Text-Based Tanya Class—Week #24

yesterday two days ago matsushabus first the end of shabbos and the a little bit after shabbos was akron here about the five towns i was it was a beautiful gathering hashem and a wonderful turnout and uh what do you want just you want me to give them the 10 second version for those who weren't here we spoke about a lot of things but i think one of them was that um achen chopesach is the commemoration of the splitting of the the sea christians which i conveyed the gist of about wine action been aminoda was the only one to jump into the sea he was the only one with that idea but the way that ebb explains it based on the madris is actually you wonder why he even did it because um before martin tito the jewish people were not yet halal jewish and a non-jew is not allowed to take their own life that's one of the seven noah heid laws and yet throwing yourself into the sea would certainly be endangering your life now if you're jewish you also have a mitzvah of kids hashem which is to sanctify god's name even at the risk of your life or even giving up your life but that mitzvah of kidness hashem does not exist for non-jews so that was the deliberation that was going on at the time of the the of the splitting of the sea people were like there's the sea hadn't split yet they had no idea it would split so they were saying are we allowed to endanger our lives holocaust and so then now the question becomes why did it why didn't action wait and listen to the conclusion of the scholarly debate and finally find out if he was even allowed to do what he did and then of his answer was if you're starting to ask already am i allowed to sacrifice myself am i allowed to endanger myself am i allowed to enter into massive snfish then you're all you're already missing the point an auction didn't didn't have to wait for the conclusion to the to this debate because he didn't even start the debate his whole focus was he knew one thing they came it came out of my time to get to harsinai and that's where i'm going is there a yarm in between okay so maybe hashem will figure it out but that's not my business my business is to go toward the goal so in our day our goal is to get to the finish line to perfect the world and are there sacrifices that may need to be made in between yeah maybe there are maybe they're not but that's not really our focus it's not what we're considering i mentioned i mean now you said to do it in one sentence i can't hold back but i mentioned there was a group of uh you you had a uh a zoom call with mr silverstein from chernogov the shloka and a young american girl who went on slickest to ukraine which is crazy enough and then ends up becoming a war refugee which is even more unthinkable and her whole demeanor is basically like yeah okay i'm calm i'm at peace i'm okay and people are like marveling how can somebody have such a sense of inner peace and such a con in such a in such a situation and i was trying to explain the idea that when you're on a schliches which we're all shlokam we're all on a mission then you don't really you what what's your mind focused on your mind is focused on your goal your mind is focused on the completion of the task not on the hardships that may be entailed in completing the task so if we think about the hardships of gullis it's you know all the different tests and trials and tribulations it can become you know what it can become it just it's not a good path to go down but if we focus on the goal if we focus on the fact we're here to perfect the universe and that whatever comes up in between in the interim trying to complete our task we'll deal with it we'll deal with it just like an action he wasn't really thinking about was this going to be snowfish is it not messier that wasn't his discussion his discussion was which direction are we heading and that's it you just go in the direction you're heading anyways that was the five minute version not the one-sentence version and then obviously there was much more than that because it was like a two-hour uh but like they say you had to have been there so next next year but next year in jerusalem yeah definitely so everyone will definitely be there okay so should we do pedigree dalit four four chapter fourteen you could tell jokes yeah it's like the guy goes to the doctor he says doctor hurts when i go like that doctor says don't go like that so that to answer your question seriously yeah what if the hardships are so distracting that i can't even focus on my goal the answer to the question is the question itself which is focus on the goal and you'll be able to deal with the hardships but in order to focus on the goal mashiach is such an abstraction for many of us when we say anima a moon is something that by definition faith means something it's abstract you don't have a you believe in it because you haven't seen it that's why we have to not just believe in meshiach but we have to learn about mashiach we have to learn from terrorist sources to describe what it means what the world will be like not just the trees will be growing candy and all the the you know childish ways of describing it which are also true but childish so that the the goal of meshiach becomes real in our minds and it's not just uh i don't want to minimize it by saying it's i don't want to minimize faith by saying it's not just one of the 13 principles of faith but it's also incredibly uh psychologically and emotionally healing because if you do have a very clear vision of what mashiach means it changes everything it changes everything that ever wrote in a letter that since he was a small child he doesn't say the age but he says before i even started going to heider so a child of two or three years old he said i was already beginning to envision what the redemption would look like so as a little child as a toddler he was already picturing the redemption i think that's an instruction for all of us we have to have visions we have to have images what does redemption mean it's a very important exercise to have to have those images and to have those thoughts but that they shouldn't just be fantasies they should be based on torah sources which means we have to study you have to study there's there's plenty of material in the uh in the literature going back all the way to you know hamish and uh tanakh and uh gamara and madhurish and shainam and speaking all about meshiach so maybe we'll start uh we should start a share just on uh concepts of meshia we could do that yeah okay we're starting a new shirt okay so should we do pedigree dallad okay all right pedago dalla chapter 14. so 12 13 14 maybe even 15 sort of all go together because they're all talking about the bani if you remember in chapter 10 we spoke about the tsaddik in chapter 11 we spoke about the russia and then in chapter 12 we introduced the banany so um we're continuing now in chapter 14 to speak about the bandini i'm just going to jump in he made us call adam bacharach the i'm going to translate midos habenini as the level of the baini is a level that anyone can acquire and everybody should strive to attain it how we're going to make such a statement that the level of the bain me is attainable by everyone we just said that abhini has 100 impeccable perfect thought speech and action how we're gonna how we're going to assert that everyone can attain that level shakola is because anybody can be a knee at any time because after all remember does not need to despise means evil but we could call it selfishness or anything that's not expressly for the service of hashem he's not turned off by it if you told me i had to be turned off by it well that's very difficult i'm not that in control of my feelings i can't get myself to like what i don't like or dislike what i do like at least not at will i can't just will myself to change my desires and my attractions but i can control my behaviors so that's the that's the easy part of being abandoned is that the mainly is not required to change his feelings he says your preferences your desires that's something that is a matter of the heart it's not really it's not really up to you valet kola chavez also not every situation not every time and place is the same meaning these things fluctuate you know sometimes my feelings are more aligned with what hashem wants me sometimes less and that's not really something i can control i can control the expression of it whether i allow it to come out as a behavior but the fact that i have these feelings the heart wants what it wants rather what does abednee do he turns away from evil and he does good the heinough and what do we mean in actual deed with action with speech and with willful conscious thought as we've defined so many times before thought here means the activity of consciously choosing a thought not images that pop up in your head those are just impulses and those we know we can't control but we're talking about willful thought where you choose a thought and run with it as an activity that we do have control over just like we have control over our action and our speech and that's what a mainly controls perfectly so after all what is the mainly really doing he's just exerting control over that which all of us have control the only difference is he he does it consistently yeah that's the point that's the whole premise right there where there was a accosted who a lot of people used to say was a banane it was a mashbeer in the yeshiva and uh he'd come out of russia and he ran underground um schools it was a guy who's just diving all day and uh didn't really yeah he was just dabbing all day basically um people used to say it was obeying me anyways i confirmed i actually heard the story as a rumor but then i confirmed it with the person it happened to he was uh visiting america and actually this story happened in canada and when he was coming to new york to visit but he stopped in montreal and he was staying with his uh relatives and so his little uh nephew was six or seven years old and there were two brothers two brothers who were roommates little kids and when their great uncle this venerable [Music] mashbiya this uh the person that people murmured about and said he was obeying me uh when he would come over to visit so one of them would sleep on the couch and the other one would stay in the room and be roommates with their with their fat there with their uncle so the i mean for anyone who matters the the i guess the names are public record at this point anyways the the the great uncle is uh nissan emenov from brunois and the two boys were uh yasi and maisha demberg or about schlechman florida so i heard this from yossi so anyways he says that he turned he didn't know any better and he turns to his uncle and he says father bisto obeying me are you are you obeying me which is not really uh i don't know if you know acidic cultural norms it's not a polite thing to say so it's a little bit a little bit bold so he didn't say yes he didn't say no he said um you could be obeying me you can't design a bane in me so he says yeah he says yeah he said gaynema uh i kill him go take us safer tell him so he took his effort tell him and he says okay so he starts reading taylor and he's doing this for four or five minutes and at the end of the four or five minutes the uncle says tim says zogman tell me um the past four or five minutes were you doing anything you're not supposed to be doing he's like no i'm just standing here he says were you saying anything you're not supposed to be saying he says no i'm saying tell him tell him it's good says were you thinking anything you're not supposed to be thinking he says no i'm just thinking ah i wonder why i'm standing here saying tell him that that was it so the the uncle says he says perfect now just continue that for the rest of your life so simple now this is somebody that people said he was abandoning whether he wasn't he wasn't none of my business the point is what did he respond to the child when the child asks are you obeying he says you could be a banemy and what was the illustration go have four or five minutes of it of a taste of what being a banana is like at least one level of abandonment obviously there are levels of of being a baini and and and we're not we're not suggesting that all bane and him have one inner profile where they have the same degree of struggle the same degree of self control or purification obviously there's a whole range within being but what is universal about albanium is that their their behaviors are perfect and then inwardly there's some degree of struggle how much struggle obviously would vary from one mainly to another but there's some degree of struggle because their insides are not in perfect alignment with their with their outsides so the point is that this uncle tells this this child you want to know what a baby is you're speaking about it like it's such a like an exotic thing like this oh this banany like it's such a foreign idea for four or five minutes you had the experience of being a badani and the only difference between four or five betany minutes and being someone who's in the category of mainly is just extending those four or five minutes for the rest of your life just don't stop now easier said than done just don't stop right obviously it takes an incredible amount of commitment and self-control to not stop and that's what the book is about or at least a large part of the book is about how to give ourselves the support we need to be able to maintain that control but as far as the actual um mechanics of being a baini it shouldn't be so uh it shouldn't seem so far removed from us it's it we're maybe i'd say we're demystifying the entire idea the mechanics of it are rather simple it's called controlling your behaviors which we all know how to do we've all done for some amount of time and the difference is not qualitative it's quantitative it's not qualitatively different impulse control it's quantitatively different in as much as it's just more and more and more and more of it without stopping okay so he continues to explain more about why we're focusing on behavior because when it comes to behaviors a person has free choice and he has the ability to control it and that that was given to everyone the whole ultimate says to everyone everyone was given the ability to control their behaviors la says to do la dabber to speak velocity to think gamma negative not only can you not do what you want to do but you can even do what you don't want to do that's very important you can force yourself this bum came up to me on the street says i haven't eaten in three days i said so force yourself that's an old henny youngman one-liner from the borscht belt today it's nobody you don't say a bum came up to me i i was thinking to myself should i edit the joke and i was like no it makes it worse you just got to go full force with the joke the way that it used to be told that's the old borscht belt joke so force yourself anyways just an old henny youngman joke don't don't get upset don't get upset okay anyways um the point is he says you force yourself so force yourself so you don't want to do it you don't feel like it just forces you what's the big deal no one's telling you to love what you don't love no one's telling you to hate what you don't hate they're just telling you sometimes you're gonna have to do something you hate and not do something that you love okay i do that already you know i do that already just yeah okay so just do it more do it do it consistently and now he describes it even at the point in time when the heart is actually lusting misawa is a tyvegasmis it's having a craving for some physical pleasure whether that pleasure is a permissible pleasure or it is forbidden according to torah even at the time when the heart is experiencing this feeling of longing which we can't control we cannot control that we have the feeling you could completely avert your attention from it meaning it's running in the background but you can completely avert your attention from it not give it any focus and he says here's how you do it you say a little monologue but i'm really by means you speak to your heart here's the beta's internal monologue i don't want to be a russia for even a minute you know why i don't want to be separate from hashem for even one minute well actually i gave away the answer you know why i don't want to be a a wicked person for even one minute because i don't want to be separated from hashem for even one minute like it says your sins separate you from god yeah i think it's very important here to underline the dis what do you call it the disincentive is that the word disincentive the opposite of an incentive disincentive the disincentive for doing whatever you feel like doing right now is not that you're afraid of being punished it's not you think about gehennam we're not saying those things aren't real i think a lot of very immature black and white thinkers get uptight and think that when we say that that's not our motivation that we're solemn negating basic fundamental beliefs in judaism oh you're saying that these aren't concerns they're not real and say it's not real i said that's not what motivates people then you could ask a deeper philosophical question if gehenna is not such a motivation then why does it exist okay that's another discussion but that's not the motivation i didn't say it doesn't exist for sure i'm not i just said the fact that it does exist is not the motivation it's not what we use to reign in our behaviors you know i'll make a parallel i have a friend who for a long time was not i don't think he was observant at all like i don't think he kept anything uh he was raised in an observant home but then completely went away and then slowly came back and uh at any rate so at one point he was not shabbos observant at all now now he is somewhat and uh maybe completely shabbos observer that's not the point the point is that somebody said to him aren't you worried about parnassa ain't worried about your livelihood he says what does that question mean he says well if you don't keep shabbos hashem could withhold your livelihood so this friend of mine laughs and he says so essentially you're arguing that money is more important than shabbos because you didn't tell me i should keep shabbos because of shabbos you said i should keep shabbos because i don't want hashem to withhold my parnosa that i want to make sure i get my money so i got to keep shabbos so you're telling me that money is more important than chavez um the question is what's the motivation are you going to force yourself to do what you don't particularly feel like doing but you know that hashem wants you to do because of ghanaian and gehenna then i guess ghanaian and gehenum are what's important not hashem i mean logically i'm forced to conclude that ghanaian and gehenom are more important to me than hashem and in fact logically that would it would stand to reason if there are if there were a way that conceivably i could cut out hashem and get the ghanaian and avoid the gehenna i would do that too because those are the motivators and those are those those are what i care about says here that when you need to motivate yourself you motivate you you motivate yourself by thinking about being separate from god that being separate from god is the ultimate punishment natural consequence not the punishment that the the purifications of gehenna even though those are real things and he spoke about it in pericas he spoke about gehenna in chapter 8 but he doesn't bring that back over here when he's motivating us it's not what he mentions over here yeah so the question is well i think that's only a motivator if someone's already experienced it and tasted it that's a that's a thought so i'm going to counter and i'm going to say it's not explicit here but it's implicit in the entire world view of tanya and it's explicit in other places that the very nature of the jew is to desire closeness with hashem it's almost on an instinctive level and it's native at least to the nephesh elections to the godly soul to desire that connection and to be terrified of disconnection so it's not something that has to be learned it's something that's already there and in quiet moments can be revealed maybe that's why he phrases it as an as an internal monologue because it's a it's a meditation it's like a quiet step aside for a second and go return to yourself so to speak listen to the still small voice it it's it's axiomatic that we want to be close to god we want to do the right thing um that ebba said so many hundreds of times perhaps i think definitely it's safe to say hundreds of times there's a law in the rambam in the laws of divorce about a man who is obligated to give a divorce halachically and he's refusing so the the rambam says you force him until he does what he's supposed to do now how can you say then that he gave the get willingly if you forced him so that abam says because you're not forcing him he wants to do the right thing and if halacha says he needs to give a divorce in this case then he that's what he really wants to do deep down you're not forcing him yitz his yet sahara is forcing him to misbehave right now so what's called being compelled there's no such thing as compelling a jew to do the right thing that's like i'm going to compel a bird to fly south for the winter that's what they instinctively do that's what they want to do and if the birds not doing that there's something compelling them not to do it that's the compulsion so the altarebit tells us to go think about separation from god because he believes that this is something that is meaningful to every jew it is meaningful to us now obviously the more we think about it the more meaningful it'll be to us but uh this is this is basic to who we are we do care about these things and it's selling ourselves short to focus on lower level motivations it's like you know telling somebody well don't be mean to your wife she might leave you well and what if she won't what if she'll just be sad and live with it would you still be mean to her i think we have to give people credit that even if there are no external consequences that we care enough about our relationship with hashem that we wouldn't want to damage the relationship and that's what he's saying here i can get myself to behave just by reminding myself that i wouldn't want to damage the relationship and that that itself is meaningful to me without the threat or promise of external reward or punishment or vice versa of punishment to reward threat of threat of punishment or promise of reward okay so he says i don't want to be separate from hashem but let's continue the internal monologue rather i want to cleave i want to be attached to hashem with my nephesh and the shama all the levels of my soul okay great beautiful idea how do you connect all the levels of your soul to a ship by connecting the three garments of the soul to or by connecting my soul to the three garments hashem's three garments so the three garments that belonged to hashem the three garments that were given by hashem like we spoke about in pedegala chapter four about the the three garments are thought speech and action and of the godly soul those are the garments of toyota study and mitzvah performance that were given by hashem and that they lift us up into oneness with hashem so you want to be close to hashem that's a beautiful idea a guy's saying oh i love my wife i love my wife okay that's a beautiful sentiment how is that going to express itself no no i just love her well you know she said go to the store no no i want to do something really big for my wife but she's standing there in the kitchen waiting for the the heavy cream and she said go to the store no but i just want to think about how okay no go to the store and then you know then maybe you'll figure out something else you could do that's you know you actually i'm as i'm saying this i remember one time in yeshiva there's this little excitable kid i mean he wasn't a kid he was 19 20 years old but he starts he i don't remember i don't remember what got him excited but he comes running into the eating area the dining room and he's like guys let's bring machia let's really do it let's bring mashiach so there's another guy who's a little bit older and a little bit more settled and he's like that's a great idea let's start keeping seder keeping saturn means come to class on time which is like the bane of every yeshiva bacha's existence coming to class on time he says let's start keeping seder and be nice to each other you know the bakram should treat each other nicely so that's pretty pretty good that shimira says you know keeping the the schedule of the yeshiva and and being nice to your fellow students so this little excitable guy looks at him for a second he's like no i mean really bring mashiach really really bring bashir okay so you want to be attached to hashem beautiful all right how how does that translate what does that look like in actual fact it means behaviors that's what it means it means choosing thought speech and action that connect you to a ship so this is all part of the internal monologue okay i'm feeling a desire to do something that i want to do or feels important to me or feels necessary or whatever it is and i'm very convinced that this is the next thing that i really really want to do hold on a second i'm thinking hashem doesn't like it no it's not no and shakhandar says don't do that so hashem doesn't want that what can i do there's what i want to do that's what hashem wants me to do what should i do what should i do so i stop and i meditate and i think to myself oh they're going to boil me if i no that's not what i think i think to myself hold on a second i don't want to be separate from hashem why would i be separate from hashem i want to be one with hashem okay great i want to be one with champ beautiful one with hashem no no one with hashem means in your next behavioral choice choose something that is aligned with hashem's will that's what it means so this is all part of the the meditation here shaheen and what are the levushum he spells it out action speech and thought of hashem's torah and his mitzvos i'm still talking to myself hashem this is sort of an answer to your question by the way says here and these are a reflection of the innate love of hashem that's hidden in my heart misuterus means hidden he says you have an innate love of hashem hidden in your heart already you don't have to go out and get it you already have it can i believe klolos in fact all jews have this all jews are referred to as mecca the lovers of hashem's name rafilu khalshaba kalam you know what i should have answered your question before and said wait three lines you see that the alter wrote tanya for every individual that every question anyone will have sometimes you have to wait a few chapters sometimes you have to wait ten chapters but right here you just had to wait a few lines this is this is the answer to your question right here remember the question well maybe i don't maybe i don't value closeness with hashem maybe i have to be more refined in order to even value that as a motivator he says here no all jews are motivated by that all jews value that he says affilo he says look historically we know later in tanya he'll speak about it more at length that even people who were completely irreligious gave up their lives to hold on to their jewish identity people were tortured and murdered for being jews and they were not particularly religious in their lifetimes and they held on to their jewish identity so where does that come from that doesn't come from from religious observance because they weren't they weren't observant you can tell me that uh the religious zealot gave up his life for his god okay every religion has that every religion has that but what about someone who was not the religious zealot far from it they were irreligious and they gave up their life for daniel god pearl yeah he was intermarried and did not identify at all religiously and yet in his in his last words he said that i'm a jew yeah that's right where does that come from it doesn't doesn't come from somebody who uh darwin schminesser three times today that's not where it comes from doesn't come from somebody who boiled the sugar before pesach it's not where it's coming from it's coming from something embedded that can't be expunged from the jewish souls just innate to who the jew is so in my internal monologue i say even the people who are completely irreligious have this desire and it doesn't come out obviously regularly because they're not religious but at a time where push comes to shove and they come to a test where it's very black and white what the stakes are mistakes are give up your life and retain your jewishness or save your life by giving up your jewishness the jew even the irreligious jew cannot give up their jewishness so if that's true i'm no worse than that when you tell me that i i'm i have less of that in me than every other jew no no i also have that elisha nicholas now he explains well now tell me why does the irreligious jew only have that clarity at a moment of a real black and white life and death test he says because he has a dos a spirit of folly vinnie malay vedas he thinks that doing this sin whatever whatever sin it is at this moment it's not going to separate me and that's how he he rationalizes doing it in other words no jew will ever sin if he felt that it would really separate him from god what so then how did you sin they could they convince themselves it's not separating me from god either you convince yourself it's not really a sin or you convince yourself there is no god whatever you have to lie to yourself you know to rationalize i've told you guys this before rational lies is rational lies so it's very smart sounding very logical and it's all lies so you lie to yourself to comfort yourself whatever you have to tell yourself you tell yourself you know god forbid that the toyota is not really binding or it never was binding or it's not real or it's man-made or you to god forbid you tell yourself there is no god whatever you have to tell yourself to convince yourself that by doing this next action it's not going to separate me from god so those are the lies that a jew has to tell himself or herself to be comfortable sinning but if you if a jew were in a situation where he or she were not able to lie and had to admit the truth that no this stuff really is real and by sub by by choosing something god doesn't want from me i'm separating myself from god so no jew would be able to do that so the difference is you're talking about the counsel of a column of the irreligious jew is that they have themselves fooled that what they're doing is not separating themselves from god at the moment of a test where you know the the grand inquisitor is standing over you and saying renounce the god of israel then it's hard to fool yourself anymore and then it becomes abundantly clear what's at stake but the point is when the even the irreligious jew has clarity and knows exactly what's at stake um the irreligious jew will not choose separation from god why because that's just something that's embedded in the jewish soul so too i'm also jewish i can also invoke that power and when i need motivation i can just remind myself that i don't want to be separate from god he continues here describing this when this irreligious jew is being irreligious most of his life what has he done what has he done that allows him to do that it's very interesting the word here he's forgotten the love for hashem that's hidden in his heart a couple words there i just love first of all forgotten not he never learned it he didn't have to learn it it's part of the factory default settings he forgot about it it was always there but he forgot about it also hamilton is that it's hidden it's latent it's it's embedded in his psyche but he forgot about it he he's out he he fell out of touch from it okay but here continuing the monologue aval ani but me [Music] i don't want to be such a fool as to deny the truth i think it's so funny i mean i don't know if it's funny maybe it's funny that i think it's funny but that when he's giving himself like that tough talk like that tough coach you know the coach you know is like screaming at the players that's how i imagine it's a little bit like a tough self-talk when you're screaming at yourself he's saying i don't want to i don't i don't want to sin why not because then i'm going to be separate from hashem uh who says you care about being separate from hashem every jew cares about being separate from a gym even even the irreligious jew except that he fools himself and he rationalizes that it's not going to be it's not going to damage him i don't want to be such a fool i don't know so to me i think there's something so jewish about that that the ultimate insult don't be a fool like like it's not like oh if you do this you won't be from no it's like if you do this you're going to be a fool you're going to be a shaytan don't be an idiot don't be i don't to me that's funny it's like very jewish like don't be an idiot like if you let yourself rationalize doing something hashem doesn't want you to do you know what that makes you it makes you a dummy don't be a dummy i i just think that's funny okay i think it's funny that it's such a true insight into jewish psychology like the ultimate thing like i don't want to be i don't want to be the idiot why would i why would i let myself talk myself into something that's stupid machine kingdom david a muscular level okay so that's the end of that's the end of the monologue the end of the monologue anyways so this monologue he says is useful we have to know what a tool does in order to evaluate its effectiveness this monologue is useful in curbing behavioral expressions of desires it is not useful in i'm going to say the setup again you're going to finish it for me okay this is like magic to kareem all right this tool is useful in curbing the behavioral the tool in the monologue the monologue is a tool which is useful in curbing the behavioral expressions of desires it is not useful in thought is a behavior so it is useful in in motivating it is useful in motivating positive behavior the the first impulsive thought yeah but let's can i use a different word for that because the first impulsive thought what we can't control go ahead keep saying reaction what's the big distinction we're making here behaviors and and you're calling it initial it may not just be initial it may be constant right but it's the part that correct so let me say it again this tool this monologue is extremely effective in helping us to curb the behavioral expression of desires but not the desire and if you try to use a tool for a job it was not intended for obviously it's going to fail give permission for the desire meaning i'm not going to encourage you to go get excited about things that are forbidden but you're but you're human and don't the thing is you're talking about things that a person you could protect them from being exposed to which you can't anyway because but but there's plenty of things how do you protect someone from ever being exposed to bitter torah there's no way to protect someone from being exposed to the idea of zoning out and wasting time instead of learning title okay so that's to say that our whole game plan is just to deny them their first taste of forbidden fruit and as long as they've never had the experience of the thing that toyota forbids they'll never develop a desire for first of all good luck trying to shelter your kids that much but second of all i'm just giving you this example bitter bitter tater is not something that somebody had to go out and learn how to do that's like a default thing that everyone catches themselves doing and you have to learn how to not do it so yeah that's not much of a game plan to say that we're just going to prevent you from having your first experience of doing something forbidden what we're saying here i just want to get to a stopping point is that it is natural to desire things that hashem does not want you to do it is natural it's inevitable and we're not going to focus on that what we're going to focus on are the behavioral expressions and this monologue is a tool to head off the behavioral expression of the desire let's just continue here this line here macheinke in contrast this is not so bidaver hamas when you're speaking about something that is the domain of the heart the hainu in other words he spells it out what is something that is not under your control what is something we call the domain of the heart and therefore it's not subject to free will is that you should actually despise ra which we clumsily translated as evil but like we said in chapter six it just means anything that's not expressly for the intent of serving god you cannot get yourself to to despise it you may like it but you won't do it but you can't get yourself to despise it and then he says it's interesting i want to see if you guys are smart i know you guys are smart i want to see how smart you guys are okay i'm learning you know i i got to be you know kinder and gentler but i don't know i by the way i have a lot of knockers from mike tell me them i feel like i'm very demanding but i feel like people who learn with me achieve a lot so i i don't know that's okay hopefully it's all done in a respectful fashion okay i want to i want you guys to have an opportunity to show how smart you are um he says here it's not possible to get yourself to change things that are that are completely the domain of the heart and he says specifically to get yourself to actually dis despise ra that which is not for the service of hashem whether completely or incompletely you remember you see those words here but now with complete hatred or you feel asha or even incomplete hatred what's that a call back to what that little fri those countries and not only does it take over but he turns that country right right very good very good okay so that complete hatred is talking about the complete saddik who transformed he transformed the bad guy and then the incomplete hatred is talking about the incomplete sadiq who he shut it down so it's not a threat anymore but he didn't transform it right so those two phrases are a call back to those two levels of tsadik but at any rate the point is they're both sadiq because someone who actually hates ra is called sadiq but normal people don't hate ra they just know not to do it and that's what he's saying here i can't make myself hate it that's a toddic i can get myself not to do it okay all right so we'll stop right there we'll stop right there and we're not going to continue next week because i'm out of town because i'm out of town i i booked a speaking engagement months ago so there's nothing i can really do about it um okay good good idea