Bamidbar - Ask Not What Hashem Can Do For You But What You Can Do For Hashem

2:24 And if I allow somebody to trample on me, then I don't have that strong sense of self. So obviously, the Gemara needs to be understood in a deeper way. There's another Medrash in Vayikra Rabbah that explains the pasuk "Bi'om chasunaso v'yom simchas libo." On the day of your chasuna, on the day of the simcha, the rejoicing of your heart. So the Medrash explains "Bi'om chasunaso zimud b'sinai." The giving of the Torah at Har Sinai is considered a wedding. It's considered a wedding. We also see the Mechilta in Yisro, says the same idea. Says kechoson zeh who goes out and gets into a car accident. Some have the minhag. That the chasson will be under the chuppah, the kallah will be walking down the aisle. I think by Svardim they for sure do this. And the chasson goes out to greet the kallah. A very beautiful minig. Maybe it comes from here. So this is a very big deal in this medrash, these medrashim. And you find, by the way, many others. I'm only quoting two. There's probably twenty on this idea. I think I wrote a piece on it once. There's like many, many makaros.

3:52 This idea is so important because it transforms the way we see religion. For many of us growing up, religion is a set of do's and don'ts. It's a set of laws. It's something that we're meant to follow, that we're born into. A good girl is somebody who follows the rules. A bad girl is somebody who doesn't follow the rules. This is the way that, for many of us, the way we grow up. And it's not true. It's very wrong. It's a dangerous belief. Yiddishkeit is not a religion in the classic sense of the word, the way that we think about it. It's a relationship. You're not a good wife if you follow the rules of the relationship. What are you? You're a loving wife. You're a wife who's listened to the needs, the desires, the boundaries that your husband has set up in the relationship, and that's what it means to be a loving person, and vice versa, of course.

4:51 A loving husband is someone who listens to your needs, who creates space for you. It's not a small thing. Men and women have very, very different needs. And when I was explaining to the boys yesterday, we had this long she'er on this idea. So I said, guys, you have to understand there are words that women use that probably many of you have not used. So one of the boys said, Rabbi, what's an example of that? So I said. Did you know that many women have a strong need to feel safe in a relationship? And some of you just now did this as I spoke. And I want you to know that not one of them understood that. Relax, it's going to be. I taught them. Now we get the Toma Devora murmuring of how am I ever going to find a husband? It's. They have the same question about you. So.

5:49 Rightfully, one of the boys said, 'Who do they need to feel safe from? Who's attacking them?' That's so cute. I'm so glad you said that's adorable. You have a good chance. If you find that cute, there's a lot of hope. But girls, also, you probably don't know that men also have something that looks like feelings, and they also have words, and it's it's a fascinating thing to see a couple try to learn to live with each other. It's a very beautiful thing, to see a couple in shana rishayna, and as I heard many years ago from Rav Nachor Lubchliner. That shaner rishona today is three to five years. That's what he said, 15 years ago. Today, this I don't know. Maybe it's a decade or two. The notion that we have a man who comes into a marriage and says, "I'm curious to know what it looks like to be in a relationship with you," is a very beautiful thing. A punk yesterday gave this shir to the boys, trying to help them understand.

7:16 What it looks like in a marriage to be married to your half of the species. This morning at 4:10 in the morning, one of the Mivasaad alumni messaged me to share with me that the best advice he's ever gotten was to validate his wife, just to validate and listen to her experience. He told me a whole masech. I have permission to play the voice message. I'm not going to play the whole voice message. He mentioned to his wife that his brother has non-dairy creamer in the house, and I don't know somehow he thought that was like a cool thing to mention. I don't know exactly what the context was, and his wife got very upset because apparently they have non-dairy creamer in the house and she drinks it with her coffee every single day. This was some sort of trigger, some sort of something for her. There was something explosive inside. Like you don't pay attention to me. Like you know how we start narrating things.

8:12 And there's a story behind the non-dairy creamer. The guy, just this poor guy, thought he was making a comment about his brother's non-dairy creamer. Now it's like you don't love me, you don't pay attention to me, you're not really curious about what I need in a relationship, you never liked my mother, and it's like the whole thing. It's a very beautiful thing to see two people learn to live with each other. There's a lot of bumps in the road. There's a lot of hard things. There's a lot of good things. But chas v'shalom for a couple to ever say, "I'm a good husband. I follow all your rules." It's a funny thing. Covering your mouth is the right reaction. It's a strange habit, but I think it's okay.

9:05 Could you imagine a husband and a wife who sit down in a therapist's office, and the husband goes, 'She made all these rules in the relationship. I do every one of them. I take out the garbage. I do the dishes twice a week. I help the kids get off.' And the wife is sitting there going, 'I don't know what you're talking about. What does that mean?' We don't have religion in the sense that we come after 120. Unfortunately, many of us grew up with this. It's a muscle. We took it very seriously. We're like, there's a scale. It's a marshal. We took it seriously. It's a marshal. You understand? We grew up with the idea that there's a scale, that there's a judge, that all of your good stuff that you did goes on one side of the scale. And all the bad stuff goes on the other side of your scale. We all know how the story goes.

10:02 All your bad stuff was really winning, and you were about to go to Gehenna. But that one time you saved somebody on the horse from that story, what the Balshemtov jumps on the other side of the scale, and so now all of a sudden Baruch Hashem, you get to go to Gan Eden. You heard that story when you were eight, and unfortunately, that's for many of us still the perspective that we have at eighteen. It's a mashal; it's meant to teach us an idea. But Chas Shalom for a person to sit around and go. So good! I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get like good reward, right? Like I'm gonna get like my palaces in Shamayim are gonna be amazing. Like that's a very childish notion. Schar mitzvah means that the reward of the commandment is the commandment itself. If my wife says to me, 'I want you to do something', I will do it. If she says to me, 'I don't want you to do something', I will not do it. If she wants to know why, I can explain. The reason I said 'no' is because I didn't want to say 'yes' to anything that would make her feel like she had to give up her dreams. And if she said, 'I don't want to talk about this anymore.'

10:57 And this is what it looks like to participate in the relationship, and the relationship is a rewarding thing to be a part of. So when Chazal say 'biyom chasun nasso zu midbarsina,' that Hakadosh Baruch Hu came out to greet us like a chassan greets a kallah, it's reframing the entire way that we look at Yiddishkeit. It's not a religion; it's a relationship, and that means that we have to look at it through the perspective, through the prism of a relationship. And so I'd like to share with you today a vart from the Kutzker Rebbe. And this vart, I think, specifically in our generation, is a vart that we need to say over. You'll forgive me; it's a little bit of a Kutzker vart. For those of you that know what that means, the Kutzker was a sharp critic, and we're going to say some uncomfortable things tonight.

11:50 But I'm saying that not because I don't believe in anyone here. I'm saying, other Rebbe, I'm saying you're all amazing, and with Hashem we're going to do it better than the last generation did. So I'm sharing these things with you because I want you to understand that there's something that we've lost out on. First, let me say the Kutzker verse, and then I'll tell you what's bothering me. Kutzker Rebbe says that when a couple stands under the chuppah. The choson says to the kala, harayat mekudeshes li, betabas zo kadosh moshe v'yisrael. That's the line you're supposed to say. Harayat mekudeshes. The guy has to say it. Harayat mekudeshes li, betabas zo kadosh moshe v'yisrael. Which means you are mekudeshes, you are betrothed, you are designated for me. Betabas zo with this ring. The husband puts a little ring on your finger, a simple ring.

12:45 Kedas Moshe and Yisrael according to the laws of Moshe and Yisrael. The Katsker Rebbe says, if a person gets under the chuppah and he says Harei At Mikudeshes, and he says it with all the kavanas in the world, Harei At Mikudeshes, he says it ten thousand times, Harei At Mikudeshes. If he doesn't say the word Li, nothing has happened. Harei At Mikudeshes, you've done nothing. You have to say the word Li. What did he mean? So he said as follows: The Katsker said there are a lot of people that talk about haray at. They talk a lot about Hashem. They talk a lot. They learn philosophy. They know the rules. They know the law. They know the philosophy. They're not sure what they're doing. They know all the rules but they don't know how to apply them. They can recite the rules but they can't connect the dots between the rules and their actual behavior. They might be able to solve a problem on paper, but when it comes to applying those principles to real life, they struggle to see the connection between theory and practice.

13:43 If a chassan doesn't talk about li, if he doesn't talk about his obligations, his responsibilities in the relationship, you're not married. If a chassan gets under the chuppah and he says haray at mikudeshes, he's talking about you. What are you contributing to the relationship? Where's the li? Where's your sense of obligation, responsibility? Where's your sense of grit? Where's your sense of resilience? Where's your sense of putting somebody else's needs before your own? Are you there in sickness and in health? Are you there till death do us part? To be a li in the relationship, to say haray at mekudashim li means I'm not talking about what you did in the relationship. You're in the relationship. I'm talking about what I bring to this relationship and this.

14:43 Leads me a little bit to my rant for tonight. Something that's been bothering me a little bit. There's a term that was used on social media. I like this term very much. This idea of market orthodox Judaism. Market orthodox Judaism is where we turn everything in Yiddishkeit into an opportunity to make money. Everything becomes an opportunity to make money. Today you go on a Pesach program. Thousands of dollars. Your matzah could be the mahadrian, man. The matzo is the best. It's not about the price. It's about the value. The value of the product is going up, and the product is becoming more expensive. So it's not just about the price but also about the quality of the product.

15:40 Because they know Jews are going to pay it. We can come up with anything now, and we know it's going to sell. My brother, he's hysterically funny. All he does is spend his time thinking about ridiculous inventions for Jews because he knows that they'll spend money. So he'll randomly turn to me if we're at a family simcha, and he'll go, he'll just look at me and he goes, three bladed challah knife. I go, what? And he goes, well, think about it. You have guests over. Cutting a lot of chala. What if a chala didn't have one blade? What if it had three? Not bad. So that's actually inspired. Do you see what just happened? That is a ridiculous idea. You saved yourself about seven seconds, but my brother knows that if he does it, he doesn't.

16:38 He just in his head comes up with these things, and sometimes every once in a while you'll see one of these inventions for market Orthodox Judaism, and I'll send it to my brother, and my brother will send it to me. I'll be like, "It's you. I know it's you. I know you're the person behind this." I saw. I'm not saying it's not a good thing. It's a funny thing. It's a cute thing. I saw that now in certain Jewish stores they sell tins to heat up your food on Shabbos. That the tin is a regular tin, except in the middle there's a little like a protuberance up. So that you can put the tin on the crock pot on Shabbos, and it like fits on the top of the crock pot because you know how we all do that balancing act on top of the crock pot, right? So like this, they made crock pot tins for juice. That's a real thing. And there are a million things like this. They sell sweaters for the yeshivishav boys don't want to like pull the sweater over their tefillin when they're putting tefillin on in the morning, so they have sweaters with zippers on them now.

17:37 They were selling in the time when America, when they were like protect your shoes. I saw they were selling frocks with holsters for guns. Baruch Hashem, we have turned. Baruch Shem, Baruch Hashem, we've turned our Yiddishkeit into a way that we can make a tremendous amount of money, and it wouldn't bother me. I'll tell you the truth, it wouldn't bother me. If it was just a question of like, so a couple yen, they're going to make a couple of bucks off of another couple yen. Say they're fine, wouldn't bother me. I'll tell you why it bothers me. Because it seeped into Judaism itself. Because we live now with the notion of consumer Judaism. You are the consumers, and I'll tell you what I am. You want to know what I am? I'm the little clown that gets up here every week and says.

18:27 I know how to make it a popular shir and Toma Devora. I know how to make sure that we all cram into this room with no AC and we're all sweating. I know how to keep the girls in the back engaged, even though they don't think I don't see. I don't know why they don't think I see. Twenty feet. They're on their phones. They're not on their phones. They are on their phones. They're not on their phones. I know how to do the whole thing to get everyone joking around. That they go, "I'm going to go to Berg's class." I know how to do it. Here's what I do. I get up here, I do my little pitch, my little sales pitch, and the girls come. And afterwards, they go, "I didn't like what he said last week. Or I did like what he said." And you do your little thing, and I'll tell you what's really sick about this. I am the salesman in this distorted universe, and you are the people that are buying the product. So we get up here. This is what we do. It's wrong. We get up here and we say, "Girls, this is why you should lead a Jewish life." I'm selling a great product. I'm selling Judaism. This is why, girls. Do you know what a Shabbos table could be like?

19:24 Do you know what it's like to be a Jewish mother? Do you know what it's like to be a leader in the Jewish community? To be a Jewish woman leading the Jewish community? I'll get up here every week and I'll sell my wares, and you know we'll have some success. Even about thirty percent of you will take it super seriously. It'll be something you take with you for the rest of your life. Another thirty percent of you will say that was good. A level of inspiration. Another thirty percent of you will walk out. Another ten percent of you didn't even know that I was giving the pitch because you were on the phone the entire time. But say there, we have a hundred. We understand. This is what it is, right? And the pitch, by the way, the pitch is beautiful. We get up here and we quote, misquote the Amchal, and we say it's a misquote. We misquote the Amchal and we say, "Kadosh Baruch Hu created the world."

20:12 To bestow goodness upon you, what type of goodness? You've heard the shmooz before this year. The greatest goodness possible. And what is the greatest goodness possible? The greatest goodness is God. So God created you to give you the ultimate pleasure, which is to say, to give Himself to you. Aren't you lucky? You were created to get the best stuff, and you, the consumer, either go like this:, I'll buy that. I'd like to have a good life. Or some of you go sure maybe and some of you go actually I got better stuff you know there's a place not that far from here a forest I'm sure you don't know about it there's a forest like five minutes up you could hang out in that forest and there's better stuff than the greatest goodness that Hakadosh Baruch Hu has to offer and if you go even a little bit farther up there's a shuk where they sell fruits and vegetables marzipan is there from what I understand and some people like to hang out in the shuk.

21:06 Of course, in the morning, not at night. Depends what it means by morning, right? It's three o'clock in the morning called morning. We all have our own definitions of what morning is. Welcome back. Thank you for the pitch. I'll be here all week doing stand up. So now, it's consumer Judaism, and I, the rabbi, am the one who is going to do this. Okay, let me check the time. Let me think. Well, if you want to get into the habit of thinking about it, that's fine. But if you are trying to be a good person, then you should know that you have to do something about it. So, it's consumer Judaism, and I, the rabbi, am the great salesman. That's wrong. That's the wrong thing. If this is a relationship. And you are saying harei at mekudeshas li to Hakadosh baruch hu. You're the caller, Hakadosh baruch hu is the chassan. You're receiving, but you have to have just like your chassan says to you harei mekudeshas li. In a certain sense, you also have to say li. You have to say not what do I take out of this religion, what do I give, what am I here to make a difference or am I just here to eat? Am I just here to take and take? And what does Judaism have to offer me?

22:01 I'll tell you. I'll tell you. There was an article that came out in Corona. It was a brilliant article. It was by a rabbi in I don't want to say where, but somewhere in New York. I don't know if he. He wrote it publicly. I could say it, but I don't want to say it. And people were saying, why should I pay membership if the shul is closed? Shul is closed, Corona. Nobody's going to shul. Why am I still being charged my hundred fifty dollars a month or whatever membership is? Why am I being charged that if I'm not going to shul? So this rabbi wrote a scathing article, and he was a hundred percent right. And he knew he was right because it upset people. The article was: Are you an investor or are you a consumer? If you're an investor in a business and now the business hit COVID and hit hard times, what does an investor do? An investor goes, what do we do to keep this business alive? But if you're a consumer, you don't have any loyalty to the business. It's a brilliant article to write. If a restaurant is open, I don't know, in the Five Towns, and now it's COVID.

22:59 Are we all going to get together and say let's all donate 150 dollars a month to what's the restaurant in the Five Towns? It was such a silly question. Why did I even bother asking that question? There's a zillion restaurants. Pizza La, where Sabras used to be all of Ashkelon, King David, And we're all going to get together in the Five Towns. We're all going to have a campaign. We're going to have a we're going to have a thrive drive. For Thrive Drive for Pizza Lo, right? And Miss Block is going to raise ten thousand dollars for you, Of course not. We don't have any loyalty to Pizza Lo. We're consumers of Pizza Lo, and if Pizza Lo closes down, ten more pizza stores will open up in its spot. But if a shul shuts down, and your and you, it's your shul. It's your shul. Are you saying like, but Seder? I don't need that shul right now. I have the backyard minion. That means that your relationship with that shul was as a consumer. There was a harei at mikudeshes, but there was no li. There was no sense of contribution. You know what we should be getting up here and saying? Instead of sitting here and telling you how amazing Judaism is, we should say the following: You were born with a Jewish soul. That is a gift.

24:20 But it is also a responsibility. It comes with obligations. You are a participant in a five thousand year tradition, say close to six thousand year tradition, of making this world a better place. It means, as part of your responsibilities, you have to pass it on to the next generation. So you better know what it says, so that you could pass it on. It means that you daven. That there's time for reflection and imagination of what the world ought to look like every single day. Because if we don't have good thoughts to orient us in our life, we don't know what we're going to build. Chas v'shalom. It means that there's a value of limurat Torah. You don't have to kill everything that flies. I promise you. It's just a thing. A bee, I understand. A moth, I understand less. Girls, there's a value here in knowing.

25:13 You have a contribution to make. We can't compete with them. If I can't compete with a moth, we have to ask ourselves what's really the value of being here. I want to share with you a story. It's a very intense story, though. I just heard it for the first time today. Some of you may have heard it before, but it's a story that we don't tell. It's a story that we don't pay attention to. In 2023, because we say it's not a story that makes people feel good, but you know what? This the way Jews lived for thousands of years, and I share it with you tonight because this what it means to be makabel the Torah. I think Rabbi, if I'm not mistaken, Rabbi Stelzer wrote a book on Rabbi Yosef Wallace. Is that true? Incredible. What's called? So I just read this story that Rabbi Yosef Wallace.

26:11 Who was the director of Harachim in Eretz Israel? He owns a ksuva that was written by the Kleizenberger Rebbe. It's his parents' ksuva. Rabbi Wallace's parents' ksuva was written by the Kleizenberger Rebbe, and Rabbi Wallace said, "This is the story of that ksuva." It's incredible, handwritten ksuva from the Kleizenberger Rebbe. Today when you get a ksuva by your wedding, it's going to be a standard ksuva. I probably buy a couple bucks in eyeglasses. It's not a big deal. This was a handwritten suda by the Klusenberger Rebbe. Rabbi Wallace's father was in Dacha, and there was a Jew who was being taken to his death. And as he was walking to his death, he had a small bag, and he threw it to Judah Wallace, Rabbi Wallace's father.

27:02 And Judah Wallace catches the bag, thinking that there's bread in it. The person is throwing him whatever bread he had left before he goes to die, so that this next Jew's life could be saved. He grabs the bag, catches the bag, opens it, and discovers that inside of the bag is a pair of tefillin. He becomes very afraid, because if you're caught with tefillin and dachau, you're going to be killed instantaneously. He hid the tefillin under his shirt. He goes to his bunkhouse and hides the tefillin to make sure that he wouldn't be caught. In the morning, right before roll call, the Nazis had roll call every morning to make sure everybody was there. Right before roll call, he decided to put on the tefillin. He's in the bunkhouse and puts on his tefillin. And one of the Nazis, he machshemum. Walked into the bunkhouse and he sees Judah Wallace wearing a pair of tefillin. So he tells him to take off the tefillin. Looks at his number, writes down his number, and comes to the roll call, and everybody's there. And the officer calls Judah's number, tells him to step forward. He's holding the tefillin. The Nazi says to Judah Wallace, "Dog."

28:30 I sentence you to death for wearing these tefillin. And he was put on a stool, and a noose was hung around his neck. Okay, let me think. So, the main idea is that we need to make sure that all of the text is in English. Right. Yeah, I think that's the key point. And he was put on a stool, and a noose was hung around his neck. And right before he was going to be hung, the officer, in a mocking tone, said to him, "Dog, what is your last wish on this earth before I kick the stool out from underneath you?" And Judah Wallace responded. I want to wear those tefillin one last time, and the officer was dumbfounded. He was shocked, and in his shock, he hands Judah Wallace the bag of tefillin. And as Judah puts on the tefillin, he said the pasuk that we say every morning when we put on tefillin: "They're astichli liolam, they're astichli betzedek of a mishpat of a chesed of a rachamin, they're astichli beemuna, v'yadases Hashem."

29:26 Which means I'll betroth you to me forever, and I'll betroth you to me with righteousness and with justice and with kindness and with mercy, with fidelity, and you shall know Hashem. The entire camp was watching; everybody was watching this. And there women in the adjoining camp. There women in the adjoining camp. They were all lined up, and they were looking at the fence. They like look over. They were all looking at the fence as Judah Wallis stands there. With a stool under his feet, with a noose around his neck, and he's wearing tefillin, and he's reciting this pasuk, the astichali. And he sees, he looks out, and he sees everybody's silent, and he sees that people are crying, that people are moved to tears, and he didn't think people had any tears left. So he calls out in Yiddish, "Yiden, I am the victor."

30:26 Don't you understand? We're winning, and they're losing. The fact that you could still cry for another Jew, the fact that we're still putting on tefillin, the fact that we still yearn for Hashem—we're winning, and they're losing. And the German, this officer who hung the noose around his neck, he understood Yiddish. Yiddish is more or less German, so he understood what Judah Wallis said, and he was infuriated. And he said, "Death by hanging is too good for you." And he cut him down. And he took him, and he put him in a squatting position, and he gave him two huge rocks to hold. And he said that he would give him twenty-five lashes to his head, on the spot where he put on tefillah, and he was going to whip him twenty-five times. And the officer said, "If you drop even one of these rocks," I'm going to shoot you on the spot. You have to hold these rocks while I whip you. But the officer advised him. He said, "I advise you to drop one of the rocks and just get shot, because the way that I'm going to kill you—whipping you to death on your head on the maqam at tefillin—whipping you to death is going to be much more painful." And Judah said to him, "I won't give you the pleasure."

31:56 He's holding the rocks. The Nazi pulls out his whip, and he begins to whip him on the head. One lash, then another, and on the twenty-fifth lash, Judah Wallace crumples to the ground and loses consciousness. And the Nazi thinks that he's dead, but the truth of the matter is, in a miraculous way, he was only unconscious, and he's going to be dragged now to be with all the rest of the corpses, and we know what happens to the corpses. The corpses go to be burned. And the yid who's dragging him realizes that he's not dead. He's just a kid. He's like, I mean, it's not like we're going to have to do this again. So, the point is, you can't really get around it. You either make it or you don't. That's just how it works. Yeah, I think that's right. He's just a kid. He's like, I mean, it's not like we're going to have to do this again. So, the point is, you can't really get around it. You either make it or you don't. That's just how it works. Yeah, I think that's right.

32:52 You know how, like some, remember when you were in camp, like the bunks, some of them are like raised a little bit. So he crawls underneath the bunkhouse. There's a crawl space where he could crawl underneath the bunkhouse because it was raised on piles, and he hid there until he was fully recovered, and then two months later he was liberated. He was liberated, went free. Unbeknownst to Judah Wallace, at the time that he was being Hung, being beaten with that whip. At the time when he got up and said, "Yiddin, we are winning," it was a 17-year-old girl who was watching, was standing at the fence, holding on to the fence, watching this scene. And now, after liberation, she finds herself in the same DP camp as Judah Wallace. And she goes over to Judah Wallace, and this is what she says to him: "I've lost everyone. I don't want to be alone anymore."

33:53 I saw what you did and what you said to the officer on that day. Will you marry me? Rabbi Wallace, telling over the story, said, "My parents walked over to the Klaysenberg Rebbe and requested that he perform the marriage. The Klaysenberg Rebbe wrote out the Ksuvah by hand from memory." And he married the couple. And Rabbi Wallace, holding on to the ksuva that the Klezenberger Rebbe wrote, told over the story of that ksuva that his mother, as a girl of 17 years old, saw that yid Judah Wallace on that day. Hare at mekudeshes li, veirasticha li laolam. What does it? What makes a person say in their final moments? I'd like to put on tefillin again. What makes a person say I want to wrap tefillin? It's because a yid is raised to know it's not what Hakadosh Baruch Hu can do for us; it's what we can do for Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And I've got news for you: if we would raise our children this way, what I'm saying now is much more inspiring than anything that any rebbe has ever told you. Because if a rebbe comes here and he says, 'Do you know how awesome Judaism is?' He's not wrong.

35:22 But it's very hard to tell a sixteen-year-old girl, a seventeen-year-old girl, to put down whatever it is that she has in front of her and to do something for something larger than herself. It's a hard thing to do. But the truth of the matter is that when we become adults, if somebody comes to you and says, 'Forget what you're going to get from this. What are you going to contribute to?' When you get older and more mature, you realize that's the real deal. Imagine if somebody Chassid Shalom has children. And they say, 'What are my kids going to do for me?' One girl in the audience—I won't tell you which one. One girl right now, as I said that, she's going like this. Combine short, choppy sentences into fluid sentences. Fix punctuation errors to ensure grammatical correctness. Preserve original vocabulary, keep the same language. One example: Input: "para el mercado, I think 很好" → Output: "para el mercado, I think 很好".

36:21 If you're a wife and you're sitting there going, "What has my husband done for me lately? What have you done for him?" It's not about walking on the other side of the street and saying, "What am I getting from this? What am I getting from this relationship?" Really, what are you getting from this relationship? What are you giving to this relationship? Are you ownerless? Are you hefker? Hefker doesn't mean I'm blowing in the wind. Being trampled on doesn't mean that people get to walk all over you. It means it's not about me. That I show up to a relationship as an open space, and I say, "Here, this space that I made is for you." Torah was given in the Midbar because Hakadosh Baruch Hu is saying to us that if we want to participate, not in the religion, but in the relationship of Judaism, then the question we have to ask ourselves is, "Is this about me or is this about God? Am I hefker?"

37:14 Am I really open to receiving Hakadosh Baruch Hu, or is there my own gaiva, my own ego saying this is what I demand in a relationship? We had this in yeshiva. We had a shabbaton in Bnei Brak, and one of the boys wasn't going to go on the shabbaton, and he went to the rasha yeshiva and he said to the rasha yeshiva, "He's a wonderful boy. He's a beautiful boy. He's an amazing boy. I think this boy is going to be a huge vantir. He's already a huge vantir." But he said to the rasha yeshiva, "Tell me what's in Bnei Brak this Shabbos." And the rasha yeshiva let loose on him. Let loose on him. He goes, no, I don't have to sell you on Bnei Brak. I'm not selling you on what the yeshiva has to offer. You're a talmud in our yeshiva. The question is, what does our yeshiva look like without you? That's good chinuch. Good chinuch means, and we used to say this: John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Shemirachim, John F. Kennedy.

38:09 Got up there and he said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." Tell me, girls, when's the last time somebody spoke like that? Today we get up and we say a president runs for office and he says, "This what I'm going to do for you. Vote for me because this what I'm going to do for you." You know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see somebody get up and run for the president of the United States and go, "You know what? There are some hard times ahead. We're going to do our best. We're going to manage, but there are issues. There are supply chain issues in the world now because we're still living in a post-COVID era." There's racism that we have to defeat. There's inequality of opportunity that we have to look to fix. So I'm turning to you and I'm saying, let's do this together. What will you do to make our country a better place? Of course, people don't talk like that anymore because we live in a consumeristic culture and we made our Yiddishkeit consumeristic. Instead of being hefker, we turn. We say, what does Judaism have to do with me? There's a story from Emanuel Feldman. Anyone here from Atlanta?

39:04 Emmanuel Feldman was the founding rabbi in Atlanta. He built a huge Jewish community in Atlanta. He wrote a book, an amazing book. Everybody should read the book. It's called Tales Out of Shul. Ever read that book, Tales Out of Shul? It's a must-read. If we don't have it on the shelves, somebody go to this farm store and buy Tales Out of Shul, and put it here on this shelf. Write your name in it, dedicated to anyone who reads this book. This is a wonderful sefer. Anyone who reads this book should have siyata d'shemayim. The Yiddish guy. It's a beautiful book. In that book, he talks about what it was like to be a rabbi. Building the community of Atlanta when it wasn't an Orthodox community, and a woman came to him and she said to him, "Rabbi, you told me that after my mother was niftaros, I have to sit shiva, but I have with you, Rabbi, I'm not enjoying this shiva very much." And he wrote an article in the book called "I'm Not Enjoying This Shiva Very Much." And while that sounds absurd, and some of you just looked at me and said, "Like you're not supposed to enjoy shiva, right?"

40:03 I'm not enjoying this shiva very much. Has become in a certain way a trend in Judaism today. I don't know. It's just like Shabbos is boring. So what are you doing to make Shabbos meaningful to you? Like what? Like what are you doing to make Shabbos meaningful to you? What are you contributing to Shabbos? Do we have to sell people on Shabbos? And we do. We sell people on Shabbos. We're like. It's a beautiful time to turn off your phone. As if, like before phones, there was no reason for Shabbos. It's good family time. Girls, gayim also have good family time. That's not what Shabbos is about. There has to be something godly about Shabbos, and there has to be something that people submit themselves to if we want to make Shabbos an inspiring day. We have to teach the Torah that's going to inspire these boys and girls. We have to teach them the things that are relevant.

40:57 Maybe we have to teach them the things that are not as relevant, and we have to tell them this too is Hashem's Torah, and there's infinite lessons to be learned from everything. Maybe that's the mahalach that we should have. We go against the grain in a consumerist culture. We should be the ones to stand up and say, "Of course, Yiddishkeit has so much to offer, but let's start off by saying, what are we sacrificing ourselves to? That would be a much healthier way of giving over Torah to the next generation." I say this not to bash. I say this because I'm sitting in a room full of babis. I'm sitting in a room full of grandmothers. You think you're 18 years old? In my mind, you're already 85, and you've raised Baruch Hashem a wonderful family, generations. Amen. And what's the lesson you're going to teach your kids? My wife, she tells me, she's like, I have so much to teach.

41:53 But sometimes I come to class, and if I put a text in front of the girls, you see them just—you know, there's such a thing called breaking your teeth over something. There's such a thing as dedication and learning how to read and learning how to translate. Because in your life, you might want to be a Yoda of Sefer. You might want to say to your kids, "Let's learn something together." That's a beautiful thing. It requires sacrifice. We run in life to take the next step. We sometimes don't ask ourselves, maybe we should slow down and ask myself, what am I dedicating myself to? Mrs. Trenk asked me today to mention the idea of turning your phones in to kick it off, because apparently after this there's an opportunity to hand your phones in. I'll be honest with you, I prepared this year way before she told me, and one had nothing to do with the other. There's a lot of good that can be done with technology. And I try not to be the Rebbe that gets up here and bashes technology. I think it's not necessarily the most nuanced way of speaking. I want to share with you a thing that comes from the phones. It comes from the phones, for sure. Comes from the phones, and it's not the thing you'd expect. For sure, we can talk about the wasted time. We can talk about the hours on YouTube Shorts of just.

43:24 Scrolling, for sure we could talk about what's on Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, and swiping left and swiping right, and what it does to a culture of people that have been swipe left. We could talk about these things. There's a lot to talk about. The you girls don't need me to tell you that this device comes with, with obvious impurities in the world. But there's something else that comes with this device. And what comes with it is a culture. There's a culture that's here. You're being fed stuff. I hope you understand that. People make not just a little bit of money. People make billions and hundreds of billions of dollars selling you. You're being sold through this device. There's a culture. If a person goes on Twitter and they follow certain things, certain people, certain voices, then they live within the echo chamber of those voices. There's a culture. People develop ideas. Today I'm having fights with guys.

44:24 About certain hashkafic things that 15 years ago every guy in yeshiva said that's crazy, and today it's not crazy. What changed? There's a culture out there in the world, and we, instead of being what we're called upon to be, which is an orlah goyim, instead of Jews standing up and saying, 'Let us teach you what it looks like to be in a godly world,' unfortunately, let's sayenu, so many of us have had the exact opposite experience, that now we're sitting there and judging. God's infinite word against the word of some yokel on CNN who has some ashkafa. And lest you think that yokel on CNN has half a brain, I want to share with you that if you would have turned on CNN last week, you would have thought that every one of you was a murderer. You're in Israel, in a parthied state designed to murder every single Arab. That's what they say about us girls. That's out there in the culture.

45:23 We're evil to the world. You go on social media, type in Israel. I promise you, it's not good. It's far from good. And I am on social media. I am on Twitter. I see these things. For many years, I ran one of the largest Twitter accounts that had to do with Israeli Hasbara, an organization called United with Israel. Over fifty-four thousand followers, followed by the Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, followed that account. And on a daily basis, I would be called a Zionist. This is not a culture that we believe in, but sadly, it's been a culture that has impacted many of us. And the culture that I'm talking about now is not a culture of moral values. I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about a culture of narcissism. I'm talking about a culture of consumerism. I'm talking about a culture that tells you that your value is as a consumer. That what you bring to the table is the dollars that you're going to spend on something.

46:17 Buy this new skirt. Buy this new car. Get this new piece of technology because you need it. That's your value to them. You're the consumer, and it's infected our community like a plague. It's infected the community. You look everywhere and you see it. We're living in a consumerist culture, from the market Orthodox Judaism that we spoke about in the beginning, to unfortunately the fact that most of us today are saying not what we can do for Hakadosh Baruch Hu, but what can Hakadosh Baruch Hu do for me. Rabbi, I davened and I did what Hashem wanted. How come He didn't give me what I wanted? God is not a vending machine. Good Rabbi, I put in my 75 cents. How come I didn't get my bag of chips? I shuddered like I was having a seizure. I closed my eyes. I was so frum. I held my sitter up to my face so that all the makeup that I had on right before that date, I put it all on. I was like swaying like this, and somehow you hold your elbow. I'm still not sure why you hold your elbow.

47:14 And Rabbi, trust me, I was there. I was by the mechitza of Camp Ask, and all the boys were like seeing, like how hard I was struggling. How come I didn't get what I wanted? How come I didn't get what I wanted? I'm not saying it's not an important question. I'm not saying that the question of why didn't Hakadosh Baruch Hu answer our tefillos is not an important question. But that's not what necessarily tefillah is about. Tefillah is about saying, "Al Kiddush Baruch Hu, give me tools so that I can build a better world for you, so that I can build a more godly world." Not a world where it's "have, give me," like a dog in Yiddishkeit. It doesn't say "bow, wow." In Yiddishkeit, the dog says "have." "Have" means give. A dog in our society goes "give me." And are we doing that? Are we doing that? It's sometimes my daughters laugh. My daughters.

48:05 Go to a seminary that has significantly less than you have here in Tomer Devorah, and Baruch Hashem you have amazing food and you have beautiful beis medrash and my daughters go to Ophakim, their teachers are like ninety years old, some of their rabbis and I'm convinced we're at Matan Torah itself. They report this is what I heard from Moshe Atzina, it's a very beautiful part of the Masaora that my daughters are in, and they live fourteen girls in a tiny apartment with one bathroom. And when they hear sometimes some of the complaints that the girls have, so they like laugh. They're like they couldn't last one day? Fuck you, not one day. And my wife has become accustomed to saying, Baruch Hashem, we've raised our kids here in Eretz Yisrael, where there's not as much a culture. Unfortunately, it's coming to Eretz Yisrael also, but there's not as much a culture of what are you going to do for me. You know what? I don't blame you. If you grew up in a school that says we have to be a palace and give these girls everything, if you went to camp.

49:03 There's one camp. None of you ever went to this camp. I promise you, none of you ever went to this camp. This camp is—it's crazy. The owner of the camp—I don't think he's the owner of the camp anymore. I think he sold it. In this camp, there used to be a thing called Money Day. Money Day meant that the night before, after all the kids were sleeping, he went around the camp dropping money, and the activity in the day was to find the money, and you keep what you find. Like dollar bills and like much more than dollar bills, and the camps are running these expensive trips. There's, he told me that in many years ago, in when the Olympics were in Atlanta, he pulled. This is in the 90s. He pulled a bus onto the campus at midnight, and the boys got on the bus and they went to Atlanta for the Summer Olympics. That was a trip that he took his camp on. I went to Magenav.

50:01 A trip meant that we walked down the road to the general store, spent our own money, and walked back. We only got five dollars to spend, and it was our money. What's today? We have a hike. Where are we going? The general store. How far is the general store? Ten miles. How long is it going to take together? About two hours. It's awesome. I'm going to get intimates. Like that was our mentality. And you girls think you think I grew up impoverished? Maybe I did, but girls, I promise you, I didn't grow up lacking on any level. Adarava, we became grateful for what we had. If you give kids everything, they become selfish people. What are you going to give me next? Let's keep raising the bar. What's next? What's the next thing we have to do? What's the next thing? We have this. What's in 20 years from now? You're going to talk about.

50:59 The conditions you had relative to the things that they have by 20 years from now, by the time your daughters come to Tomer Devora, the mechanchot are going to be giving them shuyshins every single morning. We have to make sure these girls have the best because that seminary did it, because that yeshiva had the biggest campus and the nicest weight room and the American mattresses and the air conditioning. So now every yeshiva needs to have that, and every single guy gets to have an avrechet. It's mamish crazy. What happened to sitting and working hard? It's a culture. It's a consumerism culture. Because nobody sells hard work, because hard work doesn't sell, except for the fact that it really does. If for no other reason, probably everyone here, on some level, including myself, is phone dependent. We can admit it. Hi, my name is Mordechai, and I'm an addict. Every one of us, on some level, has some sort of addiction.

51:45 And maybe there's value in giving in your phone for 24 hours, just to say, like a little bit of a detox, just to go. My life is better when I don't have this. Maybe. The point I'm making to you is, maybe for a minute, just for a minute, for 24 hours, maybe tune out the voices of that culture and ask yourself the following question: What do I have to contribute to the world? Instead of being told what to do, we should be more proactive about how we can use these data sets to make sure that our models are robust against adversarial examples. Instead of answering questions with yes or no, keep it as a statement. We want to be makabel the Torah. Let's make ourselves hefker. Hakadosh Baruch Hu, what do you want from me? I am yours. Tell me where to go and I'm there. Hakadosh Baruch Hu, tell me where to go. Yechadash Baruch Hu. If it's your word, I'm there. What do you need from me? Girls, have wonderful shots.