Chizzuk in These Difficult Times (bonus: how to talk to your children about the war with Hamas)

2:05 So then, staying longer makes it more difficult to leave. It's like I don't know if you remember this, but when you're at the airport when you're a kid and you're going to If you're going to Israel, you're going to Mechelat or some sort of program like that. and then the parents are at the airport. So there's always those parents that drag it out a little bit and make it much more difficult for the kids. You know those parents. It seems strange that the Rebbeinu Shlom says, "Stay with me one more day." The common answer, the answer that my wife asks me to give every year is, 'Avon mekalkelus as Hashura.' It's love, it does insane things, and when we love our children, we don't want them to leave. The Rebbeinu Shlom doesn't want us to leave. There is, however, a question that Dvar Torah. The question that Dvar Torah is as follows: It's impossible for a Jew to leave Hashem, and it's impossible for Hashem to leave a Jew.

3:03 What does it even mean? Even if you want to give the answer of a have a mekalkelas as shura It's not an understandable question. What does it mean? Hakadosh Baruch Hu is leaving. Is it possible for Hakadosh Baruch Hu to leave a Jew? We use sometimes funny language when we're talking about Judaism. We say we're trying to grow closer to Hashem. What does that mean? How can a Jew be closer to Hashem? We can't be farther from Hashem. We can't be closer to Hashem. Those are not understandable words. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is infinite. Infinite means that He's not limited to time or space, which means that by definition He's permeating all of space. So we can't possibly be closer to Hashem. We certainly can't be farther from Hashem. So my wife said today, "Upshot, uah." Smart lady. She said, "I don't know if she heard it from somewhere, but she said a beautiful pshat."

3:56 She said, "Ichfully odjom echad, stay with me one more day, kikasha elai praydastem, because it's difficult for me when you leave each other in the sukkah." So we say, 'Kol Yisrael ruyim lechev besukah achas,' that all Jews can live under one sukkah. The achdus that's expressed on Sukkot, it's a very beautiful thing. I don't Chas v'Shalom want to say anything negative about Klal Yisrael ever. Certainly not today, but it is a different experience. It seems to me somehow here in Eretz Yisrael and in America. In America, you wake up in the morning and the question is how early do you have to wake up in order to catch the bus to go to Adventureland, or to go to Great Adventure, wherever you're going for that day. Here it seems to me that there's a certain level of. Maybe we go on to Ulim, but there's a certain hominess that exists. Everyone likes it, and it seems we spend more time sitting in the sukkah here. I'm exceptionally blessed. My entire family made Aliyah. Literally, my entire immediate family made Aliyah.

4:57 My parents led the way, and then they brought my little sister, and my brothers followed after me. And then my wife's entire family also made Aliyah. Exceptionally, exceptionally privileged. Except for one sister who really wants to be here, she's just stuck in America, and happened to be here for the Sukkot. So what did we do? What's a good activity? My brother in law posted on the family group chat, 'What are we doing today?' And people literally wrote to him on the group chat, 'We're headed to you right now.' He didn't know, but people were badirch to him. We spent our time in Sukkot together. That's what we do on Sukkot. It's difficult for the Rebbeinu Shalom when Jews leave each other. Why is that? As parents, we know there's nothing. Tell me if you can empathize with this. When your children fight with each other, does it get into your spine?

5:46 You know what I mean when I say gets in. You know that place inside of you where you just clench up and you're like I just can't deal with your fighting right now. Especially if you have teenagers. I don't know if everyone here has teenagers. I don't think that's a good idea. I give you a brach. You should all have teenagers, multiple girls at once. I have. Kanana had five daughters, and four of them were teenagers at once. It's so that it seems to me that I don't know if it's different when you have boys and girls, but it seems to me for sure that girls have a tendency to bicker. They fight about narishtay, they fight about nothing. They find not you. I'm saying I'm just looking to you because maybe you could empathize with me a little bit. I'm in need of community solace. There's a sense that a parent has when a child is disconnected from their sibling. There's a sense of pain to the parent.

6:35 The parent naturally understands that there's a oneness to the kid that the kid doesn't understand. Somebody once said a beautiful line: "Family is a group of people that you would never choose to live with, but somehow can't live without." I like that very much. It's like we drive each other crazy, but it doesn't mean that chas v'shalom we're separate from each other. We behave that way very often. And we've been behaving that way. I just want to start off by saying that I have no interest in playing games of theodicy. I have no interest in playing games of why the Rebbe Nachshon did what he did, or what the timing was. This is not for us to understand. I saw a beautiful art from Rabbi Doctor Norman Lamb. He said by Megillah Esther. Esther Amalke said, "Keli lama azavtani." My God, why have you abandoned me?

7:25 And Dr. Lam And a play on words, he said, "Al tikkri lama ella lama." We shouldn't say, 'Why did you abandon me?' Rather, 'For what did you abandon me?' In other words, our responsibility is not to ask God why, but to ask God, 'What am I supposed to do with this feeling of abandonment that we have?' One of the most powerful divrei Torah that I ever heard was Said in the name of Rav Saloveitchik, from Chief Lord Rabbi Doctor Jonathan Sachs. I think I got all the things right. And he said, 'We say in benching, "Nar hayisi gam zakanti velo raisi tzadik nezav zaramavakesh lachem that David Melch says. I'm sorry. The David Melch says and tell him, I was young and I was old, and I never saw a righteous man be abandoned as children go hungry.' So R' Salavitchik asks, 'What does that mean? We never saw a righteous man go hungry, and his children were abandoned. What are you talking about? We see this all the time. The righteous suffer. How could it possibly be that the Rebbeinu Shlom that David HaMelech is saying the Rebbeinu Shlom doesn't abandon people?'

8:30 And R' Salavitchik, in a brilliant, absolutely brilliant shot, he said, "We're translating the words incorrectly. Na'ar ha'is'i, I was young; v'gam z'akanti, and I was old; v'lo ra'is'i, and I never stood by and watched." As a tzaddik was abandoned, and his children were hungry and didn't have bread to eat As the Rebbeinu Shlom put suffering into the world because he wants us to heal that suffering. We're not here to explain why anything happens, but we're here to answer the question of what are we going to do with the situation that we're in. What lessons can we draw from it? When Chazal speak about that, if something is going wrong in your life, you fashevemaisav. It doesn't mean that we should say, "Oh, I did this wrong and that's why this happened," but rather we use these opportunities. For introspection, we use them as the opportunities for personal growth. Is a beautiful story about the organization Bnei Olam. A time you familiar with this organization?

9:21 Bnei Olam was founded by a couple. I forget their names for a moment. Bachner, correct. I spoke once for them, and I met Rabbi Bachner. He is a tremendous person. The Bachner family couldn't have children, and I think it was twenty years that they tried to have children, and they were not able to have children. At the very end, at the very last doctor's appointment, this was going to be it. If we go one way or the other, and they were unfortunately told in that last appointment, it's over. It's time to stop trying to have a child, and we can't imagine the devastation of the situation. In the car ride on the way home

10:02 Rebbitzin Bachner turned to Rabbi Bachner, and she said, "Now that the Rebbeinu Shlom has said no to us, the question is, how will we say yes to the Rebbeinu Shlom? What are we going to do with this?" She said, "We know everything there is to know about the process of trying to have children. We know about all the doctors and all the tests and all the opportunities that are available. For us, the answer was no. We're not able to have children. But what are we going to do with all this information?" She said, "I'm going to start an organization to help women who are having fertility issues, to help them have children. That's how Bona Olin was born. Bona Olin was born in a car ride on the way back from her getting a no."

10:33 And since that point, eight thousand plus children have been born because of the work that Bnei Olam does. So many millions of dollars of tzedakah have been raised, and doctors, and in vitro fertilization, and rides to doctors, and chesed, and so on and so forth. Unbelievable! Why? Because a person didn't wallow in their own pity, but rather they grabbed the opportunity. We're looking today to sit and waste your time on the toxic social media. First of all, you should never be subjected, and nobody should watch these horrific videos. I understand that the state of Israel has a need to put out these videos on social media because they have a need to tell the world this is what's going on in order to garner world support. That I can understand. What I don't understand, and what unfortunately does happen, is people spreading these videos for likes and retweets and for people to watch these things. It's horrific.

11:25 And these things leave an indelible impression on a person's mind. This is not a reason that a person should go on social media. My wife will not step foot in the cesspool of social media. She doesn't want to be involved in seeing the world in that way. However, my wife told me before I left. She said. She does look at WhatsApp updates. She does look at the WhatsApp. I think it was called statuses. Now it's called updates. So she looks at the WhatsApp updates. Because on the WhatsApp updates, you're not subjected, at least on her feed, you're not subjected to any of the terrible pictures. But what you do see is the massive amount of chesed that's happening in Klausthal right now. People post videos of them standing on the side of the road and giving out bottled water and pizza and ragolach and cookies, which first of all, how Jewish is that? Like people are going out to war.

12:13 And we're like, make sure you have something to eat. That's the most Jewish thing we could think of. But these videos, they're exceptionally impressive. I'm proud to say that Lieutenant Colonel Lassry, who's one of the highest people in the entire army, was eating my daughter's brownies today. My daughter got a phone call from my mother, that my brother-in-law Benji is in the army. He's an intelligence, and she said if you want to send stuff over, and she said if you want to send stuff over, Benji'll bring it to the base. So my daughter got on the phone with their friends and said, 'Okay, who's making?' I went over eight o'clock at night with a car full of baked goods. People went to the Makolad and they bought pitas and rugelach. They bought the place out. My brother in law showed up. He thought he was bringing like three cakes to the office. He was bringing, so he said he's going to do it piecemeal every single day, and then he sent me a picture today of all the food out. He said Lieutenant Colonel Lassry is trying all the different cakes to see which ones he likes best.

13:06 So it's a very sweet thing. We know how to do this very well. We know how to be together. I don't think that it takes a grey so cham. And cham adov minavi. It's better to be wise than to be a prophet. I don't think it takes a greis or cham to be able to look at this world and to say We really messed it up this past year. We really, really messed it up. Boy, did we do a good job. We really figured out how to leave each other. We figured out how to leave each other in every single possible way that a Jew could figure out how to leave each other. We fought over the silliest things. We fought over who's more religious than the other. We fought over democratic reform, and we fought in terrible ways. We fight until there's an enemy that Hakadosh Baruch Hu sends from the outside to remember that we're all the same.

13:58 There's a beautiful story of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Lubavitcher Rebbe seems to have again as Chilukei Deos exactly how close the relationship was. The Lubavitcher Rebbe had some sort of relationship with Roshalivitchek. They certainly knew each other when they were children. When they were kids at the University of Berlin, they were chavrusas. They would go to shiur together, and it seems that they kept up some sort of relationship over the years. Roshalovetsik, I think they say that Roshalovetsik visited the Rebbe when the Rebbe's mother passed away, and the Rebbe once indicated that most people don't understand the depth of the relationship that he and Roshalovetsik had. It seems that they had a somewhat of a relationship. By the Rebbe's eightieth birthday party, Roshalovetsik was invited to attend, and they sent a limo to pick up the rav. They brought him to seven seventy in Crown Heights. And there was, for those of you who have seen the videos of the Rebbe, the Rebbe sat at a very long dais and the older chassidim sat behind them, and then everybody else sat in the mashpit over there.

14:55 And they invited Rassalvichik to speak on the dais. Rassalvichik felt very uncomfortable sitting on the dais, but on the other hand, where else was he going to stay? He wasn't going to be in the mashpit. He didn't want to be with the older chassidim behind. So they put a chair for him at the very end. There are pictures of it you could see online. There's the Rebbe in the middle, all the older Hasidim behind, and then all the chaver in the mosh pit, and then like twenty feet down that way is Rassalovetsik. It's a very beautiful picture. And he was there for the Rebbe's farbreng and for the 80th birthday, and then he left. As he was leaving, there was a reporter there, and the reporter casted Rassalovetsik and in a joking way he said. I see that now the Balshemtov and the Vilna Goyen have finally made peace with each other. After all, who would be a greater sion of the Vilna Goyen than a Saloveitchik, and who would be a greater sion of the Balshemtov than a Shneerson?

15:44 And R. Saloveitchik, in his own inestimable way, he said No, the Gra and the Balshemtov already made peace when they were burned in the same ovens in Auschwitz. There's always a sense that when we push away from each other, somehow the ga'ym have the capacity to push us back together. I'm not here to play theodicy games, but there is no doubt in my mind. There is no doubt in my mind on any level whatsoever that if we are going to take one lesson away, and this time maybe we'll really do it. The definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting different results. And we are an insane nation. We are an insane nation of three thousand years. Three thousand years, we have the same insanity. We know that Chazal said the Beis Hamikdash was destroyed because of Sanaschinim. Every tish above, every single Rebbe, Darshins on one subject, it's all of Rosh Chodesh Av. We hear it all the time, and then something happens like this, and we go, "It's time for Avaschinim," and somehow we forget afterwards. But maybe this time we won't forget. This is the greatest tragedy in one single day since the Holocaust.

16:54 When did it happen on Simchas Torah? When on the day that Hakadosh Baruch Hu says Kikasha Eli Predashim, please don't leave each other. And you know what? It's been a couple of days. We haven't left each other. It doesn't matter what you. It doesn't matter where you are. It doesn't matter if you're Charedi or Tzioni or Chiloni. It doesn't matter if you're Hasidish or Litvish or Sfaradi. Everybody today loves everybody. I saw a picture of one of the alumni of the yeshiva, a very beloved Talmud. He posted on his status a picture of him. He just finished giving blood. He waited seven hours online to give blood. Since when do we wait online for seven hours for anything? Even for COVID, we didn't wait online seven hours. People showed up to Meuchetet. We couldn't have it in five minutes. They will get the vaccine tomorrow, and that's when it was serious business. Seven hours to give blood to another Jew. I can't get Mag and David Adom to come to Mevaseret for a blood drive because they don't have space to take any more blood.

17:51 That's an unbelievable thing. It's not only that they don't need it; they can't take it. There's no space for them to take blood anymore. I said, 'Come, we'll get every guy in yeshiva. We'll give you all the blood. You could have the whole thing. They'll be in. They'll be in bed for a week. They're not. They said we just don't need it. People are waiting around the block. Mada every year they're going around to all the yeshivas and all the seminaries trying to get people to give blood. But once you put our back up against the wall, we discover who we really are. This who we really are. The Medrash says. That there was a fox, and the fox was running away from the farmer and his two sons who were chasing him to get him out of their field, and they had him cornered up against the wall, and the fox realized that he couldn't jump up over the wall. And the fox, in a moment of clarity, realized that they're going to kill him unless he plays dead, so the fox just drops, pretends to drop dead of exhaustion, he's just lying there on the floor.

18:47 And so one of the farmer's sons says, "Oh, the fox died." Well, I'm gonna pull out the fox's tooth because the fox's tooth is a good luck charm. We'll make a necklace out of it. So the fox heard this, and the fox said, "I could live without a tooth. It's very painful, but I'm gonna have to stay very still because I don't want that chas v'ach."They should be kept in their original form. So they yanked out the tooth, and of course the fox was in great pain, but the fox stayed very still. Then the farmer's son said, "Okay, I'm gonna chop off the tail." Because he'll make a scarf out of the tail. Foxes have very bushy tails. I'll make a scarf out of the tail. The fox hears this and is terrified to lose his tail, to lose a limb like that. But it's better than dying. The fox stays very still. And the farmer's son cuts off the tail. And then the farmer says, "I'm going to skin the fox and I'm going to take the skin and I'm going to make a mat out of the skin."

19:37 And hearing this, the fox realizes that he's going to die. If you get skinned, you're going to die anyway. And the manager finishes by saying, "And hearing that, the fox jumped over the wall." So the question on the edges is: If the fox was able to jump over the wall, why didn't the fox jump over the wall? The answer is because a person has a certain level of koyach before they're going to die. They have a certain level of koyach, and they say, "I can only get to here." But when you put somebody up against the wall, then you discover what they really are. Then somehow they have the capacity to use all of their koyach. It's like kaviachal the mothers who are able somehow to lift up a car so that their children can be saved. Normally we only have koyach ad lepo. Right now, these rishayim arurim

20:16 These barbarians gave us the capacity to tap into our Jewish neshamas in a way that is ordinarily not capable of getting to it. The level of achdus that we experience right now is not because we don't care about reform in the country right now. That's not the pshat. The pshat is, a Jew right now doesn't have the capacity to be anything other than a Jew. You see people that are not actively observant Jewish. They're not doing anything with their Judaism. They may not even go to shul on Yom Kippur, but today they’re posting and they’re like, And you'll discover his Jewishness. What's the pshat that Achdus has such an unbelievable capacity? I just want to speak a little bit about the penimias atayra, just to unpack this a little bit. The Yerushalmi and Kedushin says, "Kol Yisrael guf echad." All of Klal Yisrael is one body. The question is, what does that mean? What's the inner meaning of that? It sounds like just a very sweet thing to say that really we're all one body, but it actually has quite a deep meaning.

21:17 The capacity of a body to operate is only in so far as the body is operating in an organic way where all parts are dealing with other parts of the body symbiotically. So what is death? Death is when one part of the body no longer has the capacity to serve other parts of the body. For example, if the heart muscle no longer has the capacity to pump blood to the rest of the body, then the body will die because the limbs of the body need the blood and the oxygen that's in the blood in order to sustain the body. When somebody dies, it's because one part of the body was not capable of doing its job. When we think about Achdis, I think sometimes we think about it in a very cute way, like we're stronger together. It's like one of those hashtags, stronger together. It doesn't actually mean anything. You know they say if you want to go fast, go along. If you want to go far, go together. So we think of it as a very cute catchphrase. It's not what is at all.

22:17 We're literally not capable of life. We're not capable of life if one Jew is not playing their role. It's not a cute thing that the Lubavitchers do. People think it's a very cute thing that the Lubavitchers do. They put tefillin on people. Isn't that nice? They get a Jew to do a mitzvah. It's not a cute thing that they're doing. What they're trying to do is activate the Jewish soul. If you'll be Jewish and you'll participate, it's for the entire system. The system requires every Jew. When we speak about the Beis Hamikdash being destroyed because of sinas chinam, it's we think of it almost as two things. We weren't behaving nicely, so the Beis Hamikdash had to be destroyed. Chas v'shalom to say something like that. The capacity for the Beis Hamikdash to exist can only be in a state of achdus because once there's a state of disunity, once there's a state of parity between everybody, so then there's no. There's no capacity for the thing to exist. It's not a cute word. It's the biology of what it means to be a part of a body. It's the biology of the soul.

23:17 And at our core, of course, the Jewish soul is made up of five levels. The highest level of the Jewish soul is something called Yichida. Yichida is the point where every single Jew is connected infinitely to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. From that perspective, there's no such thing as closer and farther in terms of the souls. The greatest tzaddik and the lowest level rasha are equally connected to Hakadosh Baruch Hu because we're literally all one. That's not a cute muscle. That's an actual fact. When we speak about souls that are ikves of the mashicha souls, it means these are the souls that are literally the heel of Adamarishon. The heel is designed. It's the lowest level part of the body, but it's also the part of the body that creates motion. So when we speak about the souls that are ikves of the Mashiach, which are our souls, we might be the most unfeeling because we're the heel, but we're also the part that requires us to understand that we are connected most to the mind. The mind and the foot need to work together in order to traverse that path to bring Mashiach to come.

24:13 There's an amazing vort that I saw from Rav Kalman Epstein. Beautiful vort, Rav Kalman Epstein, Rosh Yeshiva of Shara Torah. We know that Klal Yisrael, by Arsina, he says, "Va'yichan Shem Yisrael neged ahar" And 'Va'yichan' is blushing yachid. So Rashi says, 'Ki isha chad beleiv chad.' So I saw a brilliant Kashar. If Kamen asks, 'Klal Yisrael wasn't ki isha chad beleiv chad in Mitzrayim when they were being beaten by the taskmasters, when their children were being murdered and thrown in the river, when they were sitting at Kriyas Yam Suf, they weren't ki isha chad beleiv chad.' So if Kamen said a very deep word, Kamen said. It's easy to be together when things are tragic. It's easy for us to find each other when we have no other choice but to be with each other. But when everything is good, will we be with each other? Will we still recognize the guf echad quality that Klal Yisrael has? Things were good. Things were so good. We were doing so well.

25:11 And as a result, we became very disconnected from the idea that we need to remain connected to. Which is we are guf echad. That's a fact. We can either choose to participate in this body or we can not choose to participate in this body. It's not nothing when we're sitting in our homes, and I don't just mean because it's bad chinuch. I mean on a deeper level, when we sit in our homes and we sit there with these labels, we go charedi this, zioni that, chiloni this, these democratic reform people this way that way, left, right, center. It's not only terrible chinuch for our children. It's much worse than that. It's it's a statement about the way that we see other Jews. We can disagree with ideas, but I think we forgot that we're not disagreeing with people. We're disagreeing with their ideas, and we trampled each other. We really trampled each other. We really did. We really did a terrible job of this. I don't mean to be makatrag on klaiyosr. I'm saying that right now, is the tikkun for what happened. But again, the tikkun came in tough times. The question is not right now. Now you're going to see. It's going to be wild. We're gonna stay united. It's gonna be haplo vafello.

26:13 But the question is, can we take the lesson that's happening right now and bring it out into reality? The only way to do that is to be nosey baolam. And I know that this is a classic thing to say, but it's still even though Rebbitzin Lubavitch gave me rishus once. She said, "I like the classic things." So in this home, we can say the classic things. I know it's the classic thing to say. You have to be nosey baolam chaveru. I want to share with you. I went to Yeshiva Darke Torah in the Five Towns. I went for almost four years. I was thrown out of school in the beginning of fifth grade. Rabbi Bender took me in, so I can't say that I was there for four years, but I was there for three years and most of the fourth year. And I heard many shmuuzan from Rabbi Bender.

26:48 On Fridays, we would go in and we would pack the shul again. Darche back then was only maybe five hundred kids in the school. Today, I think it's like twenty five hundred kids in the school. It's an empire. It's an airport. I was there when it was still the trailers. But I remember when Rabbi Bender would give his shmuzin, and I have to tell you, I thought very hard about this as I got to be an adult. I don't ever remember once, not once. I don't ever remember Rabbi Bender giving us a shmuz about Hasmoda. I don't ever remember him. And it's not that he didn't care about learning Torah. I promise you, he cares tremendously about learning Torah. But I never heard him get up and say, "Guys, you gotta learn more Torah." I never remember that shmuz. It could be he gave it, but it certainly didn't leave its mark on me if he did. And I'm pretty sure I could say he never gave it. But I could tell you what shmuz he did give. Every single week was a ben adam without exception. It was a ben adam lachaver speech every single week. There was no such thing in darkei as a shmuz that wasn't ben adam lachaver. It didn't exist. The pasuk didn't exist. Even the shmuz I remember that he did give about learning was learn with a weaker partner.

27:47 So that you could be a bal chesed while you're learning. His entire thing was chesed. Everything in darkei was chesed, and no se ba olam lachaveru. Be where your friends are. If your friends are suffering, you got to be suffering with them. And he says over this var, and it's one of my favorite ideas. I'll share it with you. It's from Rav palm zeichat sadik lerach. Rav palm was Rosh yev of tarvadas. And Rabbi Bender himself. His father was the Menahel of Tarvadas before he passed away. So Rabbi Bender was very connected to Rav Palm. In fact, one of Rav Palm's children was a Rabbi and Darkei. Rav Palm said the following idea. He said, "On the day that Sara Imenu had children, everybody who was infertile, every woman who wasn't able to have children, on that day they all had children. It was a tremendous nase. The simple understanding of this is that the Shafah Bracha opened up so much in Shamayim that everybody was able to have children on that day."

28:35 But R' Palm said that's not the pshat. R' Palm said a much deeper pshat. R' Palm said the pshat is Sara Imenu could not be besimcha. If she knew that the woman next door who couldn't have children, or the woman in the community who couldn't have children, would be so broken by the fact that she couldn't have children, and Sarayimenu did, she said, "I can't have a child until everybody has a child." That was her level of nosib olam chaver. That she said to the Rebbeinu Shlom, "If you're going to bless me with a child, you have to bless everybody with a child, because how could I have a child and the woman next to me wants to know if it's okay?" Empathy means vulnerability. Sympathy is easy. Sympathy is a cheap emotion. Sympathy is pity. If any of you have ever been on the receiving end of pity, you know how awful pity is. If you're going through something and somebody goes It's like, do me a favor, keep your eye to yourself. I don't need your eye. You know what your eye is designed to do? It's designed to make you feel better. Now you have to say something. Empathy means that you have to be present and real with what's happening. Empathy means that you have to look inside of yourself to discover.

29:37 Where you can access some point of emotion that's at the very least a similar experience to the one that this person is having, and that's a very vulnerable thing because if somebody is experiencing pain, that means that you need to go and find that pain within yourself. And people don't want to do that. People would rather be in the present than ignore the emotions that they have. To empathize with somebody means to really sit, to close your eyes, to locate that emotion, and to share with the other person that I'm with you, and not have to find any silver lining and not have to have any I or anything like that. Just to be able to sit with a person. I remember that when one of my closest friends' father passed away, I flew back to America for the Shavu, and I sat. I lived in his house through the entire Shavu. I lived in his house for seven days, and I was there the entire time. And I saw many people come and go. Most people don't live in a house for an entire Shavu unless you're sitting Shavu. I lived in a house for the entire Shavu. I watched my friend tell the same stories over and over again. He told the same exact stories of his father over and over again. And you see people, and everybody has a different way of paying a shivakol.

30:39 You have the people who like to sit in the back or coming to sort of be there, but they don't have much to say. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. You have the people in the front. They do this the entire time. You know that move. I want to tell you. You know who the most impressive shivakol was? Seven days. The most impressive shivakol was Avram Fried, the singer. Was the most impressive shivakol. He came. I've never seen presence like this before. If you've ever seen Avram Fried perform, you know that he's a real. He has a real special talent. He doesn't whether you like his music or don't like his music. To see him on stage is something wild. He has a tremendous presence to him. He came into the room and he sat down and he was really there. And in the things that he said were really real. And you could tell he was present with the emotions that were going on. When he left, the entire shiva house was like shaken. Everybody was talking about like it was the craziest shiva call I ever saw. He had an unbelievable presence in the room to really be in pain with the person who was in pain.

31:33 I've never seen anything like it since the beginning. I don't know if I'll ever see anything like it again. It was the most incredible shivakol ever. To be nosa ba'olam chaveru, to take time If we really want to create long lasting achdus, if we want to walk away from this with a specific goal, then take the time, as difficult as these things might be, to imagine what it is like for people who have husbands on the front Just as an example. In yeshiva, I was in yeshiva for simchah torah. And eight o'clock in the morning, the first siren went off, and I woke my wife and kids up. At that point, I'll be very honest with you. At that point, I was like, we've had that in Beit Shemesh before. The random one time siren. I didn't think it was going to be what it became. And I woke my wife and kids up. My six year old was very cute. He got up and he said "They're starting milchama with us. I just I don't mind if you're going to fight, but maybe later." I really wanted to sleep. He's like very sweet little six year old boy thing to say

32:30 And. One of the things that the talmidim in the yeshiva saw, which I'm so glad they got to see it, as they saw the guys who live on our campus, they saw the merits kol guys, get dressed in their madim and their combat fatigues, and pack up their bags and say goodbye to their wives and get in the car. These are very stark guys sitting and learning all day. They got in their cars on Shabbos and they drove to the front. That's what they did. They saw the av bayit in yeshiva. They saw one of the rebbeim in yeshiva get dressed and leave on some chas Torah on Shabbos. They saw it. And one of the boys said to me, and this happens to be—I'm—I'm not going to lie. Okay, let's see. Yeah, this is a very special boy. This is a potential shiduch type of boy. It's okay. I know your dad. He would have said ten times worse. This boy watched it and he said to me, 'He goes, Rabbi, I just saw a man say goodbye to his wife' And he got in the car. This is again—it was his narrative. He said the look that he had on his face was that might have been the last time I saw my wife and kids.

33:25 And I said to them, I want you to know, take that with you forever. Take that moment with you forever that you were with him. That's not a random thing. We read numbers. There's all these numbers: seven hundred people, eight hundred people. These are not numbers. These are people's husbands and wives and daughters and sons, and they're going to the front. When they're in the front right now, I'm praying. I'm trying to be very honest. In a certain way, I'm praying even more for the people that I know, and it's not because I'm chassidish; I'm disconnected from those who don't know me. To daven for somebody who's in front of you. Of course, we're doing a tremendous amount of chesed. Rav Isaacson's daughters posted a thing on WhatsApp: 'free babysitting for anybody whose husbands went to the front and need help.'

34:08 And they have forty girls. Forty girls. Who right away we're in. And what are these girls doing now? They're like secretaries. They're getting phone calls from all over the place. We could use some help. Our husbands went. We could use help. Watching the kids so I can go to the store. They're like a babysitting service now, free babysitting service. They're sending these girls out to all over the place. This is what it means to be emo anochi btsara because if you're with somebody else in these moments, then it's real to you. It's not some, it's not some abstract concept. Guf echad cannot become it can't be an abstract concept. The same way that we would never take a knife to our hand. That's what we do every single time we engage in sinas chinam, and sinas chinam is a very subtle thing. Sinas Chinam is something as simple as saying the Charedim. I don't care what the end of that sentence is. It's never going to be a pretty sentence. It's always going to come with a little bit of a.

34:55 Once you put those labels on, what do you think? But Hashem at Har Sinai was sitting there going like, okay, Charedim over here, Zayinim over here. Like you on this side of the mountain, you on that side. It's not the way. It's not the way Har Sinai was. Har Sinai was keishachar belovchad. That's a real concept. It's one that we have to make actionable. It's one that we have to make real. The only way to do it is through nosing. That's the only way to get it done. We have to be like Sari Meno, and we have to be willing to say, in a very real way, I'm not. I'm not moving on from this war until I take every single Jew with me. If this doesn't change us, then what will happen? If we don't change our ways, we'll be stuck in the same situation. I can't say nothing will, because three thousand years the Baruch Hashem has been trying to send us this message. But maybe this time we could do a better job. Maybe this time we could say, I'm going to figure out how to connect to every single Jew, and I'll be the first person to admit I'm guilty of it. I've gone to Bene Brak. I've walked through the streets of Benevento. I've seen the people there and I sometimes look at these people and go

35:47 "It's amazing that we have anything in common." I grew up a kid from the Five Towns. I see these people like culturally, they grew up in a completely different world than me. The thing that we have in common is we learn the same Gemara, Rashi, Tosus. Like I can't like I sometimes wonder like we're sitting on the bus next to these people. I'm like, do I have anything in common with these people? The answer is yes. That's my heart. That's my arm. That's my legs. The thought that I'm having do I have anything in common with these people it's a it's it's an untruth, it's one plus one equals apples it's not math it doesn't work it's not right The only way that we're going to do this is if we're no sebal and that's the avoda and I was so proud to see that Baruch Hashem As soon as Yom Tov was over

36:31 It wasn't like nobody needed it. I know it sounds like a funny thing I would say they cancel the kafishnis. You know sometimes you like expecting certain things. Across the board, they're like no, we're all in, we're all in. If you saw the pictures in Magen David Adom in the blood drives, every single type of Jew was there. Black hat, no yarmulke, yes yarmulke. What type of yarmulke? You know that article that was written years ago by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman? Moshiach wants to come, but he doesn't know what hat to wear. That's the best article. Moshiach wants to come. Maybe if we stopped worrying about the hats, he would. So that's my bracha for us. My bracha for us is maybe this time we'll get it right. Maybe this time the insanity will end, and we could be zayecha to live back this. And you know, some say it's a dream. Some people tell me that, Rabbi, it's impossible. It's not going to happen.

37:18 But if the lesson of the sukkah was anything, it's that we look through the schach to see the stars. Some people can only see the schach. That's a pasul sukkah. You know, that's a pasul sukkah. You have to be able to see through. A yid has to be a dreamer. You have to be able to see through what is to the vision of what could be. So in a chenami, maybe we haven't done a good enough job, but I still think there's a vision for what we could be. So with the remaining time that we have left, if there are any questions, were there any questions submitted? One of the questions, first of all, any one of the questions you could ask. Someone at the round said if you could discuss briefly how to respond to our children during these times. Some have a lot of young children, some have kids in grade school. If anybody wants to go, please go.

38:07 The first of all, I just want to say that there is an article that was published literally as I walked in the door. I got the message that it was published. So I can share the article with Rebbitzin Lubet and she can share it with everybody. But there was an article that I wrote specifically today on the subject of how to teach How to talk to your children in these difficult times, and so I could just say a couple things. And really, these rules are across the board. First of all, Kodim Kol. It doesn't matter what age group we're talking about; the principles are the same, but they just need to be scaled for each age group. My six-year-old son is usually pretty Like he's like a cautious type of kid. Like some Israeli kids have like no sense of boundaries. Like my son is very American in that way. Like he's, it's like a very boundaried kid.

38:54 We got in the car on Matzei Simchah Torah, and I guess because we were no longer surrounded by the Bacharim yeshiva. And having lived through the sirens of that day and all the booms. We get in the car and he is chirping away. He's talking like I've never seen. My son-in-law, my daughter, and my son were in the, and my six-year-old somewhere in the back seat. My wife and I were in the front seat. And my wife, she was like, 'Oh, you know, it's just a little bit of a mess.' And my wife, who's a trained therapist, she goes, 'This is what it looks like for a little boy to process.' As he was just trying things out, and is like the aravim this, the iron dome that. He was just trying to like figure out what everything is. If kids are talking. So that means it doesn't necessarily mean they believe what they're saying. But they're trying things out. Our responsibility is to communicate with our children. There's a couple of klalim. Klal number one is to be open and honest with your children.

39:41 That gives you the opportunity to pick what you want to share. It gives you the opportunity to add context to what you want to share. But most importantly, share with your children, that means you become the address. Your kids are going to come home from school, no matter what age they're in, and they're going to say these words: My friend said. My friend said to them is fact. My friend said that we are going to drop ten atomic bombs on all of Gaza, and we're going to have to deal with the nuclear fallout. It's like, my friend said is like social media. It has like an ounce of truth, but that's all it is. My friend said is cheder it's cheder social media. That's what it is. What we want is that our children should know that the address for truth is us.

40:28 And the only way that we can do that is if we share information proactively with them. It does mean that you give context to it. I can also share with you. They put out in Hebrew a little children's book, a little book for kids, a little children's pamphlet to talk about what war looks like, especially designed for little kids. It's very simple, and it just talks about what things are. But the more you can say to your kids, it's true that they fired in a lot of. Assuming let's say they're little kids, you could say they fired in a lot of telem. And Baruch Hashem We have something called an iron dome, and an iron dome knocks down the telem to make sure that they won't hurt us. For little kids, by giving them that information, it gives them a sense of safety. Most importantly, it makes us the address. So the rule here is, you be the one to share with them. Don't wait for them to come to you because if they're getting the information from somewhere else, remember they're getting the information from somewhere else. That's number one.

41:21 Number two, there's a couple of parts when our kids are communicating with us. There's a couple of things to keep in mind. I don't think these things are very complicated, but they are very important. Number one rule is something called active listening. Don't assume that just because your child is talking means that you know what they're talking about. And there's two reasons that we don't know what our kids are talking about. The first reason we don't know what our kids are talking about is because while they're talking, we're thinking about what to respond. Just think of it like your husband's. You know how that look that you have your husband has on his face when you're talking, and you see that he already has something to say. Do you know that look? So it's very uncomfortable. It's very unsafe. Grossman's. You know that look from your dad. There's a sense that we give to our children. If they can see in our faces that we're already thinking of something, it's much less safe for them, and it means you're not listening so carefully.

42:14 And also, if you're listening to them and you're listening to them through the lens of what you hear them saying, then you're not listening to what they're actually saying. So you have to be able to listen to what they're saying. The first rule and act of listening is to suspend all judgment. And actually listen to what's being said. If you repeat to them, 'I think I heard you say this,' two things will happen. Either the kids will tell you, even young kids, that it's not what they meant. And it might not be what they meant, which is also safe because that means they have the opportunity to say to you, 'That's not actually what I meant,' and if they see you say, 'Could you explain it to me again?' Again, it creates an environment of safety. But what's more likely happening is you did get it right. If you were really actively listening and you were quiet, you probably did get it right.

43:01 But what happens is when you said, I heard you say this, and then they heard it back, they said, no, that's not what I want to say. That doesn't feel right to me. So you're actually helping the kids process just by listening. So if you'll say to a kid, let's say for example, I see that you're scared And then you heard you say that you're scared, and then they'll stop and they'll go I'm not exactly scared. That's not what it is, right? And then again, depending on the level of maturity that they have and language that they have, they'll express something a little bit different. I do this even in yeshiva with eighteen-year-old guys. I say, 'I'm hearing that you're scared,' and they go, 'Yeah, but that doesn't really capture it. It's more like helpless, right?' Meaning what they said to me was scared, but just simply by saying the word scared back, they discovered the word helpless. Obviously, that's not going to happen with a first grader or a second grader. Sometimes we have to give them the emotional language.

43:51 Sometimes they'll say, "I don't know, I'm just having nightmares," and then you can say to them, "Seems like you're feeling really scared." Actively listening creates language, creates safety, creates the opportunity for them to process. After you've actively listened and you've really sort of found your way into a rhythm, there's empathy, which is what we spoke about before. Can you be present with your child in that moment? Again, that's a tremendous feeling of safety, and most importantly, that gives the child a sense of belonging and community. All the studies that have been done have shown that people who struggle together as a community have a greater capacity to To engage with one another and work through whatever is happening. A child who's suffering alone. These things are not just for the war; these things are in general. But a child who's suffering alone is going to have a much harder time processing what's happening than someone who feels that there's emo anochi b'tzara, that there's an empathy that's happening. As parents, we can and should be the address for empathy, and it can even happen as a first or second grader. I'll share with you And this is it. Didn't work. I think I said it maybe once here before. I do this thing with my kids, especially when they're younger. Where I say even if we can't name the emotion that we're feeling, let's at least locate it in our body.

45:06 And I'll say, where are you feeling this? And they'll say, I'm feeling it here, and I'll say, Well, can we feel this together? You put your hand on that spot, and I'll put my hand above you. And they do it, and it's an amazing thing. So my son, on his first day of cheder, a year ago, he was feeling something. And we were in the cheder room, and he was really very uncomfortable with us leaving. And so I picked him up, and I put him on a stack of chairs so that we could be face to face. And I said, 'Show me what you're thinking.' And he said, 'I'm feeling here.' And I said, 'Okay, let's do it together.' And he was breathing, and we were doing the whole thing. And I said

45:39 "Do you have any gevura inside of you right now? Do you have any strength inside of you?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Where are you feeling it?" He said, "I'm feeling it in the same place." And I put his hand over there, and I put his hand on top, and we're breathing. And I said, "Do you think you're ready for me to go now?" And he goes, "No." And the you know it didn't work at all, and I wish the end of that story was that it worked and I left because that would be a great chinuch story. But unfortunately, it's not what happened at all. But you know, it's it's still a good story because later that night, when I asked my son what did you learn today in your first day in cheder, he said I learned that my pachad and my gevura are in the same place. That's a beautiful thing for a five year old to be able to say. Being actively listening and empathizing, showing our children that we're there with them, that when they put their hand on their heart, we put their hand on our heart with them. That's a very beautiful thing.

46:26 After empathy comes normalization and validation. And this is obvious, but it still needs to be said. The name of the game here is teaching our children to accept whatever is happening for them. Acceptance is key. Sometimes people feel ashamed of the emotion that they're having, like I'm sure. I know for a fact there was a guy today in yeshiva who was crying and he felt deeply ashamed of the fact that he was crying. A macho 18 year old mivaseret boy is not supposed to be crying. And this was a guy who's particularly macho. He's in my office and he says, "Rav, I'm so embarrassed that I'm crying," and I said, "Can you help me understand what's embarrassing about crying?" He goes, "Nothing but like, come on, you know it's like embarrassing. It's like, you know, the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, it's just like, you know, you're supposed to be strong." And I'm like, "No, really. Can you help me understand what's embarrassing about crying? That seems to be a really understandable response."

47:20 And really, when we think about it, our children are above all. Our children are understandable. They really are. Everything. If we would know, really, like why a kid is doing what they're doing, every single one of us would know. Our kids are understandable. When a kid is having an emotion, if we can validate that emotion is happening. If we can remove any sentence that trails off or ends with a function word, and ensure the text is clear and free of conversational fillers, then it allows the emotion to move through them. The challenge of emotions is to most people think they're going to get stuck in emotions. Emotions really can only last about 90 seconds if we feel them. The reason why we feel emotions for so long in general is because we don't allow ourselves to feel our emotions, and one of the reasons we don't allow ourselves to feel our emotions is because we're afraid of them.

48:06 Even a little kid, even a first grader hears a boom and he goes, I don't like these booms. You can say yeah, I don't like these booms either. I can really understand that. It's like, oh okay, we're allowed to be different. We're not forced to like the booms, and then they could say, oh, I'm allowed not to like things, and then they go back and play. You see that they do it because there's a sense of what I went through is fine. The last thing I want to say Is called support. Our kids are our kids. What support means to them. They might need time to figure it out, but ultimately, they are the keepers of their truth. If you ask a kid, if you sat with a kid, you actively listened to them, and you empathized with them, and you normalized and validated with them, you can say to them these words: "What do you think you need right now?"

48:51 What do you think you need right now is a very powerful phrase. Little kids even will sometimes tell you, 'I think I just want to go play,' and you could say, 'That's okay. You're allowed to go play right now.' Or little kids will say, 'I don't think I want to talk about this anymore,' and you could say, 'That's okay. Space is an okay thing to take.' And I just want you to know that if you ever do want to talk, I'm gonna be right here. And some kids will say, 'Do you think you could come and check in? Check in on me at night?' And we can offer levels of support. But what sometimes happens is that parents think they're supporting kids, and actually, what they're doing is they're supporting the kids the way they would want to be supported. To be humble to our children means to pay attention to what their need for support is, to provide their need of support. And that's something I think we can certainly do for our kids. The final thing I'll say about this is, if we have done all that, the gift that you give your kids is courage.

49:39 Courage comes from the Latin word, which means heart. What we want is for our children to be heartful. We want them to be fully emotionally present in the reality of that moment. The reason they have trouble being fully emotionally present is because they haven't necessarily been given the gift in life to be able to know that they're able to show up as their true self. And so most people actually limit their heartfulness, which is such a sad thing. I'm sure you've seen this for those of you that have dated or were dating. You ever see a guy show up on a date and he's timid? You know what I'm talking about? Like you have a really bad day. I don't mean maybe some of you like that, but you know, there's that guy on a date that he shows up and you can barely get his name out, and you're like, I'm gonna have to do all the heavy lifting on this date. And some shadchan's like, you'll see, give it three, four dates. He's really a good guy. He just needs to come out. You know what I mean? There's a certain sense of clarity in the text.

50:32 There's a certain beauty in timidity. There is a certain beauty in a gentle type of soul, but we want people to show up as their whole self. Most people can't show up as their whole self because they don't think that their whole self is acceptable. The reason they don't think their whole self is acceptable is because they were never taught that what they're going through is okay, and so most of us learn to not be ourselves at least publicly. And so what we do is we limit ourselves, and that shows up. Most of us are meant to be on stage. Onstage means different things to different people, but most of us are meant to be on stage shouting out our lines with real courage. With real heartfulness. It's a tragedy that you see. The funniest time of the year for me is day one of the yeshiva year, because you see all these macho eighteen year old boys coming down the stairs to yeshiva for the first time, and they're all like a deer in headlights, scared out of their wits. It's cute. I want to take a picture of them just to show them. They're coming down the stairs and they're looking around, like where am I? Who am I with? Did I choose the right yeshiva? I don't know what I'm doing here. It's like a very cute type of moment.

51:31 And they limit themselves. Told that first guy, exposes himself and says it's okay to be me and it's okay to be present, and then it gives permission for everyone else to do the same. I remember when I was in yeshiva. I have a shul to tell the story. You should not think I'm saying lashon hara. I remember when I was in yeshiva. I got off the plane in Vancouver and I really wasn't sure if I chose the right yeshiva. I went to Mevaseret And I really wasn't sure if I chose the right yeshiva. I like Labadik guys. I like the guys who know how to have a good time, and I don't like too cool guys. I don't like the too cool for school guys. I was never, I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be with those guys. And I knew that there were a lot of too cool guys coming to the yeshiva. I had met them the year before at the ball, and they were like all these superstar basketball players, and I was like, oh man, I don't want to compete. But once I found out it was a disincentive for me to go to Mivaseret. I half went into Mivaseret thinking maybe I'll switch.

52:19 And I was in Ben Gurion Airport, and I was really deciding that I make the right decision, that I not make the right decision. Some of those guys became my best friends, but I thought they were too cool for school because I was very judgmental in my own place of inadequacies. I decided I was in the right yeshiva when I saw Elliot Bakritsky. Who lives today in Efrat. Elliot Bakritsky got on the baggage claim and lied down like a piece of luggage. And he just went around and around the carousel until finally another Mavasar guy claimed him. And it was I was like, now I know I'm in the right yeshiva. I like that type of humor. I think that's funny. I like it because there's a certain sense of I can be my full self here, and you can be your full self.

52:59 That's the gift that we want to give our children. This happens to be we have to do all of these klalim apply really to any time with our children, but especially now, given this opportunity, we really have the time to be able to bring these things out of our children. It's a particularly good time. Again, it has to be age appropriate. Obviously, a four year old is going to be very different than an eight year old, which is going to be very different than a sixteen year old. But everybody, including a four year old is going through something right now. And don't think that because they're four years old, they're not going through something. They might look like they're just playing with their Legos. They're also going through something right now. And they'll remember. They'll say, "Yeah, I remember that there was like running back and forth and sleeping in the mamad." By the way, there'll be some amazing memories for them. You can make the mamad a very fun place. But if we engage in these core principles, I think that that's a. That's the best way we can parent our kids through this. Maybe we'll stop here for now. Thank you very much for coming out tonight. B'suras tavos, we should be zayich the goulish leim b'karof mamish.