V’heishiv Live! | והשיב לב - An emotional all star performance at Kesher Nafshi. An MK production

A Gita Voch Birshus אבי מורי Shlita my father came specially Shept Nachas Birshus Harabunim Many years ago as a young man I had a job at an Italian company where I was the only Jewish employee occasionally when a Jewish customer came in and saw me, they would ask what's a nice Jewish boy like you doing in a place like this, I would always answer what the owner of the company jokingly told me when he hired me, Mr Rosenberg we only hired you so that we have someone here to open the business during the secular holidays. [Laughter] so I want to start this evening by asking the same question, what's a nice Jewish boy like me doing up here on the stage. to answer this question, I'm going to share with you some very personal details of my life, I'll try to be brief, so please bear with me as I've never spoken in public, nor did I tell my life story to a couple hundred people. tonight's story started over 40 years ago, when I was still a young . in search of a Yeshiva for me, my father should be well till the 120 discovered the Manchester Yeshiva in Manchester England under the leadership of Hagaon Hatzadik Reb Yehuda Zev Segal ZT"l I loved it there and I was B"h Very Matzliach one year right after Yom Kippur when the zman ended, I was approached by one of my Chaveirim and he offered me to come join him in Antwerp to spend Sukos at Reb Yankele of Pshevorsk. after getting my parents approval, I took him up on the offer. I had such an amazing experience there, I spent the entire Sukos by Reb Yankele, I didn't miss a single Tish, it was like being in Gen Eden. when yom tov was over I went to get a Bracha from the Rebbe, and I headed back to Manchester to begin the new Zman at the Yeshiva. as soon as I arrived back at the Yeshiva I saw that something wasn't the same, something happened where I felt like I was being excommunicated, none of my friends wanted to learn with me anymore, no one wanted me in their dorm room, instead I was given a dorm room all by myself, and I had no clue why this was happening. finally the Bucher that I spent Sukos with an Antwerp informed me about a terrible rumor that was spread in the Yeshiva about me, the rumor was that during Bein Hazmanim I was involved with something terrible that took place in London, and this resulted in everyone keeping away from me, although my friend knew that I was with him in Antwerp the entire Bein Hazmanim and I was never in London, the damage was done and he felt that he was unable to defend me against the entire Yeshiva. so I stayed on a bit longer until I realized that this just wasn't working, and I decided to head back to New York. I was still hurting from the rejection and pain I experienced back in Manchester, I badly needed to get this pain out of my system and find a way to heal and move on. we know that Hashem works in mysterious ways and he planted the Refua right there in my new environment at this stage while I was still a teenager, new song composition started coming to me through the experiences I was going through in my life and I got real fulfillment of this, it was a healing therapy, but no one other than I knew about this. one Friday night at the Shul Farbrebg while humming a tune quietly to myself, the people around me heard and joined me and were complimenting me how nice of a song it was, hearing that it was my tune they made sure to sing it again and had everyone join. [Shabbos Kodesh] [Applause] looking back, had the others at the shul not embraced my songs to uplift me who knows if I would have been able to recover. the powerful takeaway is how much value a simple positive action can have on a child's life. to me it was through music, but to another child it can be through whatever activity or actions excites and talks to them. to give you the ending of the Manchester Yeshiva story. around 15 years after I returned back from Yeshiva and already a father of several children, my father called me to tell me that I got a letter from Manchester England and I should come by to check it out, so I went to pick it up and I took it home, when I got home I opened up the letter and I started reading what seemed to be a very remorseful person begging for my forgiveness for what he has done to me, he wrote that he was going through something very difficult in his life and he's attributing this pain to what he has done to me, the letter was signed with his name and phone number, I remembered him from Yeshiva but I didn't remember him ever doing anything to hurt me, at the time I read the letter I didn't connect the dots yet but I felt so bad for him that I immediately picked up the phone and I left a message that I received his letter and I have no idea what he's talking about I made it very clear that I'm not mad at him and whatever is making him think that he needs my forgiveness he has nothing to worry about as I'm 100 fully Mochel him, I put down the phone I went back to my daily activity and that was it, it wasn't until a few days later that light bulb went off in my head and I realized that he must have been the creator of the rumor that caused me all the pain in Manchester, although I now knew what his letter was about I decided to just move on and let it go, we're all human and we make mistakes, sometimes our mistakes cause pain to others and even to our own children and we too want to be forgiven, by forgiving others that hurt us we also bring about forgiveness from Hashem to us and we ask Hashem אתה ה׳ לא תכלה רחמך ממני חסדך ואמתך תמיד יצרוני זכר רחמיך ה׳ וחסדיך כי מעולם המה [Music] [זכור] Thank you thank you Reb Isaac Honig A real nostolgic song Reb hershel I give you credit, in 20 which year is it today? its 2023 he says, and still this is a song of Amul. Keep it up [Applause] when being blessed with smart and deep thinking children, they may have questions that we don't have answers to, they may even say things to us that are painful and embarrass us, but the best response is to just listen and remain silent, my learning in Manchester gave me a very strong awareness in Shmiras Halashon and Bein Udom Lchaveiro, because my Rosh Yeshiva made this his life's mission, and he ingrained us with this regularly. one day when I was at a business meeting with a bunch of professionals, one of the people at the meeting got up and tore me to shreds to the point where I was extremely humiliated and embarrassed in front of everyone, talk about trauma huh? but instead of fighting back and reciprocating, I just remained quiet and just said nothing. after leaving this meeting and being so disgraced as I was driving away in my car, the Chazal of Hanelunin V'Einom Olvin came to mind and Hashem rewarded me with the following song [Applause] I'm jumping ahead to around 15 years ago all my boys are BH very musically talented I would like to give a shout out to my dear son Eli [Applause] on the drums at the Shia Kaller band [Applause] our other dear son we call him Heedy, he's actually named after my Rosh Yeshiva Yisroel Yehuda Zev, is one shtick music. starting at a really young age he was doing a lot more than just playing an instrument, he was already writing his own songs at the very young age he's also gifted with a beautiful voice, when he was around 10 years old we started working together at home to record some of my songs, he would play the keyboard and we both shared the microphone to do the singing. when we were approached by by various organizations asking if we would allow him to perform at their events, we always said no as we were concerned that it would distract him from his Yeshiva studies, what a mistake, because this was his passion, but to live and learn that's him [מי האיש] [Applause] at the age of 12, things started to unravel to the point where it was affecting us as parents to understand heedy's needs, we had no training in crisis Chinuch and we were Clueless of how to deal with the situation, so we did all the wrong things hoping it would work and make things better, well we were dead wrong, navigating these waters without proper guidance is like swimming in the ocean all by oneself without a life jacket, it just doesn't work. we were totally lost, and things went from bad to worse we were looking for help and we're ready to do whatever it takes to save our sinking ship, we finally approached our Ruv and he suggested we contact the expert in the field, he sent us to Reb Avi Fishoff [Applause] armed with his phone number we called him right from our car, not even waiting to get home, we had a long conversation about our Matzav, I will never forget the words he told us, he said your child's future is 95% depending on you his parents only five percent is up to him, we were quite surprised to hear that but we decided that we had nothing to lose as anything else we tried failed. so we drove to Flatbush and signed up to his program, we took the training course and immediately we saw things change, training taught us how important it is to improve our relationship with our child and increase the Nafsho Keshura B'Nafsho at every possible opportunity, this is how the name Kesher Nafshi was born, because the better the relationship the more healing it brings and the more healing the more everyone in the family will benefit. that is the one job we were now focused on. we always still need hashem's help as he's the only one that can help us. saying it is easy, but to really believe it takes inner work. so one morning Hashem sent to me a gift while I was outside shoveling the snow and my mind was replaying a Shiur in Emuna I listened to the night the night before, and suddenly I found myself dancing to the tune of [איך גלייב] [Applause] the house we lived in at the time was a few minutes away from the Shul where we used to Daven, I was very involved in the shul there, I was the Gabba, the shamas, The Mikva Yid, the Baal Tfila, and a few other things. we lived in that home for 29 years and when we bought the house it was a very quiet single family home neighborhood. the area became very congested and we weren't happy about it, and neither were our children, we decided to move. Baruch Hashem our house sold and we closed on a new one and we moved to a totally new area. thank you heedy for inspiring us to move we all love our new place and we never look back. around a year later one morning I woke up from a dream. in my dream I asked the question on the Chazal Meshana Makom Meshana Mazal but you don't always see that the Mazal change when people move. in my dream I answered this with a new explanation of the phrase, Meshana Makom doesn't have to mean changing your physical place, rather it could mean to change one's State of Mind your way of thinking to think positive, as they say in Chabad 'Tracht Gut Vet Zein Gut' and by changing your state of mind the Mazal will change. I immediately shared the dream with my wife and she approved my new Pshat I later found that the Rashba says this Pshat ברוך שכוונתי and a few hours later The Following song was born Shmueli Ungar, featured on the album [תתחדש] [Applause] and so it continued I was adding another song and another song to my list of songs, and I would record them as voice notes, some songs I just sang to myself, some I would share with my children, and some even with extended family, and even though we already moved and we were trying to do our best and follow all the training we were still not pleased with the rate of progress like we see by Yaakov Avinu גזירה על המת שתשתכח מן הלב but Yaakov Avinu couldn't forget of his son Yosef and we couldn't we too couldn't stop thinking of our Heedy, what more can we do to comfort him and improve his well-being these thoughts were consuming me, and I was just yearning for the moment we will see success suddenly Hashem sent me the song on the words: והשיב לב אבות על בנים ולב בנים על אבותם these words speak for themselves I don't need to tell you how personal this song is to me, it described the relationship I want, and the relationship I'm waiting to have with my son Heedy. when this happened I felt עד כאן, I just can't let these songs keep coming and not do anything with them, they'll just get lost and forgotten. but these are not songs that were composed for the sake of making a song, these were a part of my being, a part of my life. I wanted to do something about it but I didn't know how. until one Friday as was already mentioned by Reb Moshe Kraus while shopping for Shabbos I found myself in line behind him he's a well-known household name in the music industry, so I went over to him and I told him I have some songs and I want to get them recorded with music so they don't get lost, and I could share them with my family, with friends, he asked me to come to his office after Shabbos which I did, we had an appointment and we started working on the first few songs the process was now started, and the work was being done, after several weeks I received the recordings, and I was ready to send him the next batch of songs for development. but Reb Moshe tells me no, we need to talk. he started explaining to me that these are not the types of songs he normally works with, they're different, he said he feels something in every song and he went on and on. so I asked him now what. he responded I'm telling you the world needs to hear this, you can't keep this to yourself, do you know how many people you'll inspire. I was still on the fence thinking to myself who's interested in my songs, and putting out an album is not the same as singing my tune in Shul. but after thinking a lot about it we discussed it at home, I went back to Reb Moshe and i told him that I think I'm gonna go for it. I thought about it, and how music is a Common Language Heedy and I both love and speak, I remembered back how we recorded the songs in our home and thought to myself, perhaps I'll be able to start a dialogue with him on this topic. so we started working on it, we went back and forth on which songs to put on the album, which arranges, which singers, as we were in the process of producing this album, something unbelievable happened. my son Heedy, who in essence was the final deciding factor for me to jump into this project. suddenly started talking to me, asking me about the album process, giving input on the songs, and from there just wanting to talk to me, he just wanted to spend time with me, I was so excited to see this improvement in our relationship, and I attributed this to the new project we undertook. Ad Kdei Kach, that when we were in the completion of the album which took us three years, and guess what happened, my son Heedy is singing on the album on the song V'heishiv together with Beri Weber [Applause] זה שכרי מכל עמלי this project as I said was a three-year project and the feedback is unimaginable, and it was well worth the effort. I must give a big thank you to Reb Moshe Kraus from MK productions [Applause] for being responsible to the Smashing success of the Tischadeish [Applause] I've been volunteering the past few years for Kesher Nafshi, before every Shabbaton they would ask me to be the MC of the Melava malka, and I always turned it down, I tried doing the same thing this time, but this time they didn't work on their own, they brought me to the Krule rabba in Williamsburg for a meeting the Rebbe strongly encouraged me to share my story with all of you so that others can get Chizuk and see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. but I expressed my concern to the Rebbe, that Heedy might not like the fact that I'm sharing the story in public, the Rebbe responded you will see not only will you be there but by the time Motzei Shabbos Vayigash comes your son will be on stage together with you in Stamford CT [Applause] it all sounded great, but I know my Heedy. I thought it was a big of a it's a big of a stretch no? however, here we are in Connecticut, Motzei Shabbos Vayigash and I have the honor, the privilege, and the pride, to present to you live, Beri Weber with my beloved, talented, dear son, Heedy to sing the song V'heishiv [Applause] [והשיב] [Applause] an MK Production