Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
hi everybody welcome here to tonight's
amazing program amazing sheer and uh
with zoya that's close to everything
brad what's here from eric's stroll
so nice and early in the morning seeking
to come join us we appreciate it um
again tonight's share share one hundred
and eleven
with coach monachem berenfeld
and uh again i always thought every week
thank everybody for all the people that
uh promote this program it's a
self-promoted program people tell people
about it they posted on their what's up
statuses the email to the friends
and um shem it's it's worked from
growing it's getting better and better
and we really appreciate that i'm just
every week we get together here
at doc and janine speak through things
and to really get clarity get physic
this is the last year before tish above
so let's really uh three weeks that's
the nine days let's really get some
clarity again if anybody wants to join
together every sunday the flyers you
could what's happening personally at
848.525.0066 again that's 848.525068
and i'll send you every sunday to fly
for that share post it let people know
about it people join you can go to
manhattanville's website from
barefoot.com you could sign up every
week he sends out emails for um
with the recaps of the shiram and who's
coming on if you send any questions
please join for those who are watching
to replay this on youtube please click
on the subscribe button and the like
button
and uh every sunday monaco will upload
to share monday 2 32 a.m
you can get to watch it and get to hear
it and be my kazakh again i want to
start off thanking all our advertising
sponsors here who modes every week
christopher lakewood scoop here in
lakewood for joining us in lakewood
special thank you to robin unit from
kazakh for promoting us on the kazakh
channels
special thank you to ariel and
ellie and ariel from five town central a
special thank you for to kyla kaufman
school from jc under jewish content
never always growing us on all the
jewish digital networks
the okay class uh the coach for nathan
shows collaborating with open cloudy to
bring a great greater health and
wellness the jewish community around the
globe okay clarity online platform
medical public support the jewish
community okay clarity.com you find the
best therapist coaches nutritionist and
engaging forms management email to share
i have to share with a lot of
information it will be very much hashem
hold on one second
wait one second
okay so again anybody's here the first
time sunday night every sunday night at
9 30 p.m we have shares some tremendous
different topics we've discussed many
things every year abundant therapists
the best of the best tonight we brought
out the guns tonight so much tonight
should be unbelievable
next sunday see the mashiach will be
here we'll be tis above so either way
there won't be a share so the next
sunday august 7th will be not here the
following week august 14th will be very
chairman of double capital emergency
also from our smith and he's been
sustaining the topic that he wrote many
many books on we titled it with my
husband my king my wife my queen he had
a vote we wrote a book for men a book
for woman
and uh so we're going to put it together
and taking our marriage to the next
level should be very deep and meaningful
program i think everybody could use that
so please join
august 14th to be part of it tonight we
have this house in the honor of having
the most brilliant minds and clients for
all today recent breakfast from our
semester with kazakh bridals and let's
share with you tonight hopefully we'll
be able to have thousands and thousands
of people which i'm going to be here
tonight and
tens of thousands that will hear it
afterwards
and uh we'll start off with the gamache
the menachem and then reverend writers
tonight's share is one that one eleven
so me and arnold actually came out with
two matches number one for one eleven
election
and to really take it to the next level
we're going to start off with coaching
coach
open it up what are we doing here
tonight let's go thank you very much
i want to welcome everyone for coming
tonight for hashem we're doing tonight
number 111 it's a lot of seated ishmael
and i want to thank you robbie bradowicz
for
giving us some of your time and i know i
got a lot of feedback that people love
the questions and answers that you do
and i miss sherman in the email will
send out the podcast where they can
listen more
but tonight
we are in the three weeks and it's a few
days before tish above
a time to slow down
and to reflect
to see
where we are
now whether you're net israel or in
america but we're all in goddess
and
this is a time that many sometimes when
you think about it you can come up with
certain questions what's going on
along golos
in berghlal you know in general and
sometimes you think about your own life
which people go through a lot of times
they go through soros painful things a
lot of challenges
and uh
we could have questions so tonight's
topic why bad things happen to righteous
people
the truth is we need to redefine
first of all
how do we know if we're righteous or the
questions that you have how do we know
what's righteous
and what is bad things
so we could talk about it
but the truth is most of us we live in
this world we try to figure things out
the way we see it
we want to
understand the way our eyes see it with
the way we understand
and sometimes it's hard
we have questions
and in our eyes righteous people go
through so many tsaras
and we could sometimes think what does
hashem want
what's going on and this is really a
fundamental
question in in yiddish guides in just to
know sometimes people think i'm doing
the right thing
and look what's happening
so the question is really this question
martial asked hashem already
and it's not it's uh the question is if
we're allowed to ask this question
and how to ask this question
because at the end of the day we need to
understand
and to figure out how it works for us
even though we know that not always can
we have the answer but to understand
there are many people that with this
question they
they left the path of yiddish guides
because of this question it was too hard
to pain
and they couldn't understand it
and we can't um
judge anybody
but you know that's that's the mitch on
the topic tonight
imagine we'll get some clarity
to help us how to ask the question and
how to understand how to give us the
physic to be able to continue
even though there are people who
at the end of the day are going through
real huge challenges and are trying to
understand
so much
thank you ravi it's a great of us to be
with us tonight
and to give us some physic clarity
and a little bit of understanding
beautiful opening um again let's
overview tonight's chair tonight we're
going to discussing the story of eve a
little bit to give us the general
context of what we're talking about and
of course that's the powerful topic is
why the good things happen why do bad
things happen to good people and why did
the right to suffer
sadhaka alloy
um tonight's show is sponsored by
moistus hattori la delinden this week's
sponsor they're doing a big raffle to
build up the linden community over here
they're starting a beautiful toyota
community in jersey over here they're
raffling off a big house so um it's
definitely worth to join london new
jersey could upgrade to a mansion
three thousand square feet and there's a
whole link over here to join we'll put
it in the chat management try to join
from kazakh build up a linden new jersey
to be a beautiful community and then the
link for the raffle everybody should try
to join right right right i'm going to
read your bio and then the floor is
yours okay
was my cat's right i hope you michael
may okay because it's way too long
but i tried my best rabbi rabbi
bridowitz scope of knowledge brilliance
as well as uniquely ability to grasp
complicated material and communicate it
clearly to others is legendary barbara
bradford received his bachelor's from
arts from john hopkins university
attained to the national medical college
he graduated magna
from harvard law school and shortly
after became a rev of silver spring
woodside shul in silver spring maryland
while maintaining the status attendant
professor at university of maryland
school of law he lectured extensively
throughout the us and in israel medical
business family ethics he published
numerous articles on bankruptcy
commercial law medical ethics and jewish
law era breitz and his wife currently
are living in stroll and zero
you shall and be published widely in
jewish areas of laws and ethics and
vibrators and graciousness for coming
and it's just to have you here
for yours
thank you very much uh it's a great
honor to be here it's a little early for
me
uh but hashem i think the subject is
important enough that it was worthwhile
uh giving up a little bit of
uh sleep
uh you know it's been said you know i i
teach at arsenal obviously and uh we
deal with all sorts of hashtag questions
how do you know there's a god
how do you know god gave the torah
but to me by far
the most difficult question not just for
the bali chuva but for me
is how do we understand the idea
that
good righteous people seem to be
suffering in this world and as coach
menachem said
we're in good company to ask this
question because indeed this is exactly
what majira
asked dakota sparkling
show me your glory or estrogen
says meaning the mormon bronco says why
is it that righteous people suffer
and evil doers prosper and in reality
hakadosh boracay did not give him an
answer
who said
i make my choices you're not going to
understand me
so in a sense i could just stop here
because if maisha raveno the greatest of
the navien who ever lived
asked hashem kanye melpanin to explain
to him what is going on
and hashem basically said if you
remember hashem passed by him and he
said
[Music]
you will see me from the back upon i lo
yaro
you'll never understand it as it's
happening
maybe at the end when all is said done
maybe it'll make sense
when mashiach
so what is it that i could possibly add
that if my shira baner was not able to
to understand
but it is interesting we do have one
book in tanakh
that deals explicitly with this theme
and this is the
very famous book but very rarely studied
book the davoneno and that is the book
of eos which deals explicitly with the
notion of a righteous man who suffers
now it's interesting there's many many
opinions in the gemara who was he when
did he live
and there's even an opinion
that he of this lohaya volonipra there
never was
a man ev it's a fictional novel
and according to one view the fictional
novel
was written by by what no other than
moshe rabeno himself
so the way i understand that i don't
have a clear source for this but the way
i reconstruct it is
that after maishirabanam tried to get a
direct answer from hashem
and maisha rabeinu didn't get a direct
answer
maisharabenu tried to work out the
sugiya
by writing the story of
through ruach hakodesh to try to get
such a and understanding but again for
our purposes it's not really important
if ev is an actual person or eve is a
paradigm of the human experience
because in many many ways eve is the
story of every man with a capital e
because
uh eve is not even identifiably jewish
because eve is a human story it is
a jewish story that is why although eve
is described as urayolo kim one who
fears god there is no direct reference
to torah mitzvos or the pratim of
yiddish kites because this is a story
about the human condition and it's been
well said
that the question of theodicy as the
fancy term why do righteous people
suffer
is the single biggest question for the
one who believes in god because if if
our notion of the rebina shalom is that
he's compassionate but he's also just
but he's fair and he's good
then how could all of these things
happen what is going on
and that is what the book of eff
grapples with in which there seems to be
a righteous man
who fears god takes care of people uh
and uh unbeknownst to him
when god says to his heavenly courts
that have you ever seen such a righteous
man as here and the son who by the way
is not a fallen angel the suffering is
part of god's heavenly court he's like
the prosecutor he's like the devil's
advocate he simply says oh yeah well of
course eve is righteous because he gets
a good deal out of this i would also be
righteous if i get if i get wealth and
respect family let me start taking
things away
and then we'll see what a righteous man
he is
and god agrees to what looks like an
unconscionable best
at the expense of a human being now
again we as the readers know of this
fact he of does know about it and all of
a sudden
things start happening he loses his
wealth he loses his children he loses
his health he has loathsome diseases
the one thing god did not take from him
was his wife because that would have
been the same as death
and god did not take from him his
friends
because oh russo me susa either without
friends a person has no life
because once again you couldn't allow
eve to die
because that would have meant the
experiment couldn't be carried out the
whole experiment was to see how he would
respond to something
and
he of initially we talked about the
patience of job eve is so patient mrs ev
has a brief walk on heart where she says
why don't you just curse god so he'll
take you out of your misery
and he of responds with the immortal
words
hashem
god gives hashem takes
may the name of god be blessed
and this is the basis of the phrase the
patience of job
but whoever coined the patience of job
only read chapter one of the book of eve
and didn't read the rest
because eve was visited by his friends
his three friends eliphaz bildat and
sulfur and they sit with him for seven
days and seven nights and they don't say
anything and this is the mccoy in
halakha that when you pay a shiver call
you don't talk until the avail talks
but something happened during those
seven days in which he have got
progressively more agitated and upset
and at the end of the seven days he
explodes in a paraxon of fury
cursing the day that he was born
challenging god demanding answers
needing explanations
and then the book moves into a dialogue
or a trial
in which each of his friends
tries to present a position and there's
a fourth friend who joins later a leader
now
we obviously do not have time
to go over the nuances
of the different positions but i'm going
to be very very simplistic just to give
a basic chat and obviously more will
come out in the q a
but the friends essentially espouse what
you might call and this is not
pejorative a conventional religious
philosophy that is
god is good
and a just and good god is not going to
inflict pain on somebody unless they
deserve it
so you mr ev
must have some sins that you need to be
messaging you have to do chuba maybe
you're not as righteous
as you think you are
meaning if bad things happen to you
it can't be because you're righteous it
must be because you have sins now they
say it in different ways and style is
very important here some of the friends
say it in a very gentle kind supportive
way
look into your life make ah
but you know as eve refuses to accept a
gentle muslim they ramp it up meaning at
some points at the end they say there's
never been a sinner as bad as you you're
the worst guy that's ever been
by the way psychologically this is very
fascinating because this is often the
dilemma of the caregiver who's trying to
help
and the afflicted person is not
responding the caregiver might actually
actually turn against the person they're
trying to help in frustration why aren't
you listening to my words of wisdom and
the light
and again there's a fourth friend who
again makes kind of the same point
the malbem other commentaries
show nuances and differences
in in their approaches but the common
denominator of all of these are the
notion
there must be something wrong with you
now
you know the old saying be careful for
what you pray for because you might get
it
eve is constantly saying i want to hear
it from god i want to hear it from god i
want to hear it from god
and god finally shows up in a whirlwind
very scary scene
and says to you if you call you want to
hear from me
and e.f says yeah like what's going on
so god shows him
i think uh the equivalent of a
magnificent national geographic
uh travelogue he shows him the wonders
of the world he shows them the stars and
the planets and the deserts and the
mountains and the snow and the ice and
the magnificent gigantic animals
and
he says to eve pretty good huh could you
do this
were you there when i created all of
this magnificent world
now it seems that god is not answering
any question at all god is just showing
you hey it's a pretty good university of
think you could do better
but strangely enough at the end of god's
magnificent by the way if you love
nature
uh this is one of the most beautiful
descriptions of the natural world that
appears in
world of mountains and beauty and
gardens and and planets and snow and ice
and winds and hurricanes the whole
magnificent
panorama
of the universe full of power and might
and beauty
and ef says
one word to god
he says
now nikanti can have two translations in
hebrew
it can either mean i'm comforted you
have comforted me
or nihanty can also mean i regret what
i've said
either way eo seems to be placated
by god's words and god says
your friends are wrong you
your friends are blaming you
they're wrong now in some ways
that's good news and that's bad news
because the good news is hey i'm not a
bad guy
the bad news is so now i have akasha if
you would have told me i'm a bad guy at
least i would know why it's happened
but now that i'm not a bad guy why is it
happening
so god shows him the national geographic
travelogue and eve is placated with me
what's going on hashem is not answering
the question and why is eve happy
with what hashem told him
you can spend your life pondering this
book this is not a book in which we can
give quickie
shut him uh you know little vertler to
try to explain what god is doing
but i would suggest
three
interrelated ideas
idea number one which is not so much in
our messiah
is that god is simply overwhelming here
with his might and his power he's
telling ev
shut up don't ask questions because i
could do a lot worse to you if i wanted
to
kind of like a parent saying to a child
you know you want to
you know you want to get hit you know
you want to do something wrong i can
give it to you twice as bad
which means
shot number one which is not in our
messiah so much is hashem is simply
telling you
don't ask questions i could do worse if
i want
that's one maha left that
some modern commentaries say that's not
our messiah and that does not fit our
view of a benevolent god
shot number two
is deeper that we exist
in our world not only as discrete
individuals
but we exist as kind of atoms as part of
a larger whole
and sometimes
things that don't make sense happening
to me as an individual
are necessary for the entire pattern of
the universe
it's like the old story that we are like
actors in a play and imagine that you
only have one page in a million page
play and that one page says enter stage
left and break your leg
so you're going to go to the director
and say this doesn't make sense
and the director says you're such a
shyta if you read the half a million
pages before and half a million after
you would know this is critical this
would have changed the whole school the
whole plan
so what hashem is showing you this
hashem is showing you
that the universe is complex
and interrelated and the things that
happen to me are not only because of me
but they're part of a whole mahalik that
spans centuries in which any little
change would change everything and
therefore what he's showing me of is the
interrelationship of the universe you
know ecologists talk about the fact that
you eliminate some little fish or a
little worm that changes everything in
the world
so your mistake of is you're acting as
if the only relationship god has is
between you and him
as opposed to looking at the ripple
effects that are no gay everybody else
but the third explanation
which i think is really the most
powerful is
god is not asking god is not answering
the question at all
eve has a question
and god basically says
taka you have a good question
and i want you to know that just as
moshe who didn't get an answer the first
time
meisha rabbenu who may have written me
up does not get an answer the second
time
the point is i'm with you i exist in
other words eve started off with a
question
but he never got an answer to a question
instead he felt the presence of hashem
what hashem is telling him is
i know you're suffering i know life is
hard i know it doesn't make sense
i am with you
i am there
when one feels the presence of hashem
they can bear
even that which doesn't make sense even
that which seems unfair so
it's an amazing thing moshe asks hashem
for a reason and hashem said not telling
moshe tries to explore the reason to a
philosophical novel
and once again his answer is exactly the
same thing
feel the presence of hashem and you will
have strength and you will have hope and
you will have comfort and you will have
courage
not in the sense of specific answers
but those who believe sometimes don't
need the answer
they can go on in the light
of that uncertainty
and that i think is
one of i mean there are infinite
messages here but one of the great
messages of ef is
we can't always have
specific answers you know i've been
around for many many years
and i'm sometimes overwhelmed
with the pain that exists in the world
pain of all sorts there's financial
difficulties there's emotional
difficulties shalom bias
there's illness
there's depression there's despair
there's loneliness
and it can be very very overwhelming
very overwhelming in which people who
are fundamentally good fundamentally
decent
go through so much
and
you know we like to give this answer and
this answer this answer you know we have
behalf but you know when you're dealing
with the
facts on the ground then you were
dealing with the actual people
ultimately we have to admit and i'll say
right off the bat that we don't have
definitive answers
but what we can offer is what god
offered you god also did not give you an
answer
but hashem gave empathy
support
and that's really the best we can do to
try to emulate
the ways of hakadosh
so i i guess that's kind of an opening
remark that i hope that would set the
tone yes
that's great um
let's jump in over here we're going to
start first with a poll we're going to
ask everybody a question everybody
should answer honestly what they feel
just a general question and then we've
got a bunch of questions that came in
i just want to mention reverend
graduates gives a weekly q a in uh in
arsenal and he has a podcast that they
listen to they're unbelievable they
range from anything to everything
literally from anything to anything
tonight i know people want to ask
questions from all abroad you know we're
going to try to focus basically on this
topic and the tremendous will come back
again and grace us again down the road
and we'll cover other topics
um so let's start off with the poll and
then um we'll we'll take it from there
give me one second
okay three question paul
what this is these opinions okay this is
your feelings so don't take it out the
wrong way
why do you think good people suffer and
evil people seem like they have
everything going for them three choices
to choose any of the three which one
resonates with you the best
because the evil people are getting
their payment down here option one
option b is because hashem loves the
good people so much he wants to give
them
more
hardships to reward them
or option c i don't think there's an
answer the world is meant to be random
some people get some people don't get
it's called the hero
second second poll
do you really believe that hashem gives
us pain and suffering based on what we
can handle and their need for our
self-growth
there's three possible answers that i
put let's see what the the answer is yes
100 there's a perfect calculation for
everything i don't ever question
option two i hear it i don't believe
it's true since a person is created to
get stronger with struggles naturally so
that russian will give him will just
naturally come stronger it's not that
it's a calculation for it exactly or
number three i think it's a random to
make the world not clear in order we get
paid for believing and trusting on
hashem so you get scar
third question
again the answer what you're what you
feel it's not uh it's not a you know
third third question in the story of eve
when the sutton takes everything away
from him
you feel it's a fear challenge
two options yes a person is created to
withstand whatever hashem will give him
or option be sometimes challenges are
just too much for people and it seems
unjust
so everybody please answer that the best
of your ability
somebody texts me none of the answers
are what i feel okay it's not it's not
some of them you feel them it's just
meant to get a concept of feeling and
then we'll think from there okay we'll
give it five seconds and then we'll
share it with everybody
and then we will uh jump into questions
again
we are
live questions go first anybody has a
live question please you could ask
roberto it's anything literally on the
planet so please copy ryan you have this
close of everybody who's here to text me
and live goes first if you have another
question to text me
but live questions go first okay
um
let's share the poll okay i think almost
everybody voted over here let's see over
here
people here with you tonight
wow
okay so let's share the poll with
everybody okay the first question was
like this
why do you think good people suffer and
evil people seem to have everything
going for them
so you have an
equal split across the board three
thirty third half third of the people
believe because evil people are getting
their payment down here
39 a little little bit the most was
hashem loves the good people so much he
wants to give them more hardships to
reward them more
and 29 of people i don't think there's
an answer the world is meant to be
random so some people get some people
don't get so true
all right all right this is what the
answer if you have any comments on any
of them you could say it i'm going to
jump to the next one
no i just want to say that the truth of
the matter is and again this will be
more developed
uh you know these are not either or
types of questions meaning to say
is operating
in a multi-variable context in which
sometimes
there are consequences of bahira
sometimes there's even in your name of
masalos
that can control things sometimes there
is punishment for hate sometimes there
is tikkun to bring out strengths
and qualities that would otherwise be
dormant sometimes it is connected to
gilgal past life meaning to say when we
talk about six million jews done in the
holocaust there could be six million
reasons
why they died as opposed to a single
reason so just as ghazal say ayla
vieillo de reillo kim when they say
these and those are the words of the
eternal god the truth is on the issue of
evil and white sadhikum suffer there can
sometimes be certainly
very much more than one single single
factor that's going on i think you see
the answer that's why people it's like
divided in three i think that's really
it
yeah okay the second question do you
really believe that hashem gives us pain
and suffering based on what we can
handle need for self growth so 65 of
people here yes 100 is a perfect
calculation for everything they don't
ever have a question when things happen
16 percent of people i hear it but i
don't believe since it's true a person
is created to get stronger struggles
naturally
and ninety percent of people say i think
it's random to make the world not clear
in order we get paid for believing
having a moon and matakan and trusting
in hashem
yeah i guess my my comment would be i'd
like to bring in a very important idea
of the kazanish
you know we have the famous statement of
ignorance
whatever god does is for the good
and gansu
with the person who was suffering and
began with the toba so the khasanesh
says
that we make maybe a dangerous over
simplistic mistake
when we assume
that gamsula tova means everything will
have a happy ending everything will turn
out the way we
want it to turn out because obviously we
know in life
that people die we know there's
tragedies so the khazanish made the
point and this is a more mature view
that damsulatova does not mean
everything will be pollyannish
everything will be the cherry on top of
the sundae
rather life will be will often be very
very hard
but
hashem
is doing it for a purpose there is an
ultimate good that's going to be served
so gonzola tobi doesn't mean i'll have a
happy ending in my sense you know
forgive me for it for
uh quoting mick jagger maybe it's not
appropriate
but there's a one of his verses not that
i've listened to the song but one of the
verses i've come across in reading
is he has a song that says you don't
always get what you want but you get
what you need and that kind of
encapsulates i think the khasi nisha's
uh is probably the first time anyone
ever compared the two people
again totally improper uh but but that
kind of encapsulates the idea that life
is not about
what is pleasant for me
but life is about what is meaningful for
me what i need
and the gamsula tova is hashem will give
me what will make me the greatest best
person i'm able to be and ralph sullivan
said it a little differently well so
chick pointed out
that the issue of theodicy
should not be approached theo
theologically it should be approached
and what he means is the following
theology is asking why did god do
something and maybe i don't know that
is asking how do i respond
to the situation that i've been given
and that's a meaningful question what do
i do given my master that is something i
can deal with and i must deal with
so once again and again i if i could
refer to a secular book
written by a deeply religious man who
was not formally from he had no
education uh this is victor frankel
the immortal book one of the great great
uh books of the 20th century man's
search for meaning in which out of his
own experiences in the concentration
camp
he and for me to say it would be
pretentious but he was a person who went
through those experiences
how it is often our confrontation with
the greatest depths of evil
that can make us into the people that we
otherwise would never have been
and i think that is the hush of the
torah
okay beautiful everybody let's let's hit
the third poll a lot of people just want
to say the people out of text a lot of
people are texting amazing questions
very powerful questions again the live
ones go first redwood says ready for all
don't don't feel uncomfortable this is
63 we're all in it together so please
feel comfortable last question we had in
the poll the story of eve when the
sutton takes everything away from you
feel it was a fair challenge
55 percent said yes a person is created
to withstand whatever shum will give him
or better it's 45 of people feel
sometimes challenge are just too much
for people and it seems unjust
well again uh emotionally i certainly
understand that and there are times that
i will admit that i feel that way as
well
uh but you know there's an old cliche
that god never gives you a test that you
cannot pass
i will counter one cliche with another
cliche
god never gives you a guaranteed pass
either because that would have no point
meaning in every nissan that god gives
us
we certainly have the potential to fail
and i cannot look down at anybody
that has been broken by their initionos
because i don't know if i could pass how
can i judge a person how can i look down
at a person who because of suffering
lost their faith in god nevertheless i
do believe as a religious jew
that ultimately there was a way that we
could pass these decisions there there
is a way we could grow from this
and therefore i don't believe
god gives us a challenge
beyond our capacity but very very often
we do get broken
and therefore as i say i don't sit in
judgment but i do think there was always
a possibility of growing from that
messiah now sometimes it takes time i
mean i think of someone even like ali
weizel
allah that for many years after the
holocaust he essentially rejected a lot
of judaism he thought that god was
unjust but after a number of years he
made peace with hashem he didn't make
peace with the holocaust he made peace
without him
and in a very moving editorial the new
york times he said to god
we've been separated for too long
can't we get together again i don't
understand you i don't know why you
didn't
but i want to be close to you once again
so sometimes it takes a lot of time you
can't always rush a presence uh when a
person goes over buried goes through a
bereavement goes through a depression
sometimes we want to get them out of
their funk a little too quickly
a person needs a time to grieve a person
needs time to complain a person needs
time to even have kindness against three
bundesliga
sometimes
but the hope would be
that eventually
they can get to a place
where if they don't understand at least
they can move forward and understand
that there's a godzilla tova even if
they don't perceive it
right now
and that's the hope but i guess they say
it takes time and you cannot rush the
process
you have to respect the right of a
person
to grieve that is why we have our
balance i mean think about it if the
attitude is simply i should i should
move to an immediate absolutely modality
then why mourn the day that your father
dies go dancing
what do you what do you why does the
torah mandate sadness grieving and
mourning
the answer is because the tyrant its
infinite wisdom understands that even if
whatever hashem does is the type
i as a human being need to experience
sadness and bereavement and grieving
and then i could go on
okay i'm gonna start with a question
that they sent in and we'll see where it
goes
is it possible
that we are just too busy
comparing to other people
and what other people have
see whatever i have is what i'm supposed
to have so why
why are some people so busy
with what other people have and
comparing
yeah um well that's a very very
excellent point and uh i think the
questionnaire is a big static
in a sense you're not asking a question
you're giving an answer
i need to say a lot of our discontent is
that we look at other people and we say
why can't i have what they have etc and
then we feel god is cheating us and
hashem is not taking care of us you're
100 percent right if a person were to
focus on the blessings in their lives
and have a karasatov appreciation for
what hashem gave them and not look at
others so much a lot of the angst that
we experienced would in fact go away
there's a story they tell
in the it's not even a jewish story they
tell it in the special education
community and i've seen speakers use it
in the yiddish guide as well it's a
beautiful story
a woman was describing the trials and
challenges of raising a severely
autistic child
and she gave her muscle she said you
know every parent dreams they're going
to have a perfect child a brilliant
student a charisma charismatic
personality
and he gave the muscle that there was a
woman who all of her life wanted to go
to italy
and she was saving money to go to italy
and finally she finally got enough money
and somehow she got on the wrong ship or
the wrong plane i don't know how it
happened to myself she wound up in
holland
and she was so to broken because howling
was not italy and all of the things she
dreamed about she didn't get
but because of that she never saw the
beauties of holland
and holland too was beautiful
but it's beautiful in a different way
than italy
but she was so fixated on the life that
she wanted to have
that she never appreciate
the life
that she was given you know there's a
saying if you don't
i have the life that you love
try to love the life that you have
and that i think is a very very profound
idea that if we could overcome the
jealousy the envy if we could look at
the life that we were given
as something good as something blessed
then i think that could help us a lot
through our lives 100 so as i say i
think this is not a question this is
actually a partial answer to the issue
of how we deal with adversity and
struggle in life
beautiful right now it's beautiful
okay we have the first live question
you're on
hi robert breiderwicz thank you for
taking my question
um i think most of the idea of my
question was touched upon an
introduction but i think i'm going to
ask it from a different perspective
um basically just generally we know when
we all go through severe challenges or
even regular challenges
the classic answer when we go to raw
rosh shiva tam
they say if you really believe that
there's a judgement this and what hashem
does for the best
you could really be happy
that's the classic answer i got i mean
i'm sure i don't know if everyone else
got that type of answer the question is
like
what does that exactly mean like are we
just is it just like a placebo effect
just be it believe that there's a
judgement to this
and you'll be happy like obviously even
if we know there could be a judgement
but if we don't know the husband so what
type of happiness could we have is there
a way to be happy
without knowing the husband why this the
goodness behind the thing that is there
like
wha also like kind of like you know all
other
the hard questions of clients that we
have how do we know yiddish kait is ms
how do we know there was a mahmud
harsinai
i mean the rav talked about in the
beginning we understand that it's a real
question and we better give good answers
because if not i mean
kasper shalom what we're doing may be a
whole whatever
but over here for some reason it's
what's the reason that over here our
seiko has to be taken like i understand
that it has like we can't use ourselves
and there is no answer but why
why is this thing different than the
other things
and what is the coping mechanism that
when you say if you have empathy with
hashem what does that exactly mean like
is that what you mean we could be happy
like what could we do when we are we
really have this most serious challenges
and we have no clue what could be i mean
we can always imagine things in the days
of that result he could give you a
husband there's a guild goal this and we
could always imagine we were guilty but
we don't know what the guild goal was
how could we appreciate it and
continue on
our lives and our journey
again it's a very excellent question
first though let me let me reiterate the
point that i said earlier
you know buddhism
teaches that suffering is an illusion
and therefore there's no point in
suffering at all i think judaism does
not accept that judaism does recognize
the reality of suffering the reality of
sadness this is why they're surveillance
so the notion that you should
automatically be simpler i tell the
person
you know
that may sometimes be premature in fact
my first aveda when someone comes to me
with adversity and with suffering is not
to pull it away by saying
godzilla told us what i should say when
i'm going from suffering it shouldn't
automatically be what i say when you're
going from suffering
but at some point you are correct that
godzilla tova is going to factor in and
move me to a new place now the question
you're asking is very good good
if if the only answer we have to be
suffering is a black box in which we say
for sure there's an explanation but i'm
not going to tell you what it is and you
have no way of knowing what it is
then in what way can i be comforted if
i'm simply given no insight at all but i
think
uh the answer to that i hate to say the
answer because
emotionally there may not be an answer
but i think the idea is once again
ask yourself
what does this challenge me to become
what type of person can i become as a
result of this an example i give very
often of people that i know personally
many of you might have heard of the kobe
mandela foundation founded by rabbi seth
and sherry mandel
and they lost a child along with his
classmate to a brutal terrorist attack
in toccoa the two kids 12 year old kids
were playing
under a cave subterranean cave and they
got their skulls smashed in
by so-called arab freedom fighters great
courageous guys who attacked two
twelve-year-olds
they were brutally murdered
i can tell you that the mandels were
so so so devastated by this
that this was beyond grieving beyond
crying this was the
greatest greatest tragedy
that a human being
could possibly suffer i mean nothing
nothing
can top this
and for a while they were paralyzed and
immobilized
but after a while they started a
foundation called the cl in memory of
their son kobe hashemi
kobe mandel foundation that offers
financial medical psychiatric assistance
to families that have been victimized by
terrorism
and because of this tragedy they turned
the tragedy into a source of light
a source of goodness they took what was
so
meaningless and absurd in some way
and they turned it into a driving
mission
that brings comfort and freedom to tens
of thousands of people over many many
years and this is something they would
not have they would not have even
thought about
had they not gone through this tragedy
and mrs mendel herself wrote a
magnificent book which i urge people to
read and called the blessings of a
broken heart
which exactly goes through this idea and
of course that's victor frankel's thesis
in man's search for meaning so i think
the way we get comfort
and solace
is by taking the challenges of life
and asking ourselves what can i do
to become a greater person a better
person
many of you might have heard of the
actor christopher reeve who died a few
years ago he was superman a guy i'm not
even giving a jewish example
and christopher reeves suffered a
tremendous outcome he was paralyzed
in a writing accident there was a point
in which he wanted to take his life but
he couldn't even commit suicide by
himself he couldn't move
his wife
talked him out of it she said let's talk
her for a night if you still want to
kill yourself i'll kill you she said but
let's schmooze a little bit
and she talked him out of it
again a very righteous woman in that way
and
he changed his life around he began to
give speeches talks giving people
inspiration and he said about himself
he would never wish his accident on
anybody
but
he likes the person he became more than
the person that he was
because the person that he was was
focused on wealth
accomplishment egotist
and now
he learned through his awful struggles
empathy and compassion and care
this in a sense
may be an awful price to pay an awful
price today
but ultimately
this can be the catalyst
to make us the type of person that we
never would have become
had we not had those struggles
and the beautiful thing about it
is
that this can apply to minor struggles
as well as major struggles meaning even
in our minor struggles i didn't get the
job i wanted i didn't get into the
medical school that i wanted
nevertheless
there is this capacity
to take now the old t-shirt saying if
life gives you lemons
you try to make lemonade
and that i think is the solace
that we that we get
um
i'm sorry i just uh i have a little bit
of a technical problem i hate to bring
this up i need to i need to plug in my
computer i'm on battery life
just give me two minutes no problem no
problem take your time everywhere
okay
so what do you think
style rubber and a solid
whoa swiss
all the people that are texting me i'm
getting so many texts at once
okay then i fly one of them
hold on one second
i'm not going to get the cancer up and
all the questions people text me
i'll say a story from the ramban while
we're here on this topic i don't know if
robert brothers could hear me right
brady can you hear me i'm gonna say a
story can you connect
the famous story of the rambana the
ramban i believe not the ramban the
ramban or the nun i think the story was
that there was a person that uh was
dying and he had a bunch of daughters
and
and he said to him i need you to make
sure that all my daughters get married
you take care of the
money that i'll take care of it but i'll
ask that you when you go up to him once
you come to me in a dream and tell me
why so many people suffer for so many
from so many different service that's
why i heard the story
so he said the first lord got engaged
got married he never came to him in a
dream second daughter
well the last daughter was getting
married and it was the night before the
wedding and then you came to the ramban
in a dream so ramban said you know i
waited for all the all your daughters to
get married you told me you promised
you're gonna come the dream so yeah it's
a very big time for me to remind him to
come to you but i made a promise i have
to keep it the reason why i never came
to you is because when you came up to
schwein there's no question you see
everything so clearly there's no
question anymore you've heard that story
yeah yeah you're beautiful beautiful
by the way like if i could add a little
work to this
like i uh
did not see this word inside but
somebody told me i had mentioned that
when maisha rabeno asked hashem show me
your way so the annual
he wanted to know
why did sadique him suffer
so hashem passes by and he said
he says
you will see me from the back you will
not see me from the front so i mentioned
earlier that for some cypher's chat that
you won't understand things as they're
happening but in retrospect at the end
of time you will see how everything
makes sense but uh the additional vote
that i heard was this
cause i'll say
that my sure being who saw the back of
hashem's film hashem was wearing
fill-in whatever that means and hashem
saw the cash share
of the twill and shell rush
so here's what it says we know that's
villain shall rush has two rituals there
are two straps in front of you
the right strap is supposed to be a
little longer than the left strap
the right represents hashem's kindness
that's it
and the left represents hashem's din
and khaset is dominant over din but
still very thin in the world
but when you see it from the back you
see that both straps emanate from the
same place so even what looks like the
din of hashem
is actually a hidden a hidden
if you really understand it well and
indeed that's the meaning of shema
hashem
[Music]
says
hashem
hashem is
ultimately it emanates from rahman
that even the media saddened
is really
a different manifestation
of midas
in an ultimate sense okay beautiful
writers have a bunch of pending live
questions let's try to get to some of
them okay yeah okay you're on
okay i guess that's me right that's you
okay um
rabbi bridal was it is
this is
since i've been following you and yavana
and your questions and answers and a
number of other things um
i always wished you know that i could be
you know in your killer or whatever you
could be my room so this is my one
opportunity
um
and i have to also add that i
particularly like when you say i may get
into trouble when i say this but
yeah because
and that's one of the reasons i really
follow you because
you say things where other people fear
to tread
um
but don't worry my i don't think my
question is very controversial um and
actually i came up with the second
question uh as you were answering
someone else's
um so i'll say them both together the
one i didn't intend to say was
i'm not even sure how i could apply it
exactly to the sonic borrello
but um
you know when
i'm listening i imagine other people
were
all feeling as when we go through our
very very painful experiences and uh
we all get something like you said
sooner or later um
it's very hard um to be
well you know we feel like we're in the
worst space
and then i listened to um
you know the story that you told about
um
i forgot now i'm thinking just kobe
bryant and i know it wasn't there but
you know who i mean
yeah exactly um and you know that my
first thought is
you know how can i even speak up because
i didn't come close or should never
happen
to show them
to what she went through
um
and that's something that could set me
backwards
um
so that's one thing that i'm just
putting out that is difficult to keep in
mind the guilt that my cyrus and someone
else's desire
i know you did say you know even if it's
a job etc etc
um
but
something i
i imagine many people grapple with
the question i
did
submit
um
was
this eternal question about the feeling
the closeness of hashem
and um it's
that i have difficulty
feeling his closeness not because i
think he left me
but i'm not i struggle with how do i
achieve this in the first place so
and if i can't call upon him
in the best of times other than to say
thank you maybe that's when i feel most
profoundly when things are good and i
you know and i could really appreciate
the good
at those times but
how can i
even
go to the closeness during the bad times
i know it's a big madrega and most of us
have trouble getting there
but this is how you when you gave um
your question i mean you gave the talk
before taking the questions this is you
know that was your third point that
hashem
is with us no matter what and this is
how
this is as close of an answer
as you could give so
i guess it's a question about quote
feeling closeness of a stem
yeah and then
ultimately how
you know it's it's interesting i'm sure
you've heard this this is a famous story
and again it does not originate from the
jewish tradition but it's been
incorporated
about the two sets of footsteps it's a
very very famous mushroom in society as
a whole
that a person says throughout my life i
always had two sets of footsteps i'm
walking through the sand and god is
walking with me
and now i only
see one set of footsteps i'm all alone
i don't feel the presence of god
and hashem's answer was no my son
those footsteps are mine i'm carrying
you through
this very very great
difficulty and it's something that it's
hard for us to grasp exactly but you
know
hashem answers prayers not always by
giving us what we ask for but by giving
us the strength
to cope with the situation that we're
given to put one foot in front of the
other to keep on going not to give up
hope to try to be optimistic to see the
good in the world you know the rambam in
the moringa book
raises an abstract philosophical
question
he says
is there more evil in the world than
good
it says people say life is a veil of
tears life is so bad only a little good
says is there more good than evil so the
rambam brings a philosophical proof
that there's more good than evil
from the fact
that evil still upsets us we get upset
when bad things happen now if bad things
would be the norm of life
then why would we be upset the very fact
that we're outraged we're upset we raise
a question
implies that there's a lot more good
than evil in the world that's an
interesting perspective you know the old
story that they never publish good news
uh they never publish uh or dog dog
bites man that's not news it has to be
man by star or whatever it would be and
the truth is
one of the keys
to feeling the presence of hashem is
hakara satov
to learn to be grateful and appreciate
everything the fact that you can breathe
the fact that you can walk the fact that
you have people in your life that care
about you and that you care about
the more we can focus on being grateful
on our kara satov for the khastaya
the more i can feel the presence of god
and love him and feel his love for me
that is why the very word you who did
this emis points out why are jews called
yehudim after all you who dies only one
one tribe
this fus emma says because leia called
her fourth son yehuda because she said
now i am grateful
and why was she grateful after number
four because she knew there were four
wives and 12 tribes each one gets three
when you get what you're entitled to you
think you're not grateful you're
grateful when you get more than you're
entitled to says this fuss ms every jew
must go through life with the feeling
hashem has given me more good
than i'm entitled to i'm grateful for
everything
and when you're grateful for everything
then
you know when things don't go your way
they're not going to break you so much
because you don't have the sense of
machiali i'm entitled to it let me point
out as well
that this is where memory
serves a very very important part you
know when we when we're going through
dark moments
we think that's the end we can't see any
hope we don't see any future we don't
see any way out of me
but then we have to remember that a lot
of times we've been there before we've
gone through these
and we came out on the other side
but sadok says you have to have faith in
hashem and faith in yourself
as well
and memory is very very important
because we can't allow the negative
to cancel out the positives
as if they didn't exist at all
so i think hakara
coupled with memory
and reliving
the good experiences in your life
can go a long way to creating the
attitudes at least that allow you to
feel the presence of hashem
where is it okay
next live question you're on
i thank you for taking my call uh ushi
and coach manasm you guys are the best
um
the question for the rev is it's a
little a little bit off topic but i
think it's a good uh general hush guffa
question
being for more cement i think it could
definitely be a very good question my
question is
in in general does hashem
does hashem love uh all every every year
the same
or for example
does hashem love a rebecca kanievsky the
same as he loves a little omi
or even someone worse someone doing you
know average does it is it an equal uh
platform that's that's the question
you know that that is a
very excellent question and it's not an
easy question i'm not sure i can give
you a a definitive answer
the closest i can come to is
let's look at the parent relationship
right sparkle is described as avenue
so let's imagine
he's volcano as well but alvino is
certainly one of the aspects
by which we define it
so let's ask the same question i can
turn the question on you or on me or
anyone that's a parent i have two kids
one kid is righteous
he does everything right
and the other kid is unfortunately off
the derrick and uh maybe on drugs
so here's the question do i love
the righteous kid
more than i love the kid that's off the
camera now granted obviously i love what
the righteous kid is doing
and he's doing much more in accordance
with my with my will
but does that mean
my love for the kid off the derrick
is less
or is it there but it's changed with
sadness over what could have been
and what and what was not
i think as parents we have to think
about that and ask ourselves what our
answer would be
and to some degree that might give us an
insight
into akadesparco hakadoshvarko looks at
even the russia
and he sees the potential after all
everybody is made with the
salamehlo kim
[Music]
does apply even to non-jews that's
that's the mushmose of the mishnah
in pirkei
so
we have in fact this is one of the
imperatives of kiribati the rambam says
an interesting thing
that the assad of trying to be matariv
people is it's an expression of your not
only abbas israel it's an expression of
your ab
if you love hashem
how can you let god's children
walk away from their connection to him
right you can't just i mean if if a
parent had ten children and nine of them
died
you can't comfort the child the parent
by saying oh you have one child left
right so
i guess my answer would be i think
god's love is the same
but god's disappointment is also going
to be much much greater to the to to one
of us than to refine kenepsky in which
hashem only gets knock nakas
but it is an interesting question
because there are tsukim
that do imply
that god hates the rashaw
but the balatanya writes that even in
human emotions
there is such a thing as simultaneous
love and hate
and love and hate are not as opposite as
you might assume
love can coexist with hate and sometimes
the greater our love
the greater our hate when we feel
betrayed
and the like and i think that
complicated dynamic is what is going on
with hashem's feeling
towards the uh towards the regime
because you have to understand a russia
is a tragedy not only in terms of what
he does to other people
a russia is a tragedy in terms of what
he did to himself
the potential that was there and god
grieves over it god mourns over it
and therefore we too have to mourn over
it and try to help bring people back to
whatever degree we can
still whoever radowitz okay you're on
hi thank you very much um
first of all i i i really like the idea
of instead of finding something secretly
good about the challenge
um
you just look at what but it can bring
out in you know in myself
so that really talks to me
uh my question now is
if i have a challenge that
the challenge itself keeps me
from becoming a productive
um better person
the challenge itself keeps me back from
that doesn't allow me to connect hashem
doesn't allow me to be the best person i
can be
say something like depression anxiety
things that really keep the person back
how can i find challenges like that to
be
um
good
and better myself as a person
you know that that is a very very very
excellent good good question
uh let me get tell you a story about
from obviously
in which a man came to the bridge over
before rosh hashanah
and the man was a righteous man the man
wasn't sonic and the man had a very
difficult life
and the man asked the producer could you
pray for me
that i should have an easier life you
know ready that it's not because i want
to be comfortable i want to learn more i
want to give more stucco i want to serve
hashem more i want to become a better
person
but these sorrows are preventing me from
doing it i just want to serve hashem in
a better way
and the prodigious said to him
you're 100 right i know your motives are
noble and i will dive and feed
and the story goes that after rosh
hashanah and the whole year things were
just as bad
and the man went to the verdict of her
and said
what's going on
and the predictor looked at him very sad
and he said
i'm so sorry he says
hashem cherishes what you're doing more
than the alternative would have been
again this is maybe to hard to
understand
but essentially he's saying the
following
you have or we have a certain idea of
what does it mean for me to be the best
person that i can to be able to do this
and to do that and to do that and to do
that and all of these things are holding
me back
but sometimes
a person's advisor is to do less
but to struggle and push themselves
and it's in that struggle that they find
their redemption and their tika
not necessarily in the abstract
accomplishments that might be more
noticeable
so
it really is a question of you know the
language you used in the question was um
it's holding me back from becoming my
better self
so semantically
we have a question
how do i define my better self
sometimes my better self has to be
defined in terms of
what did hashem envision
as my purpose in the world my struggle
in the world
and that may not coincide necessarily
with the goals that i would like to have
but i sometimes have to redefine
the goals now again i i god forbid i'm
not talking down in any way if you
because this is an extremely difficult
process
that you know i struggle with and we all
we all struggle with because all of us
have the idea of what is a successful
person even in rookies even spiritually
we have definitions of success
but our definitions of success are not
necessarily happening
of our ultimate success in life
okay brad what's another question
thank you for taking my quote
um this is really a question more to the
side of pain
um if hashem is a call yojo
why can't he reach the goals that he's
accomplishing through the pain
without pain
you know i hear i hear what a child
accomplishes with the pain but if
there's a call yoko you should be able
to accomplish it without
without
yeah yeah yeah uh this is a certain
genre of question that that comes up in
a lot of contexts uh let me just
give you another example which is kind
of an analogous question to you everyone
knows the
famous
passage in the derek hashem
that the reason that hashem's ultimate
goal is to bestow goodness on us so why
do we have to struggle because he says
that if we were to get the goodness
without the struggle there would be
embarrassment there would be busha and
therefore we have to struggle so that
when we get the good things there'll be
no busha so the question becomes well i
guess berkeley could have created a
situation where we don't get embarrassed
and if we don't get embarrassed he could
just give us the good without slows and
without any obligations
in other words the issue becomes uh
academically could have eliminated the
negatives
uh and just give us the
the positives
you know i'm not sure uh that i have a
direct answer for that i mean the point
basically is that you know
in some ways
the world of struggle is is is necessary
for growth now
to simply say why can't there be growth
without struggle
i guess the question would be would that
be growth that would just be an
artificial thing
that's engrafted on us
that did not come from anything internal
within our dynamic and for something to
be part of us
to be part of our panemias to be part of
our internal identity it has to come
through a process from within
and
you know to say that well after sparkle
could have made a process from within
without the struggle
you know i i i'm just not sure if it's
logically i mean i understand the
question but logically you're basically
saying could have created a universe
with a totally different dynamic kind of
an alternative universe with different
laws of spirituality and physics i think
i think
i'm the question my understanding is
like if hashem wants me to be this type
of person because it doesn't have to
make me suffer to become that type of
person he's called you awful he can do
it any other way
no but the thing is you wouldn't have
been this type of person this type of
person comes
from the struggle
so to simply say god could have
short-circuited the process would have
meant that the process didn't occur
within you
and therefore would it wouldn't have
been the same
unless sakura sparkle would kind of
create an alternative universe
structure
uh which the round bomb says already is
a question we can't really
we can't really ask in other words it's
kind of like asking
why does gravity go down instead of
going up couldn't hashem have made
gravity
going up well yeah he could have but but
this is the structure of the universe
and in the structure of the universe
transformations of human beings occur
through struggle and growth
uh they are not automatic things
now you're asking that god could have
made a universe where it is
automatically you know you understand
that that would have been a different
universe but it is a good question i
understand that this is not a full
full answer but it's similar to the
derek hashem problem that i made that
why couldn't god just eliminate the
embarrassment
the shot i think was by mr abeno that he
said that if something would happen
differently i would have to return the
world to sheisha mayberations because
everything had an exact husband from
traditional vibrations like things have
to work in a certain path that's kind of
how it is meaning to say there is a
certain structure here
and hashem could make an alternative
structure but that would change that
would change the whole the whole picture
uh the universe is founded on a certain
structure of physical principles and
spiritual principles
okay murray let's go to the next
question there's so many live questions
right right so i hope you have all
morning
okay you're on yes i just got it
okay okay
okay so thank you very much uh for the
reference amazing talk i'm looking
forward to hearing it again
with the recording
uh my question is and maybe you have
answered it somehow already but i need
to hear it again
um
the ralph mentioned uh stories of
greatness that come out from pain like
superman or different organizations that
were
founded through people who
had special needs children or
different very difficult
challenges in their lives
so those are stories of greatness and
they are usually very unique stories
i wonder whether there is any research
on all the broken lives in the process
on all the stories of people who had
tremendous challenges from which they
never recovered
no no listen you're you're 100 correct i
i don't i don't need to suggest
that everybody will be able to do this
there are many many people who are
broken many people who are depressed if
you remember i had even said
that side by side with the idea that god
never gives you a test that you can't
pass
i would also submit hashem never gives
you a test that you will pass there is
no guaranteed pass in other words in
every trial
there is the possibility
of failure there is the possibility of
being broken and there are carbanos
there is no question there are carbanos
uh but
i do think
that it's our responsibility as human
beings and as jews
to look for the hidden potentials in
life
because what's the alternative as again
victor frankel's book is it's very very
instructive here
one can choose
the path of bitterness
despair
despondency
or one can choose one can make a choice
that i'm going to try to make my life
something beautiful and something good
and to try to find within me
some hidden strength some courage to
deal with the darkness that engulfs me
and frankel said that that is the
measure of a human being a definition of
a virtuous human being is somebody who
can make a choice so
as i said before
i do not dare sit in judgment
on people that are overwhelmed by the
adversities in their lives piercing of
us tells us do not judge anybody until
you reach their place
and the semesters writes nobody ever
reaches that place of somebody else
but i do still believe that the message
of the book of eve and the message of
really all of our suffrage muslim
is that we try to find the light in the
darkness we try to find it and in that
process
of trying to find it we can take even
the darkness
in fact the zoar has a beautiful
evocative phrase the zower has a phrase
called
uh
the cardinousa who's seen that the
cardenosa means black light
the light
that is black now black light is any
contradiction but it means that even in
the blackness there's a very hidden
light
that one tries to discover
robert was okay you're wrong
thank you uh rebuttrak thank you coach
menachem and uh usher for uh setting
this whole thing up really beautiful
um
rabbi bridewith it was true poetry i'm
hearing you compare the khasanesh to
mick jagger
um really beautiful touchdown um
okay so so the question
i'm asking
i'm gonna ask it in two ways um
i'm asking i'm literally asking for a
friend i'm asking for advice
it's not for me
but i i wanted i want some guidance with
how to talk to people who are going
through this
um
and i also think that there may be
people on this call
who are like
dying to hear something
like what i'm about to ask
and they're they're just they're looking
for an answer so
the question is and and
some really the lady who just spoke
before me asked this and the lady
earlier who asked a question like two
three questions ago also asked this
that sometimes there's there's people in
my life people who i know stories that
you hear
where it's just so brutal and so
terrible what they've been through
and
and they haven't gotten up you know they
they got knocked in the mouth and
they're laying on their back
and
what they went through
either
objectively how horrible how terrifying
it was
or subjectively because they're more
sensitive and even if objectively other
people have been through worse you know
a lot of us are our
you know grandchildren or children of
holocaust survivors like it's
unfathomable what they went through
but to people who are just
knocked down from whatever it was a
molestation a death something that they
went through
what
what can you tell them what can you
give them what can you show them
that can help them
you know gain their power back and and
and
and face it and and i'm saying this as
someone who truly believes i'm one of
the pollsters who believes
like an animal that there is nothing
hashem just dishes you that you can't
handle
um but i believe that and and
i don't know i don't know if everyone
you know who's been through something
really rough rougher than stuff i've
been through
how do you how do you what could you do
for them
yeah yeah well that's ultimately uh the
64 thousand dollar question as they say
uh
the most important thing first of all is
not to demean the reality of their
suffering as i said before
sometimes we're too much in a rush to
try to resolve the issue give them a
terrorist give them an answer give them
a mahalish without giving them time to
grieve and to vent and to express their
bitterness and express their pain and
therefore i think first and foremost
we do have an evoda of empathy of no say
the old to bear the yoke
that a person should know they're not
alone
uh initially
they're not alone in the sense that you
know you're there as a friend you're
there to listen you're there to give
your shoulder and eventually that can
move to hashem you're not alone because
you always have a goddess
so
i i do think that's extremely important
not to short-circuit the process
of letting people suffer and i know
that's very hard if you're a person if i
love somebody i care about somebody
to kind of
not take them out of it is very painful
for me but on the other hand it is a
process that people have to go through
but at some point at some point
uh we gotta go on we gotta live uh we
have to make our life something and once
again you sit down and you discuss with
a person at some point not right away
listen this is very very rough this is
brutal you've been through a lot
but do you want to be a victim is that
how you want to define yourself
or is there something we can do with
your life
to make it something beautiful and
worthwhile
to redeem the light that is hidden in
this darkness
and
i do think that the experience that
people go through in many many cases at
some point in their lives they will be
ready
for the next step
if they're given support if they're
given love if they're given friendship
if they're not abandoned sometimes
people get tired right sometimes people
get tired of dealing with people who are
going through
difficult times
but if you can be a friend that can stay
with them through that journey
i think there will be a point in which
you can move help them move on to the
next step
by the way therapy can be very helpful
in these matters too
you know obviously our values are torah
values but but sometimes we need mental
health professionals
to help people through bereavements or
through other types of tragedies to
sexual abuse
uh certainly
uh i know people get in trouble for this
i mean um
you know when we have let's say victims
of sexual abuse which can be absolutely
devastating i mean there's no question
and i
you know i don't want to deny that i
affirm that
this can be devastating
but at some point
even a victim has to ask themselves are
they defining their life
and this is where people do get in
trouble including me
are they defining their life as a
perpetual victim is that kind of going
to be the meaning of the rest of their
lives
or will they be able to extract a higher
meaning
from everything they've been through
maybe to become an advocate or whatever
it would be
so
as i as i say there is no guarantee that
you or any other rabbi or teacher is
going to be successful in this
but i think it's a process that does
have at least a chance
of being successful but you've got to
give it time and you can't rush it uh
you just have to
let the process go through the normal
psychological
uh undercurrents
that it will go through
and sometimes sometimes that's a
challenge for those people in their
lives who want to help like you
mentioned
it's harder for them to see
that somebody close to them is not
getting up already it's been a year it's
been two years let's go
so sometimes you mentioned therapy
sometimes
they you know the healthy one could go
to therapy
yep it takes no you're you're 100
correct it takes a certain amount of
mental health
to go into therapy you're correct when
somebody is in the throes of depression
or despair they literally don't have the
energy or the motivation
to move on to the next step
but in truth we have the other famous
teaching of both the rambam and the and
the sabra
of adam niffal to south
which means instead of looking at our
actions as the outgoing of our emotional
states
our actions can educate our emotional
states meaning sometimes the idea is
do and then you will feel in marriage
counseling we sometimes tell a person if
you're not feeling loving toward your
spouse
act as if
and the love may come
sometimes there is the notion of get out
of bed
go to work go to the park go to the
museum i know you'll hate it it'll do
nothing for you you'll just feel worse
over time
those actions can have a bit of a
helping and a calming effect on us
so that's another thing to remember as
well
uh that a person has to sometimes do
things that do not correspond to their
inner emotional state because this will
help them reach
that state
at some point right
so here's here's another question that
somebody sent in
we've been taught that life is like a
play a theater everyone is given a role
to play and whatever's supposed to
happen
whatever's supposed to happen to us will
happen
and the people in our lives are just
like it's just like puppets
i am having trouble with that view
while i'm trying my best to live a
meaningful third life
but i have these puppets that seem like
they're really trying to take me down
what are some ways i could refocus
myself and stay calm
when another light storm seems to come
my way
yeah yeah well um you know uh everyone
knows the famous uh
song
uh based on words of ravenclaw breslov
that the whole world called olympulo get
your charm the oath the whole world is
like a narrow bridge
the
low the fight club
and the most important thing is don't be
afraid you know it is a jungle out there
you need to say every single interaction
is front with dangers there are
things that can destroy you that can
just that can disorient you that can
break your spirits
and you have to kind of have a moral and
spiritual and psychological compass that
says i will try to withstand the storm
but i do want to say
that it's not all bad out there there's
a lot of good in the world there are
people that are kind there are people
that are good there are people that are
caring
don't despair don't look at yourself as
i'm the only voice of sanity in a world
of irredeemable evil
there are other kindred spirits
and we need that
says
two people are better than one because
if one person falls down who's gonna
pick him up
when you have two people and one falls
he is not only talking about ice and
snow which is also true he is talking
about life there are moments of weakness
there are moments in which
i give up i fall i falter
but if i have a friend
that friend can give me strength when
i'm weak
and i can give that friend strength
when they're weak
and i think therefore friendship and
community
are something that we all have to try to
find and that can give us that ability
to navigate all of those puppets as the
questioner said it that are kind of
trying to take us away
from our goal
one shouldn't think the whole world is
that way the whole world is not that
and you've got to find a little corner
of the world where you can be connected
to good people because they do exist
in fact i would say in reality
most people
are actually good
you know we get sidetracked uh by the
experiences of life and uh promotion
devera writes that when you confront
difficult people
try to imagine them as children
because at one point in their lives they
probably were cute adorable babies
no one-year-old two-year-old
so at what point did they become these
bad people that they are now
and if you understand that
he was once a cute baby and now he's a
rotten adult
but moshiach diver says instead of being
angry you're going to feel sorry you're
going to feel pity you're going to feel
compassion
what happens
to that wonderful little child and the
saying in the
community psychological community is
hurts people hurt
people who hurt others or because they
were hurt
and with that type of understanding
i can take insults less personally
because i say it's not about me it's
about them
and if it's about them i can feel sorry
for them but they're not going to own my
life and they're not going to control my
because i can feel compassion instead of
anger
so these are kind of strategies that i
think can help us
in this area
all right it was beautiful
okay you're on i
it's just you um
i've really enjoyed listening to you and
it seems like you've answered a lot of
the questions
that people have brought i must be on
the same wavelength with a lot of them
this idea that you know that some of us
maybe were born with more challenges
than others it's one thing joe was you
know a happy-go-lucky guy and that he
had was tested with bad luck
but what about
those of us who may feel that we have
like you know the wrong environment
born with a dysfunctional situation you
know we you know we don't have the
privileges or advantages
but um
i mean is it hard to retain a certain
positivity i just want to say that i'm
glad that you didn't mention anything
about punishment
you know because i don't know why bad
things happen you know some you know
but there are some people maybe feel
that way that
god just doesn't like me or whatever the
reason is there any way to
at least block out that kind of thought
pattern
yeah now
yeah yeah yeah again again i mean the
question you're raising is is a
powerful meaningful question i just want
to say that i think even punishment is
is often misunderstood there is of
course a concept
of punishment in the torah you know one
cannot deny that punishment in this
world punishment to the next world
but even then the punishment ultimately
comes from love it is corrected one
might analogize it to physical therapy
let's imagine a person broke their legs
and they have to go through therapy now
i've seen this myself the person is
screaming with pain and the person is
begging
not to have to walk on these broken legs
or whatever it is and it seems to be the
most barbaric thing to make them go
through this and yes this is the therapy
that will enable them
to resume function
i think divine punishment
is a spiritual therapy in the same way
of physical therapy god does not punish
because he's vindictive god does not
punish because he hates
god does not punish because he doesn't
like you
but god decides through his inscrutable
wisdom
that we need this certain purification
of our soul
to be able to be rehabilitated
so look at punishment even gehenna
as essentially spiritual
rehabilitation to prepare our souls to
be purified and connected with god i
think that's a very important point
because there's all the difference in
the world between an abusive person that
simply beats you
and a loving parent that disciplines you
to bring you to a better place and the
torah itself says that god's
chastisements to the jewish people
as difficult as they are
is like the chastisements of a father of
a parent
to a child right so that's a very very
important
orientation uh to have now the notion of
different people are born into different
circumstances which is a very
interesting one
you know uh obviously i teach in
orthodontics and most of our tomatoes
not all of them
are people who are bali chuba
and one of the things when you come to a
city like ushalaya and i experience this
myself is you know you meet rabbis and
families that are a hundred generations
of rabbanim and the six-year-old kid
knows that knows more gamora than
we know whatever it would be
and we often get an inferiority complex
and we feel second rate
because we just were not born into that
environment
but one of the things you need to know
is
that if the 10th generation you show me
has many gifts that we don't have
the guy that comes from south dakota
or montana
has gifts that the mayo showroom person
doesn't have
if hashem put our nisham in a certain
environment
there are things we get from that
environment
that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten
and that's why i tell people when
they're bali chuva they should not cut
themselves off from their past
but they should try to reclaim from
their best
that which is valuable and good
uh an example i give although it's not
quite about suga was of nathan's fee
finkel the queen of the great rosh
yeshiva of mir everyone knows the story
he grew up in chicago he went to a co-ed
school
he was on the basketball team now when
he became a great rush of shiva he did
not make believe he didn't have that
life
he remembered that life and that was the
basis of how he connected
to american kids
by telling them that you can do all of
these things and you can still become
great in torah and serve hashem that is
what rafael rachel calls
not the chuva of amputating the past
but the chuva of reclaiming your past
and taking the positives from it that's
that's a very important idea that i take
my experiences and i build the
foundation of my life from those
experiences
okay
okay you're on the phone you're
on
okay sean another bride with um i have a
question about uh the general questions
you can please clarify i'm being i'm
administering
um what does it mean to be ahmed when
the science someone's going through
difficulties obviously
mean that he's in a state of ecstasy
like you hear about kadai women as if
nothing happened
or if a person except accepts
that he realizes it's russian hashem and
he's living he's functioning he's not
broken but he's definitely affected
and he can't function as if he would if
nothing would be going on he can't learn
as well it can't happen as well but he's
functioning he's learning he's doing
he's not broken
but he's not in ecstasy he's not it is
affecting him is that cool thing i'm
into saying well he's not there yet
yeah no so yeah again a good question
and i i would say that omega has many
many many madregas just like robinayana
says
chuva has infinite madregos
omega
it might be that the very very highest
level
is to mamish have uh the simcha to hilu
it didn't happen
on the other hand i don't think atari
sparkle expects that of every person not
every person maybe hasn't invited to
reach that level and i think that if a
person can still function
and if a person can still see the
positives in their lives
and they do mitzvahs and they learn
i i think that's a very high madrega
they should be
happy with that meaning to say
they shouldn't get depressed because
they're not only been italian i mean in
a way that becomes a depression not a
depression
but don't be too hard on yourself i mean
uh if a person is able to keep on going
that's a great muttering that is a
tremendous ring and by the way
that is a great lesson to to one's
children
if one's children see that their parent
is going through difficult times but
still manages to learn to dive in to do
mitzvos to be a good father and a good
husband
that's a real real important beautiful
lesson
that your children are learning from
that
so one should not be too hard on
themselves if they haven't reached the
absolute
highest level hashem does not expect
everybody to reach the highest possible
levels
all right i want to jump on this
question um
hashem keeps on sending me different
wake-up calls i am not sure what hashem
wants me how do i go about figuring out
what hashem a person goes to and go
through things how does he know what he
has to work on
yeah well that's a real question you
know the villenegon writes
that in the uh time of the base on
nicknash when we had nabua really the
viktor sri shown and only the beginning
of the mix of
so you know we think that the vm we're
always giving national messages they
were giving messages to claudius
the villain said the vm were also
private uh therapists so to speak you
could go to a nubbing and you could say
what is my mission what is my calculus
what is my goal
mama
would tell you exactly how pr
what you need to work on
unfortunately today uh we don't have
nagua uh today uh
anyone that claims to be a navi is
either a sheikah or a katan
so by definition we're struggling in the
dark
and you know uh we never know what the
messages really are in fact i'll give
you a very practical example
let's assume you have a project that you
think is a good project and you find all
sorts of obstacles every time you're
trying to get it further advanced
something happens now sometimes that
means it's a similar ministry
not to pursue it
and sometimes it means it's such a
wonderful thing that the citra accra is
putting all these difficulties in your
path and therefore the more obstacles
you have is araya that you're supposed
to present now these are two opposite
interpretations how do i know what it
means in any given in any given
situation
so number one this is why you need a
rabbit
well or clever
uh this is why you need to be miss
powell for
a tahini
that the ability to give you clarity
they also bring
a uh in the name of a kind belgium that
if a person is not sure which way they
should move in life
they should learn for an hour without
interruption
and then whatever makshava falls in
their head
is a ruach
because the villain says everybody has
is blocked by the static
of taiwas and yetzer haras
so you kind of purify yourself a little
bit and then you're able to receive a
divine message but at the end of the day
you're 100 correct there is a lot of
trial and error in that process you know
we try something
sometimes it's not the right mahalis
then we have to move to something else
so
you do need to be flexible and you do
need to pivot
uh in your spiritual life
okay roberto a few more questions okay
you're good
yeah
okay
you're on a mute press star six
there you go
[Music]
the same you know it's not the same
russell so the more it says that you
have to be traveled with simcoe
but the question the question is i mean
a person when a person
when things bad happen the person should
be dancing and whenever something good
happens the person suppose you know the
person supposed to
it's supposed to be very simple it's
like so like like when like when
something good happens
he makes us
i'm saying you don't you don't hear
about people making sudas and something
that happens so what does he want to
mean that kashem the same way as
somebody's good the prisoner supposed to
thank hashem son's men and the more it
says
through the simpsons
how do you relate to such a thing
yeah yeah again it's a very good
question uh let me point out as i said
before
that unlike buddhism that basically
denies the reality of suffering either
recognizing the reality of suffering we
have hilco bayless we have zamanim
we have tish above coming up where we're
naive with all of the hammachers of our
bayless
and indeed let me point out that you
know the breakfasts are different in
other words if if we were to simply say
that all evil is ultimately good then
you might as well make a tobah negative
entrepreneurs like why is there even a
difference
so i think the havana has to be that
when the gemara says you have to be
macabre
itself is a spectrum of how you express
it there is the symbol of dancing on the
table and making a big sugar
and then there's the symbol which
coexists with a certain sadness which i
understand that even though this is a
sad thing for me there's an ultimate
purpose and an ultimate good and an
ultimate talent
and that can give me
which means when the gemara says
both for the tithe and for the ra
you have to be macabre
in both there is an emotion of symptom
but the expression of sinful is going to
differ between the two the gemara does
not mean
you express and even feel the simcha in
exactly the same way one is the active
somehow the other is the
more quiet syndra of gam zuluteva call
mati avid
and uh
as they say because otherwise uh why
have two you scribes right and why have
your surveillance so
i think you have to redefine simcha as a
spectrum
of different types of emotional
expressiveness
let's go to the next live question
you're on
um okay thank you so much i just wanted
to ask one question um
throughout this safer um
it seems like i'm talking about the
safer super ear so
throughout the season it seems like
there's a
spotlight on eo
specifically with his struggles and the
many
most of the lessons that we learn come
from
how eo responds and you know how a
person should respond when they are
in that situation of challenge
i'm just wondering because so many times
people
i think we find ourselves in a situation
that the challenge for us could be
potentially watching another person
go through
a challenge that they are you know the
in the spotlight of that challenge and
being a person that's close to them a
person that loves them very much
not so much
where can we get guidance as to how to
support them or help them
through that but rather my question is
how can a person
in that sidelines type of role
um i guess
learn
like
how to make their own pain
a purposeful i guess their own pain and
their own that challenge of their own
uh purposeful
um
can you hear me yeah a purposeful
experience and grow through that
on a personal level
you know
you know your question is very
interesting one because the truth of the
matter is although you are correct
that the bulk of safer ev is dealing
with eo's suffering and how he responds
to it
many have said that at least a secondary
thing is
how do you be a good friend how do you
be a caregiver how do you be a person
who gives comfort and when hashem says
at the end of the book
that eo's friends are wrong
you're right deal that your friends are
wrong it doesn't just mean that they're
wrong on the fact that they called him a
sinner
but they're wrong that they did not
uh they did not do
what caregivers and what friends are
supposed to do they did not show him
compassion they did not show him rakhim
him they did not show him empathy in
many ways you can look at the book of
eve as a manual as to how to be a friend
and how to be a comforter when somebody
you love and care about
is going through a a difficult time
uh in many many ways
uh
to be a friend under these circumstances
is very much of a daunting challenge
uh in some ways uh the pain that your
loved one is suffering might even hurt
you on some level even more
uh then it's hurting them because they
might have coping strategies but you
cannot bear them to suffer an example
would be uh god forbid if somebody's
child is suffering
the parents agmasnefesh might even be
worse
than what the child himself is is going
through
uh but again i'll repeat what i said uh
the issue here is empathy the issue is
love the issue is to communicate the
person is not alone
that you're with them you will hold
their hand through this journey just as
hashem is holding
their hands uh through this journey
and it's very very hard because
sometimes you will be depleted you will
be exhausted you will be irritable you
will be angry i remember seeing once on
a pbs special it was unbelievable but i
i understand it
in which
a husband was very sick with cancer and
he wasn't getting better
and his wife actually shook him in anger
and said why aren't you getting better
you're quite amazing talk about blaming
the victim
and yes
that's the way it is
so
the caregivers the loving friends do
have to sometimes take time for
themselves to recharge their batteries
and that's why we sometimes need
resources for caregivers or whatever it
would be to take off but ultimately it's
the empathy and the sense of not being
alone that's going to be the biggest
help that you can give
to the people that are struggling
more degraded graduates
okay let's jump on this question a tough
question
i've been married for almost 10 years my
wife and i have not been to have
children as of yet the doctors seem to
have a bleak outlook i'm still trying to
be happy from time to time but looking
at the entry tables seeing all my
friends and families living a meaningful
life it's almost impossible to have any
symptom i need some physique and
understanding this pain and suffering
that was sent especially to me
yeah yeah this is this is of course a
very very big source of ahmad for any
married couple and i think for religious
for jewish religious people it's even
more so
we have the mitzvah of
and
even things like who will say kaddish
after me these are things that we think
about
and you know not having children can be
a tremendous tremendous pain
um first of all i want to point out and
i'm sure you're aware of this but just
to be sure that there are wonderful
jewish organizations
uh a time in particular which has a
website a time
which deals with giving
as well as practical advice
and medical advice
regarding infertility
uh and and and the like and by all means
if you kind of have other people that
share this nissan and share this
challenge and share this difficulty you
can get physic from each other sometimes
in fact most times
people who don't have the difficulty are
not necessarily able to give the same
visa as people who are going through
this together so if you haven't yet
connected to a time
i would strongly uh encourage you uh to
do so
uh the second issue is to consider
things like adoption um
my own my wife and i's our own child is
an adopted child and i can tell you that
uh
we love him indistinguishably
from a biological a child
but the third point to keep in mind is
that you have to understand
that the relationship of a husband and
wife
is a holy sacred cuddish relationship
it's not just as a means to have
children yes having children is very
important and it's a great blessing but
you have to know
that you are building a place for the
shekinah with your wife
that this is a relationship of holiness
a relationship of sanctity the archaedas
yitzchak says the safer arcade of it
says
that when
yaakov was angry at rocco remember rocco
said to yaakov
if i don't have children i want to die
so yaakov said oh am i in place of
hashem who didn't give you kids which is
a very very harsh remark i have kids
it's you that have problems so the
meadow says is this how you answer a
woman in distress it's a big catcher but
the arcadis yitzhak says
that what is getting yaakov upset is his
love for raqqa because if rachel says
without children i might as well die
she's saying there is no purpose in our
relationship
except children
well what about us
what about husband and wife
so
in some
ways i don't want to say it's a gift i
mean everything is a gift but i
understand for me to tell you that would
not sound right
but in some ways this is a chance
to develop a closeness
an intimacy
a relationship that might be even deeper
and deeper and deeper
so everything has its brothers right the
children are tremendous problems
and this can be abraca in terms of the
closeness
that you create and as i say by all
means
try to consider adoption
uh
or even financially to support uh
children and for their enough to pay for
their education
because i'll say you're my goddamn
you're a god holy person an orphan he
said if you gave birth to them you're
begotten a person to teach them torah
it's as if you gave birth to them
so there are many many ways
in which you could still be a father
and remember the haftarah that we read
the minds of every kindness seibert we
read it we read it shiva sarvathamas
we're going to read it the minh
the saris the one without children says
i am an atheist i am like a dry tree
and hashem speaks to the sorry sin who
don't have children
and he says
i will give you a yad vashem i will give
you a thing to hold on to
told me
will be my nose it's a puzzle
better than sons and daughters
because you will be a servant of hashem
and your mitzvoth
will be your sons and your daughters
that will be there for you when you go
to allah
so this is a very very difficult messiah
and
hashem may you and your wife be blessed
with many healthy children
but at the same time look at your life
even now as abraham because there's much
in it that's
blessed there are so many people who
don't have shithu they don't have a
spouse
hashem
you have a wife you have a place where
the shakina comes in
and be cognizant of that and cherish it
and appreciate it
okay everybody someone have one more
live question the person who's gonna let
me know but i wanna i want my last
question i'm gonna ask for tonight um a
lot of people texted similar questions
i'm gonna
try to encompass and then we'll go to
closing is that okay
yeah
okay so i'm gonna ask the question but
i'm gonna throw in all the people that
are texting me people are texting me
how do we understand hashem when there's
children are molested how do we
understand the shaman the holocaust and
all these questions
but the question i'm going to put it all
together is how do we understand all the
tragedies in the world that we've been
going through you see all these terrible
disasters whether it's surface
children dying children being molested
children people now you know all these
different stories how do i how should i
cope with such strategies and it really
affects my moon and hashem what could i
do to be much of myself when i deal with
these
unbelievable difficult you know types of
votes yeah yeah you know once again
as i said at the very beginning of my
remarks uh on an emotional level
it's going to be very hard to give on
answer
that will
satisfy us let me mention another point
which i did not bring out earlier that
is
hashem did create a world
of
hashem gave human beings the ability to
choose good
and choose evil and as the rambam writes
if we were predetermined to be righteous
or evil then how could god hold it
accountable for evil and why should we
deserve reward for righteousness for
just computers that are programmed to
act a certain way so the whole predicate
of accountability as well as reward
is based on bahira
now the problem is
when you create a world based on bashira
that does mean that human beings
can choose to do evil because you can't
have a fever world where the only choice
you can do is choose good because that
wouldn't be bashima that would be like
the old elections in the soviet union
where there's only one candidate
on the ballot and he always won by a
landslide now that's not that's not a
choice
so in a sense
if you accept the idea
and this again this is kind of different
than things i was saying before
that goodness can exist only when
there's a capacity to choose evil
then in some ways evil is a necessary
evil for there to be good
so if you think about it in a lot of the
examples that you get we're not dealing
with cancer tsunamis we're not dealing
with acts of god
we're dealing with volitional
bahira
done by people who made choices to do
evil so even with the holocaust you know
instead of saying oh the holocaust meant
god you know killed six million jews
is it god that directly did it or did
god enable human beings to make
choices meaning the rabbi suggests at
one point
that evil that is predicated on human
choice is not really god's issue at all
god allows for shiva because in the long
run
bakira facilitates optimal good
in the short run basira will allow many
many destructive and evil acts
now again uh this is a big big machokas
between the orachyam
and the khaibasalavavas and even the
urachaem there are many interpretations
the arakayam actually does say
that the power of bashira can override
god's decree because god made a world in
which bashira can harm even innocent
undeserving people because that's the
fallout
of human behemoth
says no one says nothing happens to a
person unless god specifically decreed
it and some consider this
even heretical
even though the arachim
says it and the like but the point is in
my long-winded way part of what i'm
saying is that sometimes we do have to
differentiate
between
tragedies that happen and tragedies that
happen because of human volitional
because that is the world of bakira in
fact many have said that the holocaust
tells us much more about
human beings capacity than it does about
god instead of asking where was god in
auschwitz
you could ask where was man
at auschwitz what does it tell me about
human beings
beautiful writers okay all the people
that are waiting to ask live questions
i'm going to we're going to end now
right away i'm going to come back again
this session thank you okay so we're
going to closing and uh
then you'll go let me just wrap it up
quickly
again i regret when brad was waking up 4
20 in the morning
and really giving us over two hours of
time and it was
it was really really powerful tonight uh
aggressive subscribers
there was over twelve thirteen hundred
people here tonight they must send
thousands of thousands we'll listen to
it later and again everybody should know
where writers has a weekly q a
where he asks ants ass is asked anything
from eight out of ten is tough
so um
please listen to this podcast that's uh
you could probably search it but we'll
put in the email with the links um again
tonight's show is sponsored by moises
hattorio delinden we're doing a raffle
this week for uh for our house in linden
new jersey they're building a view a new
beautiful jewish community
so please try to help to build them up
at sadaka and uh the selling raffle
tickets and to win a beautiful house
you'll be part of the neighborhood uh
management post on the link the the the
link for the for the raffle i'm gonna
also email it out
and please try to um be my kazakh this
is this new jewish community again thank
you everybody for coming on at the end
we'll go get back to the gematria like
the kim echoed hashem is one right
and i think after tonight's cheer we
talked about it was it was unbelievable
brighter which was really really
unbelievable again if anybody wants to
get the the the flyers every sunday
please what's at me at 848.525.0066
you can go to manakhanburnfly.com
everybody wants to know where the where
this share is going to be listen you can
hear it later it's going to be on
youtube it's going to be on spotify it's
going to be an apple podcast it's going
to be on colossians it's going to be on
our phone number i'll say it in a minute
and make sure i'll send it to rob ryder
so put on tour anytime we'll send it
around and uh please listen to it
anytime you feel down just listen to it
again and again remember
again if anybody's here the first time
every sunday night at 9 30 on this zoom
id the unbelievable shirim and different
abandoned therapists different topics
next sunday like i said in the beginning
either way there'll be no the no share
whether comes and we're not going to be
available or they'll be tissue above so
we won't be available so the next show
will be much from august 14th we're able
to capital from right to trial also from
our topic will be my husband my king my
wife my queen taking our marriage to the
next level i think we all could use
always because of control and bias so
please join it should be unbelievable we
wrote many many books on shawn by us
from bill kaplan everything is recorded
mitchell we'll be on monacomv.com if
anybody has any questions please email
coach menachem gmail.com we'll send
everything to rabbi bradowicz if anybody
has any questions or provide us when he
has time
again tonight's share is 111. it'll be
recorded if you want to listen to it on
the phone the number is eight four eight
seven seven seven grow that's eight four
eight seven seven seven g r o w
and uh
thank you to all the advertising
sponsors liquid school program
from five town central
and kyla california from jc and the
jewish content network again right right
so i want to give you a question coming
on and we're going to go to closing now
first of all
graduates just before you go
give us a good takeaway we wrap up the
tonight's physique with so many people
but coach venatum you go first
the first i want to thank you everybody
with
for the physic for hashem
and i do want to mention that
when people go through you know whatever
challenge they're going through whether
it's big or small like
we mentioned many times when you're in
your challenge it's real
and uh
it's a challenge and sometimes it's hard
to hear
what we're discussing
but especially by us us humans we want
to see change we want to grow we want to
be out of that place of discomfort we
it's a place you're sitting where you
don't like you don't enjoy it
you want to you want to make sense out
of it
it just doesn't make sense and to sit in
such a place is just
not made for us and we truly try to run
and fix
and um
figure out
so yes we did learn some skills which
will help but ultimately
like we heard last week
from
representing many times there's nothing
you can do to change it you're in a
situation where it is what it is and
there's really nothing you can do
and he mentioned as as a friend or a
family member the only thing you can do
is to be there for them
don't turn your back just be there
there's nothing you can say
and that sometimes even the person
itself going through
depression or sitting in that place
thinking that
life is just not working for me it's not
working this is not where i want to be
so that itself you want to get out of
you you're not happy you can't sit there
that itself can cause more anxiety i
want to get out of here but to be able
to sit with yourself
and understand like we heard tonight
it's the challenge
and it's a it's in the sign
and it doesn't mean you have to get out
it means you be there
and do whatever you can and it's it's a
slow process
it takes time
and many times it's committee it's a
harder if you feel discouraged saying
okay it's not working it's over
and the itahara just wants you to stop
that's it
so all you have to tell yourself is
listen i don't like where i am
i am discouraged but i'll do whatever i
can and if it's very minimum very small
small steps that's it i'm not trying to
get out of it but i'm not giving up
all the it's our wants is to give up say
it's over i can't continue so thank you
very much
everybody for giving us the physic and
admits hashem we should be able to
get out of whoever we are everybody in
their challenge whether it's big or
small
and with that with that we shall discuss
two questions before the close i have
two questions for you okay
number one what do you say when so many
hundreds of people thousand will come
together every sunday night to get
physical what is it what is it what is
it what does that say hashem
well first of all uh the banished islam
gets tremendous tremendous nakas
from yidden who in fact there's a metro
which we're going to read some people
will read on teach about that says
when the goulash lama finally comes
hashem will look at on the israel and
look at all that we've suffered as a
nation
and all that we've gone through as
individuals
and hashem is going to say
i don't know how they did it
so the fact that people and many of you
i know i seem to be struggling with with
amish issues these are not just academic
questions
the fact that you care enough
and you're miming enough to try to get
frieza to try to get better to try to
work this out to try to walk forward as
difficult as it is
barakal gets tremendous
and pride
from all of your struggles and you need
to know that he's crying with you
he's weeping with you in your suffering
emo anoshi
second second request and then you go to
closing to wrap it up
can you give everybody a broccoli
tonight that we should get the physique
that we need to go through the challenge
that we're going through
again
i i hope that all of you will find
an inner joy in your life and
appreciation in your life
feel the presence of hashem even in your
difficulties
may you see the light even in the
darkness desire calls the black lights
and may that black light become a
shining radiant light that you'll be
able to go forward
amen
right just want to give a closing
yeah i'd like to end with a little story
those of you that are in the music world
may have heard of a great very gifted
classical pianist
leon fleischer
again a jewish man although not an
observant one
and he was a very very famous pianist in
the 50s and 60s and 70s
and then somehow in the 1970s because he
was so obsessively practicing he had
very serious carpal tunnel syndrome that
could not be addressed
and as a result he had to give up
playing piano professionally
now you might look at that as a minor
thing but for him music was his life and
he literally was on the verge of suicide
he wanted to kill himself
but eventually he redefined his life and
he became a very gifted teacher of piano
so although he couldn't play he could
instruct people
how to play and a whole generation of
pianists were his tummy i happened to
meet
some people who became bali chuba who
were proteges
of leon fleischer
after being a very successful teacher
for 25 years
his wife had read that there was some
new treatment in japan to some deep
tissue massage
that could
give her restoration of function
she wanted her husband to try it he
didn't want to do it
because he said
you know i've gotten used to being a
teacher if you're going to give me hope
that i could play again and it doesn't
work
i'm going to be so sobrock and i might
convince you with that i don't even want
to try it
but she pushed him and he tried it and
lo and behold it worked and he was able
to play for five more years eventually
he came back with five years of playing
and because he was a teacher for all
those years uh he was able to play at a
very high level now that's a nice story
but the reason i'm sharing the story is
he gave a little muster schmooze at the
end and he said
why did god take away my talent
for 25 years
he said
because when i was the you know the best
pianist in the world
my life was about me it was about my ego
my cover my honor
god wanted me to learn to care about
others god wanted me to learn to reach
out to others to be less egotistical so
he took away my talent and he forced me
to care about others
that their successes
i cherished more than my successes
and their failures hurt me
more than my failures
and i changed and i became a person
who cared about others
and then hashem said
you learned your lesson
i'll give you your talent back
i took it away for a reason
and you'll get it
now this is a neat ending although it
took 25 years
we don't always see that ending
but i think the idea of
self-transformation
is fundamental in this area
you know davina malek says in bismarck
your stick and your staff
speaking to hashem
they give me comfort
what is the difference between a stick
and a staff so it is sending them a
fortune a stick is what you get hit with
and a staff is what supports you as your
olympic
sometimes
hashem gives us a
stick and sometimes he gives us a stare
but
says
as long as i know it's from hashem
i know it's good and it'll give me
comfort even the shame it will give me
comfort
when i know
it's from you
because it's for my good
and finally the famous puzzlic which is
word for the balchemthough
i declare your loving kindness in the
morning
and your faithfulness
at night
the balshemptoev says
day and night refers to different parts
of our lives
there are parts of our lives that are
daytime
joyous happy bright full of light
and then i can see the loving kindness
of god
in the bokeh of my life
but then there are moments in life which
are dark
hopeless
full of despair
it's hard for me to see
my faith in you
will sustain me
even in the dark moments
[Music]
so my brother is that all of you should
have that emotion in the dark moments
but ultimately
hashem should take you from the dark
moments to the bokeh
in which all of us will feel
the sesame
park
for me
from thank you for watching
thank you all for coming have an easy
tissue bob we'll see you in access troll
if not august 14th turns up
kaplan robert
carlton be well
yeah