The Process of Becoming: One Deliberate Day After Another - Rav Josh Kaufman

precious Rabbi Cohen. It's very humbling for me to be standing in front of you. The respect I have for each of you, each Talmud, and what happens in this space medish is not something I take lightly. And so I asked myself, what could I possibly share with all of you that would be meaningful? And I realized that maybe the only honest thing I can share is something I only began to understand from sitting in your very seats. long enough myself. When I came here 11 years ago, I had a simple goal to grow in my avote and to try to become a but the longer you're in this process, the more you realize the question is not just what we want to become, but how that actually happens. What does real growth actually feel like while it's happening? And I think the Torah itself is quietly pointing us toward the answer in the way that it presents the holiday of Shabuis. Shuis and Paras Emore which we read this past week is strangely framed. Unlike the other Yamim toim, it doesn't give us a date. There's no month, no explicit day. And it also never mentions a commemoration for Matan Torah at all. Instead, the Torah gives us something else entirely. Each yomtove in addition to being part of all of the moed cycle is also treated separately in its own unit in the parasmo with a and despite the holiday of itself being so empty of any details of all of the other yam toim it has the longest section at 14. But instead of being about there's a long focus on the on the gradual process from PES to shuis culminating in the so much attention is given to the buildup and so little to the day itself. And when the Torah finally does describe Shuis, it uses a very unusual phrase. Declare it, declare the holiday on this very day. What is this very day? What makes it so significant before anything is even said about what happens on it? Rabosi the Torah is teaching us something so fundamental. Shivis is not like Pesak. It's not like sukus. It's not like Kaneka. It's not like Purin which celebrate miraculous events of divine providence. And in their experience of them engage us with the performance of a mitzvah. Is different. It's not defined primarily by a moment, a misitzvah, but by a process. The Torah conceals matan Torah in order to f force us to focus on the steps that produce it rather than only on the grand finale. You don't arrive at shuis the way you arrive at a destination. You build towards it day by day, step by step. And that's why the holiday is called shuis weeks because it's the process which defines the kaduca, not just the result. The point is not only arriving somewhere great. The point is what slowly happens to a person along the way. Growth in a hashem and in becoming a is not usually a sudden breakthrough or dramatic revelation. It's a slow, quiet, deliberate process that builds on itself day after day, month after month, year after year. We all want instant results, these major breakthroughs. And we live in a world that demands something to show for everything. Something tangible, something measurable. And I think that n naturally shapes how we think about ourselves too. Maybe because we feel time is limited or for other reasons there's this rush and a pressure to become, to know, to master. And so we start ourselves thinking in terms of metrics, what we've covered, what we finished, what we can point to, what we can see. There's so much talk about goals, about finishing, about covering ground. And of course, structure matters. But sometimes the way we measure growth, the way we measure it is where we get it wrong. Because growth is not linear. It's recursive. Each thing you learn changes the way you understand what came before it and reshapes how you approach what comes next. You're not just accumulating the knowledge, but you're being refashioned by it on a constant basis. And that's true in Torah. It's true in aotem. It happens in the steady surrender of each day. how we learn, how we dive in, even how we walk to and from yeshiva. It's not about carving isolated moments of growth, but about letting the entire day become part of the process. And sometimes you don't notice anything at all. You finish a seder, it feels ordinary. You struggle through a suga for weeks and you're still confused. You go through periods where you wonder whether anything is changing in you. But then years later, you look back and realize those were the moments quietly building the foundation of who you became. There's no fixed finish line for this. We have forever. We have a lifetime. It doesn't end when we leave yeshiva. The sphere itself is 50 days, right? Remes to the fullness of a lifetime. Eternity to something which is whole and complete. But we can't rush this process at all. It happens at its own pace. This is the nitiv sees in the phrase He suggests that the phrase is why we don't accept early the way we do other normally we're the holiday early we dav early we make kdish early but on we wait until nightfall until the taz famously say maybe this is the explanation we all know because of a complete count full 50 days But argues it can only begin the hay on this very day. The day which is the end of the process of omare. The day that we've been working towards, the day which marks the completion of the process cannot begin a minute earlier, a minute before the time is ready because the of is not independent of what comes before it. It's born from it. It can't begin until the process that creates it is finished. And that's the message. However long it takes, because growth is not about immediate payoff. And if we ask ourselves honestly, how do I know that anything is really happening to me? The answer is usually you don't. Real transformation almost never feels dramatic while it's happening. It only becomes visible in retrospect. But I can tell you from my own experience being in yeshiva, growth rarely came in dramatic breakthroughs or single defining moments. It became visible much later. When I look back and realize how much the small almost unnoticed moments had changed me, the Kuskuni captures this idea beautifully. He explains that the Torah deliberately conceals the date and central events of Shivuis because it's afraid that once a person sees the destination, he'll stop valuing the counting that gets him there. Everything depends on the counting itself. And yet during those days of counting, you can't yet sayu The process is still unfolding. The growth is still hidden. Only on Shabuis at the very end do we finally make the braha. But I'd suggest that the shehanu is not only on the day of shabuis itself. Maybe it's also on every quiet step that brought us here. On every unnoticed moment of effort, every difficult seder, every small act of consistency, every ordinary day that slowly shaped us into something much more than we were before. Because real transformation almost never feels dramatic while it's happening. It only becomes visible in retrospect. And I think that's something all of us need to remember to believe in ourselves a little more. If I could begin to tell you how incredible you all are and how much you all have to be proud of. I told myself that if there's one thing I would say if I got the chance to stand up here and speak to all of the tamid of yeshiva, it would just be to tell you how wonderful, how special, and how amazing you are. I have had the chance, the tremendous to meet so many of you on such an intimate level. I have met so many of you that are not here in this base medish that were with me when I started in yeshiva. And it's more than Rubo Culo for those of you that I haven't had the chance to know. Well, you all have so much to offer. You all have so much to be proud of in your own right. Believe in yourself. Trust the process of sincere daily growth and find joy in the very privilege of learning Torah. Every single day we have the opportunity to sit in this base medish here and for the rest of our lives to go slowly deliberately to build ourselves with Timus and then one day we'll look back and realize that all those days we thought were small, tiny and insignificant we're actually building something enormous within each of And maybe then at that moment we'll truly be able to sayuhiganu las and perhaps that is really what it means to arrive at man matan toenu. Thank you.