Bereishis - Help I Have Fallen And I Can't Get Up!

2:01 I was thinking about the amount of courage it takes to pull up from the logo with the game on the line. I don't know if I could do that, and the reason I don't think that I could do it is not because that's probably a terrible shot selection, even if he hit it. It's because what if you miss? The truth is, at some point in all sports, the talent level is exactly the same. The difference between the great ones and the average ones is your capacity to shoot and miss. Because if you can't shoot and miss, then you're probably not going to have the courage to take the shot that needs to be taken.

3:00 One of the things that we see, especially at a young age, is if you shoot and you miss and you're okay with the miss, you'll probably eventually develop into the guy that could hit the shot. But if you can't shoot and miss, you'll never develop into the guy that could hit the shot. Part of learning how to walk is learning how to fall. And the very first fall took place almost immediately after he received the commandment. Gemara in Sanhedrin tells us that Adam Harishon, in the ninth hour, he was told not to eat from the Eitz Hadass, and in the tenth hour, he ate from the Eitz Hadass. Chazal say he couldn't even last an hour. It's not interesting to me that Adam Harishon made a mistake.

3:58 That's what human beings do. Adam HaRishon was unbelievably large, and I don't just mean physically. Spiritually, this was a man who was impossibly spiritual. And even then, he fell. People fall. But what's interesting to me is what the pasuk tells us happened after he fell, after Adam HaRishon fell. What does the Torah tell us? He hid, and where did he hide? This is what's interesting to me. The Al Shach Hakadosh says he hid, and remember Gan Eden was probably a large place. There were many trees in Gan Eden. Where did other Marishim hide? The Al Shach Hakadosh says he hid behind the Eitz Adas. Now that's very strange, because the number one rule after you do the crime is don't return to the scene of the crime.

4:51 If other Marishon is hiding from Hashem, which is a very strange thing, so go hide behind a different tree, and when Hakadosh Baruch Hu looks at the Eitz Hadass and sees that something is missing, that clearly somebody's eaten from the Eitz Hadass, and turns to other Marishon and goes, "Did you eat from it?" "Go, me, eat from the Eitz Hadass." I'm all the way over here, but if you hide behind the Eitz Hadass, it's like you're communicating. I didn't. That's a very strange thing. It's totally counterintuitive, and the Alshach Hakadosh points this out. He says. It's so strange that other marishim eats from the eitz adas and then he hides behind the eitz adas. Why are you hiding behind the eitz adas? Distance yourself. Get away from it. Especially if you're trying to hide from Hashem. If you're a kid and you have a part of you that lies. Some kids lie, and like the second they lie, it's like already you know, like their parents call them out or a teacher calls them out, and they fold like it's nothing. You know what I mean? Like these kids, they have no grit. They have no resilience. Some kids are the deny till you die kids.

5:48 It doesn't matter that you—they've got you on film, and you're like, nah, didn't do it. Nah, careful, boys. There's some people. There's other Marishon. It's like you're gonna hide from Hashem, so you think you're capable of beating the system. So then, run away from the Eitz Hadass. He hides behind the Eitz Hadass. Very strange. So the Alshach Hakadosh explains as follows. The Alshach Hakadosh says that what did other Marishon do? He said to himself, as soon as he sinned, he saw that he changed. And by the way, Chazal say that that's in fact what happened. That other Marisheh, the Medrash says, before he sinned, he was enormously large physically, and now he fit inside of Gan Eden. He physically shrunk after he did the Aveiro. That's what the Medrash says. He physically was much smaller, and other Marisheh knew it about himself, and he knew that God was going to call out to him.

6:47 So this is what he said. This is what the Al Shachak Kader says. That other Marishon said, 'I am no longer a being that's capable of hearing the voice of Hashem immediately. So I can only hear now a lesser voice of Hashem.' So let me go to a makom hatoma. Let me go to a place where the vibrations of Hashem are less. This way, I can actually hear Hashem. So he went to the Eitz Hadass, not because he was hiding from Hashem, not because he was distancing himself from the Eitz Hadass, but because he said, 'This who I am now. This who I am. I'm the Eitz Hadass guy. Look at me. I physically shrunk, and in order for me to engage with Hashem, it's going to have to be on this smaller level.' The Al Shach Hakadosh is telling us the most profound psychological insight that happens to a person after they do an avera. Every one of us is going to do averas, boys. That's part of the process. You had Yom Kippur. You were cleansed by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. It's amazing. Hashem granted you a kapara. You had Sukkis. It was gevuldek. In the interim between Yom Kippur and Sukkis, we were all busy. Sukkis. We're sitting in the embrace of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Simchas Torah. Amazing, boys.

7:59 It's back to real life, and back to real life means you're going to fall. And if you set for yourself an expectation of perfection, you are doomed to fail. The need to be perfect has nothing to do with Hashem. Don't blame Hashem for our perfectionist parts. Hashem is understanding of humanity. He created us. He knows us. He doesn't want us to be perfect. Malachim are perfect. If Hashem wanted perfection, He knows how to create perfection. Hashem created us, and He says, "It's if you're going to be imperfect, that's fine. Do tshuva, bring me into your lives. That's what Hashem says. Bring me into the lowest places of your life. That's what Hashem says. I created the world to have a dira b'tachayim. So if you mess up and you go lower, great. That's an opportunity to invite me lower. But there's one mistake, and if you make this mistake, it'll kill you. Don't identify yourself as your lowest moment."

8:56 Don't say now I'm an Etsadash Jew. Now it's impossible for me to get back up. I've fallen and I can't get up. It's literally the old commercial for the old people that fell. They had to wear a button that said 'I've fallen and I can't get up.' It was like a slogan in the '90s. 'I've fallen and I can't get up.' We made fun of it as kids. I don't know why there's nothing funny about it. But the truth is, every one of us needs a life alert. Every one of us, we do an avera, and then the yitzharah comes in. You know what the yitzharah says? That's you now. That's you now. You were on a great streak. You went to minion, God knows how many days in a row, and now you're off the streak. So what happens, guys? Go, I'm off the streak. It's over. I guess I'm not a minion guy. He says you're not a minion guy. You made a mistake. You fell. It's a great opportunity to do tshuva. But now I'm not a minion guy.

9:51 So now I've almost given myself permission to be this person, because I'm identifying with my avera. The Baal Shem Tov Kadosh said, "It's not the bite of the snake that kills you; it's the venom. The bite of the snake—it's just a pinch. It hurts. The fangs went in. That's not what kills you. It's the venom that's coursing through your blood afterwards." The Baal Shem Tov says, "The bite of the snake—that's the avera, but the feeling you have afterwards—that's the venom." And we live in a world where guys think that it's from to beat themselves up after they did an avera, and when they hear a shmu like this, they go, "It's Chassidish Berg. It's a cute thing. He's trying to make us feel good." No, I'm trying to save your life. It's not cute. There is no mitzvah to shame yourself into change. First of all, I'll spare you some time. It doesn't work. Go ahead, try it. See if you're gonna.

10:45 Beat yourself up. I'm such a bad person. See if you change in the long term. In the short term, maybe you'll have some gains. In the long term, you're destroying yourself. Who gives you the right to talk about yourself negatively? You are Hakadosh Baruch Hu's child. Would you ever speak to your friend that way? If your friend came to you and said, 'I didn't have erev. I made a big mistake, and I'm so ashamed of it,' would you go? You should be ashamed. You're a piece of garbage. If you wouldn't speak to him that way, what gives you the right to speak to yourself that way? It's because no, Rebbe, I'm being real with myself. You're not being real with yourself. Actually, the lens of truth is only the lens of compassion. We say in davening, Avinu ha'avarachamun, ha'merachem, rachem aleinu, v'sein b'libeinu, lo havin l'askel. We daven to a merciful God and we say, 'Please give me mercy, and then give me bina and seichel. Give me intelligence to understand. What does mercy have to do with understanding?'

11:40 The Bal Chassidus say, if you don't have mercy, if you don't see yourself and others through the lens of compassion, you have no understanding of what's happening in reality. It was the yard side of the Halakha Berditchever this past week, so the eyes of Berditchever are present for us. People think of Berditchever as like a cute comic book. It's like he saw the wagon driver wearing tefillin while fixing the wagon, so he decided to be a positive person and say, See how kadosh the Jews are, even when they're fixing their wagons, they're wearing tefillin. But obviously it's inappropriate to wear tefillin when you're fixing a wagon. Wrong. The Barditchaver saw right, and we see wrong. The Barditchaver knew how to see who a yid really was. We need a rebbe. We need a rebbe to give us unbelievable mussar. Just need somebody to tell it to us straight.

12:36 You do need somebody to tell you straight. Straight means every single person in this room is understandable, and anything that's understandable is worthy of compassion, and anything that's worthy of compassion ultimately is forgivable. That's straight. I remember when I was a kid, there was a certain rebbe, and one time he never did this, but one time he gave the most what you guys would call hype mussar, and it was like fire and brimstone. It made shrier fire look like nothing. It was unreal, and he was just saying, "You guys!" I remember as a kid, like me and my friends, we were getting so, "Yeah, finally somebody's saying it." Musler had zero impact in the long term. Because what are you doing? You're tearing somebody down. That's going to make them a better yid. It's not true. You see somebody who's fallen, help them up. Tell them, "I know who you really are. I know you really are."

13:34 It's a mistake. Chazal call it a ruach stus. A person doesn't have avera to ruach stus. So you might say because you're very frum, you go, no, it's not a ruach stus. It's who he is. But you're going against Chazal. Chazal say it's a wind of insanity. Give me, Rabbi. He's so insane, he keeps doing the same avera for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. At some point, it's not a ruach stus. At some point, it's his identity. But that's not what Chazal say. You could do an avera for your entire life, and it'll be a ruach stus. You know why you did that avera? If you were being real with yourself, you would look at yourself and you would go, "Something was going on in my system. Something was going on. Maybe I was feeling anxious. Maybe I was feeling rejected. Maybe I reached out for a coping mechanism that wasn't my highest self. That's actually real. And then you could get to work on it. Instead of just focusing on the avera, you could look at the system that produced that avera, and you could say beseder."

14:31 I made a mistake. I'm human, but I had the courage to play the game. It's a chesed shemaisa, which means it probably never happened, but it's definitely true. There's a chesed shemaisa of a rebbe who said to his chassidim, "If you won't be mechal shabbos, you'll be zayche to greet Eliezer Navi." So one of the chassidim said, "I'm not going to be mechal shabbos." But how could you guarantee that you're not going to be mechal shabbos? Shabbos is a lot of halachas, and by the way, in your life. You got to learn those halachas. You have to know, even if you're not an expert in mechal shabbos, you have to know enough to know what's a shayla. This chassid decided the only way for him to guarantee that he keeps shabbos is he's going to lock himself in a room for 25 hours. So he went into the room, locked the door, and he had nothing that he could be mechal shabbos with for 25 hours. He sat like a monk, and he didn't move. He davened. He didn't even eat.

15:29 He didn't eat because maybe I'm going to do boreh while I'm eating. He didn't do anything. After 25 hours, he wasn't zaycher to see Eliyahu Hanavi, so he went to the Rebbe. He said, "What happened? I thought you said if I keep Shabbos, if I'm not mechalal Shabbos, then I'm going to see Eliyahu Hanavi." The Rebbe said, "You didn't keep Shabbos. That's not called keeping Shabbos. You just stopped playing the game. Shabbos, Shabbos is the game. You have to have the courage to be a yid who keeps Shabbos. Being a yid who keeps Shabbos means you might make a mistake. You make a mistake." Beseder, there's such a thing called tshuva. Did you guys know that there's no halacha meda oraisa of chinuch before you're 13 years old? It's derabanan. You know what that means? Meda oraisa. That means meda oraisa. You would have started the game at 13 years old. 13 years old. You wouldn't have known anything. You wouldn't have known what's muter, what's usher. You know what would have happened over the course of the next five, ten, fifteen years of your life? You would have learned.

16:27 Mistakes are part of the process. We fall down, we get up. That's part of the process. Midravon, we want you to be able to hit the ground running, so we have a mitzvah of chinuchim. We mechanech our children. But midoraisa, the Lubavitcher Rebbe points out, mistakes were always part of the process. And just because we have a derabbanon that says that we have to be mechanech our children, doesn't mean that a yid is expected to be perfect. Chas v'shalom. We are trying our best. Absolutely, everybody's trying their best. I've never met a Jew who's not trying his best. You'll say, no, but that guy—he's clearly not trying his best. He doesn't do anything. If he could be doing better, he would be doing better. How do you know why he's not getting up brisachrus? How do you know why, in the middle of Seder, he finds himself out on the lawn? You think no, he's just lazy? How do you know? Don't judge him. You have no idea what set of choices he has to choose from. You have no idea what pain he's gone through in his life. And when you criticize him, you should know you're not saying anything about him. You're only speaking about yourself.

17:26 The fact that the Brindichiver saw everyone with beauty, the fact that he saw everyone with compassion and positivity, that's because the Brindichiver lived that way. And who doesn't want to live with a Rebbe like that? Who doesn't want somebody who could look at them and he could see the light in them and say it's good? That's what Hakadosh Baruch Hu did. The world was a place of unbelievable chaos, and the Rebbeinu Shlom said Yehi R, and then there was light. And the Rebbeinu Shlom said the light is good.

17:57 The light is good. What do you mean the light is good? The light hadn't even been separated from the darkness yet. Before Hakadosh Baruch Hu said 'Vayavdala Gelm Esar Ben Achoshu,' before he separated it, before there was any Avdala, the Rebbeinu Shalom looked at the light and said, 'The light is good.' What do you mean the light is good? It's in the middle of the Chayshak. It's in the middle of the Tahaim. But I see the light. That's a godly thing to do. A godly thing to do is to look at somebody and see their light. A godly thing to do is to look at yourself and see your light. The biggest trap is to say I am my aver, and I'm going to tell you exactly what it sounds like. This is exact, and it's every single one of us. It's me too. Every single one of us. We do the same thing. We're like, I'm never going to be the same. It's always going to be this way. Chaver, life is vulnerable, but have the courage to play the game. You fell, gevaled it. You're learning. You get back up. You might have to fall seven times. Sheva yiplat tzadik v'kum. What makes a tzadik is he gets back up again.

18:53 Is a famous letter from Rav Hutzner, one of my favorite letters, where a Talmud writes to Rav Hutzner and he says I'm struggling so much. So Rav Hutzner said he wrote back. He said if you would have told me you're doing well, I would say it's a good letter. The fact that you wrote to me and told me that you're struggling, he says now it's a great letter, and he bemoans the fact that we make our tzaddikim perfect from the time they were little. From the time he was three years old, he already knew ganshas. He didn't. He was a kid, and he liked to do childish things. That doesn't make him less of a gadol. That makes him more of a gadol. He was somebody who grew up like us. That's why people love hearing the stories of Nosson Svi Finkel's Nechetsadik Lebracha, who's the Rebbe of Mir. And every guy, especially the guys who are from Chicago, he went to Ida Crown. Every one of us. Why? Wait, does that? It's okay. I don't know if he went to Skokie. That's why my realm.

19:49 I'm not giving anyone. So I'm not. That's a different schmooze. Frat boys in diving jackets. I'm not going there. So cool. I've been up since two thirty. I told you. Why do we like to tell the story? Rav Nachshon Svi. He was in the Eider Crown yearbook. It's great to say that story. Because it means every one of us could do that. These people were exceptional, but they weren't less exceptional because they were kids. They're more exceptional because they were kids. Now I'm at the age where a lot of my friends are the up and comers. A lot of my friends are up and comers, major abanim today. And guys, I'm not gonna tell you the stories. Some of these kids were brain damaged in high school, and they're major abanim today. And that doesn't take away from them. It makes them even greater.

20:42 Because they had unbelievable kayach and they used that kayach for something. I remember many years ago I heard from Rav Weinberger Shlita. He said over the Meimor Chazal that when they saw that the tayva for Avodah Zara was becoming too great, so Chazal davened that they should get rid of the tayva for Avodah Zara. And a lion came out of the Kodesh Hakadosh and they trapped the lion in a cauldron. Since we lost the tayva for Avodah Zara, we also lost nevuah, because they go hand in hand. Because a yid who has a tayva for Avodah Zara is also a yid who's going to reach for greatness. And Rav Weinberger said the mistake was that they trapped the lion. What they needed to do was tame the lion. A guy who has the courage to play a game, he might fall, but you know what? He's becoming great. Don't trap the lion. Then you're going to lose a major part of yourself.

21:39 Tame the lion, then you're going to harness your power. The tzaddik didn't become great because he never fell. The tzaddik became great because he knew how to get up after he fell. One of my closest friends in the world is an amputee. He lost his leg to cancer-related complications when he was 12 years old. One of the things he told me is that before they give you your prosthetic leg, they teach you how to fall. Over and over again, you have to fall. Because if you're afraid to fall, you're not going to be a great walker. So you learn how to fall. And he says, 'I'm not afraid to fall.' Because you know, some people it's like when they fall so awkwardly that they're for sure going to break something. But if you know how to fall, you roll with the fall. You understand? I'm a human being. This is a great opportunity. Adam Rishon made the worst mistake in the world, and he passed it on to every one of us.

22:32 And it's our responsibility to be mitsakin this mistake that Adam Rishon made. The mistake was not that he ate from the Eitz Hadass. That was always going to be Hashem's plan. Hashem knew that he was going to fall. Other Rabbah, it was even a good thing to be truth be told, because now the world is lower and Hashem could be brought into a lower world. The mistake was that he hid behind the Eitz Hadass. He said, "Now I'm an Eitz Hadass guy. Now I can't hear the word of God directly." We're honest people in this yeshiva. I think that's one of the hallmarks of what it means to be a mevasserikai, to be very real with yourself, to not just look at the surface of things, but to look deeply at each other, which comes from looking deeply at ourselves. We live in a very shallow world. We live in a world of materialism, and I don't mean materialism like gashmius, and I don't mean materialism like cars and houses. I mean we live in a world where people all they see when they look at things is they see what something is on the surface. They look at a table, they see a table. They look at a chair, they see a chair. But a table is not a table, and a chair is not a chair. There's elokus.

23:52 There's divine will for this table to exist, coursing through this table. Spiritual people are people that see beyond the surface of reality. And if you train yourself to see that way, you're only going to see beauty in others. That's a gift. You get to give the gift of your eyes to other people. Every one of us is born in the gaze of another, because when somebody sees you and they see you kindly, they're telling you you're worthy of love and connection. I can guarantee you, one hundred percent money back guarantee. There's not a guy here that didn't have somebody in his life that saw him in a beautiful way, and it was that person that gave you the gift of life. It could be a camp counselor, could be a division head, could be a head counselor, could be a rebbe, could be a teacher, could be a principal, a parent, a sibling, an aunt, an uncle. Somebody in your life saw you, and they saw you were awesome.

24:49 And because they thought you were awesome, it was genuine, and they let you know that. They didn't always have to say it, but they let you know that. Because they thought that about you, you learned to think that about yourself. You always had worthiness inside of you. You were a neshama, and a neshama is worthy. But you didn't know how to access it until somebody else taught you that you were worthy. Ravosai, every guy in this yeshiva is responsible for every other guy in this yeshiva. There's no such thing as a guy who walks through this yeshiva, and he's like, "I do me. I've got my chavrusa." You're not a mevaser guy. If you're a guy who just does his thing, you're in hotel mevaser, but you're not in the yeshiva. If you're a guy in this yeshiva, you care about every other guy in this yeshiva. Not only every guy in this yeshiva, every guy that walks into this yeshiva, every guy that comes to visit. It's your yeshiva.

25:46 Every guy that's having a hard day—that's your yeshiva, that's your friend. You're not so close to. Great. Now it's a great opportunity to be close to. See him as a beautiful person, and if you do, the biggest gift you're giving yourself is eventually you'll see yourself that way. People are struggling. People aren't struggling because they're bad. People are struggling because the human condition is to struggle. The human condition is to struggle. Now I'm going to tell you a big secret. I don't know how many people are in the room right now. Baruch Hashem, the lights are off now. All of you in this room tonight, you're all just watching a chavrusha. I'm having a chavrusha with one person in the room right now, and he knows who he is. Who he is? And I told him today, everyone in the room is going to hear our chavrusha. This is our chavrusha. I'm talking to one person right now. I'm not talking to. I don't know how many people in the room. I'm talking to one person.

26:44 And you are getting to watch. Why am I telling you that? Because I want you to know, there's a guy that's sitting here. He's your friend. He's your brother. He's the guy sitting next to you in the beis medrash, and you have no idea that he's struggling. And he's walking around in the halls, and you might not know it. You might think he's fine. He might sit in the chadarochel, and you might think, yeah, what do you mean? This guy's awesome because he is awesome. He's a rock star. But maybe on his face, he looks okay. But if you were sensitive, if you were a sensitive person, you might start to become attuned, because guys walk around and they act like everything's fine, but not for every guy is everything fine. In fact, I would say for most guys things are really hard. We're back in yeshiva now. We just started. It's yesterday before Rosh Chodesh because we're super stark.

27:44 I bet a lot of guys in this room are having a hard time. I bet a lot of guys in this room are maybe a little overwhelmed. It's a long charev, man. There's a feeling, expectations. I came to yeshiva. I want a shdaik. It's beautiful. Maybe they're feeling like I don't know if I could do this. Maybe some guys made some mistakes over sukkahs that they're not proud of. Maybe some guys are still beating themselves up over an ello that they're not so proud of. They're struggling, guys. They're struggling, and you're struggling too. That's the truth. But we're all playing a little bit of a game. I'm fine, and so we have to pretend we're all fine. But it's not true. What would happen if we were honest? What would happen if we sat down and somebody was the first courageous guy to raise his hand to go? Actually, it's really hard. I bet there would be a chorus of people behind him that would go, "Oh, thank God you said it. It's really hard for me too." And maybe there would be a couple of people that'd be like, "Nah, I got this."

28:39 But most of us would be like, 'This is really hard,' and if we would raise our hands and we would say, 'How many guys are struggling with?' and list the very common averus that people in our generation struggle with, I imagine that the answer would be a hundred percent of the guys that go, 'Yeah, I struggle with that too.' But we think, 'No, nobody could possibly be struggling with that. It's only me,' and it's not true. We're all human. Adam Rishon sinned in the first hour. He got the mitzvah not to sin, and right away he sinned. You know why? Because people sin. Because people don't always live in alignment. But the mistake is how you treat yourself afterwards. I want to give us all a bracha. It's time to become berditchavers in our own way. It's time. It's time to really start to see each other beautifully, and I believe be amuna shleima that until we start treating ourselves with compassion, we will not genuinely treat others with compassion. So my bracha for all of us is that we should know that we're good. Vayar lo kim es har kitov. The light is good. Rabbi Yisai, the light is good. Don't forget, you are the light.