Webinar: Children who leave Yiddishkeit (Part 2)

maybe let's let's formally let's i'm gonna formally open this okay hi welcome uh to our uh part two of this webinar what every parent should know and what every children whatever child but all children should know regarding the situation when religious parents who raised their children in a certain path when the children did not follow that path so last week or not last week but two days ago we spoke a message that was directed to parents and as promised tonight we're supposed to have the message that is directed to the children um i had a lot of mixed feelings about tonight and i'm gonna i'm gonna tell you why and then then i'm gonna tell you about my ace in the hole over here i i have a a fear about tonight's session and that is it's one fear but there's two aspects to it one one aspect to it well basically the commonality between the two things is i'm afraid of tonight's uh the content of tonight's uh session being used in a hurtful way against people um so the two aspects of that are one is i know that if you if you heard what i said last week about you know people who have left the religious community there's always some level of emotional trauma involved in that um whether it's you know the trauma that caused them to leave or the trauma of leaving or the trauma of the reaction to people the reaction that people have when you leave or all three of them or you know the intersection of all three the point is it's an it's an emotionally painful thing it's not like it's not it's not so simple it's not a fun thing and the the process the journey to find some level of peace and stability is just that it's a journey and therefore i'm really worried that there are people who are in the early stages of the journey who are going to hear some of the stuff we're talking about tonight and they're going to feel pressured and they're going to feel guilted and they're going to feel all of the rejection that is pretty much the the hallmark of their of their experience in the community on up to this point so when i'm going to talk about things that kids i don't really mean children children but you know children of all ages that people who have left the community and what i'm going to tell you some things that i think you know you can do for yourself i don't want god forbid anyone to hear that like i should or like i'm piling more guilt or more obligation that's just gonna you know drive you away further because you may not be at that place in your journey and i fully acknowledge that there are people who are not ready to hear any of this yet i hope that everyone does get to the point where they're ready to hear it but if you're not ready to hear it yet i don't want you to be burdened by hearing so that's the first aspect of the fear the second aspect of the fear is i'm afraid that the parents who were on last session who are on the other night are going to come back on tonight they're going to hear all of this and then they're going to call their kids and say rabbi tom said that you have to get over your negative feelings about us in the community yeah but that's not for the parents or anyone to say to the person who needs to get over it god forbid it's not not only it's inappropriate it's just it's not helpful it's not helpful so i'm really concerned about what's gonna happen tonight um so i was telling this to the guy who got me into this mess ellie nash who's the one who set up this structure he said i'll do one night for the parents and one night for the children and i'm like i'm really worried about tonight so he's like you need backup i said yes i need backup so this this is my ace in the hole over here that's awesome okay go ahead fill the hour you know chase before we uh before we jump in i'm reminded of the time we spoke together by mendel simons and uh it was january of last year which is something like 30 years ago a different world different plan so we were in california and we were talking about intimacy and love and addiction etc and uh you made a comment there about in a relationship where people are comfortable being physical that they were sheer they're comfortable sharing the most intimate parts of their life but they're not comfortable sharing the grocery bill yeah and uh as it happens you picked an example that someone that applied to someone in the audience and uh she she came at you pretty hard yeah and i um although i don't expect that tonight because it's a sealed webinar i i saw over there that there's there are limits to what a rabbi can say sometimes you want to take someone out back but the rabbi can't do it so even though i got smikha i don't carry myself as a rabbi i can say i can say things and sometimes the reverse is true on some of the web webinars i say something so on some of the other webinars what you had i say something that could be perceived as so heretical and then you're there to say hey it may not be so crazy sometimes right so right right you provided the same um service for me at times so i'm glad to we co-sign each other's loans okay okay yeah as as one of the children who you're speaking to or at some point in my life i was one of the children you're speaking to so do you agree first of all what i was saying before about there is a journey and there are stages and there's definitely a stage where it's just not even possible to start talking this way i think that's true and there's a there's a further point is that certain people are the wrong even if it's the right message they're the wrong medium for it so it's not at any point in time that they are i can tell you with with myself i tell my parents you had until you know depending on the opinion whether you hold of the the jewish opinion of the secular opinion either to the age of 13 or 18 to influence my uh the the way i look at judaism and that's all like at this point in time they're not going to have the impact so i'm sure you've said things that i've been able to hear from you that i was not able to hear from my father it was the same message that was the same message right yeah that happens all the time yeah so and that's okay sometimes we're not the right we're not the right messenger and if we're not we shouldn't be the one saying it we know it's not going to be received yeah and i would say if anyone's hearing this and you feel like this is not resonating with me and i'm not feeling good about this that's totally fine and just like allow yourself you don't have to hate us to not listen to us you could say i like you guys but i'm not listening to what you said that's that's fun it's totally cool okay and what about the concern about this stuff being weaponized and it falls in the wrong hands and then they're gonna you know the parents probably the parents i'm most uh concerned about going back to their kids and saying well you're supposed to get over it and you're supposed to uh figure out how to forge your own relationship with hashem and it's not our fault we messed you up so even if we did mess you up you gotta you gotta you're giving away so listen i think anyone who's after your warning regardless of whether i'm here or not but after your warning and in general if after listening to the first part or your message or your message overall even with just even if this turns into a snippet even if someone takes two minutes of a snippet here but they know who you are in general i think if they're using that message and you're messing with what your message is i think if they're using that message to beat their kids or other kids or or others that they have influence over if they're using your message to beat them over the head then i i think they would do it without you you know don't worry about someone drink like abusing the alcohol in your cabinet if it wasn't yours it would be someone else's okay so okay i just you've given the warning there's a warning okay um and what about um what well i didn't mention this before but you you sort of brought it up about uh i i mean maybe you answered it already that maybe i'm not the right guy for this message well that's been the right listen you have been the right guy for me and for many others who i know look up to you so i think you are the right person for this message because it's it's what you stand for it's your message and you've brought a lot of people closer including myself to judaism i think that your fears the question is not whether you'll say the right things to the to the children quote unquote i think the the question is whether or not some people may misuse what you're saying and i think there's a third point which you you haven't brought up on this call but the there's people at different stages it's also like i i heard your message at a certain time and maybe you yourself i would have been rece i wouldn't have been receptive to your message three or four years prior but again that's not your problem and there's also a recording for that i read uh i read a book on i was given a book on addiction five years before i got into recovery and i like to say that i couldn't believe how much this author learnt in five years like such a short period of time between my two readings of it because i read it once in early therapy my therapist recommended it to me and i returned to him i said it's garbage it doesn't apply to me i just thought it was nonsense and then five years later was given to me again this time i read it but i was ready to hear that i was an addict it was a book written by patrick harness and called out of the shadows and when i read it the second time it it hit me hard so sometimes the same message same person different periods of time but i don't think that's since when is that uh our responsibility your responsibility is speaker's responsibility we put the message out into the world and comes from a good place and we hope that that uh it has the right effect so somebody could be watching this now and it uh they hate it and a year a year later they watch it they're like oh yeah that makes sense okay and that's why it's recorded come to six meetings to find out if it's right for you okay so um i i i mean my message is pretty short i mean i just have two points uh to cover and then i think we could take uh q a and we could uh we can do some interaction but i just have really two basic points the first before this is like before i even make my points uh is that if you didn't hear the previous session um i'm not going to rehash everything that i said over there but um everything i'm about to say is within the context of understanding that my understanding of um people who leave observance um is it sounds patronizing to say i i hate saying this it sounds condescending but my perspective on it is is nothing but compassionate because here's how i feel i feel and this is something i believe uh and you know i'm not going to argue i'm not going to defend it it's just it's a belief of mine and based on this belief are a lot of my other beliefs and that belief is that uh the toyota belongs to every single member of the congregation of jacob so this is your birthright this is your inheritance this belongs to you um and so when i see a jew who is a uh an heir to a fortune and who's walking around without access to that fortune like that that makes me uh i guess a little bit indignant i'm a little bit upset like hey this guy comes from you know a family where they have endless fortune and and and he doesn't have access to it or he doesn't think he has access to it or or at a practical level he's he's not able to use it so you know i i always look at that as like this person is being cheated he's getting the and whether he he he opted out or or or whatever it doesn't matter how it came to that point the point is is the inheritance of every single jew and and and when a jew doesn't for whatever reason have access to that or feel like they have access to that it's uh it's wrong and and it's upsetting and and therefore um here's my my first big message claim what is yours claim what is yours this belongs to you somebody comes and takes something from you that belongs to you that's your right this is where entitlement maybe it may be the one place where entitlement is not a toxic uh state of mind if a jew feels to any degree that yiddish kite doesn't belong to you there's something wrong claim what is yours claim what belongs to you now i know that can sound like i'm obligating you claim it you know start putting on filling i don't want it to sound like that because that's more pressuring and it's more you know uh you know it's just rekindling the trauma but what i mean is if there is an aspect of jewish life that you do enjoy okay maybe you know like for a lot of lubavitchers it's you know i might not be shamer shabbos but i like this okay and for some by the way for some people the fabrian is the biggest trigger so i i you know or whatever it is don't think of yourself as a hypocrite don't count yourself out and say well who am i to enjoy uh singing a niggun if i'm not eating kosher don't worry about it that in fact that that's the vort porsche israel malay mitsuski remind actually there's too many to look about i'll tell you about them first of all the story somebody came to the rabbit once and said that his rabbit said how can the mother say uh even the wanton sinners of israel are full of mitzvahs like a pomegranate if the if they're wanting sinners how can they be full of mitzvahs and the rabbis said i have the exact opposite question if they're full of mitzvahs how can they be called wants and sinners right okay so that's the first thing but the second vote i want to tell you can i chime in on this one yeah okay so just my from my personal experience and perspective i think this is something that i had to get comfortable with exactly what you're talking about is to get to a place where what i enjoy and what speaks to me naturally i can still be okay with even though there are aspects of it that i don't and on the surface what's interesting is when your lubovich is almost this additional guilt because hey you were taught the opposite of guilt you were taught as a khabadskar right that you go out there and you welcome people in and it doesn't matter what they ate that day and what they did that day they can put on fill in they can light javascript they can come to shul they can celebrate a holiday but for whatever reason the message the message that you're sending is on point anyway as you know i was i've recently been learning relatively recently and what i was learning and the environment around me without going to specifics wasn't completely not not the place but it was on shaw this morning and the environment where i was in was not completely um like that wasn't a job it wasn't javascript so i'm sitting there and i was wondering is it a contradiction here it is saturday morning right there's music playing in the background there's we're just a setting that's not exactly uh chavistic can i learn or can i not learn and i struggled with it and i said you know what i'm learning like the that's that's what i'm doing i'm learning i'm not getting caught into the uh i'm not saying it was an impure place i'm just saying it was a uh nacho stick and a couple weeks later i came across a asiha which kind of resolved the contradiction because it sat there and i said am i a hypocrite am i sitting here learning while there's you know clearly things that aren't in line with a lot of the rubber's teachings or halakha or things like that going on so i s so i came across a sikho which spoke about the dreams that joseph assadek had that led to were gonna go you inaudible yeah okay i remember that i don't remember that word but what we said in benching right when we say yes we will have been as dreamers when when we go out of gulas we'll look back on the galas and say wow we were dreamers get that okay so i don't remember that i remember that line used there but the idea was that leading up to egypt and the exile of egypt which the exile of egypt is kind of the the uh the exile of all exiles it has a component of each one there were many dreams there was a dream that gotcha is thrown into the pit that ended up in egypt it was the the dream that solved the famine there was a dream that he interpreted that got him out of jail so on and so forth so the rubber set is not an accident in fact it's a component of exile that there could be things that are opposites like in a dream like someone can be learning you didn't give this example someone could be learning on shabbos money with music playing in the background and they should know that the the hypocrisy is is the other way right like you were saying it's not the hypocrisy is not how could i be how could i be learning while i'm listening to music it's the learning is the natural state and how could there be music going on that's the that's the one that uh has to be resolved the learning doesn't have to stop and after i learned that i felt like it was a personal message to me that it's okay i don't have to resolve every contradiction as i do what it is that feels appropriate and that i enjoy that feels natural to me so two thumbs up cisco and ebert on the uh on the first point so so let me take you to the next level because there's another vert about that malay mitsuba and about the pomegranate it ever brings out another idea here which is what does it mean full of mixes like a pomegranate it's not just quantitative it's qualitative the metaphor isn't just quantitative the metaphor is qualitative in other words it's not just saying that a pomegranate has a lot of seeds it's speaking specifically the metaphor specifically speaking about the manner in which the pomegranate has seeds compare upon pomegranate to other fruits other fruits once you get past the skin or the peel you have fruit maybe there's a pit inside as well but you have you know a you have the meat of the fruit you have the actual you know edible part for you know through and through um a pomegranate each little piece of fruit is contained in a separate membrane in a separate little pouch so the fruit in the pomegranate is is not integrated it's not it's not a hole you know it's here's a piece here's another piece here's another piece and here's another piece so the rabbit says like this malay mitsuba means being full of mitzvahs in a manner where it hasn't become thoroughly integrated as a whole each mitzvah remains compartmentalized in its own little place and that's okay that's okay or at least that's a phase or a stage that's okay and and to and to reject that and say well i don't want to be a hypocrite i don't want to do something if it's only if i can only carve out one little context of my life for this mitzvah and then there's other contexts where i'm going to be doing other things and then i'll carve out another little piece of my life for a minute i don't want to be like that i want to be completely integrated don't worry about that of course that's the ideal of course the ideal is complete integration where everything is you know one straight line through and through but uh you have to embrace the pomegranate and and it's okay to say i i i'm gonna allow myself to do this mitzvah right now or or this minhag or this even a jewish cultural thing you know i'm gonna allow myself to do it and connect to it and to enjoy it even though it only exists in a very specific context which may be currently separate from everything else i have going on in my life it's okay it's called being a pomegranate so that that's my first point is is don't deprive yourself don't deprive yourself look this is your birthright that means if you've got a million dollars in the bank and you only want to take out you know 20 that that's up to you but don't hesitate from taking out the 20 because you're not going to take out the note right just because you're not gonna use it all doesn't mean you shouldn't use as much of it as you're ready to use okay um that's my first point my second point is in fact i got this from you ellie i mean the the the the formulation the the the way i'm going to say it you told me a passage you you quoted king david taimuru taste and you will see that hashem is good and i think the way that you meant it was that you know do the taste test if it's hashem it's going to taste good if it didn't taste good you know it reminds me of the story levitz he's always finding the silver lining in every jew so he said to an atheist he said young man the same god you don't believe in i also don't believe it so it's almost like saying that to yourself that if you found something and it was negative i'll go even further and it wasn't delicious you know what then then the taste test proves that wasn't that wasn't the real thing if i can add to it the for for people who you know i thought a lot about your comment in our uh the first webinar we did the panel discussion on this topic that there's always an element of trauma when people leave and you said it sounds patronizing and yeah i i i guess to a degree it sounds that way right my life choices and a lot of ways i would live today would not be the case if not for trauma when you know it's anyone it's like that it doesn't feel it doesn't feel great to hear but at the same point in time i you know if it's true it's true and for me is it true it's probably true so what are you gonna do with something this is is true but the and the question is different so a is why do people leave right it's often because they don't feel a sense of belonging and everyone wants to feel belonging but and in addition to that there's a sense that someone at least in my experience is a sense that someone taught me something which didn't sit well with me and if i encapsulate that whatever it was that i'm i feel strongly that i have to reject as judaism then i i need them to be wrong on some level does that make sense like this rabbi let's say who really hurt me or a person who i associate with judaism who really hurt me i need them to be wrong and i can't just come back and embrace judaism and then say they were right so when i say time or taste and you will see that that god is good i'm saying that when you're rejecting them you're you're saying that what they're not practicing what they're practicing is not judaism if if that's what you got from them then you can reach you can reject it and then know that you're you're rejecting something that is not judaism i'm rejecting something that is not judaism and what's my proof because it didn't taste good the result wasn't good the end result wasn't good so if it wasn't good it could not have possibly been judaism and now i'm free to to to reapproach it versus saying i had a terrible experience that was judaism that person has to be wrong and it has to remain wrong for life i'm never going to make them right that makes sense makes perfect sense and and just to add another layer of how difficult that is to make that separation sometimes the person hurts you and not only do you assume that they're hurting you in the name of judaism because they're religious but they they say it they explicitly what i'm doing to you right now is painful and cruel and god wants me to do it to you in so many words yeah so that's really tough they told you and maybe it was even their job to teach you and they told you that this is a holy war i have you know this is a mitzvah to torture you so that's really tough to to undo that and say no actually what they did they took it upon themselves to do and you know that that wasn't judaism but they told you it was yeah so i would say a big part of my motivation in life is i don't want them to win okay them is them is representative of anyone who who is trying to hurt me consciously or unconsciously both you know from childhood onward i don't want them to win so i'm gonna live my best life as a way to hey i wanna listen i'm i admit it i'm motivated in some ways by by anger so not that the anger is conscious all the time but it was definitely something that pushed me through years of therapy and through years of recovery saying i'm not going to let them win i'm going to to live a great life in fact i'm going to turn it into something positive if at all possible as a way for them for for them not to win so when i realized because i i do enjoy a lot of aspects of judaism when i realized that them taking away my relationship with i want to say judaism also spirituality right that my relationship with god right them destroying that then i said like wow that's a pretty big deal they didn't just hurt me anywhere they hurt me on such an essential relationship and i didn't understand the importance of that relationship until recovery it it was only in recovery and i don't remember which book it was i think it was a book by scott peck it's not on recovery but a lot of people in recovery read it the road less traveled and he speaks about exploring the your maps and the importance of exploring your maps and in it he eventually became very religious but his first book i don't think he was very religious when he when he wrote it but essential argument over there either i understood it from it or he said in those words is that everyone believes in god what does he mean that everyone believes in god everyone believes in certain kind of rules to the game so maybe you believe this this is the kind of game that there are no rules that there's no one watching there's no one who cares but there are some rules that you believe exist over here so to sit there and say i have no belief of god i don't believe in god you're there's some belief you have so for me it was something that i when i left crown heights so to speak figuratively and uh and otherwise i said i don't need to explore this concept i wasn't coming from a place of i'm rejecting it or not rejecting it it's an unimportant concept to me there are more important things in life than whether or not i believe in god and i didn't get into the whole philosophical conversation but when i read this book and this was like i said after recovery it forced me to say i have to look at these conversations i have to look at this what is it that i believe and what i believed ironically was that for the most part the person doesn't care the person the the entity no one cares to what's going on but if at a certain point punishments start coming fast and furious so they don't really exist but then they do with punishments it was this kind of uh hybrid and what i decided was that god doesn't exist but if he does i hate him you know right so some some hybrid of that but they weren't conscious beliefs i couldn't say it i couldn't express it in that way and as i peeled the onion further and further i said someone did this to me someone did this to me and i'm not going to let them win i'm not going to let them strip away one of the most important relationships that i have which is the relationship with with a god a relationship a spiritual relationship with with a higher power and reclaiming that in some way was my out of my revenge but it was my way of saying you're not going to screw this up for me i'm going to figure this out yeah yeah that's you know when i when i was saying before about the maerashi keyless yankee that this is your inheritance this belongs to you go claim it that's what i was trying to say but you're saying it in a much more compelling way like i'm not going to let somebody this is my natural state this should be at least look i believe that i'm not going to get it again these are my beliefs and i'm not going to defend them and this is not the place uh to prove it this is not it's not what this is about but i'm just saying from my perspective the default setting is that a jew is a minor he believes and when he's not and something happens and something happened and and you know i said last uh in the last session um and maybe i was a little bit maybe i i wasn't as careful as i should have been on a recorded talk although i still believe it and i'm about to repeat it again but i compared you know our children today who uh who feel cut off i compared them to holocaust survivors you know that if a holocaust survivor would uh would tell you you know i don't want anything to do with yiddish kites because it's too traumatic because it's you know triggering so nobody would you know what no one would harass this 90 year old holocaust survivor so i i made a comparison and again i i know that it's one that could be offensive or taken the wrong way but i'm making it again um so there you go but my my my point of bringing it up now is that you know it's one thing that something happens to you and it's it's traumatic and it's it's it's emotionally taxing and you just it you don't have the strength to maybe i i want to be careful what i'm saying but a damage occurs there's there's a there's there's there's a trauma and a person is one of one of the residual effects of the damage is they they suffer spiritually okay fine that's one thing but to me when the assault on the person was so intrinsically uh religious in nature so it's not just a person experienced a difficult uh you know that they had a trauma or they had a something that was emotionally taxing and therefore it led to some type of a a damage to their to their face this is where the the trauma is directly and explicitly religious in nature inflicted by a person who identifies as resent as a representing what the religion has to offer and what i'm saying is maybe maybe i don't know did i even say this on tuesday that uh no i said this at a different webinar a recent webinar um yeah actually this is not released yet i was speaking to janina fisher who's a world expert in trauma and the neurology of the brain and she was talking about the religious jewish community and i told her that i knew a holocaust survivor i was actually he was showing me his hundred grandchildren he said this is my revenge against hitler and and i was thinking you know the context i said it to her was you know we know now that there's intergenerational trauma so the holocaust didn't just affect the survivors that affect the survivors and their children and their children's children so somebody who was traumatized by a parent or a teacher who was traumatized by someone who was traumatized by hitler what's their revenge against hitler meaning their yiddish kite was robbed from them but not by a nazi in a nazi uniform but by the jew who was traumatized by a jew who was traumatized by the nazi in the nazi uniform so what's their revenge what revenge did they get to take where and where they're again i want to be careful because people are going to say shea stout compared you can't compare anything to the holocaust i understand but just think about it for a second if a person has what what is their fundamental if you're a religious jew i'm assuming you believe this that their their relationship with god is a fundamental natural state of being it's it's it's as natural as breathing right and that was damaged and it was damaged in the name of judaism by somebody who represents judaism i want to know where do they get their vengeance if the holocaust survivor gets to say i have a hundred eight o'clock that's my revenge against hitler and nobody's going to begrudge him that vengeance in fact we all cheer for it so where is the revenge quote-unquote of the one who survived the system came out spiritually uh damaged and then reclaims their judaism what i'm saying is i'm not a vengeful person i don't believe in vengeance but so maybe we can come up with a better word but there definitely has to be a sense of of of of indignation and you know righteous anger is is a dangerous thing and entitlement is a dangerous thing and i said before you know this may be the only instance of entitlement that's not toxic and i think maybe this is the only instance of self-righteousness and righteous anger and indignation that's not toxic where you say nobody's gonna mess this up for me my relationship with god is the most natural most intrinsic part of who i am it's the core of my being and and if it got messed up for me first of all if it's not going well then something happens something happened and i'm not going to allow that i'm not going to allow it to win i will not let it win so i i don't know if this is a necessarily a healthy way to constantly go about life you know with that that sense of indignation but i i think at least there has to be a permission for people to have that feeling and and to come with a with a pride and and and a boldness to reclaim what was taken from them i don't know maybe you could give it to me i want to make sure i understand um because i was thinking i'll think back to the way i said it and then here in the way you said it so are we i i guess as a rabbi you have to conflate the two i have permission i think not to but god and judaism can we is it possible to separate the two in the sense that okay someone someone has been um are hurt in some way by judaism right not by judaism but by someone like you said someone who represents as you were talking i was thinking of an example of a friend of mine who i've had a lot of conversations on the subject he's still very much he's my age he's still very much in the anger of it um and wanting to push away the whole thing which i understand completely he was abused sexually abused by his bar mitzvah teacher so he sees it as you know i was doing something for judaism this guy was coming from my bar mitzvah he was teaching me the bar mitzvah everything is i mean you can imagine right it's very very difficult to unwind um to unwind that one right right compared to me i was abused by a family friend it was a you know not and not in the context of something jewish necessarily i can attribute it to i can say side things about it it was ignored not enough people paid attention you can't say the word sex you can't say the word sex abuse but this was very very very direct like right it was bar mitzvah teacher so for someone like him i have to say listen judaism i understand right you're not going to embrace that today but just because you don't doesn't mean you can't embrace a relationship with a with a god doesn't mean there isn't room for a relationship with god for this person and it may not come with any practice but to for someone to rob that from you because they destroyed judaism can we also say why do we have to put it all the way to god that's the way i would message it to him that's the way i messed it to myself and slowly over time and for me i was i want to say fortunate that i had a um a sponsor in recovery who was a monk who's my sponsor and he told me early on that he said your your healing as it relates to god which is pretty much the relationship that they work on in recovery the spiritual relationship that they would work on in recovery he said you're going to see it come to life through judaism which was at the time i pushed it away but it still planted a seed in me as i heard more and more from him and i benefited more and more from his message and he wasn't a jewish guy in fact he was a christian he was a monk and a lot of christians pushed the idea of conversion and converting jews and i've seen that happen to some as well that they were so rejected from judaism that their way of connecting to god was embracing it through a different a different religion and for in in my case that has that hasn't been but the message to that person of saying i don't let it like that's where i see the righteous indignation on my part is to say it's not going to screw up my judaism yeah i can hear that today i can hear you say that today comfortably because i've started embracing some of it you know and depending on the table i'm sitting in i may be viewed as the you know the most religious or the least religious but the but i mean it's it's irrelevant for me i'm i'm embracing that and i'm more comfortable with it and i'm enjoying certain aspects of it than my wife does too and as a family we do too and it's something important to us but i couldn't have heard that message um six seven eight years ago but i could have heard the message of and i'm not saying it as a message that oh i'm gonna say this and i'm gonna get you with this one three years later i'm saying maybe that is the message the message is that one of the most important relationships to someone who was to anyone especially someone who is damaged i'll quote a line from your book out of her understanding that spirituality and by spirituality i want to be specific spirituality defined as the belief in the existence of a higher power who is commanding create who's created who's commanding who's directing our life who cares about us so this spiritual that's um spirituality is a luxury for everyone and a necessity for certain people right that's a line from your book or chase maybe you don't remember it yeah i talked about the spiritual canaries like the canary in the coal mine right so there's just more scent they're like everybody else only more so i have an explanation on that by the way what i have an explanation on that oh why some people are that way yeah why some people aren't so so it could be like certain sensitivities for sure but anyway life is you know the level of trauma and your level of sensitivity right then when those hit a certain threshold someone has a certain pain so not judging pain if someone's a more sensitive person a lesser experience quote unquote can impact them the same way as someone who's more but as people were all sensitive and experiences could uh could could hit us and affect us so when someone has experienced a certain level of pain there's two ways to look at the world one is that there's no creator there's no there's no one guiding there's no one at the show right it's just a random sequence of events so it's a random sequence of events i'm going to be bitter for a very long time really really bitter that i randomly got such a short end of the stick but so it's almost like the only healing that can come through that's what i thought for myself if i sit there for my life and say why did i randomly get this short end of the stick i'm not referring to my life now obviously but certainly as you know a teenager and young young adult i carry that kind of anger like why did this happen to me quote unquote and i by why this happened to me i meant many more things than just the abuse and carrying that short end of the stick carrying that um that feeling if i if i continue to believe that the world is random i'll always have that feeling so i'm forced to embrace a guiding loving caring entity who was who was just as much with me today as he was when i was locked in that room over and over and over again and then what was that guide pushing me towards right what was happening in that and what is it what is it directing my life towards and what good can come from it and that's the i feel like that's when someone goes through a certain amount of pain that's literally the only option we have is to embrace it as a beautiful chosen thing for us and then from there goodness can emerge but if not we're left with uh feeling like a victim our whole lives you know ellie i'm really glad that you said this because it's encouraging me to say something that i was wondering if i should say it um a message and but you you almost said it you know like you were saying what was god pushing me towards right like there's a story here there's a there's an end game here right so i i think i want to say this and i and i believe this to be true and remember i said before that people who feel estranged from from judaism don't don't allow don't allow yourself to be excluded from anything that you want to be included in come in and claim it it's yours okay i want to say more than that now i want to say that your story i'm saying anyone who's had a story of being disenfranchised anyone who's had a story feeling disconnected from your jewish identity from your god from your religion from your ancestors from your community if you've had that experience of disenfranchisement of marginalization of being pushed out i want to tell you i firmly believe that that's all part of a story of you not only rejoining the community but rejoining as a leader and i do believe that the future of our community and what will bring the shia is those who were pushed outside of the system because they didn't fit the box coming in with all of their energy and their creativity and their sensitivity and and helping to reshape our community to be truly godly compassionate loving um and and to really perfect the world and we have a job to do you know this look i i i want to say something that's going to sound heretical but it's the opposite of a radical actually i'm trying to negate heresy the purpose of yiddish kite is not just the perpetuation of organized religion that's a radical the purpose of yiddish kite is that there's a god who created the world for a purpose and that torah is his blueprint for accomplishing that and it cannot just be that because we perpetuated a system and we've kept the system going that we can pat ourselves on the back no we have a job to perfect the world to bring world peace to bring prosperity safety health to the entire world the messianic you know perfection of the world that's a big job and that's that's that's going to take some some dreamers that's going to take some really you know out of the box thinking so all the people that were pushed out of the community not only did they have a place in the community i believe they have a place at the front leading and if anyone's listening to this now somebody wrote in the questions do we really think that any of the kids are really listening to this it's probably the parents from tuesday night listening again tonight and you're right it probably is but the parents can hear this too i want you know to know parents if you're paying i do think so yes i do think so yeah what that the people that they're listening yeah i think that a good i think a good percentage of the listeners on this call today are coming from that side of the table yes okay so i want you to know if you're from that side of the table and you were pushed out of this community i want you to not only come back and claim what's yours i want you to come back as a leader so what does that mean practically and what are the what do they what does one have to do to to claim this leadership status you know the lobbyist was very big in deputizing people and making people schloking you know making everybody a shliya everybody has a mission so uh you know if you're a laboratory i think it's a lot easier because laboratories already have that mentality of you know you see even though the babaji was not religious but like if there's something jewish going on like he could be like the organizer of it like you know just like engraved right step up whatever it is you know it doesn't have to be anything specific if whatever your sphere of influence is and we all bashka pratas were placed in different contexts with different networks knowing different people different connections please we need you we need you to to be the leader of world jewelry you know step up and in your way with your opportunities would you just post on the on the chat ellie oh someone asked for part one of the recording oh i'll post it here yeah right excellent anyways yeah i mean there are there are endless opportunities because there are so there are endless different contexts that people find themselves in so so what you're saying is that there's a place where they belong a place up front and the misery proverbially speaking and the proverbial it doesn't literally mean you have to sit you know in the front row and show maybe the place you lead from isn't true necessarily sure isn't the only jewish place so a couple of weeks ago i mean you said you said a word over here you said in the middle that to help make the community truly godly yeah right truly so truly godly so you're suggesting that the fact that there are jewish people who don't feel a place of belonging even with an orthodox judaism and even though they may not practice exactly that the same way if they don't feel that they belong as part of these people as part of this community then that it's the community is not acting truly godly correct a few weeks ago i learned a secret the same part i think as part of which whichever one has the alicia elio yeah yeah so he said it was probably from everything i've learned to date the harshest i've heard the um the rebbe speak about the dancing on two sides of of an issue i was wondering if yeah yeah because it seemed like you know like so i'll just just explain it for those who aren't familiar with it so elio navi says to the people who are serving that's i don't know that's my name without the i'm bobby no i say i'm elijah the prophet but prophet spelled p-r-o p-r-o-f-i-t good good it's a good line you ever do business in the bible belt you gotta use that line so elio navi is talking to people who are serving baal right the idol at the time and he says how long are you going to dance on both sides if it's balaz well if it's god it's god so it's a very obvious question what do you mean how long he danced in two sides how long are you going to serve baal come over to our side and serve god that should be the the obvious question and what i understood from the rebbe's explanation was that the people who are serving baal completely elijah we understood that i can they're they're very committed they're committed to something else so if i need to take someone from a commitment to something else towards a commitment to god i just have to explain to them the truth of something i can get them to that place but the people who are very difficult to change are the ones who are dancing on on both sides who one day are serving well one day are serving god back and forth and they tell them hey i serve god look on tuesday i was here on thursday i'll be there shop this afternoon i'll be eating this it's it's perfect it seemed to be a very strong rebuke of this idea and i wonder if a lot of the people who rejected or who left um yiddish kite is because they they sensed some of this um dancing on two sides and they said that's not that's not for me like that's not what i want and they went searching for more but oftentimes they're the ones who could become the uh the best evangelist for a truth when they find it you know means basically a user so meaning whatever i think is going to work for me right now so if i think yeah this kite will pay off better right now so i'm going to go i'm going to do i'm going to put on film i think baal can pay off better right now you know no loyalty you know right so that's that's obviously you know a dangerous attitude and doesn't really you you can't really progress anywhere with an attitude like that there's nothing because there's nothing higher that you are aspiring toward other than just self so you know it's self feeding into self which is you know a circle cyclical um so let me ask the question this way if you believe an idea of children as well right if you believe that your way is the truth and the right way when you're seeing someone who's not doing those things so the really the only option is to say that okay they're leading a life that's not good but i'm not judging them for it i'm saying from your perspective i'm not judging them for it i feel compassion for their for their mistakes i mean that's that's the only thing you're saying you're not saying that okay this is my life my choices their life their choices you are saying that but i'm saying it's not you're i guess just by living you're profoundly rejecting their ideas but you're saying i'm rejecting their ideas but i'm i'm accepting them but then how do they have room to be a leader in in your in your world because is it only when they come back completely come back completely who came back completely yet nobody's there completely so here's my question we have rabbis who are careful to sin in private so they're allowed to be rabbis and i'm not trying to be cynical and trying to and i'm not trying to imply that all rabbis are secretly doing terrible immoral things not all rabbis not even most rabbis some rabbis yeah it is true there are some rabbis who are doing terrible things some yeah but no most rabbis are you know pretty decent people i think okay but they're generally careful that whatever you know whatever things they're doing you know they're not advertising it okay so somebody whose sins are more public whose lack of i don't even call it sin it's such a christian word anyways let's say their lack of following through to their commitment to judaism okay yeah i'm jewish i'm not another religion i'm jewish right but what's my degree of commitment i can't say it's 100 because you know uh i messed up right i didn't do what i was supposed to do so those people are allowed to be leaders and they're allowed to be educators and they're allowed to be rabbis and they're allowed to to lead our community but they're not perfect so i don't understand what's the threshold like at what point are you not allowed to be a leader and act for the common good like at what point do we say well you know you don't have anything to offer well i think it's one when one is publicly acknowledging that way as the like the way is the way right the way written in the books is the way that i'm promoting and someone else is not publicly promoting that way necessarily right i'm certainly not so then there's a difference between somebody standing up and being an arbiter of what is uh what is jewish observance so obviously for that we need somebody who's correctly faithfully portraying what torah says and demands and teaches and somebody who doesn't you know isn't going along with that shouldn't stand up and say i'm going to be the one to give the class okay no you you shouldn't be the one but but does it mean you have nothing to contribute i i'll give a really i mean maybe this sounds cynical but let's say a person's way of being a leader and contributing to the community is philanthropy their money is good and what if they say i'm not observant but i want to but i'm not observant but i want to support torah causes we won't take their money we'll take the money of course so is money the only way that a person can support a cause that they may not personally be living consistently with so i'm actually glad you're saying this before me because i can pick you back off this so when i talk about feeling a sense of belonging in some way um i feel like i'm the wrong person to talk about this for precisely this reason that there are many who feel not welcome in one way or another the message is sent that the circle doesn't include you in it and that's the reason why some people leave the circle reject the circle hate the circle because everyone wants to belong when they go from here we leave this circle and we're looking for another place of belonging and we don't we won't stop until we find that place of belonging so it does hurt to find out that this circle doesn't include me in it and as life progresses there are different people who say hey don't you belong in our circle right they they expanded or contracted in in different ways people who we perceive as part of that circle right the group of friends playing and says hey you can play with us right one person i said man and then they're suddenly in in the group only one person invited them to the game i think that when one is giving to dhaka that happens a lot more often and for that reason i think that my experience doesn't mirror a lot of others who've felt rejected over and over and over and over again i can tell you that in the chabad houses and i've visited many years and this isn't the criticism of anyone in particular but i found that often when i came when i showed up at chabad houses i was welcome but there's nothing most chabad houses like less than a firm person who's no longer from those or most of them are don't feel welcome at habaras and i've seen it and i've i've seen it many a time so i do want to comment that while i'm talking from a certain perspective and some of it i had to fight to feel included and others made me feel included without it there's definitely a sense that came uh i was welcome at certain tables that i wouldn't i don't mean it of individuals i mean it more okay you have a place in judaism exactly like you're saying is that we'll take your money okay so you don't have a place necessarily to give the uh the rabbi's talk we're not going to give you the rabbi's chair but we'll give you the one right next to it if they give money and the rabbi's chair doesn't have to be the only keyboard that's what i'm saying that the rabbi really isn't it clearly isn't the only cuba because we have the chair for for the philanthropist what i'm saying is that's there's not only two chairs there are many chairs you know when when maestro being was making the mishkan so everybody got involved now some people you know didn't have a special talent so but everybody brought a master shekel you know but if you had a special talent if you knew how to sew the goat hair while it's still on the goat or whatever it was everyone was bringing a contribution and and that's what we need to make the whole world of michigan to bring mashiach we need every everyone's contribution so you look and you see people who are talented who have what to offer and and they're they're putting their human resources outside of the community because the community doesn't make them feel welcome how how we how is that taco how are we accomplishing what we're meant to accomplish when when the best and the brightest are not channeling their resources in the direction of you know bringing machia because they feel like they don't have a place at the table so so maybe that's actually the call maybe that's actually the charge maybe you're saying um which sounds sounds good to me that you felt someone feels rejected by the system whatever reason right they feel like they don't have a place of belonging so you're saying fight this is your heritage fight for your place of belonging right once you find it invite others in let them know like as you've been able to expand the circle a little bit to to bring your chair in don't stop there like fight to get the place in the room break the door down and then bring others in with you and hold it open because whoever put a lock in the door was not authorized to do that hold the door open yeah and and then as people are coming in you direct them and say you know go sit at my table take a leadership role so you were the guy who was locked out now you start uh you know directing people evan marswa abandonment the most rejected one becomes the comes the cornerstone what is that line evan maso abandon means it's from tillems from hollow evan mossov there was a stone that the the builders rejected they said nah we're not going to use that stone poison it became the cornerstone so not only was it it had a place in the building it was the cornerstone i'll tell you um an experience happened a few months ago that had a profound impact because like this is something that i'm actively working on like i'm in this conversation i'm not i'm not coming from a place of i found the solution let me talk to people um like this is my search i'm working on it and here i am speaking to you so it happened to be hanukkah a few months ago i had a friend um a friend in town isn't jewish and he said i'm i he was coming he was coming over for dinner and he's do you mind if i bring a friend uh who i'm in town with i said sure this guy happened to be jewish but i didn't know him before i just met him and it was shortly after they came was hanukkah so we ended up lighting the menorah and this guy was particularly excited so like he really was the jewish guy he was yeah he was like really really excited about this i was like wow this is like this is amazing like i love seeing someone so excited about hanukkah he's lighting he's singing what about this song what about that song so i know it was i asked him his i asked him his story he said i'll tell you something interesting i said how did you get this like joy for judaism like he didn't really know the blessings but he wanted to read it and he's like get me a yamaka he was like he was thrilled he's like wow it's hanukkah i didn't even realize i'm so happy i'm doing this he like over overjoyed with himself and i was like wow this this guy's great like where did he where'd he get this from he said i'll tell you the truth he said i wasn't always this way i wasn't always this way he said about he said i um he said i grew up you know i was probably about 60 or 70. so there was some light judaism around him growing up enough enough to want no part of it you know whether it was sunday hebrew school or something else enough to want no part of it he ended up ironically enough so he he was he was married had a number of kids his wife and then he ended up divorcing her she was jewish america non-jewish wife and he said with the non-jewish wife she was always asking questions about judaism and she wanted to understand who he is and what his heritage is and where he comes from so he started reconnecting in this way and he said now like my wife loves judaism i love judaism it's a huge part of our life so it's like a shiksa taught me to love god that's what he that's what he said it was just it was interesting to me but the it had an impact on me i should say he had an impact on me when i saw someone who was so comfortable fully embracing the joy of judaism well at the same time i mean he was married to a non-jew right there was at the same time there were parts of his life that were exactly opposite and not only was it a contradiction for him it was like the reason it happened he's like a shiksa taught me how to love judaism and how to how to love god i mean that's it was a uh it was a very interesting experience for me and it was heartwarming to see someone who was able to get past all of their baggage and just embrace a relationship with god let's clarify so nobody thinks this is a like an instruction like go you know intermarry god forbid in order to become inspired but i i i think you're saying the point is that he wasn't ashamed he didn't exclude himself exactly he didn't count himself out and he had a reason to count himself out he could say who am i you think i'm so jewish look what i did exactly and listen so let me address the comment that was mixed i understand why you made it but it you were making it for you're making it for others right that you're not saying that someone wants to like someone should do that right yeah right so which means that you thought okay someone's going to think that you're yeah that you're sanctioning 100 percent right i know these people right someone's going to listen to this and they're going to say chase tao was on last night with ellie nash and they said if you go into mary that'll help you eat this kite someone's right right but you're saying something else you're saying that your soul doesn't want to intermarry like your pure soul doesn't want to it has nothing to do with the taste or not taste it's not like um you know what i often say if you're so worried if someone tells me don't try you can't try pepsi but coke is so much better i'm not gonna believe him meaning if they're so worried that i'm going to taste coke and i'm going to find out that that it's better than pepsi or not they they if they say coke is better than pepsi but you can never taste pepsi i'm not going to believe them so meaning that reaction sometimes comes from someone who doesn't really trust they're not buying their own story i can tell you in recovery for example i've seen people come into meetings apps like say the most horrible things about recovery and will always smile always smile shake dead it's like it is what it is someone can be in a bad mood they come to one meeting they're there because of a court order or because of their wife's order or something else under the sun and they say what they say about god they say what they say about the program they say what they say oh let me give you a practical example so i was i was in a meeting and someone repeats that he was watching tv with his wife the night before and there was some famous therapist who said there's no such thing as being addicted to anything sexual not porn on anything else it's just an excuse men give when they misbehave this was a big therapist a doctor whatever one of these doctor drew or doctor something else so when i heard this this was like early i thought the rest of the meeting everyone's going to defend this point and prove how they know that it was real no one addressed it when the guy said it a few people laughed there was nothing to prove there was absolutely nothing to prove because everyone had the experiences that they had and the experiences that they had if they wouldn't be in the rooms if addiction wasn't real so what i'm saying is if if if that comment brings up that reaction i can't hear you i'm not sure if uh yeah can you hear me now i do if that comment brings up that reaction that oh so someone's going to go and marry a jew but what you're saying is something else you're saying that a jew in his pure form wants to be included and wants to do these things and if they're not doing it it's a sign of an imperfection and you don't need an excuse to go there your example of sitting in a meeting and somebody saying something that is quote unquote heresy to the program and nobody felt a need to rush to defend it you know why there's a little bit it's it's a lot different because that was a meeting there were no outsiders there so if you and i were sitting and you told me that story i would not feel the need to point out obviously you're not instructing anyone to to intermarry because we both understand the purpose of it but the problem is that this is an open meeting and there are people who are listening who um i'll agree with you there are people i'll up the ante i'll take it even further and say that there are religious people listening right now who actually believe that they're missing out some way or somehow in the way yiddish kite limits them and they're angry about it right and yeah and then they get indignant when when we hear people giving a free pass free pass to those who are not observant because they would like to also be not observant so i have to be mindful of the fact there are people listening right now who get jealous when we talk about sins see you know i'm not right no meaning i wasn't i wasn't questioning the comment i was quite i was commenting on the need for the comment i wasn't saying that the need that isn't there i was commenting on why the need was there the need is there because people are not totally right exactly so i was commenting about that that 100 they're not totally bought in because anybody who hears that and says oh they were they were speaking lightly about intermarriage that reaction comes from not being fully bought in because if you were fully bought in you would know there's not even a hava amina not even a uh uh how do you say that in english it it it it wouldn't even occur to you that that's a prescription for a jewish person to intermarry right so the only way you could even have that that error is if you're not fully bought in and and by the way this is one of the things exactly what you're talking about is one of the things that i picked up on like watching in like as a as a teenager and seeing some of these interactions where it felt that way it felt like this jealousy of people who were able to um to throw it all away and i'd understand that if this is if this is the the top of the hill if we if this is the truth then what is the jealousy what is the jealousy of i'll tell you even more when people suggested to me that i've had people suggest me you're not worried about your business that if you know if you don't keep shabbos or something like that you know worried that you would lose your money and i said well what sense would that make like why would it why would it work that way so um you know some suggestion that from not working god would take from from uh violating shabbos god would take away someone's money but i said but forget whether it's true or not true i said but just the suggestion is that money is more important than chavez because i would never punish something with some punish some someone with something less than the thing [Laughter] for the shabbos observant person who says that to you is implying i'm saying was this whole idea right like growing up you hear a lot of this idea okay i'm going to do this in order to make sure that that happens that happens but if i'm being punished because of it if anyone's being punished because of it then and again the qualification that's not saying anyone should not keep shabbos or it's nothing to do with that it's just it's the concept that thinking that i may be punished if shabbos is so dear then how do you what does money go into the equation for now the other way if job is so dear i should do it even if i would lose money by keeping shops i should pay for the privilege if travis is so great i should pay for it but i i'm going to keep shabbos because i don't want to lose money if it's so great i should pay for it right and i there was certain i felt that i saw that sometimes like the idea of punishment like push sometimes and it it didn't jive with some of what i heard like just in the actual text which was that this was like the gift of god to the jewish people was shabbos like the greatest gift the the gift is the money and shabbos is just the way to get the money but it's the greatest gift and you should tell someone if you don't keep shabbas you know what's going to happen you're not going to have shabbos you know rabbit doctor torski all over shalom i remember him while he one time he said there's a sidisha safer called the vineyard so he said you know what the anish is for someone who doesn't learn beneath her he doesn't get to learn but now you all sasha by the way i think i'm not sure if it's true but i think i'm like uh he's a uh i i think i come from the menesaker someone told me that last week oh really okay so there you go they heard it from a sibling of mine he said i said well who's the bene sucker he said opportunity but now he came up twice i'll have to a verify if that's true and be um the the dinner but that's the point and i think that as i think that there are certain um kids growing up who are sens who pick up on those small things who are sensitive to that kind of hypocrisy or are very sensitive to what robertorski said like that's exactly the message you know what you're going to lose if you don't learn it is you're not going to learn it you're not going to have the benefit right you're not going to go to disneyland you know what's going to happen what's your punishment for not going to disneyland i mean what can i do it's the right if it's the best it's the best so the uh yeah and that and that's part of what i was saying before is like not always the people who are supposed to be delivering jewish messages are the ones who are delivering the best messages so the one who is supposed to represent shabbos is basically in an unspoken way but pretty clearly implying that shabbos is just a tool to get things we really care about i i don't think that's an inspiring message um and what i would say is if you're not completely from yet but you have a more inspiring message about shabbos that is about the intrinsic value of shabbos then why can't you share that message maybe it's even a stronger message than the person who's officially orthodox but who's you know not really doing it for the right reasons now i just want to clarify because we always have to clarify mutation if you're doing a mitzvah for the wrong reason it's fine it's better to do it for the wrong reasons than than to not do it while you're waiting to have the right reasons but what i'm saying is even somebody who's not uh keeping 613 misses which basically means everyone is just a continuum you know how how many of those are you doing or not doing why can't you have why can't somebody i'll just put it very simply why can't somebody who's less observant than i am and and that's such a weird concept anyways because qualitatively who knows what who's more observant lessons but just quantitatively doing less of the mitzvahs right why can't they have something to offer me in yiddish kite why can't they have something to that that's inspiring or or uplifting why i don't have anything to learn from them so i have to be humble enough to know i have what to learn from them and they have to be bold enough to know they have what to teach so also for anyone um for anyone offended by anything we say on this webinar they're probably not the children that than the parents and we had a warning why'd you why it's for the children it's not for the rehearsal i'm kidding so just to sum it up the message that you have the message that you have to the children is a if you've ever felt like you don't belong know that you do belong you do 100 belong yeah not only do you belong because like you're on somebody's guest list it's your house it's your house i mean it's your father's house and you're his son so it's your house right and we're not we're not changing it right there's no message over here and i i should mention message that personally i have like that's i understand why people do it but it's something that doesn't work for me at all when people change the like the the oh shabbos must mean in this day and age such and such like i could never walk into like a reform like reform reconstruction those ideas like it is what it is is what it is of course right if it's being walked away from it's being it's okay so i'm not doing it but it's not the same thing it's all right it's not changing it we're not changing a locker we're not changing your demo these things are what they are we just acknowledging that people aren't perfect and right and we're saying perfect people have what uh they have a place and you say even the people who are messaged who were telling you they're probably imperfect in a different way don't get going on perfect 100 they're imperfect so the fact that they happen to be embrace certain things outwardly that you don't doesn't give them any more belonging than you do you have as much space in the house as they do you have a key to the front door just like them that's right that's right you walk into the house and open the fridge and take out whatever you want it's your house now we said before you know there's the rabbi's chair right so maybe you're not the person to get up and give the class okay fine but that's a different thing that's divisions of labor you know the poor guy shouldn't be the philanthropist because he doesn't have what to give and the guy who's not learning shouldn't be giving the class because he doesn't have what to give there there are divisions of labor but right now i'm talking about the fact of being at home in your father's house this is your house like you said you have just as much space as anybody else right and that's right that's not the same thing right because there's something it's uh maybe like modern culture sometimes is that not only do i get to be here but you have to embrace my way we're not saying that no no but we have to embrace each other i think that that fight by the way comes when someone feels like they don't belong i i think it was you i heard you say it maybe with someone else they said someone asked the question how should i deal with someone who's gay for example right how should i deal with with that should i tell them they have no place or should i you know they do and then i'm embracing everything else and it was i mean it was you may someone else said just treat them the same like you would someone who wasn't child who didn't keep shabbos like don't make one one law different than the others and i when i whoever said that when i heard it i think that oftentimes listen i've there were times in my life where i walked into shul and you know i i didn't make it in a way that was shabbistic and at the same and i didn't feel like i didn't belong there no one said the rabbi didn't say new rule new rule you can drive on shabbos but there was no message that i didn't belong here and i think there were certain people not specifically because of me there was no message that anyone who didn't keep shabbos didn't like you have a right you could come in the shoal you can dave and you can do you you have you have space here but there are certain people who felt specifically with with with the gay issue that they they don't belong they don't belong and the message was for for the leaders is it doesn't have to turn into no it's um being gay was wrong we can do gay marriages and everything else under the sun it's just the message is the message the message is the mess the the law is the law just like it is for shabbos just like it is for for who people are meant to cohabit with each other however we don't we don't reject someone we don't make a distinction between them we don't say one law is different than the other i think that was the message if we treat them the same way then the person won't feel rejected they'll understand that there are certain laws that this has and that's fine but the person doesn't have to feel rejected apologize for going to the gay issue but i think it explains it in a way that others don't and that oftentimes someone feels completely rejected because of their life choices versus there's a life choice but there's still belonging in there like someone who doesn't keep shabbos will feel very comfortable you know i know with the show i go to college many people on aliyah who don't keep shabbos i mean it's not you know they they come how they come no one asks them but oftentimes there are people who felt like oh because of these other choices they don't don't have an alien i think the message that i heard was treat them both the same way there's no there we don't that we didn't get a ranking from god the terror like this how this this violation is more than that violation or the other violation the laws are the laws of the laws and if we treat everything the same way we don't carry our own emotion to it someone won't feel rejected if they don't feel rejected then they won't feel the need to impose in the other direction everything is okay i don't know if that's i don't know if that's making sense but i know that oftentimes i have a lot of friends unfortunately who are in that situation and they feel very strongly rejected i would say the same thing there's there's no more rejection there than for someone who doesn't keep a different law there's still room to be to be in the room and in the space and um participating in the same way and the fact that one person struggles with shabbos another person struggles with another issue doesn't give us any right to reject the person who they are well still the the law says what it says i i don't know that anyone's trying to change it unless they themselves feel rejected yeah yeah i mean it's a sensitive topic but yeah i mean it should go without saying that this is not about changing uh changing torah hashanah i mean but why does why do we even have to to go there it's like we already accept imperfect people i mean we already accept people who violate torah all the time you all are you already allow your children to be educated by people who violate torah you you you ask questions people who violate because everybody's imperfect so just why we where you draw the line when it personally upsets you more where you have a personal uh you know aversion to whatever it is that right which is the last example i gave i think i mean it's a very extreme example but right there are certain ones we have that are more uh you know taking a beard offering it's a very strong right right it's a strong there are certain things that have a statement that's that's attached to it so your message to the the children you have your space you have a prime space you have just as much right but also a huge responsibility is you could eat a shrita but if it's you can't so what i'm saying is there there are raiders that bother us more but whatever i my point is yeah yeah yeah i don't know if you'd belabor the point okay listen i i felt the need to say something because i know that that issue almost more than any is um one where people feel like there's really no space for me to belong if i struggle in this way there's really no room at all and obviously you're saying that no there's room 100 for every single person at the table no matter the struggle no matter the sin no matter the challenge no matter the confusion there's room at the table for you walk inside open the door eat from the fridge everything else you are a firstborn son just like everyone else and not only that and not only that as far as god is concerned the experiences that you've had are not random they're specific which now puts a responsibility on you figure out how to figure out how to break in if you felt like the the lock was broken but you're breaking into your own house you're an exactly criminal you're not the criminal for breaking into your own house and then let other people in make it easier for others yes that's the that's that's the overall that's the overall message yes yes it is okay i don't think we'll offend the children saying this if we offend a few parents it's my intention bonus sorry not sorry no i'm kidding okay is there a question you want to uh tackle here i think we covered everything so there's a last question here that's um that's interesting is some of the judgment around people who break jewish law is based on the punishments in the torah talks so if god is harsh with them shouldn't we be harsh with them as well says law is pretty harsh god gets angry and punishes so therefore what therefore we should be pretty hard i mean that's what uh those in the community you really believe that god is harsh with these people why shouldn't they get more of your compassion so it's a simple question why shouldn't they get more of your compassion but what do you want to do you want to kick a man when he's down you want to add to their uh if you really believe that god has it in for these people so while they're falling down the stairs you want to kick them and let's even say it's their own fault and you're in the way you're looking at it they were playing on the stairs and being reckless and then they fell and as they're falling you're gonna kick them that'll teach you so i guess the question is different the question is right what seems to be the question is isn't that the godly thing to do so here's people who want to be godly so is the godly thing to do to be receptive and embracing and understanding and accepting and welcoming or is it to be punitive as well can i answer i can ask this question quite simply there's there's no one else you want to do it to but to your own kid anyone else who comes in you're welcoming we're talking i mean unless our people if they're if if there are people who embrace the message of chabad then you're not saying this to them you're not saying this to them you're saying this only to your own kid or to someone you feel or a student or to someone you feel directly responsible for or for someone part of your own community that you feel needs this message so it's like the closer to the art to you the more of their the more of your wrath so unless if someone's going to take that approach then do it across the board with everyone but it doesn't sound like uh they do it across the board with everyone but i i don't know that there's anyone on this webinar who would say that about anybody so maybe so maybe here's a question right i know that i've learned a lot you have the people who are and maybe this is like fine-tuning the question for them a little bit so you have someone who's tina nishbar is that the word he was captive kidnapped yeah okay so we have someone like that who we feel compassion for but someone who's part of the community and saw it and was close to uh yiddish kite and the reba and everything else so maybe they're not in the same category and they don't deserve our compassion maybe that's what the question is yeah they deserve more compassion because the person who grew up without a jewish education has a clean slate the person who got one and it clearly didn't work out because you see the results so now he has a whole bunch of negative associations to overcome in order to come back right so that okay so that goes back to basically the basically the first statement you said your premise when you see someone who screw up from and is no longer from is that their tina shinichba are squared on steroids they're like the most because they had an experience that was negative and someone told them it was judaism they're the kid who was molested during his bar mitzvah lessons correct meaning when right when you see someone that's your assumption and anyone who came on late and thinks you're using that as a hyperbolic uh or rhetorical turn of phrase that's an actual example of a friend of yours that you're using correct you're not trying to be inflammatory no i'm actually i'm using an actual example so i'm saying so but that so your assumption basically is that when you see someone who grew up from grew up belong feeling a sense of belonging to the jewish community and then leaves it because they don't feel a sense of belonging as part of the community then they had a moment like that for them a tiny niche for a moment where someone all right and then once you see that moment once you see that the end result you're saying i know that existed so because that existed of course i'm going to be compassionate understanding and the acceptance comes from that without that belief that you have then maybe you'd arrive at the same conclusion as them that someone deserves harsh punishment somebody's writing the chat is this new age judaism accepting sinners you know look all i can tell you is that uh you know we we have a story that uh the ms richard magette who was the talmud in mali making him of the balshemptiv once told rebellion he says here's mela do you hear it called the mailer a belly mella milozenski what they're saying in the means loving a russian governor just like you love atsadi government so this is this is tales of loving a russian government the same way you love it sadly this is we're not changing we're not letting people rewrite the rules we're not letting them say that things don't apply to them what we are saying is that every single jew has a place in their father's home and if we're going to start kicking people out because of evaders we're going to kick you out and you out and you out and you're everyone's going to be kicked out right it's so it's so sad that people hear it that way like that question is like very disconcerting is this new judaism where would you see this in jewish law to welcome someone in who sins we're welcoming someone in we're not welcoming like why you're welcome someone you're walking a person in you're not who's saying that it's embracing what they've what they've done i mean i kinda i feel like i want to drag everyone to a meeting it's like there is like people walk into a meeting and there's i mean it's so clear right we're saying we want to live a life without alcohol we want to live a life without drugs we want it like this is the life that whatever it is that there that people that people are meeting about we're absolutely embracing this as as the life we want to live we're committed to it we'll work hard on it we'll do whatever we could to stop there's no to stop those behaviors to stop you know just to stop using it anyway but when someone walks in struggling with that they're completely welcomed and if someone isn't even sure if somebody isn't even sure not only that ellie it's more than that when a newcomer the guy who walks in who was just he was drinking earlier today he speaks of alcohol he wreaks of alcohol not only did they have a chair for him he's the vip yeah right and it's not and and and the person understands i mean it's such a it's like for me it was so beautiful to be around the room of like group of people who they understood my goal right my goal was the same i wanted to be like the ones who were sober when i first walked in and there there was no message to me it's okay in the sense that i should keep doing it but is that if i did it then i still have a home i always felt accepted no matter how many times the the the slip was was there there was this ability to break between the two and i guess what happens is you're saying okay if a guy walks in for the first time off the street reeks of alcohol then i get it but what happens if a guy has been coming to meetings for 20 years and he still can't get it right he still just can't they're still welcome they're still they're still one welcome and i said then they understand there is that struggle and i think that ability to be able to separate the person the person will feel completely accepted and they'll also know that in this room we hold by no alcohol for ourselves and everyone who's in there we hold but that is the standard there is no like nobody is thinking that because they let this guy who's drunk into the meeting oh now they don't care about now we can drink now we can drink no one even no it doesn't even occur to anybody but all of a sudden because somebody is not keeping all the mitzvahs which i said is already everyone but now we're going to let them sit at the table with us oh that means we don't care about hostile right and then someone's going to say you want to take recovery and right put it like recovery is going to teach us about judaism well recovery has a lot to teach i became closer to judaism let me say it this way i became closer to judaism from recovery than i did from the things that people are calling judaism meaning i i came closer to judaism from recovery than i did from yeshiva so my complaint is and not a complaint because there's no there's no use complaining my my call my cry is can we please please offer what our children need can the yeshivas please offer bonding love acceptance tolerance camaraderie all the why do they have to do they have to have their lives fall apart and then find god in a church basement does it have to come to that they can't find god in yeshiva we can't provide that kind of support is there is there a rule against it like would we would we would we be missing something would it not be as authentically jewish if people actually had that sense of of belonging and and vulnerability and safety like if we provided all the things that were provided in the rooms of recovery would that would that be somehow wrong would that not be an improvement aren't we i'm asking these questions aren't we obligated indeed to offer this to our children so that when they come out of the system that they feel that they were given the greatest preparation for life the the the most solid foundation the firmest emotionally solid grounding that you could possibly have why can't we why do we have to tell them that they're only doing this either like you said keeping shabbos for money or doing mitzvahs for for brownie points in in ghanaian i mean why can't our kids finish the system and say wow i'm so grateful my education was one that gave me such strength as a person and such a love for for life and a sense of purpose and belonging is there a reason we can't offer that i mean i i i to me i think it's that acceptance and agreeing i think it's a sense that if we accept someone we agree with them and it's not the same thing we can accept someone and disagree with them strongly you know and i speak as someone you know i'm not speaking as a rabbi i'm saying for anyone that we can accept someone and disagree with them strongly but fully accept and love them and then they feel that sense of love and belonging which is often time what they're running from they're not running from you were saying this we're not running from a theological disagreement often it's from a place i do not feel like i belong here why not why don't i feel like i belong in this place because someone told me i don't belong because i i did certain things or didn't do whatever else when the same message can be said no you belong we still disagree with what you're doing 100 and i felt it i i never got the sense or chase i never got the sense from you that you agree with my lifestyle 100 i never got i never got that sense from you i but i got the sense that you accept me right and that's the question is how can we do both how can we say i accept you fully and i don't of course yeah it's an announcement from the way you live that you don't fully agree with everything i'm saying and that's fine and there's a way to do that for teachers for teachers for parents to say i accept you but i don't agree with you but i accept you have a place here i don't even think it needs to be stated it doesn't need to be stated if it needs to be stated it's like you're already something something's already wrong right i'm saying it doesn't need to be stated it's this it's the sense what's the concern the concern is that if i hear the words i accept you right if someone hears the words from me that i accept them then it means i also agree with them and there's a way for people to feel fully accepted that you agree i you know i know i keep harping on this but i'm going to say this again as an example the people you respect okay the rabbi you respect the person that you call when you have a child okay he yelled at his wife he yelled at his wife in fact he he's gonna yell at her again do you approve of yelling at your wife just because you accept and even respect somebody doesn't mean you're saying all of their behaviors are now right sanctioned by they're all sanctioned behaviors now you accept the fact that people are imperfect and even though this guy does some things that i don't that we all agree are are are not proper but he has what to offer me what's so hard about that right yeah i would say even further you don't sanction everything i said on this on this webinar today just in case i said something that uh people want to turn on you you don't sanction everything i said on this then you don't have to i'm saying it it doesn't have to be sanctioned it doesn't have to come with you know i i think that's a um that's i know for i mean i'll say this my my parents i mean today today we have a beautiful relationship and this obviously was a sticking point at the time when i made choices of course was very difficult for them to see me make certain choices that were um that were different and there was a time where they felt the need to constantly remind me and i said one point i don't i don't need the reminder i know i i know what you believe i know what you want and everything else and i said i said don't you think i would want to feel like i'm moving worlds when i'm watching naga boss or don't you think well that i'm that i would want to feel like i'm affecting three generations before and three generations after what i'm saying to helen don't you think that i would like i would want that feeling wouldn't it be great why do i have to go look for something else that's going to give me meaning and impact and right and and fulfillment i'm going back about 10 years but eventually it got to the point where it's that wasn't it anymore i love you i want you to be here with me i i want you around and not the message of um and that was never confused i never heard that i never heard them say oh okay great now they believe that shabbos doesn't have to be kept like that's that's where they they came to they never there was never a sanctioning with it we're capable of hearing that i think even young i think even teenagers and young students are fully capable of hearing that and we would have a different uh i think we would have something different people don't have to be pushed out to a sense of not belonging because of of certain choices and then what you said about you just automatically view them as having gone through something difficult so how can i push someone out further went through something difficult let me say this story because this is a crazy story just happened a short time ago someone calls me and they say that um i need your help because my 10 year old was kicked out of school why was his 10 year old kicked out of school because he searched for pornography on a school computer it was like a class something search for pornography so they kicked him out of school how old 10 years old so so my first reaction was wow like this would have been a great teaching moment like first of all the average age that people first search for it is like studies tell us between eight and ten years old for boys right that they first see pornography for the first time so it could have been a great teaching moment and i was upset at the school for like why not take this teaching moment but in fact i was wrong it was the wrong approach because four or five days later i get a call from the parents again saying that in talking to our child and you know this now he's home from school they found out that he was being abused by one of the teachers so meaning the question instinctively and i said you know something it's it's like it bothers me that i missed that because that should have been my immediate reaction is what is a 10 year old doing looking at porn why is he looking it up what happened what happened where was the disconnection what's what's off in a 10 year old's life that he's searching for that and there was something fortunately in this case the parents found found it but that the fact that a teacher can look at a 10 year old who searches for a point and saying he's wrong he's got to be out of class instead of instinctively thinking the way you started this phone call that there's something wrong there's something amiss here the alarm went off and i smashed the alarm instead of like oh here's my alarm bell i smash the alarm we don't want any more alarm bells every single every single kid who's leaving the jewish community has to be an alarm bell for the jewish community and instead of listening to it ringing and saying there's something i need to pay attention to there's a fire somewhere let me smash the alarm smash it throw it out the window throw it to the bottom of the sea just i shouldn't hear it anymore right this can go on for a while it's a big topic we got to stop smashing the alarms you know the people who need the most support not only get the least of it they get rejection and that is something that i believe that our entire community has to do to show before every single one of us because as at sibor as arabim we're all complicit to some degree because we're all part of this society those who need the most compassion support resources concerned care not only they get the least of it but they get the most rejection and it's it's it's a cultural norm hashem didn't tell you to do that toyota doesn't tell you to do that it's a cultural thing it comes from trauma it's intergenerational trauma whatever it is but the point is we're all collectively complicit and we need to change this culture now i don't want to i don't want to say muscle i don't want to be negative i said before let's make our community a more godly community so i'll i'll say it in a positive way okay i don't want to dwell on the negative but it it's it's it's nothing to be proud of to to have an an exclusionary uh culture that where rejection is like as like a major feature of our culture that's nothing to be proud of and and you're going to go tell hashem that you did this for him go tell hashem that you were his children in his name and you tell hashem that you did this in his name so we we collectively we have a tikkun to make this has to be fixed this is a grave grave grave error i'll call it an error i will not attribute maliciousness to it but it has to be fixed there's uh i'm sure you're familiar with the work of gabor mate yeah sure yeah very famous addiction addiction therapist so this guy's worked with the worst of the worst drug addicts the worst i mean you're talking people who he said he's like if i was as a doctor i was measured by how long my patients lived i would be one of the worst doctors are you talking people who can't even get off of heroin they just have to put them on safer drugs like you know skid row the worst and he said you know you think these people are judged horribly by society push to the side and everything else and what really got him into his work on addiction is you know he had started as a doctor in a bunch of different areas he was asked to get involved with this and he said okay i'll help out he was an expert on addiction but he started talking to his patients and as he started talking to these people who was helping you know instead of the dangerous needles he was a safer needle just there was nothing to do with them other than try to um he he almost thought his paleo out of care right where they're they're in so much pain actually that's where he came from he came from paley out of care which palette of care is basically pain mitigation for people who are in so much pain there's nothing to do yeah it's right at that space there's so much pain you're just trying to manage how much pain they feel and have but there's really nothing to do to cure someone so he was then he went to addicts and he saw the comparison between the two and he he started talking to them and he wrote a book in the realm of hungry ghosts where it's really stories of the addicts that he worked with and he said what changed for him he said instead of asking the question why the addiction he started asking why the pain and when he sees someone who's using drugs and you're you're making this comparison i don't know that i can go so far as making this comparison but i think as far as your the framework like let's say you're wrong okay so you're wrong and you gave the and you gave someone a hug instead of instead of the opposite you know and i'll give it sadaka analogy in a second remind me if i if i forget but what he said is just looking at people and saying why the pain shifted everything because when you say why the addiction why the addiction turns into a war on drugs like let's let's get rid of it it's bad we're banning but he saw people he said no one wants this no one wants to be on cocaine all day long no one wants to be on heroin all day long no one wants to destroy their body destroy their life destroy their family enjoy their jobs no one wants this so when he started asking his patients why the pain all of a sudden something else opened up and i think you're saying the same thing is when you're seeing when you're hearing that the ten-year-old searched the computer searching the computer for a pornographic image you're saying what went wrong not you are wrong what went wrong and when you're seeing someone 30 years old 40 years old 50 years old you're saying you grew up from what went wrong and that question changes your whole perspective so then one thing is all right let's say you're wrong right let's say you have me wrong on one nothing went wrong this guy is just you know he's bad to his core for whatever reason so i'll give you the tzedakah analogy for this someone once told me this a long time ago and don't don't abuse me for it don't abuse me for this one but the it was if two people come to your door okay and you know that one is deserving and one is not deserving one is a and one one needs tzedakah and one doesn't one is a thief he's making it up you don't know which one is which do you give both or do not give both you really asking yeah yeah you know the guy's a thief no there's two people one you know is needy and one is a thief and but you don't know which is which oh you don't know which guy i know which is which so do you give both people or do you give no or do you give none of them you know my grandfather all over charlotte he used to give money to anyone who asked and i remember one of my cousins once said to him you know that guy's a junkie and he said you know what if i forget the number he said he said let's say 9 out of 10 people who ask you for money on the street aren't using it for good purposes let's say it's nine out of ten i'll i'll give you that number and i'll say no to all of them and thereby depriving one the one guy out of ten who's deserving i'm not comfortable with those odds so you're saying you know it's it's right is it one to one right i was i was actually going to say that even oh that that was going to be my next statement was even further and let's say the odds are more so that's that's what you're saying let's say you happen to be wrong on a few people let's say you have to be wrong and there's one guy who had no trauma he's just arrested he's just like this guy didn't need comp he didn't need compassion he needed a slap in the face exactly right this one guy he right this guy should have gotten a slap and he got a hug right but obviously you have no idea what he needed the hug got the hog right exactly so you're saying right which is the right there may be there may be some people who are rejecting it not because they've been through i think there are people who would argue the opposite they'll say if one guy out of a thousand needs a slap i'm comfortable with slapping the other i don't think so i would hope not i don't think people have those senses i think putting it in that way i think could help listen it's clear where your perspective is coming from you're not coming from a perspective of a more religious or less religious or anything else you're coming from a place of deep compassion which probably comes from actually people being comfortable talking to you that's that's probably the difference between you and some other rabbis is that people are comfortable talking to and sharing their experiences and then as you hear them you can only come to this conclusion that there are some people in pain and someone else maybe how did people know to be comfortable to tell me how did people know that i'm a safe person no i'm asking you the question because because i i it's a genuine question i have an answer to it uh but i i'm say i'm asking it only in the sense of how uh much can it be is it something that's transferable where all people in leadership positions can be safe people but can be taught to become safe people yes the i mean the answer is is that when you talk about safety no one goes you don't you don't go for broke on the first try right you introduce something and then what's the reaction going to be right for example if this if some if another kid overhears that one of their classmates was kicked out for looking at for looking up an image that becomes a pretty clear sign this guy is not safe the guy who kicked him out is not safe yeah if he had that kind of very harsh judgment this guy's this guy is not safe right this guy's not safe so my point is is that i mean we we've had some fairly personal conversations it wasn't in the first six seconds of meeting you right i maybe introduced something that's a little bit lighter and you see how one reacts and so on and so forth but that message but that um that idea of hearing these things that we don't like to hear and instead of responding with um with judgment we respond or harshness we respond with compassion this person must be in pain you know listen i've shared i've shared my struggle right i've i've been pretty open about my struggle and my addiction and everything else and how did i find out that i had this problem i tried to stop when did i try to stop when i got into a relationship with another human being so which means that there were times in our relationship that i did things that were not um uh that were not so kind to her and i asked her how did you say how did you accept this like how did you not how do you accept like how were you how was how are you able to tolerate it faster like it's obviously very painful when someone does especially in this regard right when when you're talking about the kind of addictions i've spoken of it's very painful for another person to go there she said whenever i saw this i said i know that's not you like i know you i know that's not you and you must have been in pain let's just have you must have been in pain and that was the difference between me being able to have a relationship with someone and not i think that it's it's something that she that my wife has and i see in a lot of different interactions when someone will respond harshly something negative happens so he said wow they must be in a lot of pain and it's not it's coming just like that's her instinctive reaction is that naturally people want to be i'm not even talking about the the judy's amazing like naturally like that's not the natural um place to look for our sexual need is in pornography it's not a natural place so if i'm going there often it's okay there's something distorted here it's not oh he's such a lucky guy he gets to do what he wants to do guilt-free no quite the opposite it's a depraved world with a depraved um payout and seeing someone go there repeatedly the way i did the message to her was the message her was wow he must be in a lot of pain and in that way she didn't take it quite as quite as personally and i think for to me if she's able to do that right then we were dating him we were together she was able to she was able to do that then i think that that's like that's a somewhat of a model for how someone can react to their own children or or others who are doing things is not to personalize that rejection for i think a lot of parents when they see i can tell you from my parents that's where it started right they fought their families to be from it wasn't like it's not this big celebration when your kids decide to to choose this way of life and we struggled with financially and we had one of nine kids and there were many times where our mother's family looked at her and said why why did you choose this life like it's just a hard difficult miserable life why did you go there so she fought her family for it and then for some of her children for i'll talk about me but for for me to choose different way she did take it personal for a time it was very personal for us hey i fought for this it's such a value of mine and now you're rejecting it that's painful but to to be able to get past that and then say obviously there's something else going on and while it may have not been the case for everyone i mean it was true with me right that's the fact there was something going on there was something going on there was a lot of pain there was a lot of disappointment there was a lot of anger and sometimes that's the the hurdle that one has to get over is the own is not taking it personal i wasn't watching porn because i found someone more attractive than my wife that wasn't what was going on i was in pain and i was using this to anesthetize and soothe the pain and she was able to see that unfortunately i was able to see that and now that i've been able to deal with the pain a different way i'm not going there anymore and i think that you're you're saying that when you see a child who's no longer from or is moving away in that direction it's your instinctive reaction and you may be wrong every once in a while but you're never going to give a slap to the kid who needs a hug if i see somebody who okay they eat ice cream and they say this is gross this is just disgusting i don't like ice cream so something's wrong unless you believe the yiddish kite is truly truly good okay follow what i'm saying unless you believe that you describe it that taste and you'll see it hashem is good unless you believe that okay then if you don't believe that you see somebody who's doing things that are not what a jew is supposed to do so you just say oh he's about either he's he's just gratifying his lusts right but if you really believe that toyota is good somebody who can't enjoy something that's good and there's something wrong there so don't castigate them figure out what what went wrong why the pain why why the pain and also if you why they're not able to enjoy the pleasure right because that's the the opposite side of the coin so if somebody can't enjoy you this guy any aspect of you this guy something's wrong yiddish kite is enjoyable and a relationship with god is is it's more it's i mean i i don't want to it sounds in english to say that you know it's a pleasure sounds almost like you know cheapening it but the greatest tainhook is is a connection to hashem and if somebody can't have that pleasure then tell me what went wrong something went wrong and it it can and must be fixed so you you nailed it before the the the metaphor of the alarm these are wake up calls these are alarm bells these are signals that something's wrong don't say oh the alarm is annoying me so let's go smash it take the cue these are cues that something needs to be repaired so let's repair it instead of being upset that the the the the alarm is disrupting me disturbing me got it you know someone asked why aren't some of the heads of school on this talk a big part of the pain is from the schools so you know those it doesn't matter i mean listen it would be great if they were on the call but the truth is and that's another message here is it doesn't take when there's a group of kids playing and there's one kid left out in the corner you don't need all the kids to turn to him and say come join the game just one has to just one has to and suddenly he's part he is part of it so there's no one there's you're going to look at the schools okay and in 50 years we'll be having the same conversation or it's just saying i mean i i like that i like to call i take it as a personal call to action on on my part the one that you said is that if you figured out a way how to break down the lock and enter your own home let other people in let other people in and that's certainly i've had it easier in some ways than others getting back into the door but it's my it's my home just the same it's my home just the same and um letting other people know and hopefully other people are listening either live or to this recording that there's a place there's a place for you in here within with within judaism within judaism and someone who um tells you otherwise doesn't speak for god whether someone just wrote in the comments of the chat what if the child doesn't think they need repairing and i just i i just want i just want to comment on that when you look at somebody i'm not accusing you whoever it was who wrote that i'm going to say you but i don't mean you i mean you know whoever when you look at somebody as a diagnosis so you look at them as a pathology then of course they don't want your help so the first thing is even before you know ellie's talking about acknowledging that that there's there's something that's that's wrong there's there's pain there's brokenness but even before that there's a prerequisite to that which you know i didn't even think to say this but now it occurs to me you have to say it first of all there's a human so it's don't say oh there's pain no no there's a human in pain because if you start saying oh i i heard chase town say that there's pain so now all of a sudden i'm looking at these people as pain you're objectifying them as their pain and they feel that and of course they don't want your fixing or your help but if you can look at them first and foremost as a human and this is a human who's in a great deal of pain then you become a safe person and then they may even ask you for help but you know the best indication to know that someone trusts you enough to ask you for help is that they will ask you for help and conversely if they're not yet asking you for help forget about injecting your help but even just not asking you for help that is a cue you need to earn more trust so stop offering the help and start building more trust the question what i was say to that is what if the parent doesn't think they need repairing parents are all fine the kids are the problem right i think i think that's one of the points is that it's it's rejecting someone so it's not just a message of it's it's rejecting someone in something so it's not just a message of oh they're in pain i need to fix them we're all part of the same system they're rejecting it while i was here i was here the whole time and and they're rejecting and they're not the pain happened while i was here so i'm meaning there's i need repair also there's every everyone does the alarm bell is not just there's a there's i mean it's similar to what the baal sanctum says right you wouldn't see a problem in someone else unless on some level it existed existed in us so the it's not just like pointing the finger at someone else and saying oh that's that's the issue there are communal issues as well that you're talking about i mean the alarm bells are ringing not just because someone was abused or someone had a negative experience the alarm bells are ringing because inside the community there's something as well yeah well i think that the alarm is a fire alarm so the the fire alarm's going off because the building's on fire so don't go smash the fire alarm so that it won't bother you while the building is burning i tell this i tell this to a lot of people who were sexually abused right and i say that i i don't know how many people were sexually abused in a perfect circumstance they said what could possibly be good about being sexually abused so nothing is good about being sexually like that's not good but if something is wrong and we need a wake-up call then sometimes we need a wake-up call right we need to know that something is is going is going on so i've i've met very few people who everything in their life was perfect and then suddenly this like massive trauma happened that's it's not usually the way it works is there was dysfunction there were problems in the community in the family and uh you know whatever it is right there was stuff going on right dysfunction is a big word some people don't like the word but there was i use it just as a the word meaning not optimal and then in that setting abuse happened the abuse is not the problem the abuse is the symptom of the problem it doesn't happen in a perfect is a perfect circumstance the kid had a perfect childhood that's the way i viewed my story for a long time here i was perfect kid perfect childhood right and then i got sexually abused it's like no there were stuff going on inside of me from before i was extremely extremely sensitive child i for whatever reason i didn't feel safe in many in in many instances and then this became kind of the wake up the wake-up call for me and it's it's affected it's had a ripple effect on others as well i'm not trying to point the finger at anyone else and say they had a problem too but when when someone when something major happens a major trauma that one person takes the fallout for we don't say like oh they're in pain it happened within a certain system and setting so we look back and say what were the other factors in here that this happened in for example maybe a better example if someone gets into a car accident you're not going to by and large most car accidents are not happening because everyone was driving perfectly so one person had this okay they got into like there's a car accident so we have to get rid of the car accidents well maybe we do or if there's a lot of car accidents happening in a certain area then they become the alarm well what's are there not enough street lights are the line's not clear enough is it too much congestion is the speed limit too high too low there's something else going on that's causing that accident so often oftentimes this becomes the stimulus for change and i tell a lot of people who are who are sexually abused when they look at it as the most painful thing and i say one way one way to heal it is to look at it is that life was perfect and then i got interrupted his life was perfect life was imperfect had a lot of issues and had that not happened you may have stayed in the imperfection been able to deal with it sometimes things have to get really bad and destroy sometimes things have to destroy us before we realize how bad it is and that's why i want to go back to what i was saying before that anyone and this this is such a good of me to say this but i'm asking the people whose experience in the community was was negative this is cuts but it asked me to ask for of me to ask them to do this but the community needs you to come back and heal them and those who have been hurt the most are the strongest ones that have the most to offer and and and we need your voices and not only do you have a place at the table i said this two hours ago not only do you have a place at the table you you have a leadership role to fill because of of your pain and and and the adversity of you've gone through so i'm just praying that those who have been hurt the most and again it's cuts above me to ask this but i'm praying those who have been hurt the most can find it in their hearts to come back and and to heal the community and and i think they can find in their hearts if you think about it like this this i feel is a compelling way of thinking about it think of yourself you were 20 years ago or however old you are now you know think about yourself as you were you know at an earlier juncture in your life and think about the fact that right now in the community where you grew up there are a thousand children who were who are right now where you were at least come back for their sake come back to our community and offer what you have at least for the sake of the kid who is where you were 20 years ago 30 years ago 40 years ago however long ago it was come back for them because the ones who are going to fix it are not the same status quo people it we're not going to get different results running things the same way evan marswa the rejected stone has to become the cornerstone come back take a leadership role in the community if i can add to this so i've you know i for a while i i mean i kind of left the community and i came back to it really through jcw right and i said what's exactly what you're saying that i went through certain experiences and then i felt like i had certain healing and i needed to share this with people like hey this is going on in the community so i came in from um like i kind of almost reconnected with uh with crown heights in the chabad community by saying okay there are children exactly what you're talking about there are children who suffered the same thing i did and let me go back for them let me go back for them there's there's something that i can offer for children who are being abused and i heard so many stories of it and listen abuse i want to be clear when i talk about sexual abuse it's not the end-all and be-all of pain if someone didn't have sexual abuse doesn't mean they had it they didn't have they didn't have trauma i think what it is is oftentimes the an outgrowth of a tremendous amount of problems and then for me i said i got tapped on the head to i almost chosen i was i was chosen by god to deal with this issue otherwise it wouldn't have happened to me we can't believe in god and we can't believe that there was uh that god gave the torah on mount sinai but we don't believe that god chose for me to be sexually abused or for other people to go through those experiences right obviously not in a past like oh it doesn't matter what happens no we have to go back and change like we have to fight that it doesn't happen to anyone else of course not this passive approach to you know god wants bad things happens to let it happen that's not the jewish way but once it does happen i have to say that i was chosen for for this point and one of the things at first when i heard these negative con like comments or people dismissing it or people minimizing it or people um attributing ulterior motives or whatever it was or you know we'd have a beautiful event really impactful and you know someone got a little bit heated and said one four-letter word and then everyone's talking about oh my goodness a four-letter word was said in the show and i was like really that's what you care about a four-letter word was said in the show can i tell you what happened in the show it involved much worse than four letter words that's why i'm here that's what i'm here talking about i have the actual actual people so there were times where i got very angry and very dissuaded and pushed away so i'm talking to the people who are listening to your charge and saying okay on some level we've we've all been through certain experiences and each one is different i can't i can't crack the door open for everyone what is it cracker open is just to feel a part of the jewish community i think that is it's a beautiful source of pride for me and i have i feel very strongly connected to it and i think that others should as well it's a beautiful heritage a beautiful culture it's long-standing and for someone to be that to be jewish and not to feel connected to it is a pity and a shame regardless of their their level of of observance i think the the i heard it a million times turrets evolving i never translated it once i don't know it just you know you hear it so many times okay it's a beautiful thing this is an inheritance it's a it's a beautiful inheritance to be part of the jewish to be part of the jewish people for me it's definitely a strong source of pride and something that i want to give that i want to give to my children but it's true not one person one person can't open that door for everyone because people have had different experiences and there's there are others who can who can break that open for them my my point in all this is that when i started hearing these comments for at first when i started doing very s insensitive or hurtful or rejecting or like i said attributing ulterior motives and it's it's no secret that i've been criticized by different people um in the community over different stances that i've taken on different issues the what what kept me in the fold was every time i heard one of those like i didn't say okay now i'm running because i came back and i should get a beautiful warm welcoming well not everyone's going to give you the wonderful welcoming that's going to happen and what what i said was every time i heard it every time i heard one of the negative things i said that's why i'm here that's why i'm here it's exactly for this that i came back if it didn't exist i'd have no reason to be here the problem is the reason that i'm here so so the the people who are rejecting me were fueling me because i said that's why i'm here imagine someone like i came back i'm not looking to hurt the community i'm looking to help community i've given people attributed ulterior motives to me when i've given so much of my time and money to jewish organizations and people still had negative things to say about uh not negative things to say obviously i did things wrong everyone makes mistakes what i'm saying is that like that my motives somehow like all of a sudden in this place were incorrect they didn't question the check but they questioned the speech but they they quite they questioned the speech and while they at times were hurtful it also fueled me and said no this is the dysfunction this is what it is that there's there's a certain mold and people who don't fit it completely some are very comfortable rejecting them and those people it's a it's a it's a it's a cancer in the world that smart people smart people have doubts and stupid people often have a lot of conviction you know on everything right so here you are the loudest voice in the room get the hell out you don't belong here that's right right that's failed and then you talk to other people and say like listen i support what you're doing i don't quite know how you're doing it but that's not a very good like tagline right so all you hear is the guy who's like you know the guy the guy who wants to beat you down so what i'm saying is to those who are looking to come back when those comments come to you which they will not everyone's going to be welcoming everyone's going to open the door but if you're trying to change something in a positive way you know your motives are coming from from good and you're motivated by what chase what you said was 100 correct you're motivated by you're speaking to the younger version of you normally when i went back to the community i said i'm speaking to the 10 year old version of me and speaking to the 15 year old version of me what did i need to hear that i did not hear and that's what i said and when you're going back with those intentions and you hear certain things use it as fuel to keep pushing forward and to open the door the the door for others the second you stop hearing the comments retire on that issue and go to no another one because that problem has been solved uh to stay there awesome i hope this uh this was this was great for me by the way i enjoyed this uh this conversation very much you gave me a lot of things to to to think about which is not i asked before we went on are you in the mood for this you said yeah i'm in the mood so worked out it worked out i hope i hope it worked out for those listening but i imagine if people spend two and a half hours with us yeah they uh they got something from it so thanks everyone for for joining us i hope i didn't uh interfere too much with what you're gonna say but everything says it's meant to be beautiful it was beautiful and uh i i i just hope that no i more than hope i do believe that this in i know that this will lead to positive action my hope is that the positive action will lead to positive action that there will be a um compounding effect well i could say this you know from the from the different topics that i've touched on um in the webinars i've done um some of them which we've done together this by far has gotten the strongest response yes yes yeah this is this is a topic that's um almost no one is what they say ain't biased right there's like no one who hasn't been touched by this on some level on some level themselves a sibling a cousin a parent a child there's you know just it's it's it's affecting because people feel like they don't belong and they don't have a space and that's that's yeah so yeah okay all right and in terms of that i'm encouraged right there a couple people who make small comments but when there are people who turn out and people are interested and people questions and obviously this is a topic that a lot of people feel is open for them it's an open issue for them so it's not it's it's a topic that can still be discussed and explored and hopefully more and more people take it take it on because it's a i'm a big believer in like i believe jewish pride you know it's an identity of ours and we we deserve to uh to have that i didn't always feel it i feel it strongly today and i think that all all of us could if it's you know as sheldon adelson said he had an experience guy gave tremendous amount of money to jewish causes so one of like one of the most profound experiences he had was watching a kid get um like attacked or yelled at for being jewish someone else and he said he said if i'm he says like no matter what we do like that that's not what we do people someone's gonna identify me as being jewish anyway like as far as as far as away as i run whatever happens someone's going to identify me as jewish anyway right even if we've distanced ourselves i've as far as i've you know as far as i've gone i'm saying oh the guy's jewish i've heard it so many times about me this guy's jewish so okay so if i'm going to get it for the bad i'm going to get it for the good right meaning that's what he said he said that so for him it gave him a very strong jewish pride when he saw that negative reaction he said if if someone can attack someone else for being jewish then i'm going to wear that proudly as well i want to wear i'm going to wear that proudly as well and there's a way there's a way i mean you'll hear it consistently with people who have achieved uh tremendous success i'm like sheldon adelson and people who inspire me or people who take negative experiences as fuel as fuel converting it to uh that's that's a negative experience to see an anti-semitic incident and said he said you know what that's going to be my fuel while i give billions to jewish causes so why not yeah that wasn't what the person intended exactly right the advantage of light that comes comes from darkness yeah and i think for all of us who's been through through those experiences i mean that's the that's the to unpack that box it's not an easy box unpack and i'm not judging anyone who hasn't unpacked all of them yet i certainly haven't unpacked all of my experience but the ones that i have it's the best it's it's really the best feeling in the world to unpack some of these boxes and to look at some of these negative experiences in my life and say that negative they're the best they're like in some way they're the best in the sense that they've not go not letting the other people off the hook but the best in the sense that they've they've made me who i am and they've created a a certain amount of good in the world and they've they've pushed me and fueled me in ways that very few things could michael jordan became michael jordan because when he was in the eighth grade he got cut from the basketball team he went home he was crying and his father told him don't cry shoot hoops and he became michael jordan right so not that we shouldn't cry cry and shoot hoops do both i'm not uh push from that perspective but to convert those experiences i mean michael jordan is not michael jordan without that eighth grade experience it's the it's the the people who learn it's not the people who don't have negative experiences it's the people who learn how to use those negative experiences as fuel for what they do because it's the best fuel it really is the best fuel is those those negative experiences it's what keeps me it it definitely gets me going much a negative comment can keep me going much longer than a uh than a positive one a pat on the back is good for a few hours someone abusing me when i was eight years old is good for the rest of my life that bastard's never gonna win so and i hope listen sorry for the the words i don't call them bad words i call them strong words you know they're power words and they have to be they have to be used at perfect time for someone who's been through those experiences please use that fuel don't let them win don't let them win there's another way out everything can be healed life doesn't have to life doesn't have to end the way it began and then one day we'll look at those people and we'll say not only didn't you hurt me you helped me not only didn't you hurt me not just i mean it's in a little bit different way than we were said before those who were rejected come come back as as leaders also the aspects of our lives which we rejected we said we were evan moss by means they they would they they they spurned it they they were just they despised it right those parts of our lives that we we despised peanut they end up becoming you know the the cornerstone of of what we accomplish i want to add one one thing to that even though i know we're going for a long time but everyone's free to leave when they want the uh i was afraid that people are going to hear what i said the wrong way so if someone had a painful experience and they haven't yet converted it's on them so i want to be clear the process the process actually is to surround yourself the only way to go in deep into some of these negative experiences to actually look at the way it affected us which is the only way to heal it is to go right where it is it's not get over it let's go right through it to those most painful experience of our life it's not oh i'm just going to use it as fuel it's going back there seeing really the way it affected us feeling the pain that we couldn't feel at eight nine years old because it was too big then but now we have better capacity too it's only by surrounding ourselves with people who can tolerate that as well who can hold that like hold that pain with us so it's not something to be used as a battering ram against someone else saying oh i heard someone talk about abuse and they used it for something positive so why are you still weeping in the corner no that that person hasn't had someone who sat there with them because we get hurt by people and we heal through people that person hasn't had someone sit with them and who can handle that pain that's what i needed someone who can sit there and not be blown over not when i was when i needed to feel that and once i was able to feel it i didn't need long in it but i needed to be able to feel it and feel the pain fully for a period of time before getting over it quote unquote no one gets over it no one gets over it you go right through it to the deepest parts of it and that happens with i want to say the watchful eye but it happens surrounded by people who can tolerate that level of pain oftentimes people who have experience who've gotten through the other side of theirs so this is not to be used in any way as a battering around someone who has not converted the the painful experiences to fuel in their life is positive it's simply painting a picture on the wall for someone that the way your life began is not the way it needs to end there's hope it doesn't just because someone has gone through painful experiences they're not branded as messed up for the rest of their life quite the contrary it could and should be converted over time and the time that someone needs is the time that someone needs to uh to get there it's not it's it's not on any of us to uh to judge or to paint the timetable it's my only message is one of hope that someone that this could be changed that's all i got i've gotten more fired up in this one than most of my other surprise i could i could get you going again if you want i do this my wife wants me home at some point oh okay fine all right all right we're still senator say okay thanks ali have a great night everybody thanks so much