Behar - Accepting the Torah With Humility and Pride

1:51 Instead, we have the Kolos Ubrakim, the lightning and the thunder, and it's coming down on the mountain. If you really want to express your humility, it should be Moshe coming up from the depth, not coming down from the mountain. That's our first question for tonight. Obviously there's something about a mountain that's both humble and strong at the same time. There's a machlokus. There's a machlokus in this week's parsha as to the reason for Yovel. What is the inner nature of Yovel? So the Chinuch says that Yovel is to teach us humility. Why? How does Yovel teach us humility? Girls, let's think about it for a second. You work the land. Today we don't think about what it was like to work the land. Today we think about what it's like to go to an office. But imagine you were a farmer for a second. You're working the land. You push the land. You push the land. And you're a chacham.

3:01 You know. I don't know if you know this, girls, but like Growing up, I thought farmers were like planting in your backyard. You plant in your backyard, you have a little bit of soil and you make a little thing with your finger and you put a seed in, or maybe you had it in school, maybe you had some little science experiment in your class. That's not planting. That's like planting A farmer takes thousands, tens of thousands of seeds, and he has to till the land just right. He has unbelievable wisdom of what it looks like, exactly what time to plant, exactly what time to reap, exactly what time to sow. He knows all of these things. He knows the weather. He has all these chesbainus of how you put the water on the plant in a way that the plant won't be overwhelmed by the water, but will be nourished by the water. There's a great chachma in water.

3:53 I don't mean water. I'm farming. So a person starts to think like Look at me It's my land. Look what I was able to do. So what happens in shmita? What do we say? What do we say? Don't work the land. What is that the equivalent of? If we say don't work the land, what does that sound like? What's the humility there of not working the land, girls? Trust. It means Hakadosh Baruch Hu is in control. I'm not in control. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is in control. So every fifty years, Hakadosh Baruch Hu takes the land and he says, "It's not yours; it goes back to its original owner." In every seven years, we have shemitah. What do we do every seven years in shemitah? Every seven years in shemitah, we let the land lay fallow. But in the yovel year, we say the land doesn't even belong to us. Imagine a person purchases a piece of land from Reuven; it's Reuven's ancestral land in Eretz Yisrael.

4:54 Thirty years go by. Now it's Yoval. Thirty years, girls, of working the land. How do you feel? Whose land is it? After thirty years It's your land. No, it's your sweat. It's your turn. Can you imagine? You see a farmer. Can you see it in your mind's eye? Can you see the farmer's calloused hands? Whose hands are those? Those are the hands of a man who put his life into that land. To provide for himself, for his family, for his community, this is chashuv. And then when the yovel year comes around, 30 years after his purchase, he bought it 20 years into yovel, 30 years, 20 years after yovel, 30 years later. Sorry, Charlie, that land belongs to Ruvain. Imagine the feeling that the farmer has. You're taking my land. That land belongs to me. Anyone here ever moved from one house to another? Did you have a house that you grew up in and then you moved?

5:48 I'm gonna tell you something, girls. I'm 43 years old. I grew up on 707 Annapolis Street. We moved to Lawrence when I was 16 years old. Arayomazef. I go back to Farakway. I make sure to drive by 707 Annapolis Street. The people that have been living there for almost 30 years. I only lived there 15 years. Or less than 15 years, 12 years. But that's my house. And every time I drive by. The Devors are wonderful people. They bought the house, but every time I drive by, I go, "The Devors are living in my house." Like that's my house. You're not supposed to be living in my house. And what did I do for that house? I did nothing for that house. I just grew up in it, but I have such an attachment to it. You ever have something like that? You imagine this farmer. He worked the land for 30 years. Every seven years, he let it lie fallow, and he said, 'I'm not in control. Hashem's in control.' After 50 years, he has to say, 'It doesn't even belong to me.' Do you realize the humility of shmita and yovel?

6:46 Unbelievable humility. That's what the chinuch says. The depth of Yovel is the humility to recognize you don't own that land. That's a deep humility. But there's a machlokus. That's not the only reason given for Yovel. There's another reason called from the Ralbag, and the Ralbag says as follows: We know girls. What's the halacha? If you sell yourself as a slave, an eved ivri, if he sells himself as a slave, or he's taken in as a slave because he can't afford to pay his debt because he stole from somebody What's the halacha in shemitah? What happens to that eved ivri? He goes free, except for what happens if he wants to stay, so he does the thing with the ear. And then he stays until when? Until Yovel. Yovel he goes free. So the albag says. There's a different reason for Yovel, and it's the exact opposite reason of the Chinuch's reason.

7:46 The Chinuch said it was all about humility. What does the Albag say? Yovel is all about the restoration of pride. Because you know what it is to be a slave. To be a slave means you're nothing. It means you have no sense of identity. You're not. You don't belong to you anymore. So even though in the Torah a slave is not like. When we think slave, we get very nervous because slave sounds like it's very uncomfortable. You think like slaves, like in America. That's not what happened with Jewish slaves. The Gemara says, if you were kainah and eved, you were kainah a master. If you only had one pillow, who got the pillow? The slave got the pillow. You had to provide for the slave. The slave mamish became a part of your family. So even though you got the slave's work You had a tremendous amount that you were now responsible for.

8:38 But is that a good feeling, girls? If you're the slave, is it a good feeling? Even though you're taking care of, imagine if you're a slave for a very wealthy man. It's probably pretty good. You could see someone almost bragging I'm who's very wealthy. I don't know. I'm like, I'm Steve Jobs. I was. I actually thought Steve Jobs in my head said he passed away. Let's say you say, "I'm Steve Jobs' slave." I'm. I'm this great actor." I'm this great actor's slave, So you got you know he says you know where I live I live in this mansion. I have this guy who went from being a guy who couldn't pay for anything, and now all of a sudden he's living in a palace. He's got a down comforter. He's got feather pillows. This guy is living it up, right? You think it's pretty awesome, no?

9:33 It's not true. It's not true. Because you know the feeling that he has. At the end of the day I don't have my own place. At the end of the day, when you're eating at somebody else's table, you're eating at somebody else's table. Girls, there's a wonderful feeling that Beis Hashem you're going to have. The feeling is when you get married. And you have your own Shabbos table. So there's a certain pride in that. Could you imagine it? You and your husband sitting at your Shabbos table. Your beautiful children are sitting around the Shabbos table. And who else is at your Shabbos table? Guests are at your Shabbos table. But even as comfortable as you make it for your guests It's not their Shabbos table. You have a gaiva. You have a pride. I don't mean gaiva like an arrogance. You have a pride because you say, "I have a table that I can invite people to." But the people that you invite, if they don't have a table to go to There's a little bit of like a weakness. Like I don't belong anywhere. You know what I mean? Like I don't, like I don't have a place.

10:37 They say a ma'isa with R' Shlomo Freifeld, Zechesadik Levrach, the founding Rosh Yeshiva Shoyashiv. That there was a boy who was sitting at R' Freifeld's table, and he didn't have anywhere else to be. And R' Freifeld saw that he was like a little broken from it. So R' Freifeld pulled him over, and he said, "Remember, you're not a guest. This is your table. You're a Ben Bias. This is your table." And it's a beautiful sentiment. But as much as he said it, thank you, Rebbe, for those beautiful words, and it is very meaningful to me. But it's not my table. Eventually, one day I'll have my own table. This Eved, he could walk around. He could be walking around. He's LeBron James as Eved. He's Steve Jobs as Eved. I tried to do a liquor thing for you. Try. I'm the best Eved. But you're an Eved.

11:24 You have no pride. You know how little pride this Eved has. He has so little pride that even when he should have gone free in Shemitah, you know what he said? I'll be an eved. Who chooses to be an eved? What would you rather? Would you rather be a slave in a palace Or would you rather be a pauper in your own house? Any normal person would say, "I'd rather be poor" But what I have is mine. Than be living in a wealthy man's house and lose my dignity and have to say that I'm a slave. That's what any normal person would say. This guy is not so normal. He's too afraid to go back into reality. He's too afraid of the vulnerability of reality. So you know what the Rebbe says? You know what Yosef does? It says to him, "You're not a slave."

12:13 That's not who you are. There are people walking around. We call them addicts. There are people walking around. We call them addicts. We say they walk around going, "I'm an addict. I'm a slave. I'm an addict. I'm a slave. I'm an addict. I'm a slave." It's a very big mistake that they're making. It's one thing to say I'm addicted I have a problem. There's something beyond my will. But you, in your essence, are not an addict. You are a human being. And there's a part of you that is an addict. But you, right? IFS language for those of you that are in on the joke. The self is not an addict. There's a part that's an addict. By the way, for those of you that looked around just now and did the smile and the smirk, I just want you to know. Thank you. Welcome to the club. We're all part of this together. For those of you who know what I'm saying, if you don't know what I'm saying, you know what I'm saying.

13:04 Yehovah comes along and says, "Stop it." Stop. You re-upped your slavery. You can be a human being. You can walk around in the world. Have a little bit of gaiva. Have a little bit of pride for yourself. You see this all the time. You see this all the time. It's people walking around." And they mamish. They're they're they're so they're so nothing. They're so nothing that they don't even have the ability to get out into the world and to be something. You know To get out into the world and be something is very hard because you could be rejected. Imagine you're going for a job. You go to college. What are you majoring in? So you know, girls start. I don't know if this is what I'm good at. What if nobody hires me? You start to like. So I'll end up doing something that I'm not really good at, I'm not really passionate about, but it's a job that I know I can have.

13:55 But chaval, maybe you were awesome at something But why didn't you go do it? Because you said I'm a zero. If you want to be something in the world, you have to believe that you're something. The first step of greatness is believing that you're worthy of greatness. Girls, do you know is an unbelievable, unbelievable shemishmuel? He says Klal Yisrael before they went to Mount Tabor, where'd they go? A place called Refidim. They went from Refidim to Ar Sinai. Chazal say, you know what happened in Refidim? Rafu yadeihem b'Torah. They cleansed their hands of Torah. They held up their hands. They didn't learn in Refidim. Can you imagine? They're about to go to Ar Sinai. They said, "We out." We're not doing it. Can't do it. Washed our hands of Torah. We're out. So how they? And that's when Amalek attacked them. Because when you give up on yourself, Amalek attacks you.

14:43 So the Shemis Shmuel says. How they overcome? How they actually get to Har Sinai? It's an unbelievable shemi shmuel. You know what he says? They imagined themselves there. What the shemi shmuel says? They were sitting there in their feedim. They had totally given up. What's the way to get out of giving up? It was a what do they call that in psychology? It was like not a hypnotic state, but they put themselves in a place where they were having a deeply emotional experience. They imagined themselves at Mount Sinai. They imagined the thunder. They imagined the lightning. They imagined Moshe Rabbeinu coming down with the luchos, and that's what brought them out of their despair. In other words, you know what the Shem Mishmuel is saying? The opposite of despair is the pride to be able to imagine your life. That's the power of daydreaming. How many people in the room? You don't have to raise your hand. You'll tell me just by looking. How many people here are daydreamers?

15:38 That was a lot of you. That was a lot of you. That was almost a hundred percent of you. And for the remaining five percent, you know what they were doing when they didn't respond? Daydreaming. If you think about it, isn't daydreaming a very powerful thing to do? Because what happens when you daydream? You find out what you really believe yourself capable of doing. No? You find out what it is like. You imagine yourself building that home. You daydream about it. It becomes real. The dream makes the reality. It manifests the reality. But in order to dream, you have to have what? You have to believe in yourself that it's possible. Even if you despair, Klal Yisrael fell all the way down to the bottom. They discovered when they were all the way down at the bottom that it was still possible to dream of Har Sinai. And since it was still possible to dream of Har Sinai, that's how they got their way out.

16:29 So we have in front of us two approaches: the approach of the Albag and the approach of the Chinuch. What is Yovel about? What does the Chinuch say? It's about humility. What does the Albag say? It's about pride. Does that seem to be opposite each other? Almost like an exact parallel of what? Almost the exact parallel of a humble mountain. A humble mountain. It's humble. But it's a mountain. It's prideful. It's strong. It's Yovel. It's humble. It's not my land. I give it back to the person that I got it from. But it's also about pride. It's also about the strength to be able to say, "I'm not an evet." What's the pshat that you need both of these things in order to receive the Torah? So this is the kicker. You ready for it? And this is a good way to actually end the year.

17:21 Not to girls. Do they still do this thing where you go psych? That was like a thing back in the day. That was last week. I got the phone call. It'll be a little awkward, but we'll get through it together. The secret of a relationship is that you need two things at once. In any relationship, you need two things. Number one, you need humility. Number two, you need strength. Why is humility so attractive? When we meet somebody who's really humble, why is that so attractive? When we meet someone who's arrogant, why is that so unattractive? I think you girls have heard me say this before, right? What happens when somebody's humble? Even if at first glance when you meet him and he's not necessarily the best looking guy, but then he's humble, it's like he's growing on me. And when you meet someone who's initially very good looking and then they're arrogant, all of a sudden it's like he's gross.

18:27 Why is humility so attractive and arrogance so deeply unattractive? Because a relationship is about creating space. An arrogant person doesn't create space for another, and a humble person does. Humble person creates space. But there's a danger to humility. What's the danger to humility? You can pull yourself back so much that you're not even in the relationship anymore. What do we call that? Codependence. You girls have heard of that term before. Codependence means that I'm not myself anymore. I'm dependent on you for my own validation. And so we have to thread the needle, girls. The phrase porcupines in the winter. Have you ever heard about porcupines in the winter? Porcupines in the winter is a great martial. It's a great martial. Porcupines in the winter means. How does a bear survive in the winter? It hibernates. That bear is a big, fat animal with a tremendous amount of fur, and it goes deep into a cave, closes itself off, and goes to sleep.

19:32 And it wakes up six months later In some cases, girls go into hibernation mode. You don't see them for a couple of weeks. That's a bear. A porcupine is too little. It'll die in the winter. So how does a porcupine survive? It needs the warmth of all the other porcupines together, all their body heat together, in order to be able to stay warm. What's the problem? What happens if porcupines get too close to each other? They'll poke each other. They'll kill each other. So how do porcupines stay alive in the winter? The answer is Porcupines have no. It's not true. That'd be like an amazing process of plucking themselves. It's not true. Porcupines have an extra sense where they can get exactly close to each other without poking each other. It's an amazing thing the way the Rebbeinu Shalom created porcupines. They get very close to each other so they get all the warmth from each other.

20:30 But at the end of the day, they don't poke each other. This is what it's like to be in a relationship. You get very close to the other person, but what happens? You have enough distance that you stay yourself. If you get too close in a relationship, you lose yourself. If you're too far You die from the cold. The secret to being in any relationship is humility and pride. If you have too much pride There's no space for the other. Too much humility, and you're not present in the relationship itself. Does that make sense? Now let's go back to our mashal about Hashem. There are two types of girls in this room. There's really two types of people everywhere, but there's two types of girls in this room. There are girls that walk into Sharfman's on day one. They've got it. They know exactly what they're gonna do. They have their vision, their strength, and their pride, and they go for it. They're freight trains.

21:31 You can't stop them. They're they're like I'm on the road. I'm going. You know exactly who they were. They showed up day one. These girls weren't here to mess around. They came. They were strong. They had a vision. I'm gonna maximize every moment. But there's a challenge sometimes with those girls. The challenge is Sometimes they're so set on becoming great that they never stop to pull back to actually listen to how other people are experiencing them. They come to sem and they're off to the races with their pride. They're they're not they're not listening. They're not really being makabu. They're just racing toward that vision, but they're not slowing down. There's no humility there. You know what I mean? Other girls lo alenu came this year. And they didn't believe it was possible to change. There are girls that walked into Sem this year. And they looked at themselves and they said You don't know where I've been You don't know what I've done.

22:32 And in order to fill the vacuum of their own lack of ego They did things they're not proud of. I'm talking about to make themselves feel better Because when I do that thing, it's like a drug. It's like a temporary high. It gives me that external validation. So it's not that they're not coming to Shir because they're bad. You know why they're not coming to Shir? They'll tell you it's because I don't care, but it's not true. What's the real reason they're not coming? The real reason is because they don't believe that it's possible to make a lasting change. One of the saddest stories in my chinuch career was a young man who was like mamish throwing away his year in yeshiva And he wasn't doing anything. And so I pulled him into my office to check in and see what was going on. He told me a story about a friend of his who had gone to yeshiva.

23:28 And he did great in yeshiva, and he really threw himself all in, shan olive, shan a bet, and he shtagged tremendously. And then when he went back to America, unfortunately, he made other choices and he threw it all away. So he said, "I'm not going to be the guy who wastes my year in the basic medrash just to throw it away when I get back." So I said to him. Just because he did that doesn't mean you will. So he goes, I know myself. I will. I'm not strong enough to make it. So that's exactly what he did. He wasted his entire year. And he said, I'm not going to give myself the chance to be great because I don't believe that it'll last. So we have these two dichotomies. We have some girls that showed up this year on fire, but they weren't actually listening to anybody. There was no humility.

24:14 Other girls who didn't show up, and the reason they didn't show up is not because they were bad. It's because they lacked belief in themselves. To come to Har Sinai is an unbelievable message. If we would go into a ravine, if we would go into a valley to receive the Torah That wouldn't be good. You know why? Because that would be us. We're not enough. There's no strength there. There's a tremendous amount of humility, but there's no pride. You know why I receive the Torah? Because I believe that I'm worthy of receiving the Torah. And unfortunately. Unfortunately, there were those that thought I'm coming to that mountain. I'm very strong. Hashem said, "Wait. Which mountain? Which mountain are you going to? You're not going to Mount Kilimanjaro. You're going to Har Sinai. A small mountain, a humble mountain, a mountain that doesn't need to puff out its chest.

25:06 Now, I want to give you my goodbye message. Goodbye message is like this. I hate. There's a certain message that's given over every year. I'll be honest with you, I hate this message. It's how do you bring it back with you to America? It's like come on What have we been doing this whole year? Educating you so that you change, real change inside, so that wherever you go, you're a girl who's serving Hashem. It's not I'm from Yerushalayim. If you're only from Yerushalayim, something is a problem, right? We're from wherever we go. We're serving Hashem wherever we go. It's not I'm from in Yerushalayim, but not in L. A. We're from in L. A. We're from in New York. We're from in Yerushalayim. We're from everywhere. I don't like that message at all. I'll tell you why I don't like it particularly Because we're really telling a girl. If we have to tell a girl, here's the tip of how to take it back with you It means that we don't believe that she has enough strength That she has enough pride to be able to say, wherever I go, I am me.

26:10 Wherever I go, goes. But what if I'm impacted by my surroundings? You're normal, so you're impacted by your surroundings. Remember when your mother said, and if somebody was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you have jumped too? So maybe you're going back to an environment where people aren't behaving the way that you're behaving. Where's your strength? Where's your harcinai? I'm a har. I'm going back. That's a very powerful way to go back. But I caution you Because a lot of times, if we did well in Eretz Yisrael, we come back. You remember the girl who came back from Israel and she was all on fire, and now she was like all preachy and telling everyone what to do. You know that look she has in her eyes when she comes over to you and she's like, "Okay, sweetie, just wait until you get to Israel, then everything will." You know what I'm talking about? You know that girl?

26:59 At least eighty percent of you know that girl. I know that girl too. You know what I'm saying? I am that girl. You know what I'm saying? That's the. We are that girl. Baruch Hashem. Amen. If you're gonna come back strong, that's beautiful. But to come back strong means to come back with humility. That means make space for people in your life. Make space for Hashem in your life. Make space for your parents. Don't come back and start telling your parents, 'I learned all these halachas now. Let me just change everything we've been doing.' Slow. It's not the way we speak to our parents. We express Hakarasatov. What about your siblings? I get this question all the time, Rabbi. How can I help my younger brother by being a brother? So if I want to tell him all the mistakes that I made so that he shouldn't make them, would you have listened if your older brother came home and told you that? Where's your humility?

27:52 You can come back to America strong. But don't come back without your humility. If you come back and you're all of a sudden taking up all the space, then you were not makabel the Torah at Har Sinai. There was a Har there, but there was no Sinai. There was no humility, and if you come back and you're all Sinai and you're nohar, then ena kanami, you won't believe in yourself to be able to be makabel the tyrant in America, and it'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Girls, I want to wish you a beautiful Shabbos. A great summer A great rest of your year, a tremendous amount of hatslacha, and hazrat Hashem, we'll see you next year. Shana tova.