Chanukah - Dreaming in Exile

2:42 It's strange that the Abar Benel says that the primary aspect of these next four parshiyos of going down to Mitzrayim is really just a story about dreams and interpretations. I would not Let me just like that. I would not have categorized it that way. If somebody said, 'What are these parshiyos about?' a million different answers would have come up. Maybe it would have been the story of sinas chinam. Maybe it would be the story of what happens when brothers can't communicate. Maybe it would be the story of going down to a low place in order to discover something that's infinitely high. I would not have pointed necessarily to the dreams as the way of capturing the entire story, though obviously it's true that we do see many dreams throughout the story. We see the dream beginning with Yosef Hatsadik's dreams. We see the dreams of the Sarah Mashkim and the Sarah Ophim, the butler and the baker. We see the dreams of Paro, and ultimately we see the dream that Yaakov Avinu has before he goes down to Mitzrayim. The dream that he has with Hakadosh Baruch Hu that tells him to go down to Mitzrayim. It's true.

3:55 That there are four dreams that are articulated throughout these parshios, but I would have suggested that those dreams appear to be ancillary. I would have thought that those dreams appear to be pieces of the story, but not the story itself. It appears to me that the dream of Yosef Hatzadik was the straw that broke the camel's back. That his brothers were so angry at him for all of the negative reports that he gave to Yaakov Avinu. And that's how he ended up in Mitzrayim. I would have said that the dreams of the Sarah Mashkim and the Sarah Ophim were just a hechatimza to Yosef HaTzaddik ending up in the house of Paro. And I would have said that Paro's dreams were the hechatimza to him becoming the Viceroy of Mitzrayim, which ultimately allowed Yosef Hatzadik to confront his brothers with that powerful moment of Ani Yosef HaOra VehaChai, and then the final dream of Yaakov Avinu, which brought him down to Mitzrayim and began the Galus. But it seems to me that the dreams are only transition periods; they're only the things that spurred the story on.

5:09 It's sometimes funny. I think in a beautiful way because we're so familiar with the stories that we grew up on. We all grew up on some version of the little medrash says Yiddishkeit. We all had the stories that we learned in first, second, and third grade about the parsha. So we don't really analyze them from a literary perspective. That's not the way, and I think that's a beautiful thing. We don't look at it in an academic, critical type of way. These are the stories that we grew up on. The stories that live inside of every one of us. But if you actually pay attention to the stories, you could very clearly see. If you looked at it again, not Chazl Shalom that we should do it this way, but if you look at the stories, you could see that the dreams play an important role, but they're really just spurring the story on. One would not have circled that as the central idea of the story, and that's what the Abarbenel writes: that these stories, these dreams, are really what the whole sipur is about, and that seems to me to be a very strange thing.

6:09 Befrat every all of the balei machshava all the balei chassidus are always tying these parshiyos into Chanukah. It's like if you look in any of the svarim, it's really it seems to me it's just like Chanukatayra that happens to tie into the parsha because that's the nature of Chanukah. The nature of Chanukah is the illumination of the darkness. Everyone's looking for the seudas. Everyone's looking for the deeper things that are not spoken about in the parsha. But it is interesting that in the Baley Machshav and the Baley Chassidus and the Baley Kabbalah they point to two times of the year The time of what we'll call Nissan through Tishrei, which is where you have all the days of holidays. From Pesach to Shavuos, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot. That's what we'll call summer time. And then there's a winter time. There's a darkness. There's a darkness that exists, and that's basically from Cheshvan through Adar. That's the darkness of the winter months, where we only have Yom Tovim midrabanon. It doesn't have the same illuminated quality.

7:12 And so the Baalei Chasidus point out that it's daytime and nighttime. That when you split up the calendar year, it splits up into a daytime and a nighttime approach. The daytime approach is the Yom Tovim daraisa, and the nighttime approach, which is the winter months that we're in. Although I just saw that the next crusade. Of President Donald J Trump Baruch Hashem he has so much on his plate. Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Baruch Hashem, the new president has announced his intentions to take on daylight savings time. Baruch Hashem The agenda is clear. Happens to be I suffer from the depression that comes with night time starting at four thirty at night. Does anyone here agree with me on that? Like if I'm giving shear, and like all of a sudden it's dark out, and you see the guys just like physically getting ill, you know I'm talking, you know like you know Some of you relate to this. So I am happy that he's taking this on, but the notion of winter time being these months of darkness, these months perhaps we could say of dreaming of sleep.

8:24 It makes sense that these parshios, which are the parshias that the Abar Benel says are about dreams, are happening in these months. So perhaps it's valuable for us to take a look at the inner nature of dreams. And for two reasons. One Because the nature of dreams itself appears to have contradictions in Chazal. That on the one hand the Gemara and Brachos tells us that dreams are empty. The dreams have no reality. And we shouldn't pay too much attention to our dreams because it's not really what's happening. You ever have a terrible dream and your parents say it's just a dream It's just a dream. It's one of the sweetest things in the world. Blessed Hashem, you'll see when you have children. One of the sweetest things in the world is when your little kids come into your bed and they say, "I had a bad dream."

9:18 It's like a real Superman moment. I'm gonna rescue you from your own self. That's something exceptionally beautiful. And or it's three o'clock in the morning and I have to wake up in two hours and I'm gonna kill you. One of those two responses. There's something very beautiful. You say it's just a dream, it's just a bad dream. Come snuggle for a minute. You'll go back to bed. On the one hand, Chazal tell us there's nothing to dreams But on the other hand, Chazal tell us that dreams are shisha minavua That a dream is a sixtieth of prophecy. So which one is it? Is it nothing, or is it shisha minavuah? Those seem to be contradictory. To try to put those two things together, that's one avoda. And then there's another avoda, which the pasuk in Tihlam says That in the times of Mashiach, we were like patients That will be like dreamers.

10:14 And that's a very interesting thing because that's not what we would have thought That. In the times of Mashiach, we're going to look back at all of these All of these difficult years that we've been living in And say Hayinu kecholim that we were like dreamers then. I would say that we're very much awake And we're experiencing terrible trauma throughout all of our galus and terrible tragedy. I would not say at all that this is like a dream, unless David Amelech meant to say that this dream is a nightmare. What does it mean, Hayinu Kechamim, that we're going to look back in the times of Mashiach and we're going to say we were? It was like a dream the entire time. So these are the two questions that we want to ask, or really three questions. Number one How could the Abarbenal say that all of these parshiyos are really stories about dreams?

11:09 Number two What does it mean that a dream is at once both shishim and nevuah, and it's also empty? It's also nothing. And finally, what does it mean, Hayinu Keholim, that we'll look back on these years and say that we were like dreamers? See, the Alter Rebbe says as follows And this is where it gets a little bit complicated and it gets a little bit deep. I hope that you'll be able to come with me on this journey, and I hope that I'll be able to articulate these ideas because they're not simple ideas at all. See, the Alter Rebbe says as follows: How does a dream work? It's amazing. Just Agav. It's amazing the Alter Rebbe, well before Freud. Well before Jung, well before IFS or any of the modalities of psychology that we have today. The Alter Rebbe was so attuned to the psychological makeup of a person. He was able to articulate these ideas before this language existed. The appeal to see the depth that a person can reach to understand the human being, just by learning.

12:15 Tayra, Kabbalah, Chasidus—whatever you want to call it—a person can have an unimaginable, remarkable level of insight into human nature. See, Alter Rebbe said like this: How does a dream work? When we're awake We have the intellectual ability to discriminate between categories. That's what happens when we're awake. Our mind can't handle it because of our intellectual faculties. Our mind can't handle ideas that are beyond categories. Marshal, in the world of science, in the world of math Everything is very categorized. Everything is very clear. That's the whole. Do you remember when you were learning science growing up and they taught you? All and I'm sure many of you remember this. They say science is the study of all things. Biology is the study of all living things. The mitochondria is the power of the cell. It's amazing, never fails. We learned nothing in our education. Your parents dropped a quarter of a million dollars on your education. That's all that you know.

13:29 There are graduates of college in this room, and that's all that we know. I met somebody recently who told me that she was becoming a biologist. I said, "I'm a biologist. I know the mitochondria." The nature of science is that things are categorized. In our world, when we're awake Our intellectual faculty discriminates. This category does not blend with this category. That category doesn't blend with another category. What happens when we're sleeping? So the Rebbe says, when a person is sleeping Their intellectual faculties are diminished. And the imagination is more powerful than the intellect. And what the imagination is able to do To a certain degree What the imagination is able to do Is blend categories that would never otherwise have been blended. It's the nature of what a dream is. A dream is something that makes no sense. It's outside the world of logic. We put things together that have no capacity to be together. That's why it's always so fun when you see people daydreaming.

14:42 You ever see people daydreaming that they're you see them they're awake but their intellect is gone And there's that moment where they snap back. I see this sometimes when I'm giving sheir. You see somebody who's daydreaming giving sheir. You want to see what it looks like from my perspective? It's a beautiful thing. You see somebody like this. You see this. They're not. They're gone. They're a human being. They're gone. There's nobody home. And then there's a moment where you catch their attention. They go like this. It's very beautiful. That's the whole moment. You see, all of a sudden, their entire intellectual faculty comes back into play. They're a human being again. And sometimes in shiur I say, "Welcome back." Like it's just you traveled a great distance. Maybe you should make a tefillah sadar. Where were you Rabbi? I was on Mars. I was thinking about what would happen if I was bouncing around on Mars.

15:28 It's not. I don't take it personally. It's an amazing thing that when we go into a state of dreaming, anything could happen. We're flying. We could be five years old. We could be at our chasna. There's no category that we're bound to. That's the nature of a dream because the intellectual faculty has been completely diminished. And therefore, in a dream, what we're able to do is synthesize paradoxes that, in our real life, with our intellectual faculties, we would never be able to synthesize. Elu ve elu, divrei elu kimchayim. Two things can be true at once. Every high school kid asks the same question, Rabbi. Don't tell me elu ve elu, divrei elu kimchayim. Who's right, a baya or a rava, Rashi or Taisus, the Rambam or the Rashba? This rishon, that rishon, this pesik, that pesik. They can't both be right. What does Hashem want? It's got to be one or the other.

16:29 So how can Chazal say elu ve'elu dvei elokim chaim? What do those words mean? That high school kid is right to ask that question because he's living within the world of the structured intellect. And in the structured intellect, only one category can be true at one time. There's no capacity to handle multiple truths and synthesize the paradoxical nature of this world. But that is the approach of Yavon. That's the nature of Greece. The nature of Yavon is to elevate and to worship the intellectual faculty. It's the nature of what Yavon is. This is the Choshakh of Yavon. The darkness of Yavon is to be able to say only that which I can articulate clearly is true. There is no truth. That I if I can express it, it's true. If I can't express it, it's not true. I remember many years ago I was talking to my rebbe.

17:32 And my rebbe said there's three approaches in life. If I can't define it, it's not true. That was one approach. Number two, it's true and I'm not interested in defining it. And then my rebbe said his approach was It's true whether I can define it or not, but I'll do my best to define it and give it language where I can. I always thought that was a brilliant insight on my Rebbe's part. There are things that are true that are beyond human capacity to understand. And try as you might to articulate it, you can't. It doesn't diminish the truth of something because I don't have the intellectual capacity to articulate it. How can two of these things be true at once? I'll give you an example of this. And perhaps this is the greatest paradox. In order to create the world, Hashem needed to be metzamsem himself. He needed to create a place where he is not In order that there should be something that appears to be other than him and that feels other than him.

18:33 Otherwise, how could there be a world? If Hashem is infinite, then there can be no finite. So the Arizal says that Hashem pulled himself back to allow for the creation of another. But of course, according to Chassidus. How could Hashem pull Himself back? Because Hashem is infinite. So in Chassidus it says, and this makes no sense. The words that I'm about to tell you make no sense. So Hashem pulled Himself back from a place in order to allow for the creation of another, but in that space He was still present. Dikap, how that makes no sense. But in Chassidus we would say, what's your choice? If Hashem doesn't pull Himself back, then there can be no other. So he has to pull himself back. But if he pulls himself back, then what is that? That's a place where Hashem isn't, and there can't be any place where Hashem isn't.

19:23 So two things must be true at once: Hashem pulled himself back to be somewhere where he isn't, and paradoxically, at the exact same time, he's there in that place. Does that make any sense? There's no way of articulating that to a logical human being. If all you believe in is the cloak of logic, then you cannot believe that there is a God who created a world. Because those words don't make any sense, but there's a humility to being able to say that just because I can't articulate it doesn't mean it's not true. In fact, in Judaism we say the opposite: if it's paradoxical and I can't understand it, that's how I know it's true. Because it's beyond human comprehension, and two things must be true at once. So there's a humility to the way we articulate ourselves, but in this world that makes no sense.

20:14 The nature of a dream in this world is to be able to live in multiple dimensions at once. What does that look like in our lives? The Alter Rebbe says as follows: Imagine you have a person And they wake up in the morning and they have the most inspirational davening. And when I say inspirational, I don't mean like a. I just happen to get excited by davening today. That's not what I mean. Imagine a person has a davening where they truly humble themselves before Hashem And their posture is one of absolute humility, one of absolute self-effacement, one of absolute bittul. And they, in that moment, want nothing more than to leave this world and just connect to Hashem. It is a powerful, inspirational experience, one that would naturally guide them throughout their day. And yet, what happens? You see this, and it's not fake. We're not talking about the childish, eighteen-year-old shuffling like you're having a seizure type of davening. I'm talking about a legitimate davening. Something where I'm paying attention to the words, and I recognize refuah only comes from Hashem. By acknowledging that, I'm opening up portals of refuah into this world, and everything comes from Shamayim and Einod Mavado. You're in that real posture, and half an hour later, you're in work with your anxiety, and if I don't get this job done.

21:44 Then my boss is going to fire me. Unlike all of a sudden, you're living in this very materialistic world. And you're not just living in it. You're not just happening to be in that materialistic world. You're living it to such an extent that everything you accomplished in your davening half an hour ago is like you're a completely different person. You ever have an experience like this? People say it's like from day to day. It's not. I'm not even talking about from day to day. I'm talking about from one hour to the next. That in one hour you were on fire, you were inspired, you were doing, you were like totally connected, and in the next hour it's like the dawning never happened. It's such a contradiction. It makes no sense how a person could live that way. Because we're awake And because we live with this world of categories.

22:39 So we define ourselves in those moments as hypocrites. So we say, which one is the real us? Because in the world of categories, it can only be one or the other. It's not possible to be both. I'm a hypocrite, Reburg. You don't know the averas that I've been doing. You don't know where I have been. You don't know how I totally lost whatever things I promised myself I wouldn't lose, and I have moments of inspiration. But I'm obviously a hypocrite, and those moments of inspiration are not true. And it must be that this is the real me, because if I look at the volume of one over the other, I clearly have more time spent on this side of the aisle than that side of the aisle. In other words The nature of being awake and being in a categorized state does not allow for a person to be large and to contain multitudes.

23:35 Does that make sense? My am I expressing myself well here? It's hard to say, but when we're living from the perspective of this dream called Gollus, which is where we are So everything is completely chaotic. And in this absolute state of chaos, I can be in multiple places at once. And because I have some faculty of intellect, I just look at this and say it makes no sense. So what do most people do? So most people check out. Most people say I don't want to be a faker. So in the name of authenticity, this is what I love. In the name of authenticity, we define ourselves by our lowest possible moment and say, see, that's who I am. And we convince ourselves that that's the truth of who we are because we say it makes no sense. How am I able to be in multiple places at once? How could I have had that davening and then that day?

24:39 There was a girl once in I won't say which seminary, but in one of the seminaries that I was teaching at on Wednesday nights, there was a girl many years ago. Press elimination. I won't say which one. There was a there was I don't teach anymore on Wednesday nights. The there was a girl who was coming to the shir And she said she came over after Shir one time. It was very sweet, and she said, 'I just want to let you know I'm not going to be coming to the shiur anymore.' So I thought it was one of those cases where I offended her I want to make sure I say it again. Like, what was the why? So she's like no, it's nothing you said. I'm just tired of coming to shear every Wednesday night. And really feeling like I know what I want to do, and then every single Wednesday night inevitably I end up doing exactly the opposite of what I just promised myself I wouldn't do.

25:32 And I'm just tired of feeling like a hypocrite. So I'm not going to come to Shira anymore. So I said to her, I really hear where you're coming from. I also wouldn't want to feel like a hypocrite, but it's interesting to decide that version of yourself after the Shira is more true than the version of yourself in the Shira. So she said, she's like, look One of them is much larger than the other. So it's a volume play. I clearly do this more than that, so obviously this is the fake part of me. That's that famous story with the Labavitcher Rebbe that somebody came to the Labavitcher Rebbe and said, "I'm not going to Shul on Yom Kippur this year," and he said, "Why?" He said, "Because I don't go to Shul 364 days a year. I'm tired of feeling like a faker when I go to Shul on Yom Kippur." So the Rebbe smiled and said, 'You're right.' You should go to Shul the rest of the year. That's when you're being the faker. I admire that person that came and said that.

26:21 And it makes sense that they said that because they don't understand this dream of galus that we're living in this darkness of Cheshvan and Kislev and Teves and Shvat and Adar, this darkness that we're living in, we're living with this synthesis in our lives that makes absolutely no sense. How could I be in two places at once? And it makes sense, so that's one faculty, one aspect of dreaming. Is that I exist beyond categories. And since I exist beyond categories, nothing in this world makes any sense. By the way I think even on a national level I think all of us, especially over the last year and a half I think all of us, including myself All of us are having trouble articulating what's happening in the world right now. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed that nobody's been able to lock in. And give us some sense of clarity of where we're holding.

27:27 There was a Rav who was in my neighborhood, or I was in his neighborhood. Rav Malinowitz, Sechertzalik Lavracha. Have any of you heard of Rav Malinowitz? He was the Rav of a shul called Beit Tefila. Everybody in this room has been impacted by Rav Malinowitz, Sechertzalik Lavracha. Rav Malinowitz was the editor of all of Art Scroll. And he was phenomenal. Phenomenal talmudachem, like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. I one time totally inappropriately, I was one time sitting behind him on a bus And you're not really allowed to look at what somebody else is. You're not allowed to look over somebody else's shoulder. It's usar on every single level. But that was my average that day. So I was on the bus. I needed to see what R' Melinwitz does on a bus. It's a good kasha. What does R' Melinwitz do on a bus? I saw he had the galleys.

28:17 To what would end up being the art scroll Masilas Yisrael So he's reading all the notes and he has a pen and he's crossing out entire sections totally by heart on a bus and just writing in the notes like Look at this, he was a phenomenal genius. One thing that Rav Melinowitz had Is he had an unbelievable capacity to articulate and to frame Like what was happening in the world. He passed away a couple of years ago. And Kimat. I don't want to say every week, but it's probably close to every week or every other week. In the yeshiva car driving to Mevaseret every day because a lot of the rabbanim in the car. I happen to have not davened in based tefillah, but a bunch of the rabbanim in the car did daven in based tefillah at least twice a month. Somebody in the car says What would R' Mulinowitz have said about this? We're missing the ability to articulate what is happening in the world right now. We don't. Nobody understands it.

29:19 We knew the playbook. After October seventh, we knew how it would go. If you asked any Israeli, we've been through this ride before. We know how it goes. We said okay. So in the beginning, world opinion is going to be on our side. That's going to be for the first two weeks. Then in the third week, we know how it was going to go. In the third week, world opinion is going to start to taper off. In the fourth week, they're going to be against us. But we never, in a million years, thought that in the fifth week, Osama bin Laden was going to become a hero. Do you remember that? Do you remember on TikTok where they made all these lunatic, woke, psychotic people say, I read Osama bin Laden's letter after he destroyed the World Trade Center. Taka, he had some good points. I was watching it and going like, this is a new part of the playbook. Where did this come from?

30:06 And then they made encampments on all the college campuses, and they became heroes. Jews weren't allowed to walk through the encampments. It's not anti-Semitism. It's anti-Zionism. And everyone bought into this. We were all sitting there going "Efaani ba olam." Where in the world? How did we get here? And in a certain sense, the dream of what's been happening for the last year and a half has been totally psychotic. Nobody has any capacity to frame what's going on. And we don't know if we're coming or going. We thought Biden was running against Trump, and then all of a sudden he was out of the election. Then it was Kamala. Who's going to win? And then Trump wins in a landslide. Like, nobody knows what's it. If you had told us three weeks ago that Syria would totally transfer to ISIS We would have laughed. Nobody's paying attention to what's going on.

31:02 Because it's so absolutely insane that we don't have the capacity to say anything So it's not only in our personal lives that we're. And I think, by the way, Dafke, in this generation, we feel more hypocritical than our grandparents did. Our grandparents, when they did an avir, they didn't feel like hypocrites. It was like I did an avir. It was okay, but say there. You don't have to get anxious. You don't have to unpack it in a safe space. It was a very regular thing. Right now, in these moments before Mashiach, it's like this. This paradox is no, I can't be this way. I have to either be this or I can. I have to be that. I can't be both. I can't be human. And also in these final moments before Mashiach, the dream. You wake up from the dream At the low, right about right before you splat. I'm talking about right at that last moment where you're about to And then you wake up. Doesn't it feel like we're in the final moments of that dream? Because the dream is so horrific.

32:00 The dream is absolutely horrific. Assad ran from Syria to Russia. And the international court said we're not going to prosecute him as a war criminal. Bibi Netanyahu has to go. Bibi Netanyahu can't leave Israel, but Assad who gassed his own people with chemical warfare I don't think he's prosecutable. It's so absolutely insane. We have no capacity to articulate what's going on. That's one aspect of Gulus. One aspect of Gulus is the inability to understand what in the world is happening. The categories are all falling apart. There is another dimension of galus here that also needs to be unpacked And that dimension is as follows. The Alter Rebbe says it in the following terminology. I'm going to use his terminology. It's a little bit kabbalistic, but I'm going to try to make it very simple. A circle is a circle. No matter what position the circle is in.

32:57 You turn a circle upside down, it's still a circle. You turn it on its side, it's still a circle. You can't change the nature of a circle. Masha'ain came this something called a line, and a line is not a line. It's not the same line if it's vertical or horizontal or anywhere in between. The nature of the line changes depending on its position. So far, so good? So here's where it gets a little bit kabbalistic. It gets a little bit heavy. A circle represents pure, 100% unadulterated divinity. Total godliness No chaser, straight godliness. Godliness is godly no matter what position it's in. There's no capacity to articulate it. It doesn't change. There are no categories from the perspective of the infinite. It's a circle. Turn it this way. Turn it that way. It's all the same. My she'inekhen, when it comes to a line, position makes a difference. That's called structure and classification.

34:11 Which one Which one do we have access to in this state? So the outer Rebbe says as follows: When we dream Because the awareness is diminished. We're actually tapping into the divine energy of the circle. As opposed to the classification of the line. In other words, to try to put it simply, something like this: the Gemara in Pesachim says, "V'hoya bayomahu" Iya Hashem echad u'shma echad. That in the future, la asad lavo, God will be one with His name. What does that mean? That God will be one with His name. So the Gemara in Pesachim says. That will be able to pronounce the name of Yudkevavke. We use the name Adnos. Whenever we see Yudkevavke, we don't say Yudkevavke. In the future, by the way, we don't even know how to pronounce it. It's not just like Like the way you would think. It's a mystical name, and in the times of Mashiach, we'll all be taught to be able to pronounce the name of Hashem.

35:20 What does that mean? It means that right now in this world. There's something that cannot be articulated Which is the divine essence itself that we have access to beyond classification. Because we're dreaming, I know it's a little bit heavy. I'm going to try my best to make it as clear as possible. Because we're dreaming We actually have access to a state that's even higher than the times of Mashiach. Because in the times of Mashiach We will be able to pronounce that which is ineffable. We'll be able to pronounce that which is unexpressible. So we're going to limit it. We're going to put it into these words. Words are very limiting. But right now, because we're dreaming, because we're in a state of galus The concept itself, without the words, is something that we have access to. I think this is the best way I can explain it.

36:25 When I went to Poland when I was 18 years old. You do that? Did you go to Poland? So I came back. I was very close with my madrich. And my madrich became a tremendous talmudacher, and he's still learning in kollel, close to 30 years now. My madrich was an exceptionally deep person. And he asked me. We landed on a Friday. I was in yeshiva for Shabbos. And he asked me How was Poland? And I was just about to answer him, and he stopped me. He said, "I'm so sorry. I should never have asked you that question." I didn't know what he meant. It's not like a deeply personal question. I said, 'You could ask it.' He said, 'No, you don't understand.' If you answer me right now Then the words that you're going to try to use to capture this moment You're going to forever limit.

37:23 This, this like amazing, infinite like experience that you just had to those words And we do this all the time. What do we do? How was it? It was amazing. Do you realize how trite that is? How was your wedding? Amazing. Like you can't articulate. So we, and that's and that's why like It's so. I don't know if you know this word. I'll teach it to you. I hang out with eighteen-year-old boys all day long, so I want you to know I am an expert in all of the new technology, like all the new technology of language that these kids come up with. They call it brain rot. You know that word, Rabbi. If you hang out with us too long, you're gonna get brain rot. So the new word for cool is gas. You ever hear boys say that? They go, Rabbi, it was gas. Like that is not a word that you can use to describe something that was cool.

38:18 Rabbi, I'm telling you, it was gas. I'm like, no, don't say that. But they use these words. Why is it so pathetic? Why do we as adults look at an 18 year old kid I can't even begin to describe to you how ridiculous these words are, Rabbi. You're glazing, Tanya. I sit all day long. These boys, they Rabbi, you're cooking. There was I want you to know. There's a guy who's in. There's a guy who's in the mirror. There's a guy who's in the mirror. He went to a certain yeshiva. He's in the mirror today. He's in like a decent chabura in the mirror, like a serious chabura. But he was one of these kids who had brain rot. As a kid, he spoke in this way. And he's in the mirror now, and he's with a bunch of the Vassar guys that are in the mirror.

39:05 And one of these guys, this guy Ben Winter, came to me for Shabbos, and he told me that this kid in the mirror said, Rabbi, this Tosis is cooking. And he said to him, you can't talk that way anymore. You're in the mirror. You can't say this Taisus. You can't say we're cooking in this Taisus in the mirror. It just doesn't work. You have to use Yeshivish terminology. You can't still. You're not allowed to be a hafter kid anymore. You know what I'm saying? You have to. It's time. He gets mad. You have to leave. It's so sad for us as adults to see people take language, which is the most chashuv thing in the world, and to debase it and say these phrases that mean nothing. And the truth of the matter is that sometimes the best words to say are no words at all.

39:52 And when my madrich said that to me on that day, and he said, "Don't," I shouldn't have asked you the question. Don't answer it. Let it just be this thing that lives inside of you that's beyond words. It's very interesting. I went home for Pesach that year. And I didn't talk about Poland. And my father assumed that it was because it was so traumatic that I wouldn't talk about it. And only a couple of years ago, my father said to me, "He goes, do you realize that you never spoke about it when you came home?" And I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Was it really hard?" I'm like, "No, I just never wanted to put it into words." And my father's like, "What are you talking about? Like you go on vacation, you say, 'How was your vacation? What was this experience like for you?' I never spoke about it, but not because it was so deeply traumatic. It was so fill in the blank, whatever it was, that he didn't want to give it language.

40:43 In the times of Mashiach, it will be v'ha'yah b'yomahu yia Hashem echad u'shmao echad. In the times of Mashiach, the paradoxical nature of the world will be able to be articulated in a way that makes no sense to us, but right now we actually have access to it. We have access to the paradox because we're sleeping. So we know somehow. And it's beyond language. We have the ability to know that Elu ve Elu Divriyelukim Chaim, that two things are true at once, even though that makes no sense. The Jewish soul is so deeply connected to this idea that we don't know how it's true. It's just true. Maybe another way of putting it is like this: You know that sixteen-year-old kid who thinks he's so tough, so he goes. If you can explain to me why I should do it, then I'll do it. If you can't explain to me why I should do it, then I'm not doing it. That like pseudo intellectual type of sixteen. You know what I'm talking about? I was that kid. Like that kid who's like, no, like I only like, dude, you just want to party, relax. You know what I'm saying?

41:45 I don't do it unless I can articulate why. Isn't there something so tragic about that way of being that you don't allow yourself to intuit the truth in a way that's beyond language? Isn't that really where we live our life from? Like in our lives, how do we show up to relationships in a way that we can articulate, or in a way that's beyond articulation? If you can articulate the power of the relationship, that's not a very powerful relationship. The way I heard this from one of my rebbeim is, he said, "I would never want to worship a God that I could express." I would never want to worship a God that I could give language to, that I could understand. I would only want to completely submit myself to something that's so exceptionally larger than me that it's beyond human comprehension. That's the beauty of Gullus. The beauty of the dream of Gullus is that we have complete access, in a way that is beyond language, to things that make absolutely no sense.

42:39 I can't point to God. I can't touch God. I can't prove God. By the way, that's one of the reasons, and I don't mean to be critical of anything. It's beautiful what Rev Lawrence Kellerman did in those books, Permission to Believe and Permission to Receive. I love the way he said it. These are not proofs. They're permission. They're indicators. They point to the existence of a God. But not more than that. If you can put God in a laboratory and you can define Him and you can say He's the mitochondria, He's the powerhouse of the cell, that's not Hashem. The way to connect. If you go to that Eish Torah class and you walk out and you go, now I know that God exists. We are not talking about the same God. That Eishah Torah class speaks to the articulation of language, which is awesome.

43:29 But you have to know that in this world, by definition, the language has to fall short. You would never want to be in a relationship with someone that you could express. What would you say if you said, "I'm married. I'm married to my husband. I love him because he's a great provider." Do you see how pathetic that is? I love him because he's a great father. You just love him because he plays backgammon or sorry with the kids. That's why you love him. Those words hopefully fall short of what we want our relationship with our spouse, with our children, and with Hashem to be. But living in the dream gives us access to the thing itself beyond language. This is what David HaMelech means when he says Hayinu kechomim. Now that it's articulatable in the times of Mashiach, now that we'll be able to say Vahaya Bayomahu Iy Hashem Echad Rishmo Echad, we'll realize that we had access to these concepts the entire time that were in galus, that were living from that deep place of emuna, that which is beyond articulatable language, that we somehow were connected to Hashem's essence, which is beyond categorization. We were living in the circle, not in the line.

44:41 Does that make sense? So this is the paradoxical nature of a dream. On the one hand, a dream, like the Gemara says, is nothing. There's nothing to it because there's no intellect. It's just pure imagination run wild, and you're living with unicorns, and you're flying, and you're on a different planet. So on the one hand, a dream is an absolute nothing, and on the other hand, a dream is an aspect of naviyah. A dream gives you access to something that is so essential and so deeply connected. It's beyond language. That's why the most powerful people in the world are dreamers. Don't mess with someone who has a real dream. By the way, if you want to know who has a real dream, it's very easy to see. When someone has a dream Assuming that they're wide awake, like that story with the Panavicharov. Somebody said to him, "You're a dreamer." He said, "I am, but I'm wide awake."

45:38 If you're dealing with someone who's a real dreamer They're not bound by categories. They could do anything. You should know. You've just met the most powerful person in the world. There's nothing that will stand in their way. A million different problems will come up. And they'll go right through those problems because they're just categories. They're just words. Anything could be jumped. If you think about it, right? Like Let's take for example on a very stupid level. I mean it on a stupid level. Even though it's a huge thing, I mean it on a very stupid level. Elon Musk just says why can't we land a rocket? Why can't we land? We can land a rocket. Why can't we land a rocket? You don't think a million people before Elon Musk said why can't we land a rocket? They also thought of it. But what did he do that was so different? He's just the most powerful dreamer in the room.

46:28 So because he's such a powerful dreamer, his dream is so powerful that when everybody else gave up hope, he just kept going. We learned from that mistake that we need to do something different. And now he landed a rocket, and he said, 'This is a really major step to becoming interplanetary.' Do you realize interplanetary? That's a word. Interplanetary is a word that we're talking about in 2024. We're sitting here. Where are we in Woodsburg? Was that where we are? Woodsburg. We're in Woodsburg. Imagine if in not that long from now, people in Woodsburg are going. I think I'm going to go to that Pesach program on Mars. That's real. I heard they're bringing Y Jacobson to Mars. It's five star catering. They're very good. It's a real. And the kashos is because you don't have to worry about so many issues because we're bringing it interplanetary. There's not that much chametz on Mars. That's a real conversation that people are going to be having.

47:20 Because he's the most powerful dreamer. But then when you start to take it to something that's real, you start to look at let's say for example the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe's dream was so exceptionally powerful that he said. What would happen if we just sent kids all over the world and said you're going to go and you're not going to come back You're going to go to Kathmandu, Singapore, Africa and Indonesia. We're going to send Chabad shluchim all over the world, and you're not going to come back because if you come back, then you're not going to have real roots in the community, and people aren't going to trust you. We're going to send you, and you're going to go and find the sparks of godliness in the farthest places in the world. How many people, when the Friedecker Rebbe said it, and then the Lubavitcher Rebbe continued it, said that's crazy? And how many people thought when the Rebbe died that it was over And then they just had a kino shluchim with over five thousand shluchim

48:10 And it's hard to imagine what the world looks like today without those chabad. Not just for people that travel. I think people think chabad is like a it's very nice what they did for the orthodox community. It's like if I'm going somewhere, there's a local chabad that I can get food. That's what people think. These people are travel. They're like driving an hour and a half because they heard there's a Jew. And they want to go put a mezuzah in their house. And wherever they are, they're gonna pay for that menorah and they're gonna light it up and they're gonna go everywhere. That was such a dream, and the Rebbe was so intent. The dream was so powerful that nothing could stand in his way. Because people who dream, they dream beyond categories. They're touching something that's essential. Somebody said to me, and I think it's very inspirational. Somebody said she just set her date for her wedding.

49:02 She's not dating anybody. But she just set her date. She made a date. They booked the hall. They booked the hall. Not a joke. They booked the hall. It's an unbelievable thing. It's a refundable. It's not like you know what I'm saying. It's like a refundable deposit. But they booked the hall up until a certain point. They like it's a refundable deposit. Why? Have a wedding date. It's going to happen. That is such a powerful dream. She got this idea from Ravmanis Friedman. She listened to one of Ravmanis Friedman's YouTube videos. She booked the hall. How many people have heard that video from Ravmanis Friedman and just kept going? How many of us booked the hall? But it's an unbelievable thing to be able to manifest that dream. It's happening. Nothing's going to stop me now. I. But what about all the categories? What about all the things? I'm tapped into something that's bigger than those hurdles.

49:53 That's where greatness comes from. Could you imagine what it would be like if we lived that way? Could you imagine how insanely powerful all of us would be? There's not one person in this room that doesn't have a dream. But how many of us were told that our dream is not realistic? Of course, it's not realistic. It's a dream, but being realistic is no great value. Making your dream a reality is a great value. And I have tremendous hakaras hatov to my father. When I told my father I was going into chenoch. I thought I was gonna get you know it's not like a It's not an obvious thing. I don't know if you know this. It's not an obvious thing to come home to your dad. Who's like a very successful person in business and say, "So I'm thinking" Chinach. He just so you know, it's not like a proud moment for when I grew up. It's not like a proud moment for a dad. It's not like good for you. It's more like usually this is the way it goes. I grew up not that far from here in Lawrence. Usually the way it goes is And Kesef minalan? How we're going to be providing for our family? Is that going to be me? It's like that, like it's not going to be me type of conversation. When I told my dad I'm going into Chanoch, he said, "Good for you."

51:10 I was shocked. I said, "Really?" He's like, 'Yeah. If this is your dream, you're going to have to figure out how to monetize it. You're going to have to figure out how to support your family. But if this is your dream, then go for it.' I never in a million years thought that would be his reaction. He used to tell us all the time as kids. I didn't know if he meant it. He used to say, "You have to make your avocation into your vocation. You have to take that which you love and make that your job." That's how people are powerful. You meet powerful people when they live out their dreams. And people who pour water on that fire go, 'It's not realistic.' Why not? Why can't it be a reality? Because you decided that you're living in the world of categorization. You decided you're living within this world. And you can if you want to." There is a world of seven days of creation, and within the seven days of creation, there are categories.

52:01 Or you can choose to live in the dimension of Chanukah. The dimension of Chanukah is the eighth dimension. It's that which goes beyond all of the created categories. It's the essence of the thing. And from the perspective of the essence, what categories? Darkness and light are not just opposites of each other. They're made of the same substance. It's all alokos. It's all divine essence. People who live that way are the most powerful people in the world. In any contest, I will always choose the greatest dreamer. Because that person will surely win. We live out these dreams. A person has a dream: I'm going to get married. They show up with that dream to a date, and the other person across the table says, "I'm in the presence of greatness." And then you meet the people who have doubt. They're not living with that dream. They're living in the world of categories. Doubt only exists within the world of categories.

52:53 They live with doubt, and you show up, and you're like, I don't know. You don't seem that powerful because you're terrified, as rightfully you should be. Because when you live within the world, you're living within the chaos of the world. There's no positivity. There's no hope. There's no optimism. That's why people today like wear it as a badge. Look at me, I'm a negative person. Kol hakavod to you. You're walking around saying, I know what's real. You live within the created categories of the world. You'll never build anything. It takes a dreamer to change the world. By the way, our grandparents did that. The schools that we daven in, the schools that we go to, they're palaces. These people got off the boat from Europe with nothing. They were Holocaust survivors, and they came and they said We'll build. Hayinu kechomim because they were tapped into the world of dreams.

53:40 To be in the darkness, to be in these final moments before Mashiach comes, we have to grab these moments right before we wake up, because in these moments we are tapped into the divine energy of the world. That's the Nees Chanukah. The Nees Chanukah was these Kohanim. When we were growing up, did you ever like see the pictures of Judah Maccabee? Talking about where I grew up, he wasn't Yehuda Maccabee; he was Judah Maccabee. They make him look like an Adonis. He was probably a skinny tzaddik. Talking about he was a gentle skinny tzaddik. I imagine that's what he looked like. I don't think he looked like a powerful warrior. How did the Chashmonim win? It was Rabbah Miad Miadim, right? How were they outnumbered? How did they do it? The answer was they didn't look at the numbers. The entire founding of the state of Israel, we were this tiny, tiny thing, post-Holocaust, going up against all of the Arab armies.

54:36 Today, what would we have said? You have to run. You have to run away from there because it's these created categories. Everyone's going to die. But they didn't live that way. They knew that they were dreaming, so they lived with the capacity to dream. And today Those same dreamers—they gave birth to a generation because they were so powerful and because they created so much. And now we're living with everything that they built. Today we live with the terror of We don't want to mess it up. We don't want to lose anything. So we're not ambitious. We're not changing the world in the same way that our great grandparents and our grandparents did. And by the way, when we see people that are, it's so inspirational Why didn't I think of that? That's amazing. And when you meet these people, they're viral. Who do you think Rav Daniel Kalish is viral because he's the most inspirational speaker? That's not why. He's not the best speaker.

55:36 Rav Daniel Kalish is viral because he thought of a completely new way of being mechanech a segment of Klal Yisroel, and he just went for it. And he did it, and it was like he built this thing, and everybody across the board from all aisles went Wow, it's incredible. He had this idea that if you'll just be absolutely authentic with your talmidim and with them where they are, you can change lives. Looking back on it, it doesn't seem so crazy. It doesn't seem crazy now because he built it. And you listen to Rav Fisher speak and you listen to this whole beautiful movement. Psychology and authenticity, and being present with the talmidim where they are, and just allowing them to be as they are, and every one of us is inspired by that. Nobody did that in the nineties. Those yeshivas didn't exist, and our rebbeim were like a million years old and totally disconnected. If you would have asked me in the nineties, 'Do you want to have a kesher with your rebbe?' I didn't know that those words existed. What does that mean, a kesher with your rebbe?

56:39 First of all, they weren't my rebbeim; they were my rabbis. Like kesher with your rebbe. This revolution that's happened is unbelievable And it came from people that decided not to pay attention to the created categories. People who lived from such a deep sense of self that they were totally unafraid to shatter all of the ceilings. Say, what would happen if we did it completely differently? That is a powerful person. That's a Hanukkahnikah person. That's why it's Hanukkah. Is the final night of Chanukah. The eighth dimension of Chanukah is the dimension of May Eis Hashem Haysozois He Neflowis Beienu. When you're living in that eighth dimension, you realize the Pella and the wonder of going beyond all created categories and seeing things in a whole new way. And that's what we're living in right now. If you can't articulate what's happening in the world right now, maybe it's because we're not supposed to.

57:37 Maybe Rav Molinowitz and all of those tzaddikim that would have given us language to be able to say exactly what's happening, maybe they're not here right now because we're not supposed to be able to articulate it. Maybe we're just supposed to sit there and ride this ride without any language and say this is pretty wild. It's a pretty wild thing. Can I share with you something? It's been a while since I've been in the Fetter House. I feel like this is a place. I feel like it's a safe space here. I feel like I can say whatever I want here. Do you know that this year? This is a crazy thing to say. This year, twice The Iranians sent cruise missiles to the country that I live in. Do you know what a cruise missile is? When a couple of years ago, Katyusha rockets were a big deal. Do you know the size of a Katyusha rocket?

58:24 A big Katyusha rocket is less than half the size of this table. If a Katyusha rocket hits your house, it could really kill somebody in the house. It's very dangerous. If a cruise missile hits your house, there's no more block. The block doesn't exist. A cruise missile is the size of an 18-wheeler truck. Filled with exceptionally powerful explosives. And the first time that the Iranians said they were sending cruise missiles, it was a crazy thing. It took a long time for them to come. They announced at 10 o'clock at night that at 2 o'clock in the morning, four hours from now, the cruise missiles are going to be in Israel. And I remember it was like Mitzvah Shabbos, and I said to my wife, "Some of you know my wife." Iran is sending cruise missiles, and I was like, 'What's that mean? There's cruise missiles coming to our country, and I was like, 'Like it's a big deal.' She's like, 'Okay,' she went to sleep.

59:20 She went to sleep. It's not a joke. She went to sleep. She took it to Hillel to her bed. And she went to sleep. I live within the world of created categories. So I decided that anxiety was a good way of dealing with it. It was a very different approach. So at eleven o'clock at night, the news said the cruise missiles will be here in three hours, and at twelve o'clock at night it said they'll be here in two hours, and at one o'clock it said the cruise missiles will be here in an hour. And then at two o'clock in the morning it said on the news they're here And then at two o three my house started to shake because they were exploding. Up above And it was so surreal. I was my wife rolled over And started saying Tillim, and then went back to sleep.

1:00:11 It was like an unbelievable emuna moment. I was like, what in the world is happening here? I was bringing whatever water bottles we had into the mamad. The sirens didn't go off. The sirens, we just it was like a one katusha rocket comes. Everyone has to run to the mamad. If hundreds of cruise missiles come, I guess it's just like forget about it. It was so absolutely insane. And then it happened again. And my kids were out shopping in the Merkaz in Ramat Bechemesh, and I called my daughter. I'm like, are you okay? She's like, yeah. There's a lot of us. We're just in the basement underneath Yesh, but it's okay. There's a lot of us here. There's a Ma'ariv minion. My other daughter was like, "I'm in Yesh, and I'm in the freezer section, and it's cold. We're in the freezer section." And then as soon as the sirens, as soon as that, the second time, I got in my car and I drove around the neighborhood. People were speeding, picking up their loved ones and bringing them back home. I ran to pick up my son-in-law and I ran to the Mercado, and my kids met me on the corner. You're speeding home because we don't know if there's more missiles coming.

1:01:22 How in the world are we supposed to process this? What's the language? What trauma therapy? Everybody in Israel should have EMDR all the time. It should be constant tapping. They used to come in COVID time. They used to take your temperature before you walked into a mall. Everybody should have to have a little EMDR before they go into a mall. That's what it should be. There's no way to articulate what's happening right now. Maybe we're not supposed to be. Maybe it's just so absolutely insane that we're supposed to recognize that we're living in a dream. In these final moments before Mashiach comes, and we should just embrace the fact that this is unadulterated Elokuz because it's beyond our capacity to express. I think perhaps Perhaps we have to grab these moments before Mashiach comes Because soon we're going to be in the world of language. Soon we're going to be in the world of being able to articulate the ineffable.

1:02:16 And there's something beautiful about that. But there's also something amazing, something incredible, something remarkable, something profound About having no language to be able to articulate anything that's happening, and just open up our soul to this process I'm going along for the ride In our personal lives, as we engage our own hypocrisy in that world of like, "I'm inspired and I'm uninspired" And I'm leading this very mundane life. And I don't know how to find godliness within it. Maybe there's value in just saying, "Hayinu kecholmen." " Somehow these categories somehow they merge. Somehow Somehow I in a way that I don't understand. Somehow there's godliness in these moments too. Be'ez Hashem we should be zeicher to grab every single moment before Mashiach comes, so that Be'ez Hashem as we dream this dream, when we finally have the language to articulate what's going on, we'll appreciate the time period that we've been living in. Name.