Bechukosai - The God Who Sees Us Truly And Doesn’t Walk Away

2:03 So that's pretty frum. The shir tonight should be a shlosh for a full shalaima for Ariela Chava Baschan Amalke, the wife of one of the rebbeim in our yeshiva, who, blessed be Hashem, will have a full shalaima b'kar of mamish. B'soch shaychol yisrael. This week's parsha. We have the klalos that are terrifying. Before the klalos, there is a small parsha of brachos, a small parsha of blessings that Yisrael receives. In this small parsha of brachos, there's a bracha that I'm going to learn with you tonight. A very beautiful but strange bracha that we receive. The pasuk says: I will place my shchina, my mishkan, in your midst. And I will not, my spirit will not reject you. So there's an interesting inconsistency in the pasuk. On the one hand, this is a very beautiful bracha that Klal Yisrael is getting. What's the Klal Yisrael is getting? The bracha of the mishkan that we're going to live with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. His presence will be felt within our camp. That's an unbelievable bracha. And at the end of the bracha, it's the most strange thing in the world. It's like, and I won't reject you.

3:33 That would be the equivalent of a guy getting down on one knee and saying Please marry me. I won't reject you. Now, I generally don't mind phones ringing in shir But it does betray the no phone zone policy. So that's an interesting one. Beside it. It goes like this. It's unusual if I was proposing to my wife, you get down on one knee, will you marry me? It's going to be great. You don't say will you marry me, I won't reject you, and that seems to be what the pasuk is saying over here. On the one end, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is saying, I'm going to give you my mishkan. Don't worry, I'm not going to reject you. Okay, so that's our first question for the night: what's with this inconsistency in the pasuk? But actually, I want to focus more on Rashi. This word, lo tegal nafshiv, lo sigal Rashi. That word, which word there is strange. What does that word tegal mean?

4:29 What does it mean? Rashi tells us, but it's a strange word. It's an unusual word. Listen to what Rashi says. Ein ruchi katzabachem, my spirit will not be katzalike, disgusted by you. And then Rashi says Kol geila l'shon plateas daver habaluah bedaver. Any time in the Torah it uses the word geila, it means to purge or expel something that has been absorbed. That's what Rashi means. So lo tigal nafshi means literally, I will not absorb you and then expel you. So this is a very strange Rashi. Now that we understand what the word lo tigal nafshi means, Rashi's saying more than what we at first glance. It's like I'm going to give you my mishkan. Don't worry, I'm not going to reject you. I'm not going to be disgusted by you. He's actually the Torah is actually saying something even more profound than that. I'm not going to like take you in and spit you out.

5:32 So that is a very specific imagery. There's going to be a blyia that something is going to go in and then don't worry, I'm not going to take you in and then expel you. What precisely is the Torah telling us over here? So I want to try to make some sense of this, but in order to do that, let's take a step back from the world of Torah for a second. Let's talk about relationships. The big ticket word in all relationships is vulnerability. That's the price we pay to be in a relationship. The price we pay to be in a relationship is vulnerability. The vulnerability of being in a close relationship is the possibility of distance. Does that make sense? Something like this: the closer someone gets to me The more I see who they really are. The more I see who they really are, the more I might grow to not exactly like what I see.

6:40 You ever hear that phrase? Don't meet your heroes. The closer you get to somebody, sometimes from a distance, they stand up, they give a fancy shirr, razzle dazzle. You don't really know them so well. Every word that comes out of their mouth is brilliant. Wow, I never thought about it that way before. There's sort of an idol worship that can exist. Then you actually get a little bit older, you maybe become friends with that person. The closer you get, and all of a sudden you see the image that was carefully curated for you. It is not exactly the same as the reality. The closer you get, it's like sometimes a painting is beautiful from afar. But the closer you get to it, the more you notice the blemishes of the painting. Sometimes you could have a rebbe, a teacher, a moira, whatever it is, and they are truly amazing people, and the Torah they're teaching is amazing. But as you get closer, it's like you're not exactly who I thought you were. The real great ones are the ones where the closer you get, the more you're impressed by them.

7:40 For example, my Rebbe is 97 years old. I was honored to learn by him for eight years, and so for the first five years I was in shiur, and for the next three years I prepared shiur with my Rebbe at night, and we were exceptionally close. The godlessness of my Rebbe is when I came to yeshiva at first, I was like that's like my Rebbe. A real gadol b'toyra and somebody who's totally dedicated and devoted to not only putting Torah at the center of his life, but he spent 59 years teaching tens of thousands of talmidim. And so in my mind, this was like a larger-than-life personality. Then you get a little bit older, you get married. I was still in She'er, still trying to learn my rebbe's darhalimud. And then what comes next?

8:30 You think, like you get a little closer, you start to see the warts, right? You get a little older, and now I appreciate my rebbe on a whole nother level because it's like now I have, I'm newly married, and like I have questions that are coming up, and my rebbe is this fountain of wisdom. And so you get a little bit closer, you get a little bit older, and you still appreciate him. And then when we became chavrusas, and we would not only learn, but we would shulz every night. And at the end of eight years, I felt more in awe of him than I did in the beginning. That's a very unusual thing to have with someone. Generally speaking, the closer we get, the more we see the warts, the more we see what's going on underneath the surface, the more likely we are to be able to say "You're not who I thought you were." That's the vulnerability of a close relationship.

9:19 Almost all human dysfunction. Almost all human dysfunction. Dysfunction like. Ego, shame, perfectionism, addiction, defensiveness, anger, withdrawal, control, people pleasing, narcissistic tendencies, fear of intimacy. All of these dysfunctions, if you think deeply about them, are designed to do one basic thing: How do I stay loved without being truly seen? That's everything that we do. How do I get enough love without showing you who I really am? And by the way I think intuitively every one of you knows exactly what I'm talking about. Think about a first date. None of you have had a first date yet. I'm sure you've never had anything that even resembles a first date. But let's just say, let's be uncomfortably truthful for a second, that you could make up in your head such a case. How do you think you're going to show up on the first day? I promise you, and this is not necessarily the wrong thing to do, but I promise you that we are all going to show up to our first dates like this.

10:27 Hi, I'm perfect. Nice to meet you. Please introduce your perfect self to me. Of course, that's a lie. Because we're not perfect. But we and boys have it easier than girls in a certain sense because for a boy to show up to a date, maybe he showers, maybe he doesn't. And he shows up. I remember on my first date with my wife. I showed up with a hat. I'm not going to say my wife and I knew each other in high school, but she was like, "Oh, he wears a hat now, right?" And I like took it off right away, and she's like, "maybe not." So it's like, you show up with a carefully curated image of how you want to be seen. That makes sense. I remember I had this conversation with a tenth grade teacher of mine. He passed away. His name was Mr. Steinmetz. He was actually a very smart man. He was a very special person. When I was in tenth grade, I was a know-it-all, fifteen-year-old kid.

11:22 I had a hard time adjusting in high school. In ninth grade and in the beginning of tenth grade, I was miserable in high school. I really wanted to switch. I wanted to be with my friends from elementary school. It was a whole mess. And I remember that before they had what do they call that when all the parents come to visit, like to check out the school? Not parent-teacher conferences. Like open house, right? So before open house, all of a sudden everything in the school was being fixed. Every broken window. All of a sudden, they were buffing the floors. All of a sudden, they were scraping the gum off the wall and like everything. Like broken desks were being taken out. And as a fifteen-year-old, because remember, hypocrisy to a fifteen-year-old is poison. So I was like Bunch of hypocrites. And I said to Mr. Simons, I said, "This the most fake school in the world. This the most fake. Like, how are you like pretending? As if this what we are all like acting as if we're doing the entire time."

12:21 It's not true. So Mr. Steinmetz very cleverly looked at me and he goes You ever go out on a date? The answer at that point was no. But what 15-year-old self-respecting boy is going to say no? I was like, 'All the time.' Just got back from a date, even though it's 10 o'clock in the morning. It's a breakfast date. He's like, when you show up on a date. Now he knew I was, he was very wise man. He knew I was not telling the truth. But he said he's like, when you go out on a date, you just show up as you are. You just show up like shorts and a t-shirt, or you get dressed up. So now I had already learned the point that he was making. I knew he was right. So I was like, no shorts and a t-shirt because I'm real, right? I feel badly for that girl. That was the end of the conversation. Sometimes you know how you lose a conversation but you don't want to admit it. I got flattened in that conversation.

13:12 There's nothing wrong with putting your best self forward. There is something wrong with getting engaged to someone that doesn't know you. At some point, what we're all doing is threading the needle between I desperately need love Because that's true, and there's nothing wrong with that. Life means attachment. I don't want to spend my life by myself. I want to have somebody else in my life. But the problem is that in order to have you in my life, I need to be able to show you who I am. But the problem is, if I show you who I am, the closer you get, the more likely you are to say, "I'm not interested." Let's take people pleasing as an example. You don't have to raise your hand. I'll raise my hand on behalf of probably about 50% of you. If you're a people pleaser, I'm a people pleaser, right? If you're a people pleaser, ready for it? Then when someone's angry at you, it feels like death.

14:05 Even if you did nothing wrong. And I'll tell you how you can know if you're a people pleaser. Even if you feel you did nothing wrong, but you know that she's very upset at you, if you're spending time talking about how it's ridiculous that she's upset at you, and you're uncomfortable with that, what does that mean? It means on some level you're not okay with the fact that she's upset at you. That's why we're talking about it to everybody. Why do we need everyone to be okay with us? Because if you're not okay with me, then I'm not okay. I need people in my life. I need that sense of attachment. So all dysfunction, like ego. Why do I need to inflate myself to make my? You ever meet guys like this that inflate themselves to be bigger than they are? I'm talking about Dude, you're 18. I'm saying You're gonna be great, but just calm down. Give yourself some runway. Show up. I've got this. Why do you have that need to inflate? And the answer is because it's like I'm capable. I can get what I need. There's a sense of if I showed you my vulnerability, if I actually broke down and showed you who I really am, what might happen?

15:11 You might see me as flawed, and I don't want to be seen as flawed. I want to be seen as perfect. So I don't want you to leave. All these things that we do come down to one basic problem: I want your love. And love requires knowing me. But if you know me, you might leave. What's the very first time in history that this occurred? And you'll see why this is important. The very first time in history that this occurred was Adam Rishon And when did it occur? Almost in the first hours after he was created. What did Adam Rishon do? Almost right away. Adam Rishon was created. What's the first thing that he does? Kima. Is he doing the exact opposite thing that Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants him to do? He's told not to eat from the Eitz Hadass. What does he do? He eats from the Eitz Hadass. If you didn't know the Torah You didn't know the Torah. What should the next part of the story be? Adam just ate from the Eitz Hadass.

16:08 What would his natural, what would you have guessed his natural reaction would have been? I feel guilty. What would she have done? Apologize. And what does Adam Rishon do? He hides. Isn't that fascinating? Before he blames. Because first, Hakadosh Baruch Hu has to find him, so to speak. And then in conversation he blames, which is a totally different type of dysfunction. But before we get there, what's the first thing he do? He hides from God. Now that's obviously a ridiculous thing to do because you can't hide from God. So let's think about this for a second. You have Admorishon, he sins rather than standing up as an adult. What we would expect and this is what we want, as you get older, when you're younger. You like to try to hide from your mistakes. As you get older and more mature, what's the coolest thing you can do is own your mistakes, right? It's actually a really attractive thing to do, and that's why as soon as guys find out that owning their mistakes is really attractive, you finally, guys like, I did that, I broke, yeah, that was me, my bad. On, it's something I'm really working on. Like all of a sudden, he's working on himself. It's safe with him. Like he's gonna murder you. But statistically speaking, but the.

17:24 Why does Adamarysho not do that? Why is his first response to hide? So the answer is because we tend to assume that exposure means abandonment. And that's the key. We tend to think. By the way, that was really uncomfortable. About 20% of you had the following look on your face. This is what it looked like, at least to me, standing up here. About 20% of you just looked like this. Because if you actually think about that, it's really true. If I expose myself and you actually see me for who I am, I'm totally unlovable. And that's why people go through life not actually telling the truth. And the fascinating thing is, every one of us wants to tell the truth. That's why the best spaces in the entire world. Are in AA meetings. You know why? Because you know what happens in an AA meeting? It's totally anonymous. You get to tell your truth to other people, and nobody runs away or judges you because they've done the same thing, if not worse.

18:29 People literally pay to go to therapy not to work out their stuff. That's like a secondary thing that happens in therapy. There are people that pay to go to therapy just so that they could finally tell the truth. You ever have a moment like that where you tell the truth to somebody, and it's like almost like a relief. Like I said, the hard thing that I never admitted to anyone before. And just like I felt like after that, a burden was lifted because they didn't run away. It's because we assume exposure means abandonment, and this is why Adam Rishon does that at the very inception. Remember, even though Adam Rishon is an adult, this is the first hours. It takes time for us to adult. Even if Adam Rishon was born physically an adult, it takes time for a human being to mature. Our natural reaction to exposure is to hide.

19:18 It's to hide the truth of what happened because if you find out the truth of what happened, it means I'm going to be abandoned. And ever since then, all of humanity is in this motion, just like Admorishon is. How do I prevent myself from being fully seen? And that's why every one of us knows the truth that in some way Admorishon hid, and everyone in this room, including myself, is hiding too. In fact, we're hiding from our best friends. We think our best friends know us, but it's not true. Think about what you would never tell even your best friend. One of my favorite stories is there's a rav in Ramat Pechamas Bay whose name is Rav Kluger. Have you heard of Rav Kluger? I assume some of his svarim are on the shelves here. A lot of them have been translated into English. He's a fascinating man. He's like some sort of combination between Breslev and Chabad and like just regular Israeli Chassidus. He's a fascinating person.

20:13 Two of my acquaintances, who I'm definitely friendly with. They're best friends. They've been best friends since they were kids. They're close with Rav Kluger. They showed up both to Rav Kluger once at the same time, and Rav Kluger said to them, "He goes, the fact that you guys think that you're not only friends but best friends." " And they were like "What are you talking about? We are best friends. We've been best friends our entire life. We know each other since we're kids." So Reklinger said back to him. He goes, "All right, if you guys are best friends, then why are you both coming to talk to me about such deeply private things in your life that you've never told each other? If you're really best friends, how come you can't trust each other? And it was like a big, they both were like, it was like one of those Ni Yosef Ha'oda V'Chai moments where they were like, 'Right, we're best friends, except we don't trust each other with our deepest truth.'

21:06 In Bechemesh, there are still some forests left. I know that they've paved. They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. You shouldn't know that song. There's I know they're like destroying all the forests and shaving down the mountains to build Ramat Beit Shemesh Yod Zion But there, at the time, there were more forests. There's still some left. These guys committed themselves to go for a walk in the forest and just tell each other the truth. They went for an eight-hour walk. Eight hours. It started off like let's see where it goes. Twenty minutes, half an hour, 45 minutes, an hour, two hours, eight hours later, they walked out of that forest. This was what they told me. They said, "I felt like I just met my best friend for the first time, even though I know him for over 30 years." How crazy is that?

21:54 That everyone in this room, including myself, there are things that we won't tell each other. We're still in that state of admiration hiding. And here's the thing. You can only be loved as much as you're known. So if let's say you, and this happens all the time, let's say a couple comes in and they're like, there's something missing in our relationship. We're batting like 85. We're getting like an 85 on the test. 15% is missing. I could tell you where the 15% is. You can talk about communication issues. We could talk about being more empathetic, seeing each other with grace, kindness, and compassion. There's work to do. Maybe that accounts for like five percent of it. You know where the real delta is? The stuff that you guys won't say to each other because you're so deeply ashamed of those things. Because you can't have the real conversation. Because if I actually told you who I am You would never want to be here. You'd leave. So I'm not going to tell you who I am.

22:47 And then because we're hiding, the other person can't actually know us. And because they can't actually know us, they can't actually love us. Intimacy is into me you see. So if you don't actually allow yourself to be seen, then you're not going to achieve oneness. Do you understand the problem? The problem is very dramatic, and it's a problem that existed from the very first moments that the very first human being was created. Which explains something in psychology because everything in Torah exists on so many different levels. The Torah, I know this sounds funny in today's day and age, where everything in Torah and psychology are kind of merged together. But the truth is, I know this sounds funny. Torah came before psychology, before Freud. There was Torah, so I want to explain a concept in psychology that is so obvious. If Admorishon, in the first moments of his life, as a child, so to speak, was hiding. Then, what will we naturally expect children to do?

23:43 We expect children to hide. We expect children to go through this exact crisis because Admorishon went through it when he was a child. It makes sense that every one of us is going to go through it when we're children. So let's think about what a child goes through. I'm going to share this with you again. If it's new, great. If it's not new, amazing. Just listen carefully to this concept. Every single kid is doing this. If you ever, when you go back to America in the summer next year, whatever you're doing, if you spend time with little kids, you'll see this is what they're all doing. You don't have to pay attention very much to see it. Every kid in the world is doing the following: what emotions can I feel? What actions can I do? What things can I think will either make me acceptable or unacceptable in this community?

24:31 That's what all little kids are doing. All little kids are testing the boundaries of attachment. How many of you have worked with little kids in camp before? Does what I just said resonate as true? That every little kid is kind of looking around and going, is it okay for me to be this way? I still have friends. Here's a big one. If I feel my feelings with these people in my life What does that make me? I'm going to give you a case like this. See if this resonates with you. Don't raise your hand. This is private. Don't expose yourself here. This is not the space. It's a safe space, but not for everybody to consume. This is just for you. What happens when a little girl is crying, maybe a lot, and the message that she receives from her older siblings and from her parents is "Stop being so dramatic."

25:25 Not bad. Not bad. I like the face. I enjoy the people who went like this. I enjoy it's beautiful. Some people are very real. What happens if this happened much more? I think in the 80s and 90s. I think it happens less today. When a little boy falls or a little girl falls, and the father quickly picks the kid up and goes, "You're okay. You don't need to cry. Here we go. Just dust you off. Get back on the field." And it's like, wait a second, that kid fell. What would happen if we allowed that child to feel his feelings? Then he might cry, and if he cries, he's not going to be seen as a getter. He's not going to be seen as a man, and then the other kids are going to judge him, and he's not going to have any friends. But what actually do we teach our children when we tell them that they're not allowed to cry?

26:11 We actually teach them there are parts of you that are unacceptable. There are parts of you that if you expose them, nobody's going to want to be with you. So what do we learn to do with those parts? We learn to amputate them. Of course, it doesn't actually work. We just exile them away. But we push them away in our lives because it's like, listen, I don't want to have this, but I don't want to be seen as a little boy or a little girl, so I won't cry. And then you talk to these guys, big, strong, manly men at 18 years old who come through the year in Israel. And then they're doing this thing where they're talking to a. Do you ever do? You ever see this thing where people are talking and all of a sudden their eyes well up with tears and you see them choke it down, like they're literally choking. And they're like, and I'm, and then you, and it's like right there on the cusp, right? And because they won't allow themselves to feel that feeling because they think it's weak, and it's vulnerable, right? And all you have to do is just push it over the edge a little bit before the waterfall comes. This is the line. You ready for the line?

27:10 If these uncried tears could speak, what would they say? And then all of a sudden, you see this guy, 18 years old, in the gym all day long, ripped. Complaining, there's not enough protein in yeshiva. One of these guys is walking around with one of those five-gallon whey protein jars, and everything's scooping in. He's eating lasagna, scooping protein onto it, and all of a sudden he's like a waterfall. You've been holding in those tears for a long time, haven't you? It's not so easy to do. I shouldn't tell this story, but it's an amazing story. So I didn't want to be that father. I wanted to be the dad that actually raised his son and felt all of his feelings. My son is little. He's got five older sisters, so he barely had a chance to begin with. He was very little. He comes down the stairs and he's stalling. He didn't want to go to sleep. He comes down the stairs and has a sad look on his face and he goes "I'm having a feeling," and I'm like, "Oh man!

28:12 " And then. And I'm like, I wanted to raise him to be this healthy attachment child, but now I know he's going to get beaten up in cheder. So I don't know what to do with this kid. On the first day, because they're very smart, what they do is they start exposing the four-year-olds and Gan to the five-year-old rebbe, so that the transition won't be so hard. On the first day of five-year-old Gan, my wife and I were taking him to school, and it's overwhelming because now he's in the big building, he's not in the small building. That's where the big boys are. And it's very scary. The parents are there, and there are different kids. Some kids, and by the way, you judge yourself as a parent. If you're judging yourself as a parent, just know you're part of the club. Every parent is judging themselves. Some kids walk in and they go goodbye, and their parents just leave, and they're playing with the kids right away. And some kids are holding onto their mother's skirt for dear life, and you're thinking to yourself as a father. He's never going to go to the chuppah. He's going to be holding onto my wife's skirt the entire time. He's going to be 22 years old, being like, 'Please don't leave, mommy.' You know. So you're playing out your anxiety for the next 20 years.

29:17 But I'm going to do this right. And so my son is sitting there, and he's very hesitant. 'Don't leave. I'm not ready for you to leave. Don't leave. I'm not ready for you to leave.' And so there was this stack of chairs. And I put him on this stack of chairs What are you feeling, buddy? " And he's like I'm feeling really scared. I asked where he felt it in his body. I was doing somatic expression. He said he felt it right here. I said that's so special that we can feel scared. Why don't we feel that together? He put his hand on his heart, and I put my hand over his. I said, 'You feel? Relax. It gets worse.' I asked him if he felt like he had any vorac in him. I asked if he felt like he had any strength.

30:04 He closes his eyes and really processes his feelings. He says I do have gurah in me. I asked where he feels his gurah. He says feel it right in my heart. I said oh that's amazing. Do you want to feel it together with me? He says yeah. So we are feeling this gurah and after a couple of minutes I said are you ready for me to go? He says no. And it didn't work at all. And I was really hoping in that moment that I cracked the code and it didn't work at all. Until his rebbe walked in. And since he knew his rebbe from the year before, there's an adult in the room that feels safe, and then he was fine. I'm walking home with my wife. It was all garbage. All the psychological stuff I learned, none of it worked. Except that night when I was putting him to sleep, I said, 'What'd you learn today, buddy?' And he said, 'I learned that my fear and my strength are in the same place in my body.' I was like, 'Oh, so it kind of did work a little bit, right? Like it didn't work to actually get what I needed.'

31:02 But it did work to be able to try to teach a child that you actually have parts of you that, even though they feel weak, are not necessarily weak, and it's okay to experience them. Because every single kid is asking themselves which emotions are acceptable and which parts are acceptable. Because attachment is survival, and if need be, I will amputate these parts of myself to make sure that I'm acceptable to the group. Which means that most people are leading lives of adaptive construction, just designed to preserve attachment in their lives. Which is so sad. I'm willing to be somebody that I'm not, just so that you can fall in love with a version of myself. And you know what the crazy part is? It works to a degree. You can actually fool the guy you're dating into thinking that you're somebody that you're not in order to get married.

31:57 The problem is it only lasts for so long because eventually you're living together. And by the way, this is the thing about marriage: you will know each other better than anybody else in the world because you're spending more time with them than anybody else in the world. They're going to see you when you're not made up, and they're going to see you at your worst, and they're going to see you when you're losing patience. So you could present whatever you want to the outside world, and maybe for a time you could fool people. But you're never going to fool your spouse, and then the question becomes: Now that I fooled you into marrying me and I presented something that I wasn't What happens now in the aftermath of that conversation? Rav Noach Orloch, do girls know Rav Orloch? It's such an interesting thing: the generations of who the girls and boys know and don't know. There was a list of rabbis that when I was growing up everybody knew. There was Rabbi Orlovsky; he was the older version of Rav Gav.

32:50 There was Rav Yontef Glazer And now there's a what's his name in Eishat Torah So Hasidish Kabbalistic journey guy, Rav Dov Ber Cone, right? And so there's always these iterations of who's the next person. When I was great, Rabbi Kellerman, right? There's all these people you probably don't know. So one of the big people was Rav Noach Orloik, and Rav Noach Orloik had the following line, and it's brilliant. When we think of Shana Rishona, how long do we think Shana Rishona is? Classically, it's the first year of marriage. Rav Orlovich has an amazing definition for shanah rishona. He says shanah rishona is the amount of time it takes for a woman to feel safe in her home with her husband. And today, that's three to five years. And that is a brilliant truth because it takes time for us to feel safe. And so, a husband who's not spending time at home doesn't have a wife who feels comfortable with him, and it can impact the marriage. And so it's mumlatz, Rav Orlowich said. Rather than being off-room and saying, "No, I have to go out and learn nightseder," better to learn nightseder in your home, or better not to learn nightseder at all, and to spend that time cultivating the relationship in those formative years. Because now that you're living together and the exposure is growing, you know what's going to happen? The fear of abandonment is going to grow with it.

34:11 And so that adaptive construction designed to preserve attachment, that sort of mask you put on for the world, it will not last. What happens? What happens when it doesn't go well? Have you girls ever heard of the Gottman Institute? So on your list of things to do in your life is to learn before you get married to learn about the Gottman Institute. Devorah, they don't—they should have like—it's like such a Toma Devorah thing to have like a Gottman Institute shir, like for a year. Shana Bed has a Gottman—that makes sense. So we should do for Shanaalv also. The Gottman Institute It's this couple of Gottmans, they're psychologists, and what they've done is fascinating. They have this thing called the Love Lab. And basically couples come and live in this apartment, and every single thing they do is monitored. Video cameras. They're hooked up to electrodes, and they have been studying for over forty years. They have been studying every aspect of relationships, and they have this concept called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Have you heard of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling, and contempt.

35:32 These are the four things that, if couples do, the Gottman Institute knows couples so well that they can tell you with over 90% accuracy if a couple is going to get divorced or not. Based on the patterns that they have in their relationship, which is a wild thing to think about. Of the four horsemen of the apocalypse Number one predictor of divorce is something called contempt. Contempt is different than criticism. What does contempt mean? Contempt is. Listen to the following definition. I no longer experience your humanity as worthy of reverence. I no longer consider your humanity as worthy of reverence. In other words, I fundamentally don't respect you. I don't think you're a person worth revering. And by the way, in marriage, we are meant to have reverence for our spouse. Is a great line that I heard from one of my friends who had married his high school girlfriend. And since I married a girl that I knew in high school, when he told me this line, I was like, shoot, I really hope that's not true. It turns out it is.

36:39 The hardest part about marrying your high school girlfriend. The hardest part about marrying your high school girlfriend is that a girlfriend and a wife have nothing to do with each other. A girlfriend does not require reverence. A girlfriend is like two kids deciding. I'm choosing the five towns only because that's where I'm from. I'm not casting any aspersions on the five towns. I'm just saying this happens to be a thing that I did. You know how boys and girls choose each other. It's like this. It's like, well, we're going to be walking down Central Avenue together. So how do I want the world to perceive me if I'm walking down Central Avenue with that guy? If I'm walking down Central Avenue with that girl? There's no reverence in that relationship. They don't know how to revere each other. They're not in self enough to be able to revere somebody. Marriage is a totally different thing. A spouse really requires. It doesn't mean that they have to be perfect, but it's like.

37:38 You are someone I value as a human being, and I really stand in awe of you. To stand in awe of you doesn't mean you're perfect. It means I deeply respect you. There's a rebbe in Mevaseret. I won't say which one, only because I don't think I have permission to say it, even though he says it publicly. He says I have two rebbeim, my rebbe and my wife. He really respects his wife. In fact, when we were hiring him to be a rebbe in Mevaseret, he said, "I have to speak to my rebbe and I have to speak to my wife." And I was curious when he said I have to speak to my wife. Is that just checking in because you're making a family decision? He says, I don't make moves without talking to my wife first. It's not only because he respects her opinion; he respects her. It's a fundamentally different way of seeing it. Contempt destroys a marriage because criticism, which is not nice, is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Criticism is like attacking your character.

38:32 Contempt is like having a position of moral superiority over you. So you want to hear what they how they describe contempt? I know this not going to be any of your husbands, but this what contempt looks like. A wife says to a husband You're tired. You're tired. Cry me a river. I woke up with the kids this morning. I got them off to school. Then I went to work. Then I came home. I ran with this one to the doctor. I ran with this one to therapy. I'm just using a modern day example. I took this one to a play date. This one broke his tooth, and I ran to the dentist. I got dinner done, homework done, and gave the kids a bath. You march in here after myriv, which somehow takes 45 minutes. I didn't know I was married to Ravitcha Meyer. 45 minute myriv.

39:26 The famous joke. Yaakov Avinu was the one that instituted Ma'ariv. You know why? Had twelve kids at home. I also wouldn't want to be home at night during bat mitzvah. And now you walk in here and you plop down on the couch and you turn on the television and you're watching the game because you've had a hard time. Give me a break. You know why that marriage is going to fall apart? Because it's not just like the. It's not just like oh she spoke not nicely to him. Think about how she looks at him. Think about that level of communication. There's contempt. There's an aura of moral superiority. So the target of contempt feels despised and worthless. Is a famous marriage therapist that he said to a wife. I love this line. The wife was really beating up on her husband. To the marriage, he's this and he's that. And the marriage therapist said, But don't you feel a little bit badly for your husband?

40:26 She said, "Why?" So the therapist said, "He has a wife who really doesn't like him." Harsh, right? That's a straight for the jugular line. And he reported this. The therapist reported he was like, "Yeah." After that, she had a little compassion for him. Man, that's got to be hard. It's got to be hard to feel not only despised but worthless. Because by the way, you know what a man wants more than anything. I'll tell you the whole secret. I could save you tens of thousands of dollars if you just know this. You know what your husband wants from you? He just wants your respect. That's all he wants. He just wants to know that when he comes home, his wife feels like my guy came home. And that's my guy. Ride or die, and I really respect him. That's all a husband wants. By the way, I tell the same thing to the guys.

41:14 You know what your wife wants? She just wants to feel safe. You can have hard conversations. But you just have to have that baseline level of reverence for a woman. It's safety for a man. It's respect. Again, obviously that's a spectrum, and different people require different things. But if somebody is in a marriage with somebody who looks at them and has an air of moral superiority over them, and they feel that sense of contempt, who would want to be married to somebody who hates them? And by the way, that's what it sounds like on the other end when the guy goes, 'What am I killing myself for to come home at night and to have you tear me to shreds?' You know what he's really saying. I don't want to work so hard for somebody who fundamentally doesn't like me. I just want to be married to somebody who likes me. And that makes sense. So what happens is that contempt is the number one destroyer of attachment. Now, if you follow the logic of what we've said so far, it goes like this: We grow up, we're young. What do we learn? Hide the parts of myself that will make me feel unloved.

42:12 We get older, we enter into a marriage. Now we're close to somebody. What happens? Now that we're close, what do they see? The imperfect. They see the warts. As a marriage devolves, what happens? Because now I see you, and I don't necessarily like what I see. It could chas v'shalom come into a place of contempt, where I basically communicate to you, I despise you because of the parts of you that I don't like. And that's the ultimate destruction of marriage. It's very hard to come back from contempt. Which tells us the actual definition of love. Now again, what I'm about to say, Chas v'Shalom, I'm not making fun of it. I just think it's limited. We all, at this point, Baruch Hashem, because Rav Dersler said it, it's like canonical, and every one of us knows it to be true. Ahava is from a Lashon of Hav, and Hav means to give. So loving is an action, and it's giving. It's like what they taught you on the first day of Torah Devora. It's what they taught you on the first day of ninth grade, when you were doing whatever curriculum you were doing. At this point, they're probably teaching it to elementary school kids.

43:12 We need a more sophisticated definition of love, not because that's not true, but because it's a baseline. Let's try to get something a little bit more complex in that definition. Love is not affection. Here's a more meaningful definition of the word love. Love is the capacity to be fully present with the total reality of another person. That is a beautiful definition of love. Want me to say it again slowly? Love is not just affection. Love is the capacity to remain fully present with the full reality of another person. Even when they're imperfect, even when they're not polished, even when they're not the public version that they show the world. You can see that person in all of their glory and in all of their less than glory, and stay fully present and engaged with that person. There's an unbelievable Gemara in Sanhedrin. The Gemara in Sanhedrin says like this: You've probably heard this Gemara before. It's Sanhedrin 7A.

44:18 The Gemara says, "When love is strong" We could have slept on the blade of a sword. But now that our love is not strong, now that our love is weakened, there is no bed in the world that's big enough to hold us both. That's what the Gemara says. When our love is strong, we could sleep on the blade of a sword. When our love is weak, there's no bed that's big enough to hold us. What does the Gemara mean? I think what the Gemara means is as follows: If I can be fully present with somebody, even with their imperfections Then I'm able to negotiate conflict. And that's that lashon of we could sleep on the blade of a sword. We're comfortable with the uncomfortable. Let's get comfortable with the uncomfortable. I have a Talmud I love. His name is Gerashi. One of my favorite Talmudim of all time.

45:09 He always says I love it. Let's get vulnerable, it's a funny catchphrase, Let's get vulnerable. I love it. It's a beautiful thing to sit down and say Let's have a hard conversation. What exactly was bothering you? When I did that, what was bothering you? Tell me. There are people that are enough for themselves, and they're enough in this relationship to be able to say Let's be comfortable in a state of conflict. Because I don't need to win every argument. I'm okay to take the loss. By the way, that's the single greatest predictor of success in a marriage. If you have enough self-esteem to be able to take a loss, that's a beautiful gift. To be able to say, I don't need to be right. I'm okay to come into this and say, that's something I need to work on. I'm comfortable with conflict because I'm not trying to win. But what happens when love weakens? What happens when I can't stay fully present with another person's imperfections? All of a sudden, even the slightest wrong word becomes a blowup.

46:02 There's no place in the world that's comfortable. There are people who walk into their homes, and the moment they walk into their homes It's like all of a sudden they're on edge. The husband comes home at night, and he sees his wife, and he's looking to see what her mood is. I once heard Jerry Seinfeld say, "Is like you know Jerry Seinfeld is? You know Jerry Seinfeld is, and you don't know who Avorloik is? I understand." Revelouk's not on Netflix yet. Jerry Seinfeld said Getting married is like becoming a scientist. All of a sudden, you start to measure for drawers that are closed a little bit too hard. You know what I mean? Because there's a difference between doing this, just this is not going to work well. But you know, and then this. Slamming drawers and slamming doors, and all of a sudden you walk in and she's saying to the kids, 'Go upstairs,' and you're like, 'Oh, I think I gotta go to my room.' There's like a.

47:17 It's because we're taking each other's temperature all the time. It's like no place is safe, or like the wife who describes: as soon as my husband comes in the door, I'm on edge because I don't know what mood he's coming home with. I don't know what happened in the office that day and how everybody wronged him, and nobody's good enough and nobody's appreciative enough, and nobody can ever be appreciative enough for this man. And I have to give everything that I have to him, but frankly, I don't have anything left in the tank. It's like why are they so on edge with each other? It's because they can't stay fully present with each other. So if you've been following from the very beginning, it sounds something like this: Every one of us needs attachment. Attachment is life itself. Admarishon, exposure. Should I do the rav God version of this? Exposure is abandonment. The microscope. Exposure means abandonment. Admarishon, right from the very beginning of time. It's like if you know who I really am, you're going to reject me. So what do we do as little kids? Just like Adam Rishon, when he's 'quote unquote' little in the very beginning of time, he's hiding himself because he doesn't want to be seen for all of his flaws. This is what little children do as well.

48:16 We grow up and now we're afraid to get close to people because if I get close to you, you might actually reject me. But I need your love, so I'll carefully curate this version of myself in order to be socially acceptable to you. The problem is, it's not going to work because now I am married to you, and now you see me for who I am. What could happen? It could Chas v'Shalom fall into contempt. Now you despise me. Now I feel worthless. Attachment is dying, and we're on our way out. The real definition of love is our ability to maintain. I am fully present, even in your state of imperfection. Let's go back to that pasuk. Listen carefully now. It's an unbelievable pasuk. It's amazing the wisdom of Torah in one line. Listen what Akav Shmuel says. I'm going to. Dwell within you. What is that? I'm coming close.

49:06 And what's the very next line? Because remember, this is the bracha before the klola. V'lo sigal nafshi eshem. And I won't what? I won't expel you. I won't reject you. Meaning, what is Hakadosh Baruch Hu saying? Hakadosh Baruch Hu is saying an unbelievable thing. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is saying that because I am God. And because I know you completely, I can guarantee you that I won't reject you. I can guarantee you that I won't pull you in. Remember that lashon that Rashi said. What does sigal mean? I won't expel that which I take in. In other words, what is Hashem saying? I'm going to draw you close. I'm literally going to be dwelling within you, and I'm guaranteeing you that I won't expel you. One last question to ask and answer in the final two minutes of the year. How could God guarantee that? How can you guarantee that? The closer I get, the more you're going to see my imperfections. It's so difficult to maintain a fully present state when I see your flaws.

50:14 Finish with this. This is an unbelievable truth. When we see the full truth of somebody, we don't recoil. We recoil when people don't show us their full truth. It's an interesting thing to hear the way that different generations speak. I don't remember in my generation us saying this as much as in your generation. It could be that I'm wrong, but I don't remember us saying. Don't judge me. It's like a weird thing to tell somebody. Don't judge me. You don't control what happens up here, so I'm going to anyway. I just won't tell you. It's a weird thing to say. Don't judge me. Judgment gets a very bad rap. Actually, if you think deeply about it, judgment is beautiful. And that's why, by the way, in Yiddishkeit we have judgment. I call the Shabbat who judges us. It's like how could judgment be beautiful? Judgment feels like I'm standing over you in judgment.

51:12 Listen to why we feel that way. You see, if you don't really know me If you don't really know me, and you judge me You won't see me with kindness and compassion. You won't. But here's the thing: everybody is understandable, and anything that's understandable is forgivable. Imagine the following: let's say you have a roommate, and let's say this roommate struggles with Boundary issues. And so it's annoying to you as a roommate, and so maybe you're judging her for having those boundary issues. She just always comes in and sits down. Doesn't she know how to read a room? What if you knew that the reason she doesn't know how to read a room is because of something she went through as a child? Would you narrate that story a little bit differently? It could still be annoying, but would you have more kindness and compassion? What if you knew not only one feature of her life? What if you knew every single minute of her life?

52:13 Then when you see them do something wrong, do you think you would ever judge them negatively, or would you see the total person? What if you knew not only their entire life, but the entire life of every single person they ever engaged with? What if you knew not only their entire life and the life of every single person they ever engaged with? What if you knew their grandparents' life, their great grandparents' life? In fact, what if you knew every single human being throughout history that went into the contribution of that one person? That one moment wouldn't be a disjointed moment anymore. What would it be? It would be infinitely understandable, and anything that's understandable is forgivable. The secret of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is. The closer I get to you, the more I know you. The more I know you, the more I can guarantee you that I won't leave you because you are beautiful. You just need to be understood. You just need context. And this is the gift that every one of us is meant to give each other.

53:11 When we say we're supposed to act like Hakadosh Baruch Hu, it means that when we sit in judgment of each other and we're not okay with other people's imperfections, it's A, because of what's going on in our own world, and B, it's because you don't understand that person. The closer you get to them, the more lovable they become. So every one of us is meant to be operating in exactly this system. I get close to you. Here's a gift you can give everybody in this room. When I say everybody in this room, I don't mean that you should expose yourself to everybody in this room. But here's a gift that everybody in this seminar can give to each other. What if we just stopped hiding? What if we took it down by five percent? Do you realize what five percent more vulnerability would do in this room? All of a sudden, everybody in this room would find out that every one of us is struggling with the same exact thing. And in that space of that common humanity, we would actually feel understood, which is a gift that we can give to ourselves. But what is a gift that you can give to somebody else?

54:06 Be a person that says, "I invite you to be fully present here" And I promise you that the more you draw close and the more you tell me who you are, I'm never going to expel you. I'm not going to push you away. I'm not going to reject you because the more I understand about you. The more lovable you become. And that's the greatest gift we can give to our spouses. That's the greatest gift we can give to our children. It's the greatest gift we can give to our communities. And frankly, it's the greatest gift we can give to ourselves. You all have a beautiful Shabbos.