Chapters
Transcript
Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
This is our last class. What? What about next week? We have till June 19. Next week is. It's gonna be okay. I'm not available next week, and the girls are on a tour the week after. Change the Tealberg, Change the Tealberg word. Legit. So I'd like to share with you one final idea. Pesukim in this week's parsha. Pesukim that we're all familiar with Because they're Pesukim that we read every time we take out the Torah and every time we put back the Torah. The Pesukim of Ahiyav and Saron. And Uvnuchayomar. And so Because we take out the Torah twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, and then again on Shabbos and on fast days, these are psukim that are familiar to us. And when we have psukim that are familiar to us That means that somehow these psukim are chas v'shal. Not to say that any pasuk is more integral than any other pasuk But there is something about these psukim—a fundamental lesson.
That needs to be constantly reminded to every single Jew to awaken these lessons from within their heart. And so the question is What's the inner message of these psukim that we need to constantly be reminded of? That's our first question for the night. The second question is, as we all know, that these psukim don't belong in Parshas Balosha. But they were there to break up. Two not such good things that happened in Klal Yisrael. There was the Missonim. Klal Yisrael was complaining; they were running away from Ar Sinai. And so these Pesukim Which, as we'll soon see, should have been much earlier in the Torah, were placed here in order to create a break. But obviously, if they were placed here, they were meant to be here. What's the connection between the Pesukim of Vayihib and Salaron and Parshas Bhaloscha? Why specifically this? Parsha For some reason, it was critical that it be integrated into Parshas Balosha. What's the thematic connection between Balosha and Vaibensaro?
Read the full transcript
And finally, we know that these psukim are bookended in the Torah in a strange way. It's called the inverted nuns, the nunim afuchim. Do you all know what I'm talking about? Everyone asks the question, what are the nunim afuchim doing here and The Gemara already points out that this is considered a separate sefer. This is its own separate sefer in the Torah. But the question that we're going to ask today is why specifically the nun of all the letters in the Torah? Why specifically the nun? And why is the nun inverted? Why was that diseminent inverted nun? Why a nun and why an inverted nun? So we have in front of us four questions. The first question is why is it so important that Vaibin Soaron is something that's a constant reminder to Klal Yisrael? Number two, what's the thematic connection between Parshas Bhaloscha and these psukim?
Why the Nun specifically? Why not any letter? Why not an Aleph? And why specifically an inverted Nun, a backwards Nun? Nun means a lot of things And in order to understand the inner messages of these psukim, we first need to understand the nature of a Nun. The Rabbeinu Bachaya says. That the reason it says a nun here is because these psukim should have been fifty paragraphs earlier. The gematria of nun is fifty, so it's a simin. These psukim should have been fifty paragraphs earlier. But as we all know, fifty also means to comprehend that which is incomprehensible. Within the world of thought, there are forty-nine gates of understanding that a human being is given to understand. But of course, there's a dimension of understanding that we can understand without understanding how we understand it. This is called the fiftieth shari bina. This is why we just celebrated Shavuos. This is why we're given the Torah on the fiftieth day. Ultimately, a person can come to the highest levels of comprehension, but the highest levels of comprehension in the world of logic will ultimately fall short.
Is because logic itself is a construct. Is Logic itself something that was created So logic, in a certain way, is limited by its creation. Just if you think about it. We can measure the measurable, but somebody created the measurable, which means there's something that's always going to be beyond that which is measurable. We know this. We instinctively know this. We know that it's very possible that artificial intelligence, and if you do this with ChatGPT, I've done it a bunch of times already. If you ask ChatGPT to write you a poem, it'll write one in like three seconds, and it's exceptionally incredible. And it probably follows all of the rules of poetry. But there's one thing that it's lacking, it's lacking a certain soulfulness that I don't know if artificial intelligence will ever be able to have. There's something that's beyond that which is measurable. Every game has an aspect to it which is beyond the game itself.
And we do ourselves a tremendous disservice sometimes by only describing a game by what it is. It's like you have a lot of rabbis out there, and I'm sure you've heard something like this. Maybe it's not as prevalent for the girls as it is for the boys, but just come with me on the journey for a moment. Rabbis love to make fun of sports to boys. What are you doing? You're just putting a ball in a hole. That's not what you're doing. That's physically the activity that you're doing. But by diminishing the value of the game, which is always higher than the game itself. You're being silly. Of course you're putting a ball in a hole, but really that's not what it's about. If you had to say what basketball is about, you would say something about sportsmanship. You would say something about competition. You would say something about camaraderie. You would say something about overcoming, resilience, grit. All the things that make sports great. I remember having a conversation with a rebbe of mine many years ago, when I was in tenth grade.
And the Rebbe said Would you pay to watch a group of grown men wear pajamas and throw rocks into toilets that are ten feet high? And I said, 'Well, clearly I would, and not only that, it seems that hundreds of millions of people would, and they would spend billions of dollars on it. So clearly I'm right and you're wrong.' And he looked at me as if I was an idiot, and he's like, 'Do you think that's intelligent?' And I was like, 'Well, I would never describe the game of basketball as pajama-clad wearing men wearing, throwing rocks into toilets. But yes, if that was a sport, then there would certainly be some value to it, obviously. And what this Rebbe was doing, his point was, though I think he was making his point in a silly way' His point was If you're going to invest your energy into something, do something that's more important than just this. But what that Rebbe failed to recognize is there's a reason that people are drawn to sports.
Sports means something beyond putting a ball in a hole. There's something that's Moshecha person that draws a person in. It's the same thing, kaviyachol in a relationship. Again, I hesitate to use this example. If we could try to be mature about this. When we speak about, shamanegia, right, and you're like There's always that line when touch means something more than touch. Physically, you could just describe it as protoplasm touching other protoplasm. That's a very silly way of describing touch. There's a reason that we're shomer negia. The reason is because touch has a transcendent meaning, one that you can't measure. That's why it could be very uncomfortable for us. If you go to check out somewhere and somebody hands you change, or they linger And that linger doesn't have to be for more than a second, and you walk away and you're like, that was creepy.
And the reason is because even though it's just one second of touch, why can't somebody just go? It was one second touch, just protoplasm touching protoplasm for literally a second. The answer is no, because there's something called meaning, and meaning is invested in behaviors and activities. So there's always that which we can understand, that which we can measure in the world, and then there's that which is beyond measure. Actually, the things that are really important in life are always the things that are beyond measure. The things that you can measure are never really the important things. There's always the things that just tell you about the really important things. It's not really important. Please don't misquote me, which means you'll misquote me. But when you do, just remember that I said please don't misquote me. It's not really important to buy a home. It's not really important. Not a really important thing to do.
There are things that are really important that happen in your house. That's what makes a house meaningful. But the house itself, there's a pile of bricks in this particular place is not what's meaningful. In fact, I can prove it to you because when most people buy a home, what do they do? They don't tell you the brick count of the home. That's what realtors do. When someone's a real estate agent, they'll tell you there's beautiful wood flooring here. Do you really care about the wood flooring? You might care a little bit about it. Some of you might more than others. Depending on where you're from, but if you're a wife, if you're a mother looking at a home, what do you think when you walk into this room? You think you look into that room and you go It'd be great for the kids to play there while I'm making Shabbos because I can keep an eye on them.
That's not the measurable stuff. That's the immeasurable stuff. You walk into a dining room, and you see that dining room is very narrow, and you're like, "I don't think we'd feel comfortable having a Shabbos table with guests at this dining room." And you go, "I don't think that's a house for us." You could have all the amenities in the world in that house. You could have the most beautiful, brand new windows, and yet you might find yourself taking a house that's not as nice, but because it suits your home better. That's the nun shari bina. It's not within the measurable. It's within the immeasurable. A great realtor will know what you're really looking for and will sell it to you. So there's always the Torah and its laws. The laws of the Torah are the forty nine gates of understanding. Those are things you can wrap your human head around. But then there's the understanding that all of this is towards something greater than yourself, and that's called the nun sharibina.
There's another aspect to the word nun that I wanted, and all these will come together eventually. Please bear with me. There's another aspect to the letter nun here that's very important. The letter nun in Aramaic means a fish. Did you know that? Nun means a fish. If you look at what Klal Yisrael was complaining about, they were complaining about the money. Listen to the words that they say: "Zacharnu es hadaga asher nochal b'Mitzrayim chinam." We remember the fish that we ate in Mitzrayim for free. This is what they complained about. If you look in the Targum Onkelis under the word fish He translates the word fish as nunaya from the letter nun. Nun means in Aramaic; it means fish. What's the connection between the nun share bina And the concept of fish? What's that interconnection? Why is it that fish seem to be part of this story? There's something Something about getting free fish in Mitzrayim, and now Klal Yisrael finds themselves in the Midbar, and they're not getting those fish anymore.
In addition, the word nun also stands for nithila. It means to fall. And an inverted nun. Would mean what? If nefila means to fall, then an inverted nun would mean to arise from that fall. In fact, when you put the two on a graphic design level, when you put two inverted nuns together, what you get is a mem sofet. You get a mem sofet looks like. You get the box And the I'm sorry, you get a samach. Rather, I apologize. So what is the letters nun same letter basically? What does nun and samach stand for? So 'nun' and 'samach' stands for 'nase', and if you think about what that means, the word 'nase', what is a miracle? Let's unpack the word miracle for a second. Nun stands for nefila, and what does samach stand for? Anyone want to guess? That's the gematria of it. Samach means to be somech To rely upon. What a miracle is, and this is very important. What a miracle is, as a miracle is that which you can rely upon when you've fallen.
That's why every miracle is right. Every miracle, we're at Kriyas Yamsuf. We're in a tremendous state of Nefila. What does Hakadosh Baruch Hu do? A Nase. He lifts us up. We're Somet. We can rely on Hakadosh Baruch Hu from that place. The two Nuns obviously represent, on some level, the idea of Nigla and Nistar, Nasa and Nishma. In general, as we said before, the Nun can also represent the Mem Sofit. And the Mem Sofit represents the forty days of Torah, forty days, forty nights, that Moshe Rabbeinu receives the Torah. But really, what I want to say to you is as follows: If you put all these things together, this is what it sounds like. It's a lot of information. If you put all these things together, it sounds as follows: Every one of us is trying to reach that which is beyond our capacity to reach.
And we think. That we have to be headed upwards in order to get to the Nun Shari Bina, and I'm going to teach you a secret tonight. It's a chesidish secret, but it's a beautiful secret. The secret is that you cannot reach the Nun Shari Bina if you go up. You can only reach it if you go down. It's not possible to reach that Nun Shari Bina if you're going up. It's only possible to reach it if you're going down. But when you go down, what you have to be willing to do is be willing to swim against the current. I'll explain what I mean. Imagine you have a couple. The goal of this, we'll call this new husband and wife. These new couples you've seen them They're very cute. Like, ugh That type of cute. You know what I mean. And everything is good, and they're just going up and up.
They won't reach intimacy that way. Intimacy means oneness. That's the nun shari bina in this case. To reach beyond themselves, to be a part of something larger. In order for that to happen, there must be stress in the relationship. Every single relationship has tension. Marriage has designed tension. In fact, what do we say about marriage? We say that you girls are an azer konegdo. What does it mean to be an azer konegdo? You're a helper. By being opposed, because men and women are so exceptionally different, what happens if you put two people together in a marriage? Inevitably, the friction is present. And what happens when that friction is present? There's two roads, and this is what I really want to prepare you for. One road is to opt out. It's a road. And people take that road all the time. Opt out doesn't necessarily mean that you get divorced.
Opt out means you just don't engage. There are couples that can live together for twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years, and they're totally minutak from each other. They don't have any fights. They don't also They don't have any tension. In other words, they're not working towards each other anymore. They've just disengaged. They have to make some level of family decisions to keep the home moving. But do they have a lifetime together? They just spent their lives together. It's possible to do, and people do it all the time. Because it's so hard to relate to somebody that doesn't speak your language. In fact, I'll share with you this week in yeshiva. The boys asked me if we could do a mock conversation between a guy and a girl. What are you girls looking for? And I want you to know these boys are like
No way, that's not what they're looking for. I'm like, trust me, it's what they're looking for, and they're like. I just want to solve this problem for her, and I'm like, she doesn't want to hear your solutions. She's not interested in your solutions. And one of the guys actually had a fair point. I don't know the answer to this question. He was like, why do we have to learn to speak their language, and they don't have to learn to speak ours? It's a decent question. I'm not sure the answer to that question, but I know that we have to learn to speak your language. I know that's the way it works. The alternative is to opt in. Opting in can come with a tremendous amount of pain. I'll give you an example of the pain that could come. I say this not to scare you. I say this because there's a tremendous opportunity that's buried within this pain.
One of the majurim, I had the majurim over my house yesterday for a barbecue. One of the majurim said that he heard from one of the rebbeim in the yeshiva that marriage can be exceptionally lonely. And I said, it's true. It can be. He goes, why is that? So I said, let's unpack this. You've dedicated your life to somebody. You've married them. You work every day for them. And now in a state of separation, in a state of friction The feeling you might have is the most important person in the world to me right now. Is not with me. That's not the same thing as just not having somebody next to you. That's the absence of having somebody next to you. Do you hear the difference? That's a very lonely feeling. Now you have two choices in that lonely feeling. Number one is to go. Forget it. I don't want to ever feel this lonely again. So I'll just disengage. I don't need him. I can have friends, and you can go to the park. And there are plenty of women in the park. I've been to Ramat Bechemish. There's like that's where you go.
I don't want to say I'm not invited or allowed there, but I don't feel very invited or allowed there. I could walk through on my way to Ma'ariv. But that's the extent of it. Seems that they have their place, and maybe we have our place. Men go to shul and women go to the park. But it seems to me that it's possible that a person could get everything they need from shul or everything they need from the park. And that's a way you can take that route. Or alternatively, you can ask yourself, what does belonging mean? And how do I create authentic belonging within myself? And what did I do to create this lack of belonging in this relationship? What can I take ownership over? And how can I come back and re-find this person, even when I've already hurt them and they've already hurt me? Now the growth opportunity there is enormous.
A couple who says I feel tremendously distant from you right now But we're committed to finding each other. It's going to require a massive amount of heavy lifting. There's a lot to work on. And when they do that work, that's going to mean that they have with themselves. It means they're going to have to be authentically aware of the things that they're feeling and the things that are going on inside for themselves. They're going to draw upon levels of faith and courage that they never thought they had. And they're going to become fundamentally different people than the people they were before. We see it all the time. I very often marvel at the choices that you girls make when you marry a husband. And if you marry one of the boys that I know from yeshiva, sometimes I wonder to myself What was that girl thinking?
He's a great guy. But I once saw him throw a couch off of a third floor just to see if it would break. I'm not saying that actually happened But it definitely did. And when it didn't break He then thought of another question: Will this couch burn? And it did. And somebody married that man. And when I heard that he was engaged, I remember thinking to myself I'm curious What that girl saw in him. Was he on a date? And he said, 'Yeah, we pulled the couch up to the third floor, and it was a narrow staircase, but we really pushed it through, and then we threw it off, but nothing happened.' So we decided to burn it. I'm wondering what the girl's reaction is on the date. Is she going like, 'He's so fun.' Like what? What about that decision? Clearly, there are people like that, and I'm thinking that a girl is thinking to herself.
Something about that story made you think this would be a good partner. He's the fun one. He's the clown. You have whatever stories you tell yourself. But then you see that guy And he's 21, 22, and then five years later, he's 26, 27, and you've met a completely different person. It's like all of a sudden you're You bump into him and he's holding himself differently. He's changed. And it's not a mystery. You know what it is. It's because he's married. And marriage changes you if you're good at it, because especially if you're not good at it, you have to do really hard things and you go against the stream. When you go against the stream and you say, okay, I'm not just going to be male and I'm not just going to be female, but I'm going to be a husband and I'm going to be a wife.
Those are different than just being male and female. Male and female don't get along very well, but husband and wife have a shot. But it means humbling yourself. It means drawing from faith, authenticity, integrity, all the honor, dignity, all the things that go into making a marriage great. You had to do that, and so you see very rapidly that it starts to change people. Marriage is just one example, but there are many. We see boys who come back every year. I don't see the girls really who do this because I'm not really part of that world so much. But we see boys every year who come back from Camp Ask. And they're changed. They're changed people. What was it? A lot of these boys never had to do hard things in their life. If you grow up in certain places or towns, and you're driven everywhere. And you've never had to take care of anybody else.
You were taken care of your entire life. I worked growing up. My parents weren't sending me to camp when I was in high school. You're in high school. You're working. And when you go to Israel, my parents didn't give me a credit card. They said, and they had the money. They said you're spending your own money. It was a life lesson that they taught us. If you've never done that, you have a limited, stunted amount of growth. And imagine you go to Camp Ask, and now you have to take care of people with special needs. And some of these people are really hard to take care of. It means sometimes doing really I'll clean it up Which is what they're doing, really menial tasks, right? And it's things like a guy said, I never thought I could do. We had one boy in yeshiva who told me this year. After working in Campask, I've had every single type of fluid from the human body on me. He's like that's but you should know this boy is a gem.
He's a gem. Truth is, he was a gem beforehand. But he's clearly a person who's grown tremendously. Friction creates growth. You should know that parents love to hate the generation that they raised. No That's so true. Because And really, a lot of it's our own stuff. We love because we're always like, in my generation. You raised this generation, so what are you complaining about? My daughters do this. You're the one that raised them. And we know this. Hard times make great people. Great people make easy times. Easy times make soft people, and soft people make hard times. We know that's the way it goes. So if you raise people that they don't have a life of friction, then you won't have a life of growth. Even thinking about my grandmother describing what the depression was like, or the post-depression era She lived through hard things.
I don't know how afraid she was of life because I don't know what else life could have thrown at her. She wasn't a Holocaust survivor. My grandmother lived in America. She was born in America. What must it have been like to see people washing up on the shores post-Holocaust? She lived through that era. She saw the state of Israel be born. She saw 1967. We come to Tormer Devora and we're like It's hard, and I'm not saying it's not, but it's also not. It's hard. I don't want to minimize. I don't want to invalidate. Somebody's going to walk out of here and go, Berg invalidated my experience and he triggered me, and then I'll be canceled because you had a feeling. Crazy world that we live in. But also You girls have been served on a silver platter. You've been served on a silver platter.
And it doesn't mean that it was the best or the nicest conditions always. And it's our fault. And then we turn around and we go, I don't understand why these girls aren't growing. What did you give them that was hard? I grew. I didn't know it at the time, but when I was in Mivaserah twenty five years ago They had apartments, and the boys stayed in the apartments. My apartment was the kitchen. When I say the kitchen, I don't mean like a regular American kitchen. I mean an Israeli kitchen, a kitchen that was so small that the door was a sliding door because there wasn't room to open the door. And me and one other guy, Aaron Schoenfeld, lived in that kitchen. There was a bunk bed up against the window, which meant the window didn't open because the window opened inward. And there was a heating unit. And there was no air conditioning, and we slept on Israeli mattresses, and we had two closets that were maybe this big for each of us, and that was the room. That was the whole room. There was a small table that was the whole room, and we were fancy.
Cause we found a rug outside and brought it in. Our room had a rug. We were fancy. And then what happened? One of the yeshivas built a beautiful campus and got American mattresses and central air. And everybody said, "Well, I want to go there." And so then every yeshiva needed to do it. And then we turn around now and we're like, "I don't understand why the boys aren't growing the way they should." Man, because you took away all the resistance. Resistance creates growth. Fish swim upstream. That's how they return to their source. It's where they lay their eggs. It's how they have children. Jews are fish. Ve yidgu la rov be keref ha arutz. That's the bracha that we got. Ve yidgu from Lashon of dog. We're fish. The bracha that we have is that we're fish. We go against the tides. We're really a religion, and we don't talk about this enough. We're a rebellious religion.
Avraham Avinu is described as an Iveri. And today we've made it that in order to be a part of our religion, you do not be rebellious. But it's hard for Jews not to be rebellious, which is why the rebellious children are often the best. They're the ones that change the status quo. And if you can harness that energy and put them in the right direction, those kids will change the world. Because we've always been, and it's in our genetic code that when the world says we're going this way, Jews go, Nah, we're going that way. And you think about it, you're like in today in modern times, maybe it's not as easy to see. But that's because of the changes that we've made to the world, like in an era of child sacrifice Jews got up and said, "That's ridiculous! Don't ever sacrifice your children. That's not where we make our sacrifices." In an era of idolatry, Jews pointed to the oneness of the universe, which is something that science is still trying to comprehend. And science believes that there is a oneness of the universe, though they can't put their finger on it.
And we continuously have done this throughout time. In an era where we don't understand what the word 'barian' means. When's the last time you ran into a barian? I'm not talking about Israelis pushing on a bus. That's not baric. That's cultural. I'm not saying it's right. It's just a different culture. But when's the last time you saw a barian? When's the last time you saw someone walk around with a club? The world is a civilized place today, and we were an instrumental part of making it a civilized place. Here's the catch: if you want to reach the Nun Shari Bina You have to be willing to fall. And then swim against the current. That's the only way to get to the highest levels. There's no such thing as climbing the ladder and not falling down. Sheviyipol HaTzaddik v'kam is a promise. It means if you want to be that tzaddik, of course you have to be in a state of nefila, which is what the nun stands for. Remember, the nun stands for nefila.
But Torah, which is from the fiftieth sherebina, the nasev and Ishma, the nigla and Ishtar, those two nuns. It only happens b'derech nes. Nes means I've fallen, but I'm learning to put my trust in God, and I want to spend a minute on this because this is a very important thing. Since this is the last time that I'm going to be teaching you I want to share with you that when you fall, you will, because you're supposed to. That's where faith is built. When things are not going right in your life, they won't. And it won't. God willing, it'll be more good than bad. But you, there are people that have trouble with their children Teenage daughters. I know that all of you think that you weren't, but I want you to know that some of you, and probably all of you, at some point in your life, your mother said, "I wonder what's going to be with this one."
At some point, you're not bad. But they wondered about you because you were all swimming in your own path, and parents look at a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl and go. Deep breath, right? And there's faith that we find. We reach out in prayer to our Kadosh Baruch Hu and we say, "Take care of that which I can't necessarily take care of on my own." And we grow from that, from letting go and letting God. It's how we develop as people. We start to understand the difference between influence and control. Here's a place where I can influence, but I can't control this, and we learn to let go. It's the same thing in our marriages. It's the same thing in our jobs. It's the same thing in our communities. There are people, and they're Tasmanian devils of chaos. There are people that are so frightened in life.
And they're in such a state of nifila. And I don't blame them at all. I too, in my life, have done this. When we get into a state of nifila, maybe we got sick, or maybe a family member got sick, and we so badly want to control that we start spinning. We start putting people in places, and we push this person here, and push this person there, and then we get angry at the people that won't do exactly what we want. There's no sense of serenity. The thing is that the lack of serenity right now in the world is literally killing people. It's literally killing people. If you look at the diseases that are prevalent in the world today, these are stress-oriented diseases: rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis. The things that we treat with steroids are stress hormones. There's so much stress in the world today, and there's not nearly enough serenity because we've lost God—not here, Baruch Hashem, in Jerusalem, but in many places in the world.
We've really lost God. And what happens to a society that loses God? What happens to a society that doesn't know how to say, 'I can let go and let God. I can give my faith to something larger than myself.' Depression, anxiety, substance abuse, suicide, and stress are at their peak. The reason that the Lebavitcher Rebbe Zecharia of Vracha was into having a moment of prayer, a non-denominational prayer, a moment of silence, just so that people could connect to higher power, is because he was concerned for the world at large. What happens to a world at large that does not have what to be somehan when there nofil? Because the state of the world is always going to have some aspect of nifila to it. So when you fall, and you will Because only in Mitzrayim do the fish come free. That's why Klali Yisrael was complaining. In Mitzrayim, we got our fish for free. Were they obsessed with sushi? It's like this wasn't yet the five towns. They're like, yeah, the fish came to my door. You know why? Because the Nile River overflows, and in Mitzrayim, literally the fish were everywhere. It was free fish. It was amazing.
That's not a Jewish concept. A Jew doesn't sit there and go, "This should come easy." Why is it so hard? You have people that are railing in their life. Why is it so hard? Why did this happen to me? That's a painful question to ask. And of course, anybody who asks that question, those emotions deserve to be validated, felt, held, all the good things. That's an unanswerable question. Nobody knows why anything happens to anyone, but now that you're in a state of friction, you have two choices: you can either get out or you can jump in. If you jump in, you stay, you grow, you climb, and you reach that nun shari bina. If you let go, you're out. And the only thing I can guarantee you is that you're not living in mitsrayim. And if you are living in mitsrayim I hate to see what you're going to look like in twenty years without all the growth.
And there are going to be girls that leave this room and in a short amount of time don't say amen to this because it's not necessarily always a bracha. There are going to be girls in a short amount of time. This girl got engaged. That girl got engaged. It's going to be like the easiest thing in the world for them. And there are going to be girls that it's harder for. And there are going to be girls that are feeling like they're in a state of nefila and they're feeling the rejection and they're wondering and they're hoping and they're waiting and when will it be my turn and who's advocating for me and why didn't it work out and why haven't I gotten a date? There's a tremendous amount of pain and chaos in there. The opportunity is to say, I can't control this These fish didn't come free for me. I'm going to have to work towards this. What am I doing in this? Am I using this as an opportunity to grow, to invest in myself, to become the person that I want to become, or am I just trying to control this and getting angry at the world? And I want to share with you that getting angry at the world is not a very attractive place to be. Nobody wants to be with people that are angry at the world.
And it forces you to see it. You see these girls going through the pain of being single. The ones that really work on themselves have crazy growth. And be'ez Hashem, when they do find the right one, God willing, the marriage has a certain maturity to it because they're not just kids who got it figured out right away. And you know there are people that they like. They have this. I don't mean to pick on any specific block or person here. I'm going to say something, and I don't want you to blow it out of proportion. There are people that walk around Ushuaia with their thousand dollar Bugaboo strollers, or I don't even know. I heard the Bugaboo stroller is not even fancy anymore, but there are strollers that you can put in your pocket when you're done with them. I'm like, and there are people that are walking around and they're eating all day at that bagel store in that block. I'm talking about in there, and they're waiting till one thirty when their husband comes home. And what are you doing in the morning?
We hang out. We get a. We go to Katzefet. We have like it's a certain lifestyle, and it seems to be very easy and very appealing. I want you to know there are couples that are not that way. There are couples that are like we're going to do this, and we're going to work through it. I don't know how it's going to work out, but we're going to trust in God, and we're going to put ourselves out there. We're going to create the vessel, and we're going to see. And I want you to know it may not be as easy, but it is better. And it's not again. I'm not here to say to you If you're going through it, it's really better. I'm not telling this to you when it's happening. If it came to me when it's happening, you said, Rebbe, I'm in a hard time. All I would do is sit and listen. I'm telling it to you now. So that you have the hashkafa. That guy in Kylo who's not necessarily getting supported, who learns morning seder and afternoon seder, but night seder he's tutoring Bachrim on the side
Or he's learning in a yeshiva that pays a little bit more. So you'll say, but that guy who's getting totally supported, he's able to learn. He's going to become a mitsuyon. I want you to know that's not my experience. The guy who's able to learn three starim and he's totally supported and he has no daigas on his head. It's not my experience that guy becomes the biggest tamalchachim. It's actually my experience that guy becomes the biggest tamalchachim. The guy who had to shvitz for it. The sacrifice builds you. The relationship that a couple has when everything is smooth sailing is not nearly as great as the relationship can be when a couple needs to find each other in the darkness. Klal Yisrael is a nation. We're a desert nation. That's what we are. Remember when you went to Eilat? Remember when you were driving on the bus down south And for an hour there was nothing There was just desert, and it's just like a straight path.
It's not like you're on those windy mountains. You're just on a straight path of desert until you hit a lot. That's what this country looked like. This country, this entire country, eighty years ago, looked like that stretch of land. And today Today, Jerusalem is beautiful. Today, Eretz Yisrael is well traveled. I was talking to an old Israeli today, and he said to me, "Do you know that it used to be that the only way to get from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was through the backroads of Beit Shemesh" And now Beautiful highways. Gorgeous buildings going up all the time. Business is thriving here. The land is thriving here. You could see the prophecy is coming true. It's an amazing thing to see. It happened because of a group of people from left to right and everything in between. It happened because of a group of people that said we're not afraid of hard work and we're not afraid to do hard things.
As we finish this year Before I say thank you. I just want to remind you that this year, whatever challenges came up I'm not saying they weren't real; they were real. But I hope I hope that this year, in some sense, has prepared you to do the next hard thing. Like For some of you, it was probably easy to get on the plane and come here. And for some of you, it was probably not so easy. I'll share with you just in the spirit of vulnerability. I was when I went to Mavasarit twenty five years ago. We landed, and I came with friends. I wasn't really so nervous. But we were on the bus going back from the airport to Mavasarit, and I started getting nauseous. And I said to myself, "Do not throw up" Because then for the rest of the year you're the guy that puked on the bus.
You don't want to be the Berg. It's like the guy who, well, you know that guy. You don't want to be that guy. But you learn something. You learn something about having to prepare yourself, and being a person, and taking care of yourself, doing your laundry, finding a place to go for Shabbos, and maybe cooking for Shabbos. Maybe the boys are going somewhere for Shabbos, and it builds you. Now you're leaving. And you're probably not going into the midbar because I'm sure you have, and I hope you have support systems that you're going back to. But life, in a certain sense, is that midbar. Life is not Egypt. The fish don't show up free at your doorstep. But be a person who's somech nofle. Be a person who's shooting for nun shari bina. Be a person who's reaching for the immeasurable things in life. Those are the really good things. Be a person who knows that there's a tyra to every one of these moments. It's why we have to constantly remind ourselves. Vayhibens our own Monday, Thursday, fast days, Shabbos. Any time we're traveling, we're in the midbar. When we stay, we don't say. When we stay, we're like, we're here. But any time we're in motion, we're in the midbar. There's vulnerability.
There's nafila. And I have no doubt that you will. I have no doubt that in ten, twenty, thirty, forty years' time. I have no doubt that you will be either in Yerushalayim or return to Yerushalayim from wherever you're living. And perhaps you will find yourself driving by Sanhedrin or Chevet, and perhaps you'll turn to your son or daughter in the car and go Right down there. I went to Tzomar Dvora. And that was another step, maybe a beginning step, maybe an early step. And what will, God willing, be a very beautiful journey. And I want you to know that it's a privilege to teach her. It's a privilege to be a rebbe. It's a humbling thing to be a rebbe. And Chazal tells Ain Melech B'Lo Am. There's no king without a nation. There's no such thing as a rebbe without students. And when you show up and when you're here I want you to know that you've given me a tremendous gift this year, and I want to say thank you to you because first of all, it's always fun to come here.
But also in a very real way, you dedicate yourself to imparting these messages And there are people that want to. There's a chaver of mine who just said to me recently. He said, "What would it take to get into the world of chinuch?" And I described to him some of the obstacles that exist, and he said, "Yeah, forget it." " But he wants to. He just he's not going to, and he'd probably even be good at it. He just hasn't found his place. It's not obvious. There are people who come to teaching places and nobody shows up to their classes. And it's hard. You know those classes where there's only three girls left in the class, and now those three girls are suffering from the existential crisis of, if I leave, do I wreck somebody's life? But somebody told me it's my year, so I don't know what to do. It's it's hard. It's a really hard thing.
So thank you. You've. I hope that after I die in 120, they'll write two things on my tombstone. One that I play sheish beish with my daughter and my son And the other I would hope that they would just write malamed that he taught Torah And I couldn't do that without you. So I want to express my akhar satov And beis Hashem we should be zeicher to learn Torah together for many years to come.
Is this shiur filed in the wrong place? Let us know.