Tani Polansky | Teshuva: Unlocking the Essential Self LIVE at MJE

okay okay and we are live okay i'm just gonna get my door real quick hello everyone thank you for coming uh okay we are going to be we're starting in a couple minutes sorry we're running a little bit late okay there we go okay hi guys thank you for coming we're going to start in just a minute got some music while we wait okay people are logging [Music] [Applause] we're gonna start in just a minute [Music] okay let's give it just a minute in the meantime shalom everyone my name is tony polanski and it is really a immense immense privilege and pleasure to be here with mje doing this little lunch and learn thank you all for being here and taking your time to learn together it's really such an incredible opportunity um and i wanted to talk today oh it's just a little bit about me um for those of you who have not known me yet um i've done some mg stuff so you may have seen me on some live videos um but i'm currently uh a rabbinical student in reits in why u's um rabbinical training program studying pastoral counseling and psychology as well um i'm working on a my first debut album right now a musician recording artist and uh composer um and other than that just uh just a regular jew um so thank god it's uh it's fun so um okay so i wanna talk today about something really really really important and really really just really powerful we're in a very very unique we're in a very very unique and special time of the year right now in the jewish calendar time runs circularly we don't believe that the calendar runs linearly from one point to another we believe that the calendar runs circularly it runs in a circle and we run through certain checkpoints in each time throughout the year there's a specific energy there's a specific there's a specific path of what we call avodah which is work there's a certain there's a certain intentionality that we're supposed to have at each time and certain spiritual energy that comes down at that time so for example during the month of nisan the jewish month of the sun where we have passover there's this air there's a energy in the air of redemption of freedom of working towards personal redemption of experiencing collective redemption as the jewish people during chanukah during the month of his slave we have this energy in the air of light coming down there's this like it's we take the menorah we take the we take the menorah and we bring it to a place there's a law that you have to light it below 10 uh cubits or 10 10 uh 10 hands breaths and the whole idea is that we're taking light and we're bringing it down to a low place and it's like it's like the whole idea is that light this whole the whole concept of everything that light uh represents you know um vision and clarity and holiness and purity it's not something that is specific um to people on a uh you don't have to be on this you know a lofty level we bring it down so an elo we're going into this we just had rosh horsham the beginning of the month of elul and a lot of what we talk about we're going into you know we're prepper we're preparing for what we're going to start in a few weeks we're talking high holidays we're talking roshana we're talking yom kippur we're talking um we're talking this whole um experience of roshana is all about crowning goddess king yom kippur is all about repentance and leading into this leading into this this whole crazy month to all the holidays there's a tremendous air and feeling of introspection that we allow that we allow ourselves to enter into in preparation for these awesome and powerful days um the the um every single day after the tila we say so we say a special a special um a chapter of tehillim called which talks which is uh which is relating to we say this pastor save his verse i want to dwell in the house of god all days in my life to see his taste the joy and goodness of a life of meaning and purpose and to visit those places deep within myself deep within my own heart deep within an experience of god and we're saying this every single day to a lot and we're hearing this so far there's so far is blown every single day after after in the more after the morning prayers to to bri the to bring us to that to bring us to repentance it's this piercing cry the piercing cry that's supposed to represent the cry of our own soul the cry of ourselves yearning to break through uh to break through to break free and to enter into [Music] um to enter into the life that we really really want to live it's really really it's really a special time it's really really a special and very powerful time and there's a lot of talk during this time of the idea called tuva which is commonly translated in my humble opinion mistranslated as repentance and we often associate the idea of the word repentance with chest bashing and with feeling sad and down in the dumps and looking at our own flaws and our own failures and jumping right into those and ripping ourselves to pieces and it's something that many of us are we're it's like it's such a turn off it's such a turn off going into like you walk into uh you walk into a room and someone's talking about your flaws and your failures and it's like why would you why would i want to sit here listen i don't want to even think about that idea why would i want to go into that obviously introspection is very very important but there's often a very negative connotation that's come along with the word repentance that i think has to be remedied and fixed so i wanted to talk today about what is the true jewish perspective on repentance on chuva so that we can come to a deeper understanding of what is our our job as we said before during this time we're in the sick the year runs cyclically and we have in every single time period we have a specific path and a specific um thing that we're supposed to work on and right now we're working on this idea of return this idea of uh of repentance so what is it that we're supposed to be doing what's the purpose so there's a so in order to understand what we're doing first we have to understand what is the what is the what does the word mean right in order to understand if someone directs you to do something you have to know what am i being directed to do right so let's just have a look at the hebrew word for a second unfortunate we have our nice colored pencil very sophisticated [Music] beautiful okay this is the hebrew word now if we break down that word we can break it down into three parts okay there's here we go okay so we have the first letter which in hebrew is known as the directive the tough the letter tough is a directive letter it's saying you should do x you shall return is known as the shoresh or known as the essence the root of this word it means literally to return hey would literally would be the action of would be action of doing something the action of returning um now there's a very very interesting interpretation of this word as well in that the hey the letter hey the hebrew letter hey represents um in the sephirah in the writings on jewish mysticism that the hay represents the it's the rep is one of the ways that we write out it's one of the big letters in the tetra commandant in the four-letter name of god and it represents the name of god it represents um it represents godliness manifest so what the word actually could be interpreted is is return to god um so it's the act of return it's a directive to return and what is the return to it's to return to the hay now there's a very very important and powerful idea exactly to change one's bad meteos now eddie awesome awesome point so that so the whole idea of this experience of truva how do we get that what do we do so there's a really important idea that we have to understand that's talked about in the safer tanya by rashner zalman of yadi the alta rebbe from chabad he says something very very powerful he says that within every single person within every single jew there is what's called a helicopter there is a peace of god literally means literally there's a peace of god within us now what is god god is a very abstract concept um but what we when we're talking that we have a piece of god we're talking that we have this essence of god we're talking how does it manifest god manifests in this world as giving as kindness as love as mercy as truth as power and all those things that god is in the world we also have within us these are in unbelievable we have unbelievable wellsprings within ourselves of love of giving of kindness of mercy of just like enlightenment and and like ability to achieve to strive for perfection we have incredible resources in ourselves and it comes from this nishama from this soul this essence of ourselves now what happens eddie um as you said we have these bad medos we have what's called in kabbalah we have clipped we have these over the course of our lives this soul is put into a body okay and over the course of our lives we have this body and we go through we have a soul inside this body and we're going through the world you know we meet people we encounter trauma we encounter pain we encounter suffering the world is not perfect it's a challenging place and we encounter all this stuff and what happens is we learn psychologically we discuss um in therapy there's we have there's coping mechanisms and there's all sorts of those inner there's internal negative beliefs um in you know in coaching there's all these all these things that come up in our own hearts to allow ourselves to deal with trauma and pain and those are actually known as bad meadows they're bad negative emotions that come up in us and they prevent us for anyone watching if you've ever had a moment where you are really really angry to think for a second anger underneath anger there's actually a tremendously deep fear anyone you ever interact with who is manifesting as angry underneath that anger most likely you will find that they are very afraid of something they either feel betrayed and therefore alone or unworthy of love or connection underneath any like underneath any action there is a negative emotion it manifests in the beautiful so it actually it doesn't manifest in the shama it manifests as a klipa as a covering over the neshama it manifests as something covering over the essential self because in a moment where we're angry we don't want to be angry our essence our internal goodness doesn't want to be angry our internal good our goodness is calm it's serene it's peaceful we pray every day shalom we talk about peace peace comes from the word shalem it comes from the word being it comes from the word whole complete um peace is completion we don't want to be angry or irritable or anxious or fearful all those things come from negative emotions which are clique which are covering over the summer so that's a really important point so returning to this essence returning to the core neshama to the core self involves breaking the shabbat duckling to talk about kabbalah breaking these people breaking these barriers that block us from connecting to our essential self so again when we talk about chuva we're talking about repentance we talk about we talk what really what we're talking about is we're talking about breaking these negative emotions breaking these negative cycles that we get ourselves in and and getting ourselves getting ourselves into um getting ourselves back to our core self now there's a really really crazy powerful story that i want to share with you guys that we find in the talmud we find in the gemara now there was three sages who went into what is called the parties they went into basically they a lot they entered into a state where they were able to witness very very lofty things that were happening in heaven and one of those was a rabbi named alicia benavoya he was a very very holy teacher he was the teacher of rebbe mayer one of the great rabbis of the kumara as well and all these three rabbis went into this parties this garden the parties means the garden and revolution came out and he just lost it supposed they say he went off the d he went off the deep end he went he just like he stopped being religious he stopped he stopped keeping mitzvot um and he he stopped you know doing he was this great rabbi and he stopped connecting to he stopped connecting to god the way the rabbis were doing he stopped keeping torah he completely lost it um and it was really really a source of immense sadness for many of the rabbis at the time and what ended up happening was he came back from this event from this crazy vision and shortly afterwards he went into a house of repute to go um to go visit a prostitute and the prostitute asked him you know are you aren't you alicia benavia aren't you this great sage this you know incredible rabbi who's changed the lives of thousands of people and taught torah and reached these incredible levels of enlightenment why are you here and he didn't respond and this was actually on shabbat and he went he picked something from the ground which is which is a which is a um counter to the director of shabbat you're not allowed to pick things you're not allowed it's it's work and he went and violated about right in front of this woman and she said you must be you must be someone else and in that moment he took on this name he's commonly referred to in the gemara as aker and he's it's sort of like it's it's a sad story it's talked about in the attack talks about a lot it's sort of like you know we have this guy he went off and he's called her now literally means in hebrew someone else it means someone else now there's a crazy story and this is an unbelievable lesson that we have to learn unbelievable okay was what was on on shabbat he was writing a donkey which is prohibited and his student robbie mayer who is also an incredible sage comes running after him and he says rebbe rabbi you know you're not allowed to do that what are you doing why are you writing this donkey on shabbat and he says i heard a voice i heard about kohl i heard a voice from heaven say shuvu bhanim show the name let all my let all my all my sons return my wayward sons um carry on my way word son let all my all my sons return except for and he said when i heard that i i lost all hope and that was that was it i i'm like why would i if it says all my sons can return except for everyone can do chuva everyone can return to me except for akka what's left for me why why would i kosair eddie you want to expand on that but uh and hey joseph um what what like i i can't i can't wasn't it for me i can't i can't return i can't return so there's an incredible idea that i heard from a very very dear friend of mine that we that i think is so important to learn going into going into the high holiday experience and going into understanding this video the repentance the voice that cried out from heaven said return all my wayward sons except imagine if one of us were to hear a voice coming out from heaven saying return all my children except for tony i would be broken i'd probably lay in bed and be depressed for the rest of my life um but the whole there's a very interesting distinction that we have to make it didn't the voice didn't say return all my sons except for alicia and just his real name it said return all my sons except for except for the other and it's so interesting to think about and i think that donkeys are to ride on a to ride on a donkey is is yes um that what the what the voice was telling him what the voice was telling alicia was that return all my sons except for is that aker cannot come back to me why because this idea of return of chuvas we spoke about it is returned to the essential self it's returned to the core self the soul his essence ali shepard of his essence was alicia it was alisha it was the goodness unique goodness inside of him was this persona that he came up with in this house of the repute in doing this sin and doing this bad thing that ended up sticking with him where he was just like yeah i guess it's all over for me and the whole idea of what the voice was telling him wasn't don't come back what the voice was saying is that if you want to come back to me if you want to come back to god you have to come back not as achar not as the other but as alicia now is the persona you decide to take on for yourself to survive but as your essence you have to return to yourself now it's a really really deep idea in thinking about what is what is our core self and what are the personas that we take on and i think that as we enter into this time it's really essential to think to ourselves like are we when we're interacting with with other people we're interacting with our families we're directing with our friends it's challenging times especially right now and to think how am i how am i showing up to these people how am i interacting is it my true self what is my true self these are big questions that we get to ask ourselves what is my core identity who am i and then to think is it possible that the way i'm that that the things i'm doing right now are not coming from my essential self from the goodness inside of me the love in my heart but they're coming from in they're coming from in other coming from a persona that we've adopted for ourselves i want to leave you all with a really really amazing story and again thank you all for being here and for taking your time to learn together it's such an incredible incredible braha incredible blessing there's a story of schneider the author of the founding father so to speak of the khabad movement and the story goes that there was a miser in the town who was known that he had tons of money but he he just wouldn't give and there was a there was a very very desperate situation in one of the families in the town and some of the city leaders realized that unless they got some money it was all over the father of this family i believe was taken by the landowner he had a lot of deaths and he was thrown to prison and the guy was going to kill him unless they got him out of jail and this incredible mitzvah in the torah this commandment to release captives so they wanted to get him out of jail and it was really really important really really essential and hello ezra um and these people go to the rabbi they go to they go to the altar and they say rabbi we need money to get this person out of jail we we have no we have no means the community was pretty poor and we feel like the only person we can go to is this is this person so he says go he says he says go go to this person and ask him ask him to donate so these these people they go they go to the this big mansion they knock on the door and they say excuse me sir you know we're collecting money this person was throwing to prison and uh we really need help can you donate you know classic uh sales pitch so uh the guy says oh my goodness wow i i really i really feel i really feel your pain of course let me let me help you he goes into his safe and he brings out this rusty penny and and he and he gives him this like rusty coat kopeck this rusty penny and they're like they they hold in their hand they're like what like they have a look of disgust on their face are you kidding me this man's life is at stake you could like you spend more money on your dinner at night than you could than than would take to get this guy out of prison and you're giving us this rusty penny who the heck do you think you are and they throw the penny in his face and they walk out disgusted they slam the door on him they go back to the rabbit and they say rabbi you'll never believe this guy he gives us a rusty penny who does he think he is and the rabbi the altar rebbe looks at them and he says okay i'm coming with you and they go back and they knock on the door and the rebbe says shalom alaihim you know we have this we have a situation and i we really really we really really need help and this the family is broken and the wife and the kid the children are gonna be left fatherless and the wife is gonna be left husbandless and they're the guy's going to die and it's going to be a it's it's horrible and the guy looks at him and he's got you can see he's really moved by the rabbi's speech and he goes and he says yeah sure i got you and he goes to the he goes to his his safe safety takes out the same rusty penny again he gives the rabbi and the robber looks at him and says wow thank you so much that is so generous thank you and you can see the man is so pleased that this gift was accepted and he and he says thank you and they closed the door and he starts walking out and as he's walking down the path suddenly his door open the man runs out and says he says thank you ready he says wait rabbi wait please and the rabbi turns around and walks back and he says please i really want to help more and he says he says here take take take a rubble which is like you know a couple dollars and the rabbi is like wow thank you and he walks back and the guy runs back inside and comes back out again a couple minutes like a few seconds later says rabbit wait please please don't go and he takes out ten rebels and the rabbi says looks at him and he says thank you so much and he walks out and this thing repeats itself a few times ten rules a hundred rubles and it comes to a point where he walks out and the guy runs after says please i want to give you the full son he gives him the full 1000 rubles to get this guy in jail and these people were with the rabbi were dumbfounded they were shocked what happened and the rabbi said many years many years ago he probably tried to give this rusty penny and people like you threw it back in his face and he said yeah wasn't it for me and when we were able to accept him and able to accept that rusty penny as all he was able to give and accept that and appreciate that that's what brought all the goodness out of him okay now there's an incredible twist at the end that i wanna i wanna bring to this whole idea that we're talking about of chuva repentance the high holidays oftentimes we believe from ourselves we have certain standards in ourselves we have certain standards of what am i supposed to be where am i supposed to be in my life what should i be doing how should i be succeeding what are the things i'm supposed to be accomplishing in my life and oftentimes we're not living up to that that standard that we set for ourselves and we do like you know our heart will tell us you know i'm gonna do a little bit little act of kindness and oftentimes being self-critical we'll look at ourselves and say yeah yeah right that's not enough that's not it's not like you're still a nothing you're still you're still not this good person you're you know you're garbage or you're whatever it is but we're we're our own our own you know best uh we talk down to ourselves more than anyone else most often um and the moral the lesson of this story is that we may have certain expectations for ourselves going into the holidays we're gonna have these grand plans for the coming year we're going to say this coming year i want to wake up every day at 5 30 in the morning i want to spend more time with my wife with my kids with myself i want to meditate i want to learn i want to go to school every day three times a day on time two hours early i want to go to the mikvah i want to do i want to there's all these things that i want to do and sometimes what happens is all that we're able to offer up is the rest offer up as a rusty panel we're able to do you know we're able to spare 15 minutes of learning for ourselves we're able to you know we're not always going to be perfect and sometimes we'll lash out and we'll say something that we don't mean to say but we'll have a moment where we do something good and the message of the story is that when we offer up the rusty pen when we offer up that act of goodness to be able to appreciate ourselves for what we're able to give and to and from that place of self-appreciation and self-love and realizing that god is looking down and saying oh my gosh return my children return to my children i love you so much come back to me i see you're trying it's so beautiful from that place we're able to do so much more we're able to really really really really unleash our own potentials to find the hate in ourselves to find that godliness in ourselves to break over the platforms to break through all these things that cover us up to break through all that's covering over our hearts and to be able to really really find ourselves to find god to find all the goodness in the world we shall be blessed that this should be a meaningful and transformative and powerful time i'd like to end with a quick melody because that's usually how i do um when i teach i think it's really important to end with a song um there's a song that i wrote called which is means lovesick i'm sick for you god and it's all about tapping into the love not the fear in our relationship with hashem and i hope you all enjoy play it once [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] me [Music] foreign [Music] because thank you all so much for joining wishing you a beautiful and wonderful day if you like to connect feel free um check out as i'm releasing an album really soon and some some new music i just put out a new song called father uh it's on youtube you'd look up tony polanski and father on youtube uh or love on my facebook page at the feel of music um and again thank you so much for being here so much love