Talking to Students Before the First Day of School

how is this year going to be different than the last year this is the question we're all sort of asking ourselves right now as we're heading into rosh hashanah in a couple of weeks but it's also the question that kids all over the world are asking right now as they're heading into their first day of school i had the distinct pleasure to speak to sem aleph that's the first year of seminary from base rift crown heights i normally go to crown heights and i teach there but as a special outing they came to me in the five towns we spoke to them at the lady yitzchak library on central avenue and we spoke about how to make this year a great year come join us tell you something interesting every day in ello twice a day actually we say to david the lord is my light and so one of the things david malik says to hashem is hashem i'm asking for one thing from hashem issa of akish this is what i'm asking for which sounds like he's going to ask for how many things one thing i'm asking for one thing but then he says three things he says shiv tibet three things i want to dwell on the house of hashem all that is the days of my life i want to behold the the pleasantness of hashem and i want to visit his palace so you said you're going to ask for one thing you asked for three things furthermore two of those three things seem like a contradiction with one another shiv sasha makoli make hayai to dwell in the house of hashem all days of my life means how often am i going to be in the house of hashem all the days of my life which means all the time right constant i want to visit like b core like biker hoiling beaker bias i want to visit your palace means i'm not there all the time i made a special trip to come visit like you guys came to the levitzkr library on central avenue in theaterhurst in the five towns you guys probably are not all from new york so you don't realize where you are right now who here is from not from new york like half of you okay so you understand where you are geographically compared to brooklyn okay so can i explain to you um you are basically east of brooklyn about 12 miles east of brooklyn you're really close to jfk right now i don't know if you saw the planes flying overhead do you see the planes no well you go outside and you look up for 30 seconds you'll see a plane uh really close to jfk basically if you go east from crown heights and you leave brooklyn you go into queens and then you keep going past the oil and you keep going and you leave queens and then you get into right turn on red land otherwise known as nassau county and if you keep going east you'll get into suffolk county and if you keep going east you'll be in the atlantic ocean so that's where you are right now so you're visiting the five towns you're visiting you don't live here i live here you don't live here you're visiting so how could david say hashem i want to dwell on the house of hashem all the days of my life and lavaca i want to visit his palace take your pick it's one of the other it's either you're here all the time or you're visiting you got the question it could be somewhere visiting and somewhere but it's the same place it's one place it's one place yeah base hashem and the heikel of hashem is one place besides he's not even really speaking primarily about a physical place he's speaking about a state of mind he's talking about being in the presence of hashem which doesn't primarily mean a physical location it's talking about a a state of awareness that i want that to be my constant state of awareness but then he says at the end of this same verse i want to visit it i want to have it be like a special trip class trip you guys take a bus here it's like a school bus or coach buses school bus yeah um so you want to hear the answer okay so the answer we had two questions how come he said i'm asking for one thing and he asks for a bunch of things and then the second question was two of those things are contradictory so here's the answer he is asking for one thing he's asking for a paradox you know what a paradox is two opposites which appear to be at odds with one another but upon deeper examination one realizes it represents a more profound truth that's what a paradox is everything in judaism is a paradox by the way everything that's why we always have an opposite opinion to everything because the only way to get the truth is to meld together opposite opinions you ever heard that concept before like toyota was given in the third month because the entire idea of torah is the idea of threes you have thesis antithesis and synthesis so thesis means one statement antithesis or the antithesis is the opposite statement synthesis is a a truth which is higher than both of them and is able to contain both of the opposites without them contradicting so like let's say you're not from new york like half of you are not from new york let's say you never were in new york before and someone would ask well what's the weather like in new york and someone tells you it's hot and muggy and then you ask somebody else no no i was there it's freezing cold snowy how can they both be right one visited in august one visited in january and the real truth is the bigger truth which includes both of those opposites which is well new york's in a temperate zone and there are seasons and in august it's hot and muggy in january it's snowy and cold so everything in toyota's a paradox where you have a bigger view that is big enough to contain within it opposites if it's not a paradox we didn't get to the to the depth yet the magala mukesh says that maisha like moses the law giver moshe kibal tata messinai moses received the torah at sinai he says maisha surosha this is an acronym for makhalakis the disputes of shamanian hillo that the disputes of charmaine hill it's not a bug it's a feature the fact that you have opposite or divergent opinions within toyota is not an accident it's actually by design the only way to get the truth is by having a clash of opposites and then having a higher truth which can contain both of these so uh paradox what's the paradox here's the paradox i want my cake and eat it too you ever heard that expression before i want my cake what does it mean you want your cake and eat it too what does that mean you want to have everything that you could have but like you can't really have both sides of it it's not possible having my cake means i want to be able to like look at my cake and it's like perfectly intact but eating it means i can't look at it anymore because i ate it so which one do you want would you like to have it meaning i have a cake or would you like to eat the cake it's like would you like to have a million dollars or spend a million dollars no i want to spend it but i don't want to lose it i want to have it but if you have it then you can't spend it okay so i want to spend it but i still want to have it jackie mason said i have enough money to live on for the rest of my life if i don't buy anything he said it funnier than i did okay i have enough money to live on for the rest of my life if i don't anything if i die tomorrow have buy oh if i die tomorrow is that through i have enough money to live on for the rest of my life if i die tomorrow i say good he passed away already kind of takes the humor out of that or maybe it makes it yeah like dark humor okay okay you know any other jackie mason jokes just that one i didn't know oh you didn't know it was a jackie mason job yeah okay is it less funny now that you know that jackie mason drove i don't know he died okay so oliver what is asking for he's saying i want a paradox i want my cake and eat it too i want shifted i want to constantly be immersed in holiness but on the other hand at the same time i want to have the experience of somebody who's having a brand new special experience for the first time i want to be ffb and bt at the same time right that's right that's right very good so i want this to be something i'm doing constantly i'm used to this i'm good at this this is my regular routine my regular rhythm and i want it to be totally brand new like wow this is amazing take a picture of me so that explains what it means acha schwaltz i'm asking for one thing because he's not asking for multiple things asking for one paradox the experience of constant newness that's a paradox constant newness how can it be constant and be new but that's what he wants so in el l's last month of the year the 12th month of the year we're going into a new year but how many times have you gone into a new year every year pretty much right how often is a new year pretty much every year this says that shanna the word shana which means year like rosh hashanah is has two etymologies one is shinoi which means a change because a year represents change you go through all the seasons you go through a cycle it's a year of growth growth means change change over time but sean is also from the word uh shaney which means second or mishnei which means doubling repetition because it's a cycle you come to rosh hashanah again you come to yom kippur again you come to sukkas again you come to hanukkah again you go through a whole year again i've done this before so which is it is it change or is it repetition can't you can't have change hand repetition not going to be change and repetition if it's change then it's brand new you never did it before if it's repetition then it's not change you're doing the same thing you already did but shauna means both shaney and shinhui repeating and changing repeating and ch how do you repeat and change so you know what the explanation is that there are various different um dimensions it's not just a flat plane it's three dimensional so you imagine somebody who goes like this takes a trip like this so clearly there was change right he started here and he ended up here or somebody goes like this he starts on the bottom and he goes up but imagine you combine those two dimensions this and this and a person's going like this like a spiral staircase so as he's going up he's coming back around to the same point that he was at before so time is cyclical that's why every year we go through the same holidays and the same rhythm but at the same time it's progressive every year it's a higher level than we ever had before so we're repeating and growing growing and repeating at the same time that's the idea of elle is that we're going into a new year we're experiencing something new 5783 never existed before and at the same time what we're trying to do is find that preciousness or that novelty in things that became familiar you know the expression it's a very common expression of our sages two of them i assembled them repentance and good deeds repentance and good deeds so there's a question next to this why does it say two of them is some taboo i should say my some nice and ch madison matuva why because trevor's repentance that's what you do as a backup if you messed up if you didn't do good deeds so why do you say chuva with my some table you should say my some tavern do good deeds and if you mess up okay so plan b is chuva you can you could repent so the explanation is chovam is means like this after you've done chiva meaning after you become brand new that's what chuva means it means rebirth a new identity rabbi dr torski allah told me once i remember him saying you know the ramen says that when someone does chuva he's not the person who sinned the rabbi says and he's not the person who did chivalr really does shiva it's not just he stopped sinning he's not the person who sinned so every doctor tortuga told me he once he was sitting in a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and he heard a guy who was sharing and he said something he said for him made him understand this rambam the guy said the man i was used to drink the man i was will drink again thank god i'm not the man i was meaning not i drank now i don't drink no no the man i was drink the man i was will drink thank god i'm not the man i was that's not me anymore so he said and then i understood the rambam that when the person does chuva it's not just you stop doing stuff it's the person who did that stuff was a different person so you do chover you become a new person and after you become a new person what's your new life going to entail you want to know you want to hear something really really like boring after you do chuva you know what life is you get up you say may the ani wash nego assa you say brachas go davin you go learn except now you're doing it as a totally new person so that's why we say chivalry maison david because after the chuva what do you do buy some tavern go do good deeds you thought that after you do children you become a new person now it's going to be a whole new list of brand new things to do no you're going to do the same stuff that you were supposed to have been doing before but now you're doing it with a fresh sensitivity so this ahelti that david amella is asking is for the paradox i want to do all the stuff that i've been doing my whole life all the good stuff that became routine and i want it to be routine because i want it to be built into my rhythm i want it to be almost like automatic in some ways but simultaneously i want to get excited about it i want to feel that it's precious that it's new i want to feel that it's something special oh look i get to do this thing well what do you mean you say maydani every morning you watch lasso every morning yeah but it's it's so exciting and new every time you do it that's that's the attitude that we're supposed to go into the new year with like what are you going to do new this year i'm going to do good deeds you were doing good deeds before yeah but now i'm going to do good deeds with a greater sensitivity with a greater appreciation that's what it's all about ultimately what what what's going to be different about this year than last year what's going to be different is if you're going to have a greater sensitivity you're going to appreciate things on a deeper level that's going to be new so that's what it means um i think obviously this is very related to the experience of the day before the first day of school because on one hand this is very new some of you are not even from here you said you're not from new york uh even if you are from new york but this is a new level of your education this is seminary brand new on the other hand how many first days of school have you had i mean think about when you were a little kid and you had your little backpack and your school supplies and right you pick out the clothes the night before you have it all set up so you're ready you have your uniform ready for you the next day how many times you had a first day of school i mean really actually i'm asking a real question how many first days of school have you had you guys are all 18 18. no you didn't go when you were a we finished 12 baby of education 12 years of education so 12 first days of pre-school also okay how many years of pre-school did you do 14. so you had 14 first days of school you had 14 years in school so how's this you did 14 years this is not a new thing this is like you've done this 14 times in fact 14 years for you is much bigger than it is for me you know that 14 years for me is not even a third of my life 14 years for you is like 90 of your life that's why by the way time goes faster when you get older because a year becomes a smaller proportion of your life when you're a little kid like when you're five a year is a really long time because it's 20 of your life and then when you're 50 a year is two percent of your life it's nothing a year goes by so quick sometimes i don't respond to a text for a year well hopefully that person is also old like me and so you've done this 14 times at least like how is this new this is old on the other hand it could be very very new because you're more mature now and you have you have an ability to appreciate to appreciate everything on a much deeper level than you ever did before you guys excited [Music] that's the camp spirit did you hear the muscle of malach basada yeah you heard about it because you guys are good lubavitchers you all know that the king in the field and you know that's a metaphor right what's in a metaphor for what does it explain there was a king in the field the people could approach him when he goes to the palace he's harder to get to but if he's in the field you can go walk up to what's that a metaphor to explain okay so it it explains how to relate to hashem in the month of el as opposed to well more specifically tishrei the high holidays so the field is like what time of year alo and the palace where the king goes after the field is like tishrei say grocery shot in that's what the metaphor is who whose metaphor is that where does that come from what who made that up dalton rabbit very good the altareben the balatanya we call them out here in five towns yeah yeah um you know what that ebba said whatever took that metaphor and brought it down even more for kids so that ebba said that the field is like camp and the palace is like school that it's easier to get excited about yiddish kite in camp than it is to get excited about yiddish kite in school so therefore if you greet the king when he's in the field then you're already going to have your connection with him when he goes into the palace if you get excited about hashem when you're in camp right when you come back from camp and you're all on fire and you're doing kitas and everything remember cam when you come back you're all excited and then it lasts for like two weeks you know what i'm talking about but the point is it shouldn't last for two weeks it should last all year until the next year of care so what's the idea there the idea is to get excited now so that when things become routine when they become regular you'll still be able to appreciate them so this is like this is almost like camp i would call this because it's not the first day of school so this is still part of camp this is more i would call this right here the last day of camp as opposed to pre the first day of school because the idea here is to get excited so that when we go into our normal routine we'll still be inspired i don't know what do you guys think of this easier said than done easier said than done so what are going to be the main challenges that are going to make this difficult why the routine sets in very fast okay all right it's hard to remember that it used to be exciting okay so what can we do about that make it practical like do something practically instead of just relying on inspiration like what what's your suggestion oh it's still hard yeah it's still hard but but it's a good idea take a lot of when you're inspired yeah so when you're excited you make a commitment to do something so that you'll continue it when you're not so inspired yeah that's a great idea okay let's let's do it what commitment can we make for the year are we excited right now all right what what commitment can we make you guys want to make a commitment you guys even know what you're getting yourselves into like what seminary is going to be like what are you doing after this you guys ate yet when are you when are you eating while you shop okay there's a pizza place like a few dollars a few doors down there's a lot of places or you can go like a fancy place yeah there's a lot of a lot of options here on central avenue yeah but i'm being recorded so you'll be given guidance i guess yes okay good point like we hope well i guess the question is like this you know you know davina malek says uh well we quoted him before akashwalty but something else they've done alex says tell me where he says this tell me what capital this is donald milk says what capital is that is but very good that's the camp spirit now we're getting excited okay yes so we all know that obviously the famous niggun the rabbis in some of the hanafi there's a teaching from the baal shamdev about that about that pulsar he says that the word cain can also mean halawa meaning you could translate the word cain as yes or indeed or you could translate it as if only. if only when i was in a holy environment i would see you the way that now when i'm in a parched desert amalek was on the run he was in the desert he's saying my soul is thirsting for you so he's saying the edit see if when i'm in a parched desert land i have this incredible yearning for you hashem if only i would have had that same feeling when the holy experiences were were so available to me so this is like the the famous paradox of you don't appreciate what you've got until you lost it which in tanya tell me which pedotanya this is he says that the reason that dennis nasser khazakis if you do childha that your sins become merits if you do to shiva out of love is because he explains it over you tell me which chapter is tanya this is he explains that when you do chiva from love you look at those moments where you made yourself god forbid estranged from hashem and separate from hashem and they make you so thirsty they make you so uh desperate for connection and you realize if i had never you know you're not allowed to do this on purpose but after the fact if i had never experienced that spiritual darkness i would never be as motivated and as sensitive and as careful and as vigilant as i am today so it was dennis nacelle kazakis because those spiritual failures actually ended up making you more spiritually sensitive but then the question is well how come i can just why can't they just skip that whole thing and just be spiritually sensitive without going through moral failings you could that's such good news you could you're right you could and that's why we're talking about this because of course you can mess up and then experience that really yucky feeling of being spiritually distant and then picking yourself up and saying i'll never let that happen again and i'm going to be so careful and i'm going to really cherish my connection to hashem and that's beautiful that's beautiful it's called chuva it's beautiful but the truth is you could do the chuva without the evaders you could skip the whole evader thing you can cherish something that you've lost without losing it i think that this is part of why and i said this we always talk about this really deep lofty concept that seems to be really technical and abstract which is that the world has created something from nothing at every single second people always wonder what does it have to do with me and how is this emotionally resonant and it seems so lofty and abstract what's the point but here's the deal when you realize how tenuous everything is when you realize nothing exists on its own for any amount of time then you start to realize how fragile everything is and how really all we have is this moment and every new moment is being created something from nothing and then we can never become complacent we can never take it for granted because we realize hashem just created the whole reality something from nothing at this second and it's not going to last for longer than a second he's going to have to create it all brand new again a second from now when we appreciate that then we don't fall into complacency it's a deep concept you guys ever think about that hashem is renewing reality every single second it's like a deep concept you want to think about it right now think about here let's think about it everything as you know it all reality as you know it is being compelled into temporary existence for this second kind of makes you feel like everything is new because it is and i'll tell you another thing that that does whatever once spoke about on his birthday i think his 70th birthday when people get old they say they can't change and that ever said that's absurd to say just because you're old you can't change because every single second we're new so the fact that you've had 14 first days of school is irrelevant this second is brand new maybe the the the resolution could be to think about the newness of of creation at every single second maybe we could think about once a day just once a day that everything is being created brand new why do we think hashem for our soul in the morning the truth is we should thank him every single second everything's brand new every single second but it explains because subjectively we can appreciate it more when it's a new day the truth is it's the same thing every single second but for us subjectively we appreciate it more when it's a new day and it gives us an opportunity to sort of feel that gratitude so that would be a great idea first thought of the day when you are thankful is you're thankful for existence itself for a brand new existence everything is new and then furthermore i'll give you another this is this is just for free i'll throw this in with no extra charge throughout the day let's say you're having some difficulties whatever they may be you could start your day all over at any point you wish at any point in your day you could say it's a brand new universe this moment because it is that was that a helpful idea what else you guys probably want to go shopping and eating and yeah yeah we're good anything else okay i'll see you guys in seminary all right okay