Chanukah - Falling Upwards

2:18 And that's something unusual, because in general Most of the time. We follow Beis Hillel. But here it seems to be that the name itself of Chanukah demands, so to speak, that we follow Beis Hillel. The question is, given that we know that Beis Shamai is not something to be chas v'shalom Not something to be mezuzelin in any way And we know that some suggest that in the times of Oyelim Haba, we are going to follow the halacha like Beis Shamai. So then, the question is: Why dafke here? Does the name Chanukah itself impress upon us that here we must go like Beis Hillel? That it almost seems Chas v'Shalom to say something like this because Elu v'Elu Diver Lekem Chayim But it almost seems like Chanukah itself only has room for Beis Hillel And in a certain way, on whatever level this means again, not Chas v'Shalom in any way to be mezalzul in Beis Shammai. But it almost seems like here there's no room for beishamai whatsoever.

3:26 The idea that we start off at eight and go down to one, there's no room for that whatsoever. Question is, how could that be? How could it be that here Chanukah itself, in some way, embodies the halacha of Beis Hillel in a way that is unlike any other halacha? There's a question at the soul. Of this entire tefufa that we're living in. Not just this entire tefufa that we're living in, but in general, the notion of darkness. Which is why darkness feels so permanent? Something. There's something about the nature of a nefila. There's something about the nature of darkness. That it seems that when we enter into it, it's forever. I don't know if you've had this. I hope you have because it's one of the sweetest things. But sometimes when your kids get sick when they're very little They ever do that thing where they say, "I feel like." I remember my son when he was three years old. He got sick, and he said to me in that little three-year-old voice, "He goes, I feel like I'm gonna be sick forever." Like there's something so precious about a child who just doesn't know that this is gonna end.

4:46 So they get strep throat or they get an ear infection. And it like. Especially, maybe an ear infection more. Like an ear infection takes over your entire body It's something in the ear, but you're just ice men. You can't be a person in that time. There's a sense of You're stuck in that feeling so much that there's almost It almost feels like there's no way out of it. The question is, why is that? Why is it that when we enter into tukufas like this Somehow there's a feeling of Of permanence to the darkness. I don't know if I'm saying something that's shy to everybody, but I certainly feel that way. I feel like a frat right now when we're talking about this war We have no idea when this is going to end. And we know Even alpidarech ateva, we know that this has to go very slowly.

5:39 Like in some wars you see that That Eretz Yisrael we have to go fast because we know that we have a small window of opportunity to take care of what we need to take care of before the world demands that there's a ceasefire. And so like I don't know how long you've been living here, but the way it basically goes is they come in and blitz whatever they have to blitz in a week period. Then there's a call for a ceasefire that's like a forty-eight hour period where the Israelis get forty-eight hours to finish up. And then there's the ceasefire. Here already we see In a very strange way. The Israelis are not going to be gayers to ceasefire. There's no room for a ceasefire. Even some of the world leaders, who in general are not necessarily the most intelligent people, know Like a call for a ceasefire now It's crazy to let Hamas rearm.

6:34 Biden said it. I saw one of the British MPs said it. It's pretty. So they have a name change for it now. They're very clever. It's not a ceasefire. It's a humanitarian pause. I think these people are tremendous when it comes to making up words. I wish I had that type of kach. Imagine a guy in yeshiva who comes back late for curfew. And come back late for curfew, Rebbe. I was just on a pause between buses for Tula. These people are very clever. I saw a very good line. Somebody said, 'We'll give a humanitarian pause when they start treating our hostages like humans.' And returning them, I think everyone probably saw that mean. Does a humanitarian pause mean that the hostages get to come home for Shabbos? Like The like Even though the world itself has gone crazy, it's like a notion like this is not going to end.

7:29 It's not going to end. They have to go block by block. They have to go through all the tunnels that these Rishonim and Rurim built. So there's a sense of dread about how long this is going to take. And also because we know the price we're going to pay. We know. We can't even talk about it without breaking down. But we know the price we're going to have to pay. We know that Yiddish Akinder That Jewish men and women who are out there doing what they have to do. We know that We know that unfortunately La Oleno Chas V'Shalom. But we know that Al Pidar Chateva, we're going to lose soldiers, and every one of them is too much of a price to pay for us. But we have no choice. So it seems to be that in order to go slowly and methodically and. And to take over every weapons depot, it could be that we're talking about months. It could be we're talking about longer. We pashah don't know. And you're talking to all the forecasters, and some it'll be Purim, Pesach. Everyone's talking about like this is going to go for a while, and then you start to reflect backwards, and you're like, did it ever really stop?

8:27 Has it ever really stopped? Has there been a permanence to anti-Semitism not only in our lifetime, not only the first Intifada and the second Intifada, and then you go back to the Persian Gulf War, and then you go back to the '80s. And what was going on, and then you go back to this, nineteen, the early seventies, nineteen sixty seven, nineteen forty eight, nineteen fifty two. I skip, and then you start going back to the Holocaust. There's a certain sense of Does this darkness ever end? Has it ever ended? Maybe just because we grew up in a certain tefufa, we thought to ourselves It got good. The last couple of years it was good. It seemed like there was a certain lightness here in this country. And. And then, in a moment's notice, the whole world went on fire. That's what it feels like for a second. But then you start to think about it, and you realize the darkness had a certain permanence to it that never really went away. Sheli, why is that? Why is it that we feel that the darkness has a permanence to it? And not only on a national level or on a global level But even in a permanent level. When a person has even on a personal level, when a person has in the filo, doesn't it feel like this is who we are now?

9:31 Person has a nifila in their marriage. So now this is the marriage. It's hard to extract yourself. It's hard to recognize that it was pambe. It's hard to recognize that it was a one-off. We start to build narratives for ourselves. This happens every time. We always end up back in this place. Whenever you start using those words, you know you're speaking from a place of pain. Always and never and ever. You always have that type of speech. Any time we have a nifila in our ruchnias. It's like it's always been this way, and there's a feeling of permanence. Shaila, why is that? Teretz is that, that is the nature of darkness. It's not a bug. It's a feature. The nature of darkness is that it has a permanent quality to it. To try to unpack this a little bit and explain it in a deep way Person thinks like it's dark, but it's for a moment.

10:26 If it's dark, the feeling of darkness is permanence. Those are not two separate things. It's not that it's dark and I feel like it's permanent. Part and parcel of the darkness is the permanence. It's built into the system of darkness. Built into the nefila is this: this is who I am now. There's a sense of identification with the darkness. I could try to unpack it a little bit more to try to give you an example, but the best way really to explain it is from the Nachash Akamoni. The Nachash Kanmoni, who of course is the being that brings darkness into the world. So the Nachash Kanmoni stood on two feet. And when the Nachash Kanmoni, and the Nachash Kanmoni in many ways looked like a person, as we see a snake today and we think to ourselves, it's a snake. What's the shaykh to a person? But it was intelligent. It had verbal skills. It was capable. It was eloquent. It was capable of rational argument. It stood on two feet. It had a taiva for Chava, whatever that means. There was some sort of relationship that had occurred with Adam Marishon that the Nachash felt spurned by Adam Marishon.

11:40 The fact that Adam Marishon said, 'You're not a mate for me,' and that Chava needed to be created, so the Nachash was not just like a cow walking around and munching on grass. This is a sophisticated animal. The nature of the punishment is mida keneged mida. You brought darkness into the world, so now your legs are removed, and you'll be in a constant state of nefila. That's what a nachash is. A nachash is in a constant state of nefila. It's not like any other animal that could rear itself up. The nature of the nachash is that it slithers on the ground, meaning it's constantly in a state of nefila, because that's what it brought into the world. It didn't bring into the world a certain amount of nefila, a nefila for five minutes. The nature of nifila is that it feels permanent because that's what the nachash kamoni is. It's a permanent type of nifila.

12:28 Which brings us to the crossroads between yidden and goyim And it goes as follows. In this week's parsha, we know that Rivka imenu became aware, without getting to the details, she became aware that she had twins. Rashi spiega, "Kashizek kam zanofo." That when Esav is up, Yaakov will be down. When Yaakov is up, Esav will be down. Kishazek kam zan nofa. So the pashupshat, the way that many of us grew up hearing it, is exactly like I just explained. If Esav is up, then Yaakov is down. If Yaakov is up, then Esav is down. But that's not the right way to explain it. Kishazek kam zan nofa means that Yaakov is beetzem a kam, and Esav is beetzem a nofa. They go then. Yaakov Avinu has no shayches to the world of nefila. There's no connection whatsoever to the world of nefila. A Jew does not live within the world of nefila, because the world itself is a place of nefila, and a Jew lives somewhere between this world and the world above.

13:36 The nature of a Jew is that we have both the nefesh elokis and the nefesh abahamis, a godly soul and a body. Because of that, because of the design of the Jew, we're only a little bit in this world Because we have a material body and we live within the material world, and we're meant to do mitzvot within the material world in order to bring Hashem a dir b'tachtonim. We're designed to make this world into a dwelling place for God. But fundamentally, a Jew is not of the world. We are not of creation. That's a serious point right there in hashkafa, that we are not of creation. This is I heard one of the rabbis in yeshiva. He said very well. One of the boys asked. He said, 'Rabbi, there's billions of people in the world. You're telling me that Akolish Baruch who chose only fourteen million.' So he said, 'If you look at it that way, you have a kasha. But if you understand that the fourteen million are not of the world, that you don't have a kasha.'

14:27 If the fourteen million are a completely different order, not chas v'shalom to say that a gentile doesn't have a place in the world. The job of the Jew is to influence and to impact on the gentile so that the whole world can be makir Hakadosh Baruch Hu in this world. But fundamentally, a Jew is not of the world. That's why Chazal say that we are not created from Hakadosh Baruch Hu's speech. Everything in the world is created from Hakadosh Baruch Hu's speech, but we are all a b'machshava. We're created from Hakadosh Baruch Hu's mind. A thought has a certain more personal aspect. It's more internal. It's not spoken out. So there's something unique about the nature of a Jew. We're not of the world, and because we're not of the world, we're not shyach to the world of nefila. A Jew does not go down. It's not possible for a Jew to go down.

15:13 I, but you'll say We experience nifelas all the time. The emphasis that we have the capacity to borrow nifela from Esav And Esav has the capacity to borrow being a kam from us. But really, Esav is a nifel, and a yid is a kam. There are times when, because a Jew is acting in a particular way, we identify with Esav, so we become shyach to the world of nifilah, but not be'etzem. A Jew could be a nifel, but not in his essence, in a state of nifilah, but not a being of nifilah. Only Esav is shyach to the world of nifilah. Why is Esav shyach to the world of nifilah? I saw this years ago, and it blew my mind the first time I saw it. Did you know that Esav had a tattoo? Esav had a tattoo. What was Esav's tattoo? Esav had a tattoo of the Nachash Akamoni.

16:10 Why does Esav have to have a tattoo of the Nachash Akamoni? Because the whole yisoid of Esav is he embodies the Nachash in this world. That's why he says, "Hine anochi hol lechlamus." I'm going to die. The nature of Esav Harasha is that he's living in the world of Misa. He's living in the world of the Fila. He's not shyach to the bracha. He's not shyach to the birthright of Yitzchok because there's nothing. There's nothing about him that's beetzem akam. Yaakov Avinu is beetzem akam. What's the sheker of Esav? What's the sheker of Esav? When the pasuk says kitzayyed be'fiv What's the sheker of Esav? So the sheker of Esav is that somehow he tells us that we are in a state of nifila like him. That's the sheker that Esav brings to the world. That he looks at a Jew and he says, 'You see, you fall like I fall' And we begin to identify with the darkness in that way. That's the sheker of Esav. That's the danger of Esav. That when a person's in a state of nifla They feel like the nifla is permanent because that's the nature of nifla. But if we were tapped into the nature of a yid, we would know that we're not shyach to that nifla anyway.

17:27 But the sheker that the darkness tells us, the sheker of Esav, is this you. That's what we have to educate our children And honestly, we have to educate ourselves. There's a difference between I did something that I'm not proud of and I am something that I'm not proud of. The problem for so many of us is that we grew up over identifying with our nefilus. So you see, by the boys, you see this very much. The girls in a different way. But by the boys, you see this very much that when the boys have certain challenges in yonim of kedusha There's a total debacle of their entire being. It's like, how can I be a person, Rabbi? How can I daven? How can I tefillah? How can I wear tzitzis? How can I learn Torah? Don't you see? I'm a rosha marusha. What just happened here? You're a human being. You fell into as I heard many years ago from Rabbi Binyamin Cherni Shlitah, who's a Rabbi in Shaiyoshev.

18:23 He's very btsina, so nobody really knows who he is. But if you ever have the opportunity, I don't know if there's anything from Rabbi Charny online. You remember Rabbi Charny. Rabbi Charny is a tzad. He's an unbelievable person. But he works. Somebody once told me that Rabbi Weinberger is a nigla, Rabbi Charny is a nistar. And kiffi, how much the entire world knows Rabbi Weinberger? That's how hard Rabbi Charny is working. Nobody in the world should know his name. So I once, and he's an unbelievable tzadik. And I, Rabbi Cherni, the way he says it, whenever he's talking to the boys, he always says it in the sweetest way. He goes, "You fell into a funny place in a funny time. You ended up in a weird situation." So he's giving it like a chinuch message. Saying it's not you. You ended up in a strange place in a funny time in a weird way. How'd you end up there? It doesn't even make any sense.

19:11 What he's doing is helping the boys understand It's not you. It's not you. That's the Asov inside of us that tells us you are this naphila. You had a naphila. You are the naphila. The nature of the darkness tells you that it's permanent. But I'm not shyach to the naphila. But you are. That's the Sheker. That's the Sheker of Asov. The MS is that a yid has a completely different modality And I'll use this term because it's the only way I know how to say it. Anyone here ever read Shel Silverstein, the poet? Amazing. He has some amazing poetry. There's a line. It's not even a line. It's a phrase from Shel Silverstein that I love. It's called 'falling upwards' Or "falling up." Falling upwards is a very beautiful line. What does it mean to fall upwards? To fall upwards means that what appears to be a downward motion is really an upward motion. What appears to be down is really up.

20:11 That the way something goes up is not linear. We tend to think of up as if you're going on an airplane and it's going down and up, you're in very big trouble. So in the world we look at the vicissitudes of life as down and up, but in the spiritual world, the mahalach of kam involves going down. It's part of the process. So for example, you see by the mishkan by the first seven days of the mishkan, every single day in the morning they would build the mishkan. And every single day at night, they would dismantle the mishkan until the eighth day. And then the mishkan took on a certain permanence to it. Why is it that for the first seven days of the mishkan needed to be built and dismantled? Why is that part of the process? Because in order for us to achieve that bechinah of the eighth level of being in a state of calm completely, to reaching that level where it has a permanent upwardness, it needs to go through a process of nifla.

21:08 It doesn't mean that it is a nefila. That nefila is falling upwards. In fact, you can't even really teach it as a nefila. It's breaking almanas livnos. It's soysra almanas livnos. I'm taking it down in order to build it up. Meaning, we look at it and we're saying you're dismantling it. But really, any builder understands you're not dismantling it. If you would go The way we see it, imagine we're doing. I imagine you all moved in fairly recently. If you moved into this country, you know this word shiputsim. Nobody buys an apartment and then lives in that apartment. You buy an apartment to make an apartment. And if you buy a new apartment, you still have to do shiputsim on the apartment because the shiputsim weren't included in the price. And then you have the kaban that says this the apartment and this the shiputs on the apartment. It's an unbelievable deal that these people have. I'll build you an apartment twice. I remember when I was dealing with my house. So the kaban said I have to put a wall But then I'm going to have to break the wall in order to do your shiputs.

22:07 Or you could not build the wall, that's an option. He goes, no, you have to. I was like, for who? It's like, they require it. The area requires it. I was like, what are you talking about? Like it's like it didn't make it as an American. I was living in America and we built our apartment. I was like, that makes no sense to me. You have to build a wall to make a wall. He goes, yeah. So I was like, can you at least make it gevas? He goes, no, it has to be a real wall. So I'm like, you're gonna build a wall to break a exactly. It's so to me it looks like in the world of being a human being who lives in an apartment, it looks like you built a wall to break a wall. But as she puts, Nick doesn't look at it like that. Nick looks and says, "I'm not breaking a wall. I'm opening up your halal space." It looks like you're breaking a wall, but you're opening up a halal space. That's the right way to teach it. So even to say that it's being dismantled and rebuilt is wrong. Even that's not a hundred percent correct because that would mean that there's a nifla and there's an aliyah.

23:00 There's a nifla and then there's an aliyah. It's not a nifla and then an aliyah. Part and parcel of the process." Is the breaking because that it in itself? It's not. It's your rida l'tzarchaliya. It's not your rida l'tzarchaliya. There's no yirida. There's no yirida. It's not. You're not going down to go up. There's no going down. It just looks that way, but really it's falling upwards. That's the best way I know how to explain it. I don't know if that made any sense, but it's the best way I know how to explain it. There's two bechinas here. This is the bechina of David Hamelach and Yosef HaTzaddik. The Zayah Kodesh says that David HaMelech was born a stillborn. He was born a stillborn baby, and in a miraculous way, somehow he was revived and he lived. That means to say that David HaMelech is a Neifel.

23:46 David HaMelech is a Neifel. Where and when does David HaMelech get the shayches to being a Neifel? So we know that David HaMelech really is the Tikon for Esav Arasha. That's why David HaMelech, like Esav, is an Admoni. He's also red. We know that David HaMelech is a warrior just like Esav. But David Amalech, the Medrash says Befeish. The Medrash says Chalto says Befeish that David Amalech is the Tikon for Esav. But the difference between David Amalech and Esav is that Esav is a Neifel And David Amalech is the revelation, and we'll see how this works in a minute. David Amalech is the revelation that the Neifel is not a Neifel, but it looks like a Neifel. That's why, by David Amalech, we say Harachamun Hu Yakim Lano Esukas David Hanayfalus. Is the nature of David HaMelech that he lives within the world of nifilah to be megala that it's not a nifilah Which is why we see in the story of Megillas Esther that Haman, whose miserah esav, is always in a state of nifilah. Listen to what the pasuk says. The pasuk says, "V'yisaper Haman l'zeresh ishto u'luchol aava es kol ha'chakaral."

24:55 We know at this point in the story that Haman tells his wife and all of his chachamim exactly what happened. Listen, what they say: I'm sorry. It's the opposite. The passage here is wrong. The point is this. It says, "Kinafol tipe l'afanov." That's the critical part. Kinafol tipe l'afanov. What are the? What's the pasuk saying? The chachamim of. It was my fault. I wrote the wrong other thing. It's not your fault. Just print it. It's my fault. What are they saying? They're saying, "If you've begun to fall, surely you fall." Kinafol tipe. There's no way you're not going to fall. Why doesn't Mordechai bow down to? Why doesn't Mordechai bow down to Haman? The emet says Mordechai understands that he's miser Yakov and he can't be a knifel. He can't prostrate himself in front of Haman, because it goes against the nature of what a yid is. What are the chachamim? What is Zeresh saying to Haman? They're saying to him, 'We know how this story ends. Be'etzem, you're a neifel. There's no shayches to the world of not being a neifel. A yid is a kum, and Zera of Esav is a neifel.'

26:13 How does Yosef help us here? So we know that Yosef, a tzaddik. Is kisheva yipol HaTzaddik v'kam? When the pasuk says that the tzadik will fall down seven times and will always get up, who's the tzadik that the pasuk is referring to? So the svar makdoreshim say that this is referring to Yosef HaTzaddik. And when you start to unpack this, it makes sense because if you look at everything in Yosef's life, it represents the concept that we were just talking about. What's the concept? Yosef HaTzaddik is sold down by his brothers. He goes into a bar. He's sold down to Mitzrayim. And every time it appears that he's going in a downward trend. What happens? Then he becomes the head of the house of Potiphar. So then he sold even lower. You're going to go into a jail. So then he ends up as the viceroy of all of Mitzrayim. The nature of Yosef HaTzaddik is that he can't go down. That's why the pasuk tells us that he says, "Vehinekama alumasi v'gamnitzava." He says, "All of my sheaves stood up, and all of your sheaves bowed down to mine." What's the pshat in that?

27:17 Yosef HaTzaddik is saying, 'I am a come.' Meaning, if you look at David HaMelech and Yosef HaTzaddik together, so what does it look like? David HaMelech is the bechinner of a neifel who's not really a neifel. He falls; he's a stillborn, but you see, he's not really. He's Esav, but he's not really. What does Yosef HaTzaddik teach us? When you put Yosef and David HaMelech together, Yosef reveals that what appears to be a neifel is really an aliyah. Which is why Mashiach Ben Yosef needs to come before Mashiach Ben David Because Mashiach Ben Yosef. Which is what we're on the precipice of experiencing right now. Moshiach Ben Yosef has to come into the world to teach the world that what you're experiencing is not shaykh to you. It looks like a nifila. It's really an aliyah. The whole world. It's not by accident. If you want to map out how Moshiach comes, you have to just look at what's happening in the world.

28:13 Pay attention now to the world of psychology. It's a raya for what we're saying over here Because what's everybody tumulting right now in the world of psychology? What's everybody working on? What's the big deal? People are dealing with anxiety and depression and addiction. It's all the same, Zach. It's all one thing. All of this whole tyra of anxiety and depression and addiction. All of these things come to one basic nakuda, and this is what the world of psychology is one hundred percent in on right now, and it's true. All of these are things that you do and not who you are. So there's a big pushback today in the world of addiction. For example, what do they want in the twelve steps? They want the first thing that an addict says to be, "I am an addict." And there's a big pushback today in the world of addiction.

29:02 You're not an addict. Your machush is not an addict. That's not who you are. You're a person who's behaving in a particular way because of what they've gone through in their life. An old friend of mine. I don't know if you had the opportunity to see. It was just interviewed on Meaningful Minute. The guy, Sani Perlman. Any of you saw Sani Perlman is an old school nineteen eighties Farakway. It was like a whole chaver that came out of Farakway back then, very chash of a chaver. Sani's whole tirer when he went on Meaningful Minute, and it's really what he built our place on. It's a tremendous thing. He's saying a very simple thing. These are you're calling them addicts. Is it? They're just people who don't have enough sense of worthiness in their life. Is it just missing worthiness? It's all the same tirah. You're not an addict. You're a person who's missing worthiness. If you would have worthiness, you'd be okay.

29:51 Everyone's dealing with this now. All the anxiety and depression that take a person out of feeling their feelings. Why does a person need to escape their feelings? Why do we need to do that to begin with? Because a person doesn't want to feel a feeling that's going to get them stuck in a feeling. I want you to know it's a fascinating thing. The kids today have much, much more sophisticated emotional language than we ever had. I'm so impressed. Everyone always knocks this generation for this and for that. I want to tell you something. These kids have unbelievable emotional language, and they articulate it. They say it. They'll say to you openly, "Rebbe, if I allow myself to go there, I'm never going to leave. I don't want to. I don't want to even think about it because I don't want to leave there." They're not right. That's not the right way to look at it. It's not an emotionally developed way of looking at it. But I totally can understand that. By the way, you can imagine in the '90s, if a kid would say, "I'm reticent to feel this emotion because I feel I'm going to lose myself to it," for sure you would have gotten punched in the face for saying that. There's no question that nobody was ever cool enough in the '90s. The coolest kid was not capable of pulling that off.

30:54 What we have to teach our children is this bechina of Yosef HaTzaddik. That you are a com, that you could go into that emotion, you could go into that space, you could go into that darkness And it's okay. You won't lose yourself to it. You know the beautiful martial Of a person who's on the ground searching. It's late at night and he's searching on the ground, and somebody walks by and they say, "Are you okay? Did you lose something? Do you need help?" The guy says, "Yeah, I lost my wallet." So the guy says, "I'll help you find it." He gets down on all fours and he's searching for the wallet. And he goes, "Where did you lose it?" And he goes, "About fifty feet that way." So he goes, "So why are you looking over here?" He says, "It's very dark over there." It's a very deep martial because how many of us are doing that? We search in the light because we're afraid to look in the darkness. Why are we afraid to look in the darkness? Because if I look in the darkness, I'm going to lose myself. And by the way, it's true. There's a certain sense of like you're going to be in it, and it's going to feel like a permanent thing, but it's not a permanent thing. And if you're not willing to go into the darkness, that's where the light is buried.

31:51 If you don't go into the darkness, you're not going to find the thing that you're looking for. It's like imagine just on a very simple level. It's not simple at all, but on a simple level, imagine you have a couple that's fighting But they're not willing to say the real thing. You fight about the thing that's not the thing. You ever do that, right? Like, three lines into the fight, you're like, he's, she's like, you never put your socks in the hamper, and he's like, you're always criticizing me, and she, and you never like my mother. Like, how did we end up in that place? It's not bechala what's going on. There's a conversation that's not being had. That's what. By the way, that's why we fight. The reason why we have trouble with our spouses is because we don't want to say the hard thing. Because if we say the hard thing, it's going to go to a hard place, and nobody wants to go to a hard place. So nobody wants to say

32:35 I'm scared. Because when you do this, it brings this thing up for me, and I lose myself to that feeling. Nobody wants to say that, so nobody wants to go there in themselves, let alone in the other person to actually share what's going on. Especially if that person just did something that triggered me and hurt me, and now I feel like I can't say that thing. So we're all staying out of the darkness in order not to have the hard conversation, but the relationship is in the hard conversation. The relationship is sitting with the other person and going Let's unpack this. It's okay. I'm not sitting in judgment of you. I just want to go to that place and see if we can get there. It's the hardest thing in the world to do, but that's the avoda because that's where the relationship is. So there's a sense of a Yosef Hatzadik moment where you say all of this is not bechelal nafila; it's an aliyah—and then a person has the capacity to go into the world of David Hamelach and say, 'I'm a noifel.'

33:29 This place of this darkness, of this being a stillborn, of having no life—that's the bechinah of David Hamelach that a person can only get to when they have a Yosef Hatzadik, and that's really the whole bechinah of Chanukah. The whole bechinah of Chanukah is Yosef Hatzadik. That's why we know many brought down already that Venei Sasser points out that Yosef is the same gematria as Antiochus, and the Megala Amukos writes that the whole Greek domination over Klal Yisrael at that time was only because of Mechiras Yosef, and even in the Gemara and Shabbos there are many examples of this. The Gemara and Shabbos, which is talking about all the halachas of Hanukkah in the middle, stops to talk almost randomly about the fact that Yosef HaTzaddik was thrown into the pit by his brothers. Yosef HaTzaddik is intrinsic to the entire story of Hanukkah. That's why they said, "Kissvalechem alkeren Ashar." Who's the Shor that they're talking about? That's Alay Shor, that's Yosef HaTzaddik. There are many, many connections between Yosef HaTzaddik and Hanukkah.

34:27 What's the idea here? The idea here is that the oil of Hanukkah always rises to the top. That in the world of oil, there's no such thing as a nifilah. If you look I don't know if you do this. It's actually machleikus if it's mutter or not. But many put the when they're lighting their Shabbos niro, so they have the cups and they put water and oil. So it's not a hundred percent clear that it's mutter to do. Many paiskum or mekel. If you do it, you don't have to stop. I'm not chas shalom here to ruin your Shabbos. The but if you pour in like my daughter is like doing If you pour in the water first and then you pour in the oil, you almost see how far the oil can go down till it rises. If you are an adult, you pour it in slowly, but if you are a kid, you just want to see it. It's a little cool to see the oil go down into the water.

35:14 It doesn't go down, but the second it's going down, it's already going up. That the nature of Chanukah is that there's no nifla Which is weird because the whole story of Chanukah is nifla. The whole story of Chanukah is that Klal Yisrael really became Hellenized, not a small amount of Klal Yisrael. The and by the way, it's the only time we don't see tshuva in the story of Hanukkah. We don't really see it. There's no big Maisa tshuva like by Purim. There's no tshuva in the story of Hanukkah. And there's not really a falteikon at the end. The whole story appears to be one giant nefila, but the whole yosoid of Hanukkah is that what you believe is a nefila is not shyach to the world of nefila. All of that is going up. Which brings us back to this idea of the machlekes between be'shama and be'shila.

36:06 I want to share with you a story to illustrate this idea. What would it look like? How would we describe it? If somebody's entire life is falling apart If you have a person, I'm thinking of a specific person in my head. You could all think of your own specific person. There are people whose lives are falling apart. Everywhere they turn, everything is bad. Their marriage is bad, and their kids are mamished. They're not holding. They're not handling. They're not able to make it through, and their job isn't going. The bank is threatening them. Call me. There's nowhere that they can go. There's nowhere for them to turn. There's two ways of looking at it. One way of looking at it is the person is going through a gevaldik and nefila. And at the end of that nifla, he discovers something And what is that? He discovers And this is the crazy thing to discover That you're defined by none of those things That every single thing that fell apart in your life, none of those things are you And so a person lets go of all of the elements that he or she thinks define them.

37:24 And once you let go of that, you discover that there's a nikkuda of amokay. I'm not defined by my marriage. I'm not defined by my children. I'm not defined by my job. I'm not defined by my house. There's an essential point of you, and that essential point is always okay. You see this in the world of addiction very much. A person whose mamish lost everything in the process of losing everything, at some point realizes that none of those things defined them. It's very often, Laalena, what we see when children go off the darach that parents have to go through this process of understanding that it has nothing to do with them. And that they're okay And that you're not defined. First of all, that your relationship with your child is not defined by the level of observance of the child or the way that the child observes or doesn't observe But even more than that, the child is a human being independent of you, and your need for the child to be in a certain way is your own codependence.

38:22 And we do our best to raise our children to be erlich yidden. But if Chas v'Shalom Yid chooses to go in a different path, a parent has to go through a very painful process in that moment of saying, 'Has that's not me? I'm not defined by that.' It's not like you have to go to support groups for everything. I'm the parent of a child who went off the derech. If you're going to a support group like that, it's not because you're defined by that. Ad Rabbah, a person who goes to a support group like that needs to learn, I'm not defined by that. And the fact that we're all in this together is a group of people that are coming to say it's okay. We can love our children no matter what choices they make because we don't over-identify with our children. So one way of looking at it is that everything fell apart in order to get to this essential nikkuda. That's one way of looking at it. There's another way of looking at it, which is the exact opposite.

39:09 All those things that I went through had nothing to do with falling apart. Every single thing that I was going through was only building. It may have appeared on the outside like everything was falling apart, but it was only building. There was never a point where I was going down. It's not Yerida L'otar Chalila, Lo Yerida, Ain Yerida. There's no Yerida whatsoever. This is the machlokes between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel. Beis Shammai says you start off at an eight and you go down to a one, and the miraculous nature of Hanukkah is at the very end. There's that one candle that's still burning, and that's that essential point of view after everything else has fallen off. That's you. Beis Hillel comes along and he says, "Mylin bekaidish ve'ain meridin." There is no yirida here. There's no yirida. All there is by a Jew is this bechina of aliyah.

39:59 So there's no such thing as on Chanukah, specifically the bechina of Chanukah. There's no such thing as going down. It could be there are other times in the year where we're machshiv that David Hamelach type of nifila. Here, there's no inyan of nifila whatsoever. It's only mylin bekaidish ve'ain meridin. That's why Chanukah is. Ches Neiros, the halacha kaveh sila. In the world of Chanukah, there is no yirida. It's not possible. The oil doesn't really go down. It never goes down. It always rises to the top. If Atad teaches us what appears to be a nefila is a yirida too. You're always in a state of falling upwards. It's a very hard thing to say in this tefufa when so many people are going through such tragedy. It's like In a certain way, Like it's for us because we're so involved in Chesed It's already become our new norm.

40:57 It's already become the fact The fact that the hotels are full of people from up north and down south. I think I read today that there's one hundred and fifty thousand refugees in this country, one hundred and fifty thousand people that are displaced from their home. A hundred fifty thousand is an extraordinary number. And where are they living? We know where they're living, right here in this neighborhood. At Baruch Hashem, for all the Americans that buy vacation houses, Blessed Hashem, they should be zeicher to come fast for their sakes And for us, but for their sakes. But of course, like who wasn't, who hasn't been baking? Who hasn't been? My, I have one daughter. She's the sweetest girl in the world. She is as ADHD as they come. She's never met a word that shouldn't come out of her mouth. If it's in her head, it's coming out. She's like the most incredible girl. To sit and zag to hilim, I have other kids that can sit and zag to hilim. That's not her way. I have my six-year-old and my nine-year-old. I have a nine-year-old daughter and a six-year-old boy, and they sit and they say to hilim every single night. It's like the sweetest thing in the world that my mother-in-law she made some mivtza for the family that everybody should say to hilim. So they're sitting there in bed, like zaging talem. It's their way of stalling. They're not sadikim.

42:12 It's very sweet. But this daughter said to me, "Abba, I'm just not going to be able to do that. That's not my way." She's living in the kitchen. She has baked more for chayalim. It's wild to see what she's done. And my mother She also has alternative agendas. My mother bought her Uggs. That was a very important thing. Uggs is what they called the boots. They look ridiculous to me, but I'm very proud of her. Looks ridiculous, but she's living. Everyone's like it's not even weird anymore. It's not like nobody's writing articles about it anymore. How much we're doing, right? Now it's like par for the course. Remember in the beginning, Mishpacha magazine had that whole section, all the chesed. It's not even called chesed by us anymore. It's just like the new normal. This is what we do. But it's not normal. It's not normal on any level what's going on over here. It's very hard to say, and I want to be very sensitive.

43:09 It's very hard to say that there's no Eruyos. Because if Chassid Shalom somebody lost a loved one, one of those fifteen hundred of those special neshamas that had the opportunity to be mekadoshim Shamayim, regardless of what their intention was, becheftzah they were mekadoshim Shamayim. They died al kiddush Hashem. For every soldier that's on the battlefield right now. That's walking through Gaza. We can't understand what that means to walk through Gaza. I have talmidim that are sitting on the front lines in Lebanon, and they're doing real things. Even though it's reported as skirmishes, it's very cute. The difference between a war and a skirmish is like it's one of those words. They make up words. It's not a war, it's a skirmish. It's not a ceasefire, it's a humanitarian pause. It's a skirmish, but bullets are flying. But, but it's a skirmish. It's like when I was a little kid; we were just play fighting. Play fighting was a way of boys beating each other up and not getting in trouble. So all the schools had the aser play fighting. We still fight it; we still pushed each other. What is it? A Jewish fight? Who's going to punch each other in the face? No Jews punch each other in the face. You ever see the boys? They push each other. That's all we do. So it's the difference in play fighting and fighting. It's just a word.

44:13 It's not normal. It's not a normal thing, and I don't want in any way to be insensitive to what people are going through. There are wives that haven't seen their husbands for a month, and then for two. It's crazy. This one guy, he's the Av Beitim of Aseret. He went I think he went twenty two days without seeing his wife. Then he got a twelve hour leave, and then he went another two weeks, and now he's getting another leave, like a quick twelve hour leave. It's a wild thing. You saw the video. Everyone saw the video. It was an amazing video. We had the whole yeshiva to line up. To see him, we surprised the boys. This is not normal. It's not normal, and I don't want to be mezazel in any way to say that what a person is experiencing is not real because there is a bechinah of David Melech, and the bechinah of David Melech of feeling like I'm in a state of neivel of harachamun and yakum lanosuk as David and Yifalas that's real and chas v'shalom for anybody. It's like walking into a shiva house and going, he's in a better place. It's true, but be quiet.

45:11 Don't say that. I don't want to be the guy who's saying. There's no yurida here. There's no nifela. There is a yurida and there is a nifela. But what appears to be a yurida and a nifela in the world of Kislev and the world of Chanukah is not bechelal a nifela. That in the darkest moments of the winter, the nearest Chanukah come to tell us mylin bechaydish veain myridim. There is no yurida that's happening over here. Every single thing is part of Mashiach's plan unfolding. We don't understand that. I'm not going to predict the ways of the world. That I'm not going to say what Hakadosh Baruch Hu's plan is. Far be it from me or anybody to say what Hakadosh Baruch Hu's plan is. But it's certainly true that this is a major wake up call for Klal Yisro. A chaver of mine in America said he's saying the brach of Pakeach Ivrim with newfound kavanah.

46:01 That chaver was walking along the streets of Tinek, the streets of the five towns, living in an ayla madimyon, like anti-Semitism was dead. Even when they reported on CNN that there was a four hundred percent rise in anti-Semitism So some loyutzlech over there in Brooklyn knocked a shtraimol off of some chassid's head. What does that have to do with me? So that's the way we thought about it. Pakeach Ivrim, this was a tremendous wake up call. Hundreds of thousands of people marching. Imagine if they'd be marching for Russia. In the Ukrainian-Russian war. Could you imagine if they said, 'We really have to understand that the Russians feel oppressed by the Ukrainians.' You think the Russians in their world, if you would go to Russia, you think they don't have a narrative about the Ukrainians why they had to fight them? They also have a narrative, but it's fascinating. Nobody in America and nobody in England and nobody in France marched for the Russians. They all marched for the Ukrainians. Fifteen hundred of our brothers and sisters are murdered. I said it one time in this house. And people were scoffing. They said, 'I said you'll see, you'll see these words.' I pointed a certain comedian who said words And I said, "You're going to see these words are not nothing."

47:08 And what does Berg know? Because this comedian said words, and look what happened! Look what happened when those comedians get up and they say those words! Look what happened to the rhetoric! Look what happened to the world! It's pekeach ivrim. People are starting to wake up. Literally three minutes before I walked into this year. A chaver of mine from New Jersey reached out to me. He said, "Where in RBS do you live? We're looking into buying a place." " And he's a person who could afford to live here. You know something like He's running. I'm not here to say anything. I'm not here to say what's going to be. But Hakadosh Baruch Hu is makabets the galuyos. We don't know what that looks like. How every Jew is going to get back to Eretz Yisrael. We're coming here one way or another. It's a long process. It could be a two, three, four hundred year process. And it could be that it started two, three, four hundred years ago, but look what's happening.

47:57 La Maesa by next Shemitah, Rove of Klal Yisrael is going to be here. Next Shemitah is going to be a Daraisa. Major shilas on Halacha. If you thought Shemitah was complicated, don't tell me. I see all the women going. I can't deal with the peels. I only eat nachri during Shemitah. We don't know how Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to be Mikabes the Galus. We don't know what it's going to look like when Mashiach comes, and Bifrat. If you're paying attention, anybody who's paying attention could read that something wild is going on. The Gedaliah Torah slowly but surely all passed away in the last twenty thirty years. It's a wild thing. No matter how you define Gedaliah Torah, we lost so many Gedaliah Torah. It feels like sometimes we're ador yasom. We don't have the leadership that we once had. We're looking to see where's our Rav Meisher Feinstein, where's our Rav Salavetchik, where's our Rav Aron Koller, where's our Rav Cook, where's the Lubavitcher Rebbe, where's our Rav Butner. We're looking to see where's our Chaim Kaniewski, where's our Gesher Edelstein, where's our Baruch Mordechai Zerahi. Everyone's looking to see

49:09 And it's a wild thing. It's like there's no leaders. We're like children going. What are we supposed to do now? Somebody said to me. I asked one of the rabbanim in America. Why aren't you saying new? Let's go chavra. Because our gadolim aren't telling us to. I was thinking to myself, which gadolim? What are you talking about? Who didn't make the call? Which rav is saying stay? There's no. That's not the way the system is operating. But we don't know how it's going to work. We don't know how people are going to come back. We don't know what it's going to look like to go through this. But we know that the birth pangs of Mashiach are very powerful and they're very painful. And for us, befrat, in this time to go through this period without losing ourselves to the darkness. And there's this word, doom scrolling. You've heard of this word, doom scrolling. We make all these new words, fascinating words. Doom scrolling. And ever in my life, I scrolled.

49:56 First of all, I never scrolled in my life growing up. I didn't write on scrolls. I never scrolled. And then there became a word called scrolling. Now there's doom scrolling. What's meant by doom scrolling? Doom scrolling is when I'm sitting on TikTok or Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or any one of these apparatuses that tell us all the bad things in the world. And because it curates your content according to what you look at, you could just go like this, and you could see article after article. A person has the capacity to lose themselves to it. That's why there's a tremendous amount of anxiety in the air. And the tremendous amount of unfelt feelings around the fact that the world is saying certain things about Klal Yisrael.

50:32 It you can't lose yourself to the darkness if you know that the darkness has no shayches to you. That Yaakov Avinu is the bechina of Karm, that Esav Arasha is the bechina of a Nevo, and because that comes a Nevo means. If we feel like we're a niflo, it's because only because we're borrowing language from Esav. It has no shaychus to our world. That's the world of the Nachash Kanmani. Has no shaychus to the world of a Jew. A Jew has the power to be mitak in the chayt of Adam Rishon, which means that we're above. If you could rectify something, it means that you're above it. If you could be, if you could rectify the chayt of Adam Rishon, it means you're not shych to the world of that niflo. Please. But there are so many niflos. Every day is almost a niflo. I'm not saying this for ever saying, but like it's kind of like get up and these people saying unbelievable things like coming out shiver and then out shiver and they're just like come on kids let's go the way Arba did like let's carry on our beautiful Jewish life and it's like wow but also the whole thing about anxiety and feelings like should we be feeling or the feelings I don't know like how do you get yeah it's just sounding a little bit like let's all go to Mashiach

51:39 I'm always here to say, let's go, Mashiach. That's certainly. I'm all in on that. But first of all, I think Again, not Chassid Shalom to be mezazel that what people are going through isn't real. It's real. But it has to be understood in its depth. Sometimes what these people coming out of Shiva know that we don't know because we're on the outside of it Because they're on the inside of the nifela, they understand it better than we do. As they, especially if these born and bred Israelis that have been living this for generations, we're new, we got off the boat, we arrived here from wherever we came from. They're not limited by it in the same way that we are. It, they understand that on the level of Yosef HaTzaddik It's not Chasr Shalom to be. It's not Chasr Shalom to say that bechin of David Hamelach isn't real.

52:30 It's real, but it needs to be seen through the lens of a Chanukah. It needs to be seen. A person comes out of Shiva. And of course, no matter. By the way, no matter what they say, and Ari Fol does my wife's first cousin, so I'm not saying this, but I'm not saying this like from a distance. I'm saying it's not the pshat that people don't go through it. People are going through it, and there's a lot of feelings to be felt, and there's a lot of work to be done in the aftermath of those types of tragedies. But what you see from these people that go through it is the beginning points for them. It's not that this darkness is going to overtake me. As they understand that the yirida is an aliyah, it is an aliyah. In a certain way, that's what gives us access to the real feelings. But if you think the feeling is going to overtake you, then you won't allow yourself to go there. If you know that the feeling has embedded within it light, then that's where you go to find it.

53:26 So the best way I could describe it is, grief is unexpressed love. So a person doesn't want to feel grief as long as they've touched grief as depression. Nobody wants to feel grief, so they stay out of grieving. The moment that a person realizes the beauty of grief, they'll allow themselves to feel it and they'll move through it. As long as you define the nifilah in a David Hamelach way without a Yosef Hatzadik first, then it's Harachamana Yakamana Esukas Davidan Nifal. I'm in a state of nifilah. If a Yosef Hatzadik comes first, then the nifela itself has beauty hidden within it. The nifela itself is the aliyah. So that's what gives you access to it. Does that make sense? Does that resonate a little bit? It's not in any way chassvasham to put down anybody or to say that a way a person is grieving is wrong.

54:15 It's just to say that we have to have the perspective that we are living in unbelievable times. Who here thought two months ago that we were going to be making tshitsis for every single soldier? Who here thought that we were going to get shilos? The rabbanim are getting shilos today from seminaries. I know that the Rama writes that we shouldn't lechatchilu be making tzis, but maybe we can make tzis now. That's a real shiloh that people are getting. Who here thought that we were going to be having stories of people in the army that are going through a geras process that ran to finish the geras process because they said, if I die in Gaza, I want to die as a yid. Who thought these stories were going to happen? Who thought that Ramah Pechemish, with all of its complexity, in every different block means that you have a different hashkafa.

55:03 Who, and you have to choose which block you're going to live in because that defines your child for the rest of his life. Who here thought that all of a sudden those blocks were not going to matter? One kihuze, and it doesn't matter who moves onto your block from the south, but everybody's bringing food. It's an unbelievable thing. I'll share this. I'll finish with this. There's a family in RBS Aleph. It's a wild story. A Chiloni family moved into the house. The father was up in Gaza fighting. And it wasn't moved into the house like they had a separate downstairs Pesach kitchen type of situation where they just hid them. They didn't have anything. This family took them in mamish. It was a wife and two little kids. And that means doing their laundry and feeding them and taking care of everything And the wife went over, meaning the wife of the visitor. She went over to the mother of the house and she said, "I feel badly walking around in pants. Could you lend me a skirt?" It's a Charedi family.

56:00 She said, "What are you talking about? You don't have to wear a skirt." So we love you just the way you are. So this woman says, 'She said, "Af pambachayim sheli lo shamati al kareidim chal kareidim kazu." I never in my life heard of a Charedi family like this, because we were so distant from each other.' And then her husband came home for Shabbos, and he was there for Shabbos, and she said, 'Do get dressed for Shabbos. You're not dressed like a mensh.' And it's like an unbelievable thing. They never in their life saw chesed like this. Who would have predicted this? Is it exceptionally painful, Chas v'Shalom, for me to say it's not? It's ridiculously painful what people are going through. I'm watching the pain. I'm watching the wives of those soldiers. I'm literally living it in Mevaseret. Our whole kibbutz is gone. The whole kibbutz stopped fighting. The wives are there by themselves, and the government stopped the checks to the kibbutzim. But these guys—that's where their money comes from. So they're up fighting and they're getting no money. It's a wild thing. We're funding their wives right now. We're paying for all the wives' food for everything. We're thinking the pain is real. But this whole thing is an aliyah. If you're paying attention, you see the whole thing is an aliyah. We're baderach somewhere. Blessed Hashem, we should get there soon. Okay.