nobody's perfect including herself she's also not perfect and I said I think the first reason why that ebba told her to consider her own imperfection is just to sort of humble her a little bit like it's okay you're not you're not better than everyone you can you can you can relate to people you don't have to dismiss them but there's an even deeper concept here which is and this this I found this very moving when we were when we reflect on the fact that we're all imperfect like we're all missing something some are missing more some are missing less yeah that's true okay but the point is we're all missing something even the guy who's got 99.9 percent of all the virtues that a human could possess he's still missing something he's not perfect either so where does he pick up that point one percent that he's missing only in a relationship with somebody else and that's the the beautiful concept right here at this point in the letter that I was telling her we are mutually interdependent we rely on each other even if you have 99.9 percent of all the good qualities that a human could have you know there's something you don't have and where's that point one percent there's somebody else who has that and maybe that guy that's all he has he only has point one percent but you need that quality in your life and you don't have it yourself but you can have it through your friendship with him so whatever tells her that through your friendship with imperfect people who are wonderfully beautifully Perfectly Imperfect in different ways in which you are wonderfully beautifully Perfectly Imperfect your imperfection will be perfected through their perfection and uh conversely whatever Perfection you do have you're offering to them and it's of mutual benefit we all fit together like puzzle pieces we don't all look the same and some of us have funny shapes but if you put us all together we make a beautiful picture yeah the more you explain to yourself this idea foreign your isolation will be replaced by friendship so the more you explain to yourself this idea the more you're going to see you have less isolation in your life more friendship in your life has all ah and our sages have already enjoined us acquire a friend the simple meaning of that is don't expect it to come to you it's something worth investing in something worth spending effort on maybe not literally to be kinda to acquire like a monetary acquisition but to put time to put effort into acquiring a friend is now regarding that you say that a bunch of times they suggested to you a sugar and then nothing came of it since you're still learning for a while in seminary you got a while to go in the program that you're in she is so for sure when the time comes close that you're finishing your your learning in seminary Yasmin Hamas Hashem is going to send you the proper in other words answered to her at this point is relax you've got time don't worry okay it should this should have never materialized that's fine it's it's not time for it yet you have a while still that you're learning and before the time that you're learning comes to an end Hashem is going to send you a so just relax for now and just focus on your learning with blessings for good news and the kosher and holy kosher and happy Passover Damascus signed by the river Secretariat known base the PS PostScript I told you she's French or she speaks French okay we must cutest my Secretariat doesn't write French we have read letters in Hebrew and letters in Yiddish not including but there are many letters in English um those were the letter that generally those three languages were the languages of the Secretariat however the Reba was a polyglot and spoke many many languages and so there were languages which the rabbit asked people to feel comfortable to write to him in and that ABBA would be able to read the letters but because of the system of dictation the way that Eva composed letters was was through dictation through secretaries so because of those limitations there were only certain languages that the rabbit would respond in and this is one of those cases so the number says my my Secretariat doesn't write French that's why the response to you is coming in the Holy tongue Allah but you could continue writing to me in French because I do read that language that about obviously also lived in France and was was fluent in French and there are recordings of that I was speaking in French it was one of the languages was able to communicate fluently and so that tells her feel free to write to me in French but I'm going to respond to you in one of the languages of the Secretariat okay that's our letter for tonight wishing you all good friendships and to find perfection through your relationships with others even people who may be at first glance you wouldn't have thought have something to offer that is the foundation of obviousness at all you could go relearn pedaglamic base of Tanya you want a reminder of it but that's that's the heart of Tanya that everyone has something to offer and we need each other okay good night [Music]