Bo - Darkness

2:10 What does it mean to live in darkness? The first feature of living in darkness is that you can't see another person. What does that mean? There's a difference between facts and narratives. Facts are one thing; narratives are the story that we tell around the facts. When Ben Shapiro says facts don't care about your feelings, what would you say? It's not true. There's a fact, and then there's the feelings that surround that fact—the way you narrate your story. For example Let's say there's a girl in the dorms that does something. She does something. It doesn't even matter what she does. She does something that you find inconsiderate. Let's say she is constantly changing the thermostat. You have anybody in the dorms that does that That likes it a little bit hotter or a little bit colder, and it could drive people in the other room a little bit insane.

3:11 About 50% of you are coming with me on this. So now there's one thing. If you told the story and you said she changed the thermostat, is that a fact or a narrative? That's a fact. If you say she's an inconsiderate person That a fact or a narrative? It's a narrative. Is she an inconsiderate person? No. But you'll say, what do you mean? I have all these facts that show how she's inconsiderate, right? And if you really got this narrative and it's drawn out for a while because you've been living with each other for five months now. So you'll come to me, Baruchel Bithchatana, and you'll spell out every single thing that she's done over the course of the year, and show me how this is the single most inconsiderate girl you've ever met in your entire life. And then you go like this: you go, and I'm not the only one that thinks so Because what do you do? Very often, you have a narrative, you share a narrative, it becomes another person's narrative, and that becomes the world in which you live.

4:09 But the truth of the matter is that we get to choose the narratives that we have around people. Just because we have a narrative doesn't mean that narrative is true, and it doesn't mean that we need to narrate the story of life in that way. We could narrate the story more accurately. And what this means is have a don eskal haadam lekafshos. What does it mean to be don lekafshos? What does that mean? I don't mean literally. What does it mean? What does it look like? So most people think that don lekafshos is like being really stupid. Don lekafshos means somebody did something and you go, well, I'm betting that they didn't mean to do it. Even though you know they meant to do it, you're like, make up some sort of crazy story. That's not dal n'kafsulos. Dal n'kafsulos means that we are all in a state, and there's nothing wrong with this, especially in 2023. People get very upset when we say this, but there's nothing wrong with it.

5:02 We are all in a state of what we'll call evaluating what's happening around us. Or in other words, we're judging. There's a difference between judging and being judgmental. There's nothing wrong with judging. In fact, your parents taught you to judge when you were very little. What did your parents tell you? Is this a girl you should be hanging out with? What are your parents asking you? They're saying, 'Is this a well-behaved girl? Is this somebody that's going to bring out the best in you?' You should evaluate and judge whether or not this is a comfortable, growth-oriented place for you to be. There's a difference between being judging and being judgmental. To be judgmental about a person means that when you're looking at them, you're saying, 'You are this behavior.' You hear the difference. Having done is kol adam lekafshos means when you look at somebody, you're able to separate that they are a person that is worthy.

5:56 They may not behave in a worthy way, but they are beets, a person of shos. They are a person of merit. So this is what it looks like. Your kid comes home from school. They come home with a note from the teacher that said they haven't handed in their homework for a week. And you look at your child. You have an opportunity right now to be don your child l'kafzkos. What does that mean? To be done, the child l'kafzkos doesn't mean the child forgot. The child didn't forget. Why didn't the child do their homework? Because they didn't want to. They didn't want to because maybe they had friends they wanted to play with. Because maybe their homework makes them feel stupid. For whatever reason, they didn't do their homework. But being dana lekaslos means you are not your worst behavior. Do you understand the difference? Just because you did something wrong doesn't mean you are wrong.

6:48 Just because you did something that wasn't appropriate doesn't mean you're bad. I find in you a sense of worthiness. That's the way we ought to see people. Says the Chiddush Harim. What does it mean to live in darkness? It means when you choose to live in such a way that you can't see the person for who they actually are. And it's very easy sometimes when we're trying to make ourselves feel better about ourselves to push another person down in order to call ourselves tall. And so we could go. You should know I've come so far this year and I've done this and I've done that and this girl like she really hasn't done anything right. What you're doing in that moment, if you find yourself doing that, what you're doing is you're creating the plague of darkness. Because it has an impact on the other person.

7:39 The way that we speak matters. The way that we relate to each other matters. And I'll prove it to you. The girl that I'm not saying her opinion matters to you, because obviously you're your own person. But if you hear that she said something about you that you really don't like Does it ever get to you? Like not in a big way, but does it ever make your heart drop a little bit? Does it make you feel like you don't feel so comfortable around this person? And maybe it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we tell people for a long enough time that they are unworthy, you know what that person becomes? Unworthy. So there's an amazing phrase in Hebrew. Al tish al lama ella lima Which means that when a child is behaving in a particular way, don't ask why the child is behaving that way. Ask for what.

8:37 What is the benefit to that child? For example, that kid who's coming home who's not doing their homework. Say what's the benefit. And then you start to understand. For example, I remember this being the case for me. I come home, an ADHD kid. You come home from school. What's the last thing you want to do? Three hours of homework. What would you rather do than do three hours of homework? You might make a mistake. You might choose to say, "I'm going to waste away the night, just chilling out, doing whatever, hanging out." And then tomorrow, I'm going to copy somebody else's homework. Is that the right thing to do? Of course not. Is that child bad? No. Of course, that child's not bad. They're having a really hard time settling in to do hours and hours of work. They're not bad. It's they they're actually taking care of themselves, maybe inappropriately, but they're taking care of themselves in a way that's benefiting them.

9:37 So when a teacher comes and says, "You're not doing your homework," it's like, what are you communicating when you lash out at the child in that way? I remember I had a first grade teacher. I'm not going to tell you her name. It doesn't matter. I had a first grade teacher. She was Israeli and she was old school Israeli. So if you're thinking like 1986, this woman was really coming from the 60s. Hardcore Israeli educator. My mother told me that she came to pick me up from school one day because I told her I was sick and I needed to be picked up. And my mother came and before I left, I might have been lying for I don't even remember the story, but I might have been lying. I might have been like, yeah, come pick me up because I know the teacher is going to ask for the homework and I didn't do the homework. And the teacher was very smart. When my mother walked in, Moira looked at me and said, "Before you leave, hand in your homework."

10:25 And I didn't have my homework. And she started screaming at me. Now I don't even remember this, but my mother tells the story that she remembers being horrified and wanting to cry as she watched a seven-year-old little boy be berated by a sixty-year-old Israeli woman who's screaming, 'You never do your homework. How come you don't do your homework? What do you think you're communicating to that child if you tell the child over and over again? I can't see who you really are. If you can't see who I really am, how do you expect me to see who I really am?' And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And we do this all the time with our children. We're telling people we typecast them and we say, 'This is who you are' And it's not true. I'm going to tell you a true story. I think I might have mentioned this before. I was rejected from Mivaseret.

11:16 I didn't get into the yeshiva that I am currently the minhal of. I was rejected. I remember my interview. It was a disaster. The previous rashi shiva, the founding rashi shiva, he came in, and I was prepared, but I was stumbling over the gemara, and I couldn't get my act together. The rashi shiva had mercy on me, so he said, "You don't need to say any more gemara." He said, "So tell me, what do you like about yiddishkeit?" I said, "I like davening." Wasn't true, but I said that, and he was like, "What do you like about davening?" Shema koleinu. You could tell the interview was going downhill, and I had nothing to say. It was such a bad interview. I walked out of there. I was like, that did not go well. And when I got the letter that I was waitlisted, I couldn't believe I didn't get into Mevasseret. This was the yeshiva I was dying to go to. And when they came back And they interviewed me again, and that's how I got in. They asked me Why should we take you?

12:10 The Rosh Yeshiva already decided not to take you. You didn't get in on the first round. Why should we make an exception for you? And what I told them was, what you don't know about me is I've been waiting for four years of high school to come to Israel. And I'm the guy that's worth taking a gamble on. And for whatever reason, the person who interviewed me believed me, and he's actually my boss now. And he said to me, I saw something in your eyes that you were sincere. And I have such gratitude to him Because he could have judged me rightfully. He could have looked at my high school career and he could have said, let's look. How was his attendance in class? I assure you, I wasn't going to do very well. What were his grades? What are his recommendations for his rebbeim? I had none of them. So the rebbe was a hundred percent right. The rosh yeshiva was a hundred percent right to say you don't get in.

12:59 He evaluated me based on what I had done. The difference was the second interviewer evaluated me not based on what I had done. But what he saw in me that I wanted to do. That's what it means to be donas kol adam lekafshlos. And it could very well be true that the reason that I had a great year in Mevaseret is because I knew the yeshiva was saying, "We think you could become someone this year." Since they took me off the waiting list, since they said, "We see that you're someone who could do it," I came in day one, and I didn't feel like they don't want me. I felt like Adar Abba. This was the yeshiva that was really willing to give me a shot. And if you tell people you'll give them a shot, they generally rise to the occasion, because who amongst us doesn't want to be looked at in a positive way?

13:49 You know. So often, when I'm speaking to the guys in yeshiva, I'll ask them Are you close with your parents? And you get very different answers to that question. Some guys go, 'Super tight with my parents' And some guys go, "No, not at all." And the difference is always this: when you speak to the guys whose parents they're not close with, they always say I just don't think they get me. " And they're and they're not wrong. What they mean to say is, in this relationship, I don't feel appreciated. I don't feel valued. I don't feel understood. I don't feel like this is a place where I'm comfortable to be me. So I've got to fake it. And it's not what we want. We want to be close with our parents. It's natural to be close with our parents. But if our children Are going to be close with us. It's only going to be because we said to them, "This is a place where you're welcome to be you," and that doesn't mean that as a parent we're not going to hold children accountable. Because if you really love your children, you will hold them accountable, because that's a part of loving somebody. If I love somebody, it goes like this: If I really love you, I'm going to have the hard conversation with you. I promise you I promise you that. But as Hashem, when you have teenage daughters

15:06 A 16-year-old daughter. The last thing you're going to want to do is have a hard conversation with them. The last thing you're going to want to do is say to them, "You broke curfew, and I'm sorry, but you're grounded for a week." Nobody wants to have that conversation with their child. You know why? Because they're going to go upstairs. They're going to be all angry. They're going to be all upset. But you know what? You communicated to that child when you held that child accountable. You are worthy of our love and attention. You're somebody who we feel could perform up to here. If you yell and scream and berate the child, then you undid all of that. But if, in a calm, gentle, and understanding way, you say, "I really hear where you're coming from, but these are the rules of our home" And we believe that you're a person who should live within these rules because you're worthy of living within these rules. There's no doubt. No 16-year-old girl—just if you remember what it was like to be 16 just a short couple of minutes ago. If no 16-year-old child is going to come and go.

16:03 Thank you so much. I really feel deeply loved because now I can't go out with my friends when everybody else is going out. I just want you to know that I understand this is a deep statement of my inner worthiness. Don't expect that as a parent. But the children will understand it years later. Why will they understand it? Because it's a beautiful message you've given to them. And of course, it goes without saying that if you want to discipline your children, you have to know that you love them deeply. And if they don't know that, there's a serious problem already. But there's a second side to the coin. Says the Chiddush Harim The first aspect of living in darkness is that you're going to let another person know that you don't see them and that they're unworthy. But here's the second thing: Lo kamu ish mitachdav.

16:52 You think that you're just typecasting another person. You think you're looking at another person and saying something negative about them. That darkness that you created by thinking negatively about another Jew. About typecasting that person as awful by judging them as a person rather than judging the actions, it doesn't just hurt them; it crushes you. Lo kamu ish mitachdov. You can't rise up from under your own negativity that you've created. And what it looks like is as follows. Why do you think? That we judge people so harshly. Where does that come from? If you have a very strong inner critic And you yourself are constantly communicating to yourself that you are unworthy. Then when you see somebody else behave that way You're going to have the narrative. You're unworthy too. If I get to say to somebody else they're unworthy, it kind of releases a little bit of my own unworthiness. You know how when you get angry, the thing you need most is to get somebody else angry because you can't hold on to your anger.

18:06 That's why it's so annoying when you get angry and nobody will hold your anger with you. If you're angry and somebody's really calm, what do you do? And especially if they're really calm and they go Chill, right? That makes you get even more angry. Why? Because when you're so angry, you're like, "I can't hold all of this anger. You have to hold it together with me." If you feel so unworthy, you're like, "I can't hold all of this unworthiness. You got to be unworthy with me, because I just got to let it out somewhere." So the unworthiness that you're putting onto somebody else, judging them by their actions, saying that's who you are, not what you do. That's coming from a deep place within yourself that you are being crushed under the darkness of negativity. And chaval. It's a Rebbe of mine once pointed out to me. He said, "Mordechai, this inner critic that you have" Would you say that to anybody else? What do you mean? Because I was being really harsh on myself.

19:06 And he said, "If you saw, let's say I was battling in the beis medrash. Let's say this wasn't the case, but let's say I came to my Rebbe and I said, 'Rebbe, I'm not taking advantage of the time in the beis medrash. I feel like I'm bumming out. I feel like I should be doing so much more, and I don't understand why I'm doing this. And I just feel like it's all this time already that I've been in yeshiva. How come I'm not getting it together?'" And my rebbe said to me, Mordechai If there was another guy in the beis medrash that was struggling with sitting still in the beis medrash, would you speak this way to him? I said, No, of course not. I wouldn't speak that way to him. He said, What would it sound like? I said, Well, if somebody else was struggling, I would probably say that makes sense. I would probably say it's okay. I would probably say you've come a long way and you're in process. Give yourself time, patience, kindness and compassion. So my rebbe said, you'll give that gift to somebody else, but you won't give it to yourself.

19:54 Think about the inner critic that you have. Think about the words that come up when you do something wrong. What do you feel like? Take a second. Think about it now. What are the words that are coming up? I don't mean that out loud. I mean think about it for real. Let it be for a second. Do you hear how harsh that is? It's not nice. Who says you have the right to speak to yourself that way? You're crushing yourself with your own darkness. I want to share with you a verse. It's a var from the Labavichi Rabbi. Labavichi Rabbi says the Gemara at the end of Sukkah talks about a woman whose name was Miriam Bas Bilga. Have you ever heard of this woman, Miriam Bas Bilga? Miriam Bas Bilga was the daughter of a righteous family. And it was a family that had a mishmar in the Beit Hamikdash.

20:44 And Miriam Bas Bilga, she went off the derech. She went completely off the derech. And she married a guy. And this guy that she married was part of the people that came into the Beit Hamikdash and destroyed the Beit Hamikdash. And Miriam Basbila was there in the Beit Hamikdash when it was being destroyed, and she kicked the mizbeach, and she said, "Rufus, Wolf" How long have you taken the money of Klal Yisrael, and where are you now to protect Klal Yisrael? Meaning, look how much Klal Yisrael spent bringing karbanos and serving Hashem. And now Hashem, where have you gone? You're allowing your people to be persecuted and your Beis Hamikdash to be destroyed. And because she spoke so inappropriately, the Gemara says that her family lost their mishmar. But the Lubavitcher Rebbe said It's true she spoke inappropriately, but let's look at the words that she said.

21:40 What were the words that she said? She said, "Hashem, I'm so angry with you." Remember, this was a girl that went off the derech. This was a girl that married a gentile, and not just any gentile, but a gentile that was involved in the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. What were the words that young woman said, Miriam Bas Belga? How could Hashem let this happen to your people? You have to look at two messages. There's the overt message and the covert message. On an overt level, what she said was inappropriate. Kicking the base of Mikdash, kicking them as Be'ach, and saying Hashem, how could you do this to your people? But the Bava Chayi Rav says, look at the inner words that she's saying Hashem, come on, you should have protected your people. She's longing for a relationship with Hashem. It's like a guy who comes into yeshiva and says I hate Gemara.

22:26 So you hate Gemara? I hate Gemara. I said why do you hate it? Because it's stupid and it's irrelevant and I can't read it and it's old fashioned. It has nothing to do with my life. Why should I learn it? I'm like, why do you have such strong emotions about a book? If you really hated it, why do you like it? Why don't you close it and walk away? Why did you come to yeshiva to tell your rebbeim how much you hate gemara? What is the boy really saying? I wish I could relate to this. I wish I knew what I was doing. I wish I could open up this book and that it would be relevant to my life. So you could pay attention to one of two things. You could tell her to come in. I don't know who's there, but whoever it is, welcome to come in.

23:14 Please. It's. You could look at two things. You could look at the words that are being said, or you could look at the meaning behind those words. When a couple has a fight And the wife says to the husband, "You never pay attention to me." The husband could feel criticized. But if he's smart, what will the husband say? She wants to be paid attention to. She's asking for me to participate in the relationship. You could look at the overt, or you could look at the covert. You could do that with somebody else, or you could do it with yourself. A person who feels badly about themselves. We have a thing today. We don't want anyone to feel badly about themselves. It's okay. You're allowed to have healthy guilt, healthy regret. Those are important emotions. If you come to Sharfman's and you say to yourself, 'I don't know. I'm just. I'm like. I'm not feeling into it. I'm not feeling like I'm getting it. I'm not feeling connected.' That's the overt presentation.

24:09 But what's the covert? What's being said underneath the surface is, I wish I was into it. I wish I was feeling connected. I hate that I'm feeling disappointed about the way that my year is going. That's not a bad person. That's an awesome person. I. But you'll say, Rebbe, last night you don't know what that girl did. That's the acting out. That's not the real person. So you could get lost in that. That person is acting in an inappropriate way, but it's not who they are. And if you go to them and you say to them, because you yourself are a person that believes this about you, if you truly believe about yourself that you're worthy of love and connection, then you'll go to that person and you'll give them that gift too. And this is what the Mitzrim learned in Makas Choschach. The Mitzrim learned in Makas Choschach.

25:02 That if you are people who oppress people Then you're a person who lives in darkness. And today in the world we still have this. There are people that they literally there. Again, we shouldn't say these things. Baruch Hashem and Klal Yisrael, we've come a long way. But even in our community There are still people that like. They try to push people down. They try to say you have to be this way. You have to be this type of person. And if you're not exactly the person that fits our box, then we're going to label you. You should know that person is living in darkness. We should feel compassion for those people. They're probably not doing it because they're bad. They're probably doing it because they themselves don't fit into the box and they don't know what to do about somebody who doesn't fit into the box.

25:50 But if you're here with me, you're probably not a boxy person. Nobody here actually fits into a box. This is This is the least boxy place I've ever met in my entire life. Here, the only time you go into a box is when you go into a coffin at the end of your life. Nobody here ever goes into a box. But lots of people here Probably went through something where people tried to put you in a box Where people tried to say Be this And because you're really brave people, you said no. You said I'm not going to do that. I want you to know that if you were labeled and you were told your entire career, no, I'm not good enough Because you don't exactly fit the mold. I want you to know that was your superpower. The fact that you didn't fit the mold is what made you awesome.

26:37 And if for a long enough time you were told you're not good enough because you don't fit the box, I want you to know You're awesome because you don't fit in the box. It's a beautiful thing to be. You should be proud of yourself. And Rachmanes, Rachmanes for those people that are So lacking in inner compassion for themselves that they have only the choice to label others and put them down. Chaval, no They're crushed by the darkness and they're spreading the darkness with others. But makaschosh remedies that because a Jew, even in the darkness, a Jew is not stuck. A Jew can move about in darkness. Which Jews? The Jews that were capable of leaving Eretz Yisrael. So all the Jews that didn't leave Mitzrayim that died in Makas Choshech, you know why they died in Makas Choshech? Because they didn't want to leave Mitzrayim Because they had taken in that negativity so deeply, they said, "How could I ever leave Mitzrayim? I am a slave. I am a piece of garbage."

27:35 Those people had no life. They died in Makas Choshech. Who were the twenty percent that survived? The twenty percent of Jews that survived Mitzrayim were the Jews, like everybody in this room. That no matter how much they were told you're a slave They said no, I'm not. You might call me a slave, but I'm not a slave. I live with positivity. I live with a healthy self image. I'm not a slave. Those people walked around freely in Makkos Choshech. When all the Egyptians were stuck, they were fine. They weren't crushed by it because they weren't crushed by the exile because they knew that the exile was a fake. They know that exile is only there to bring about redemption. So those people left Eretz Yisrael. Girls We have an opportunity in our lives to leave Eretz Yisrael. We have an opportunity to be vessels of light and positivity with each other, with ourselves.

28:32 Here we have to be a family. Because lots of people told us we don't fit in the box. So we're all together. We're all the ones that are the weirdos, the freaks. We don't go by the book. We march to the beat of our own drummer. But this is a positive place. If you see somebody who's different than you in this room, celebrate it. Because they'll celebrate your differences if you celebrate theirs. If you see someone acting in a way that you don't think is appropriate, don't define them by it. Don't limit them to their worst moments. Al tish al lama el lama. Don't say why are you doing that. Say. It's probably benefiting her in some way. She's probably in some sort of pain. This must be a coping mechanism. How can I reach out? How can I help? The only way that we can experience Yitzias Mitzrayim is if we are people who are the light in the dark.