Disconnect to Connect

2:34 Meaning, things that do not project godliness in this world. And the way that we access the godliness of those things is by abstaining from them. So what that means is as follows: On a very practical level, if there is food that's usur to eat, the reason it's usur to eat that food is because in Shamayim that food does not project godliness. And so the way that we access the godliness of that food is by abstaining from it. So if the Torah says, 'Thou shalt not eat McDonald's' The way that I access the godliness in McDonald's is by abstaining from eating McDonald's. That's called osur. Let's skip to the opposite side. Then there's something called a mitzvah, something I'm obligated to do, something I'm chayiv to do. These are activities that, by their very nature, project godliness, and I'm obligated to involve myself in them. For example, Tefillin. As a man, I am obligated to put on tefillin. When I put on tefillin, that's a mitzvah. It's an activity that brings godliness into the world.

3:40 That's a mitzvah. That should be obvious. Most of the world is not made from things that are shlosh klipos atmeos. Meaning things that are aser, or things that are mitzvos. Most of the world is made up from this in-between category called klipas noga. What does klipas noga mean? Noga means that it is an admixture of good and evil. And it comes from the sin of Adam Harishon. In the time of Adam Harishon, everything was clear, and then he did an avera, and then there was this whole category, which is basically most of our world. It's not usur to engage in it, and I'm not obligated to engage in it, but I will engage in it. The question is, how do I engage in it? Let's take something very practical. When it comes to relationships. That's a bad example because relationships could be a mitzvah. Relationships could be an avera. Let's take something more simple. Let's say drinking a cup of water. Is drinking a cup of water a mitzvah?

4:52 One second. There is no mitzvah to drink a cup of water. You have a mitzvah to sit in a sukkah. You have a mitzvah to hear tekiah shofar. That's not a mitzvah to drink water. That's a mitzvah to have fluid in my body. Could be I could drink Coke. I'm sitting here with a bottle of water. Do I have an obligation? Am I obligated to drink that water? No. Now I have something in front of me, and it's parv. It's neither here nor there. The question is, how do I engage with it? Because I'm going to drink water eventually. So when I drink water, why do I drink that water? How do I drink that water? That's what's critical. That's what makes something go from parv. To the side of kedusha. Because I have things in our lives that are tameh. I have things that are lives in our kadosh. And the question is, what am I doing with this in between? If I have a cup of water and I make a bracha over it, what does the bracha do? The bracha reveals the godliness that resides in all things, because there is nothing in this world that doesn't have godliness in it. Not God, Godliness. God is not in the shdender. But the sh tender can be used in a godly way.

6:08 The sh tender can be used in a non-godly way. Food is a very big challenge. Let's take food. So there's a place in Yerushalayim. I don't know if you know about this place. It goes by the name of Papagayos. Some of you might know that Papagayos has an all you can eat. I think it's called the Brazilian. You can order it. It's like a hundred and fifty shekel, and it's all you can eat. And there's literally a green thing. If you keep it open, they will just continue to bring you meat for as long as you sit there. Or you can turn it to red, and that's like to stop. Now I know I'm sitting in a room full of girls, and you may not think that sounds appetizing. And for some of you, I don't want it to become a seminary cliche. For some of you, it does. For some of you, it doesn't. But if you're sitting in a room full of guys, most guys go like this: 'That's awesome.' Yeah. You mean they're just not gonna stop? They're not gonna stop. And then there's like tips, like guys will talk about it. Okay, you gotta stay away from the bread. You gotta stay away from the fries. Because you wanna just go for the meat.

7:11 That is called a chilagasa. That's called a chilagasa because that food is not to further your avodah shem. That food is to further your boych. Eating is a very challenging thing. I'm speaking here from experience. To eat with intention is very hard. That means to eat how much I need of an appropriate food and in an appropriate way. Very difficult to do. Is a Rebbe in Mevaseret who is a tremendous, tremendous tzaddik. He is known as a very big tzaddik. He is a shul here in Yerushalayim. His name is Rav Shmuel Zuckershlita. Some of you may have heard of Zuckershlita. He is a tremendous, tremendous tzaddik in every way. Many years ago in Mevaseret, back when I was a bacher, there was a boy who was drinking a cup of water and he made a bracha, like most of us make a bracha. So Zucker walks by, he heard him make the bracha and he looks at me and he goes And the guy said, What? And he said, Zucker said, When you talk to someone, speak.

8:25 Because there's a difference if I go and if you go. There's a difference if you actually mean it. Which is an awesome way of actually. People say, I don't know how to get into davening. Here's a good idea: mean it. If you mean the things you say, you're more likely to enjoy saying them, right? So when we think about klipas noga. I have this cup of water. Why am I drinking this cup of water? Am I drinking this cup of water because we smart them out of this nashashekem? Am I drinking this cup of water because I'm thirsty and I have important things to do in my life?

8:56 If I don't drink this cup of water and I dehydrate, I'm not going to be able to be a mother to my children. I'm not going to be able to sit and learn. I'm going to have a headache when I come to shiur, whatever it is. How you're doing it and how the truth is how you're doing it comes from why you're doing it, right? Because, for example, if you're eating to satisfy your baych, it's like, yeah, bring it on, and you might make a bracha over that food. But let's not pretend that the bracha was honest. But if you're doing it for the proper reasons, which most of us don't, but if you're doing it for the proper reasons, that means you've elevated it from being klipas noga and you've brought it over to the side of kedusha. The more you do that, the more godly the world becomes. The more godly the world becomes, the more God feels comfortable in this world. And why isn't God in this world right now? Because He is, but He's hiding. The reason is because He's not comfortable. Our job in this world is to build a dira betachtonim, a dwelling place for God in this world. What is a dira? A dira is a place where we feel comfortable. That's what a home really is. That's why sometimes in a home when it's not comfortable, it's like it just doesn't fit. It doesn't feel right.

10:00 It wasn't designed in a way that it flows. It just wasn't comfortable. This world is not a hospitable place for God. It's so physical that it's like, Where am I? What we have to do is bring godliness into every aspect of our life. That means when we do an avera, how do we bring godliness into our life? By doing tshuva. How do we bring godliness into our life when something is an avera and I haven't yet done it? By abstaining. Bringing godliness into your life when you do a mitzvah. That's a hard one to talk about. Because we're already doing the mitzvah; it must be a good thing. But it's not necessarily true. Because you could do a mitzvah and it's not necessarily a godly activity. You have to involve yourself in the godliness of it. That's why so many people are frustrated with their Judaism because they're like, I'm doing all the things, but they're not particularly godly activities. I don't feel like it's a godly activity. But then, rov of life, most of your life is dealing with this middle section called Klepasnoga. If you reveal Hashem in Klepasnoga, we bring Mashiach. If we fail, we keep going.

11:04 In the last twenty five years, there's been a revolution. I want to keep this very practical. I don't just want to fly off into the world of Ashkafa. There's a revolution that started in the '90s. The revolution, like every revolution, has major ramifications—things that we can't even predict. For example, when the printing press was invented. We didn't necessarily understand what that revolution was. What happened was that until that time, the average person was illiterate. Because the average person was illiterate, who had all the power in this world? It was the people that were literate. They knew how to read. It was like the priests knew how to read. All of a sudden, once the laymen knew how to read, it was an attack on the clergy. Here, all you thought you were making a machine that could print things faster. It created a whole revolution between the role of the layman versus the role of the priest in the world.

12:07 It was a massive revolution, and we keep having these revolutions over and over again, and we don't necessarily understand the impact. So there was an industrial revolution. The industrial revolution, we built cars, steamboats, we built factories, we went to the moon. Once the industrial revolution occurred, it was massive. We are in the beginning. We don't even know where this is going, but we have been in our lives since the early '90s. We've been in the middle of what I'll call the information technology revolution. You girls have grown up with Google. So you know the answer to so many more questions than I did when I was your age. Things that I didn't know, I just didn't know them. But it's an amazing thing. When you don't know something, what do you do? You say, "Okay, Google, What's the square root of right?" I used to cheat like a normal human being. Crib sheets and you know, look over at my friend's paper. Today, kids are like sophisticated. Like they have to take away your phones because you go to the bathroom.

13:18 You can find out the answer to anything. It's an amazing thing. So we're in the middle of this incredible revolution. The question is: How does Judaism see this revolution? There are three approaches. And I'll share with you what I believe. My approaches will be up to you for you to figure out what your approaches are. One approach usher Usher. This is mamish shlosh klipos atmeos legamri. We hang pashgavilim from our mirpasoit and say, 'This is a home.' That is technology free. I'm not making fun of them. The truth is, they have a reasonable argument. I don't agree with it, but they have a reasonable argument. They say, 'Look what's going on. Look what Orthodox Jews have brought into their home.' Because once you open that up, once you open up that Pandora's box. So much comes with it. Content that is inappropriate for Jewish eyes. Content that is not kadosh. Exposure to things that we do not want our children exposed to. Cut it off at its root. Don't let it into your home. If you let it into your home, you're not going to understand because we don't even understand the ramifications of it. It's spreading like wildfire. It's massive, and it's destroying people's lives. How many wives struggle because of their husbands?

14:48 I'm going to be clean here. You'll figure it out for yourself. Internet addictions. How many children have been exposed to things? How many young men in yeshiva have come to me in the last eleven years and say, 'Rebbe, you cannot imagine the things that I've seen since the time that I'm eight, nine, ten years old. Because I stumbled onto it. Because that's the way Papa ads work.' The exposure again. The world is a crazy place, right? There are television shows out there today that are absolutely crazy. And our children, we don't want them exposed to it. Because we don't want them to see these things. So even in a good case Let's say there's a particular show. This particular show involves all of the gimel chamuros, shvichas damim, gilei arayas, and avodah zarah. I'm not telling you what show it is. You figure it out for yourself. The guy said to me, "Oh, Rabbi, it's been very clean last couple of episodes." No, it only involved horrific murder.

15:49 That's not normal. What is the impact on a person when they see murder? What happened? What's the impact on a person when they see murder all the time? And it's one show after another. Now there was a show on television. I think it was last year or two years ago. Called Thirteen Reasons Why. And because your generation has Netflix, we don't want to use up our data, so we go on Wi-Fi. We download all of our shows on Netflix because we have so much storage on our phones, and then we binge watch. Sometimes a season, sometimes two seasons, sometimes three seasons at a time. How did I meet your mother? If you're willing to sit through nine seasons in a row, or if you just binge watch them on Netflix, after a week you'll know the answer to that question. Used to be when I was a kid growing up, we had to wait one week to find out what was going to happen in the next episode of Friends. Will they get together? Won't they get together? Were they on a break? They were on a break. We had to wait like normal human beings.

17:04 We had to have the anxiety of what will happen. Which is also not normal. Of course, it's not normal, but it's much less normal to binge. Last year in Yeshiva, two guys that Baruch Hashem did amazing, Bnei Torah. You can't imagine these guys today are serious, serious Bnei Torah. Last year they burnt out. They decided they're taking a week off. They woke up on a Sunday morning. They said we can't do this anymore. We're so burnt out. Baruch Hashem, there's something called the MCU, the Marvel Comics Universe, and they started in 2007, 2008 with the original Iron Man. And they binge-watched every single movie that had come out until then. They surfaced at the end of the week. They surfaced at the end of the week. They walked into my office like human zombies, pale because they hadn't seen the sun, shriveled because they had barely eaten.

18:01 And they said, Rebbe, we need help. Because when it was Thirteen Reasons Why, how many schools in America were hiring therapists because there were kids that were waking up, they had spent the entire night; they didn't sleep the night before because they spent the entire night watching this terrible thing over and over again. This is normal. This is healthy. So these people say this is Shlosh Klipos Hatmei'os. Shut it off. That's one approach. Not so crazy now, right? I don't agree with it, but it's not so crazy. Because there's another approach. What do you mean? This is awesome. I'm going to present this approach now. What do you mean? Do you realize the power of the internet? Here's the power of a phone. I am recording this right now on my phone. Later tonight, it will be posted on a website. Maybe it'll get listened to a couple of times. Maybe somebody's going to listen to it and they're going to learn something they didn't know before. That's an amazing thing. You have an obligation to use technology. You have an obligation to learn all that you can learn. You're living in a period of time where information from everywhere

19:19 From all over the globe, we can be brought together so that we can learn amazing things and change the world and transform the world. Think about what happens when one used to be if you were living in Russia, you didn't necessarily have access to what was going on in American science. Now a Russian scientist, an American scientist, they can collaborate. Do you know how much you can learn from YouTube? You can learn from YouTube. There are shiurim on there. There's general wisdom on there. I learned to cook from YouTube. I happen to know how to cook very well. I learned to cook because I needed to learn. My wife needed help, right? And like, Gordon Ramsay is my guy. You know like And I heard he came to Israel and I wanted to see him. I didn't get to see him, but I was like, I know Gordon Ramsay. I make his roast.

20:08 So my Shabbos is enhanced by the things that I learned on the internet. There is so much Torah on the internet. There are so many great websites. If you have any question, like things you didn't know, you want to just check it out. What taka is the halacha over there? You don't want to call your Rebbe every single time. Let's talk about WhatsApp. Isn't that an amazing technology? You can just WhatsApp a shilu to somebody. You don't know that you're going to be able to reach them. A Rav doesn't always have hours that you can get to in that time. So you could leave a voice note. Or even calling Israel is an amazing thing. To call Israel from America today, I have an American number in Israel. That means if you're in America, you can call on an American five one six number and reach me. That's amazing technology. You have an obligation to engage. And then they look at that camp that says Shloshklipeosatameos and say you guys don't know what you're missing.

20:57 And then the Shloshklipeosatameos looks at them and says, You don't know what havoc you're wreaking on your life because there's all that good stuff, but there's all that bad stuff too. And so, how do we negotiate this? Because in this seminary, if you're in this year, we're trying to develop subtle, nuanced, complex approaches to life. So what do we do? On the one hand, we see the value of it, and on the other hand, we know we're not stupid. You girls know as well as I do, and maybe even better, what's really going on. You know the things that are sent around. Again, today I heard it's a little bit different. But you know what type of pictures get sent when they automatically delete. You know what you can find when you go on Instagram. You know the amount of loss and horror that goes on Facebook. You know that just one thing. You know the way these groups work. You know how girls get excluded. You know how it destroys lives. So what do we do? Both are true. You can learn massive amounts. And should we just ignore that? Should we cut ourselves off and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist? What are we losing? What opportunity are we losing? We could impact the world. Isn't it amazing that somebody could give a shirt in Australia and I could listen to it in Israel.

22:01 And somebody could listen to it in New York or vice versa? Think about the global impact you could have. How could you ignore that? What do we do? And then there's a third approach. And this is the one that I personally subscribe to. And that's the approach that the internet and technology in general is not a mitzvah. And it's not shlosh klipos atameos. It's klipos noga, and it depends how you use it. Like most things in life, depends what you're going to do with it. A car. As I was taught in driver's ed many years ago, is a weapon. They didn't teach you girls that in driver's ed. My driver's ed teacher, I remember him like it was yesterday. He's like, first class, car is a weapon. I was like, that sounds awesome. It's true, a car is a weapon. But I wouldn't call a car a weapon. I would say, I don't know, I wouldn't think it's like a weapon. I'm taking my kids to gun. That's not a weapon, a gun is a weapon. What he meant to say is a car is dangerous. You can kill people with a car, and people die all the time from cars. So it's dangerous. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't have positive usage. That's called klipasnoga. Now the question is, how are you going to engage with that which has a real tsad that it could be used in an inappropriate way

23:28 And you can mamish do horrific things. But you could also do amazing things. So the question becomes: How do you engage those things? And my answer that I'd like to share with you tonight is carefully. Carefully sounds simple, but you'll see it's not so. It's not so simple. I do not believe, and again, I'm just sharing with you one man's personal approach. You don't have to agree with it. I don't believe that when we embrace everything that the outside world has to offer, that we're being intelligent. Because we're turning a blind eye to some very bad things. So I have a nephew, who's Baruch Hashem, a budding Talmud Chacham. He's 21 years old. He sits and learns, like unbelievable, in his yeshiva. In his yeshiva. They show up. They hand in their phones to the office. Have a dorm phone, totally minutak. He's a tremendous Talmud Chacham. At 21 years old, he really knows a tremendous amount of Torah. But he's not engaging the outside world. So when we engage and we embrace—that's the key word—when we embrace what happens, we're probably not going to be producing talmidei chachamim of the same caliber. Because when a kid gets so caught up in binge watching whatever shows he's watching

24:45 And the amount that you can watch today, Girls, do you know there was a time? I know this might be shocking to some of you. Do you know there was a time on television where there were no more shows? And there was just like a screen. It was like a blank screen, and just went beep. And that's what it was. I remember as a kid turning the channels, and there was nothing left. They didn't have enough content. I know it's crazy, right? Because you girls grew up in an era where Like at eleven o'clock at night. But still at eleven o'clock at night in your life. Even if there was nothing on cable, if you go in through all of your cable stations. Forget, but today, what do you mean? Every movie that I want is pirated and on the internet within minutes. If you embrace You're going to probably bring in things you don't want to bring in And if you disconnect, you're going to lose a tremendous amount of opportunity. The word that I use, and this is what I was makabel from my Rebbe Riv Parnas Shlita, is we negotiate.

26:18 Negotiate means certain things come in and certain things stay out, like in any negotiation. How do we do that? How do we make sure that what we're getting is the best, with doing our best to keep out the worst? And the answer is, carefully. We negotiate carefully. What does that look like? Let's be practical. If you bring internet into your home, you've chosen to bring internet into your home. We understand the negative impact and have delineated it. We understand the positive impact and have delineated it. The question is, what role does a filter play? If you're embracing, the answer is a filter doesn't play any role. I want it all, and I don't want to be limited to it. I don't want to have to work my way around Ramon because I'm trying to get to something and Ramon blocked it for some stupid reason. I don't want to handle it. I don't. I don't have to deal with that. I just want to go for it. We know what the negative impact is. I'll tell you how it sounds. This is what the parents say. But we're very careful about what our children watch on it. You're not. You have no idea. We do. You don't. You don't. You know how I know you don't?

27:30 Because I've been doing this for 11 years, I cannot tell you how many talmidim and how many talmidot have come to me over the course of the last 11 years and said, 'Rebbe, my parents have no clue.' That makes sense because we cannot monitor everybody. In every day, it's just not possible. Parents who tell me, 'No, but we have a thing that every night it tells us what our kids went to.' One of the guys in Mevaseret said to me, 'He went on proxy sites coming from China, because in China the government monitors the internet.' A lot of things are blocked. Chinese people are constantly setting up proxy sites so you can get around the government blockers. This kid was going on Chinese proxy sites to get around his parents. Baruch Hashem, I have the talent to tell them. He's gonna be a great someone.

28:21 If he chooses to. We can't ignore that. You can't just stick your head in the sand and say, "I know." No, you don't. You have to be really careful. And by the way, I'll tell you the filters. Today there are ways of getting around. I know somebody who got a kosher phone. Kosher phones, don't get more from than that. You got a kosher phone. He showed me regular, unfiltered internet access on his kosher phone. I said, "How'd you do that?" He said, "Ways." I said, 'How'd you get on the internet from ways?' Ways as a thing that you can search Google from ways. That wasn't blocked. So from his kosher phone, he was getting on. Even the filters today, and these kids are getting smarter. There was a kid who came to Mevaseret. He was a DRS kid in DRS every year. They would put a blocker on the Wi-Fi in the school. And this kid was like a computer genius. And he would set a timer from the minute he walked into school on day one.

29:28 Of how many hours it would take him until he was able to crack the code, and then how fast does it spread to every other kid? I walked into Skokie Yeshiva to give interviews there. I said, you guys have internet here. All the boys smile. They do this move. This is how you know it's gonna be good. No. I'm like, Do you guys know the Wi-Fi password? They're like, No. I'm like, If I give you my phone and you do it for me, will it magically turn on? One of the kids goes, I didn't have data, so I needed it. We can't ignore it. On the other hand, I don't think we can or should ignore all the positive that's out there. We strike that balance by negotiating. You said we can't ignore it. We can't ignore it. There's so many good things. Do you know how many amazing shirim I've heard? How many shirim that I've given that people have told me I heard that? I'm following along with nitzotzot. Come on, it's an amazing opportunity.

30:39 So then the question becomes. If we're negotiating, what's necessary, and is it really necessary? Because I want to tell you an impact, and I'll finish with this, and I'll open up the floor to questions. I want to tell you an impact that you might not realize. Up until now, we've spoken about content. But I want to speak about a different facet of the technological revolution. And that is our relationship with our children. These devices have the capacity to destroy family life. That's a negative impact. So I walked into a home of a rav who took the embrace approach. It was an out-of-town rav, and I was hired to be a scholar in residence in his community. I flew out to his community and was staying in the rabbi's home. I walked into his home. There he has his three little beautiful children. They're all sitting on the couch, each one with their own iPad, playing their games, totally not interacting with each other. And the rabbi said to them, 'Boys, we have a visitor here.'

31:53 Boys, we have a visitor here. Boys. All of them looks at one of them looks up and he goes, 'Oh, hi.' Because they don't even realize. Because there's so much coming at you when you're playing these video games, it's hard to get out of that. That's from the children's perspective. But what about from the parents' perspective? What about the parents that are so busy on their phone that they don't realize that their kids are waiting to talk to them? That they don't have a real relationship with their children? What about the children that use their phones to hide from their parents? And I don't mean hide from their parents because of what they're WhatsApping behind their parents' backs. I mean because I don't have to engage with you because I could just be on my phone. What about families that just sit there on their phones? Everyone's at the dinner table. Guy told me this year, Everyone in my family comes to the dinner table with their phones. We're all just eating and texting other people. You're at the table with somebody. Talk to them.

32:47 I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm not saying that it's totally bad. I don't believe that to be true. We can't underestimate the impact of what it's doing to our families. Even in meetings, business people today are saying we don't know how to run meetings anymore. It used to be you came to a meeting, you didn't have a phone, so you got to the meeting early. You sat down, you made jokes with your coworkers. It built camaraderie, and the company was better for it. And today, everyone's like again, and nobody here is bad. Chas v'sham baruch Hashem. Where it's a good seminary. And there's a lot of good things happening. But even things that you may not realize are absolutely rude. And this is my favorite one. Let's pretend this was my phone. You're all sitting there, and I know you know that I have eyes. That's a strange thing to do. It's like if you believe in evolution, you started off like an ape, and then you slowly came up to be a human, and now we're slowly going back down into that age. Disconnecting. I think I'm not saying get rid of, but disconnecting. I think is an important part of it. Certain things are necessary. Certain things are tools that you can use, and certain things are tools that you don't need to use.

34:07 And the question is, what are you doing with those tools? Full disclosure: I am on Twitter. I have two accounts on Twitter. One of them is called United with Israel. It's an account that has almost fifty-four thousand people on it. It's called Hazbara for Israel. This is where we tell our side of the story to the rest of the world, so that they don't believe all the crazy things that they hear on television. That's a huge opportunity. And I'm proud to do it because I get to share with the world, hey, Israel's not a bunch of murderers. That's great. I also have a personal account. I do my best to be makad shem Shamayim, and to do things that I think are meaningful to share. Sometimes the Torah, sometimes jokes. But just regular. I'm not like living my life on it. There was a point. I don't know if you girls know this. There's a point in the history of the world where people were able to eat a salad without putting it on Instagram, and that was like an important right because then you could eat the salad. And today they don't make food delicious. They make food beautiful to look at. Is it right? Is it Instagrammable? It's like yeah.

35:16 It's not really good. To get famous on Instagram. They know that it'll get them more customers. That's right. But that's sick. So again, I'm not. I'll be clear. In my own personal life, I have a phone. It has a filter. I use things that I think are important. I make mistakes. Not claiming I'm perfect. Sometimes I use it for an Irish kite. But ultimately, I think that balance is really important. And as you girls are now on the verge of leaving seminary, we're talking to you about what a Jewish home looks like practically. You're going to have important decisions coming up in your life because you're part of this revolution now. Which way do you want to choose? No matter what, I encourage you to think about the impact on your marriage and the impact on your future children. What will be their exposure to these things?

36:13 And so Toma Devora has come up with this thing totally optional. And I think that's beautiful also because they're not saying you have to. They're saying, think about this. And by the way, that's something you should really be proud of—that you're part of a seminary that says, We're not telling you what you have to do. We're telling you what we would like you to consider, to think about it. That's education. Let's think about this issue. For those of you that your reaction to this is like, Roll your eyes, this is stupid. Frankly, you're missing something really important because the whole idea of learning is to challenge yourself to think about something in a way that you never thought about it before. So even if you choose not to participate, think about what is the role of this in your life. First of all, it's optional. Second of all, nobody's telling you what to do or for how long to do it. It could be deleting an email. It could be deleting an app. It could be deleting an app for an hour. It could be deleting for a day. What's important is to consider the issue and then take a positive action. So when they asked me to speak about this, you understand why I felt it was so important that I had to come in tonight.

37:17 This is such an important issue: what we expose ourselves to, what we expose our children to, and how we do it. This is the challenge of our generation, and don't take it lightly, because your kids will be here before you know it. My daughter is 16. I blinked, and she turned 16. That's crazy. I don't have a 16-year-old daughter. I'm an 18-year-old who just going to mivaseret. In my mind, I went to mivaseret 20 years ago. In my mind, I'm like, I can't wait to go to mivaseret because I'm still like just graduated high school, just starting mivaseret. And all of a sudden, you blink And you got a 16-year-old girl. A 16-year-old is not that much younger than you. That's crazy. It happens fast. And the decisions you make early on, like the seed that sprouts and becomes the tree, have an impact long term. How you focus yourself, who you marry, they're going to ask you. What's your approach to these things? What type of school you send your children to? They're going to give over a particular approach. We're living in the technological era, so we need to consider these issues.

38:13 Here comes the awkward silence part, or not? I'll open up the floor for questions. The only thing I ask of you is please respect the questions that are given. Just because you might not think they're intelligent, I believe we learn from everybody. We'll start with you, and then we'll go for you. Loud, just because I'm hard of hearing. Okay. Yes. The question is just to say so everyone can hear it. The question is: Should women have filters on their phones? They don't necessarily have the same desires as men, and if they don't necessarily have social media, then what's the challenge? First of all, a very interesting thing that I'm hearing more and more. It's pretty wild, but I'm hearing it more and more. There are women that have challenges too. And even if you don't have social media, if you do have the internet, you should definitely have it. And I'll tell you something else.

39:14 In my opinion, it's just one man's opinion. You don't have to listen. I'll say it a little further. Right now, you're saying I'm eighteen years old. I don't have any children. But kids find their parents' phones. And we should be role models for our children. Do as I do, not as I say. So if I want my kids to have a phone that has a filter, and I don't have a filter, what message am I sending them? So that's another, and also spam. Like kids can get on their parents' phones and make mistakes. Also, most kids don't start off looking for it. Kids can be curious. It's like whoa, that was new, that was interesting. So yeah, it's like a car. Just like a car has seatbelts. In my opinion, this is a seatbelt. It see that's the thing. I think the future is happening now. You're setting yourself up for how you're going to be in the future. Because everyone always says there's this amorphous thing, like the future. But the future comes because the present just kept on marching. So at some point we have to make decisions, and those decisions guide us. I tell this to guys all the time.

40:16 Guys go, like Rebbe, it's hard to wake up for davening. I say, do you want to marry a girl who has a husband who wakes up for davening? Of course. So you're gonna date and you're gonna say to a girl like, 'Is it important for you to have a husband that dabbles with a minion?' And the girl will say, 'Yeah.' And then you'll think to yourself, 'Well, shoot, what's she doing with me?' Because it was like, 'Yeah, at some point, I know I'm gonna have to do it.' But then the future came, and they were like, 'I didn't prepare myself for it.' Start now. Start when you're young and when it's easier because it'll only get harder. And if you have that hashgufa, then when you're dating, make sure he has that hashgufa too. Because, as you said, there are differences between men and women. We shouldn't be ignoring those differences. And if he's telling you, 'No, I'm good,' and that's not the way you see the world, that might be an area of tension when it comes to chinuch habanim and the way that your home looks. So how?

41:10 I don't know if it's too personal, but how do you go about this with your children? What do you do? I believe in the chauffeur model of chinuch. Chauffeur. Chauffeur. Not like chauffeur. Chauffe. Not chauffeur. Shofar, like Jaffar, but shofar. Shofar model of chinuch says if you look at a shofar, it's narrow in the beginning and it's wide at the end. And if you turn a shofar around and you try to blow from the wide end, it's not going to make a sound. But if you blow it from the narrow end, then it makes a huge sound. I believe that there are different time periods in children's lives and you have to know when to give certain things to your children. So people say all the time well.

41:54 If I expose them to it, they're not going to like go crazy for it later. Because when things are addictive, and most people are addicted to these things, when things are addictive, and you give them a little bit, they go, that was delicious. I want a little more. And so, when my children are young, for sure they don't have access to any of these things. But that's a gift that I'm giving them. Because my kids grow up in Israel, which means they're getting out of school at one o'clock, one thirty, two o'clock, the latest, and then they go out and play with their friends. And they're not encumbered by this technology. And they do these amazing imaginative games because they have nothing. They're not being raised on anything else.

42:28 My kids don't know about so many of these things because they're being raised in Israel and they're just not exposed to it on any level. It's giving them this freedom to go out to the park because the weather is mostly good. They can go out to the park and hang out with their friends and have conversations without being distracted by any of these things. As opposed to when I was growing up, my friends would come over. Let's play video games together. But just because you're sitting next to somebody doesn't mean you're actually engaging with them. So for sure, when they're young, I'm not getting them involved in any of these things. And then as they're getting older, by the way, it's not too personal a question. If I'm going to get up here and give the she'er about it, I have to be transparent.

42:58 So it's a great question. As they get older, they're going to need more things. For example, now my daughters who are in high school have to type up reports. So we have a computer and they type up reports on the computer. Now at this stage, my daughters are receiving a far better secular education. Forget their Jewish education. They're receiving a far better secular education than most of us received. Even in really good high schools, they're getting an excellent education. My daughter is learning computer programming in high school. She knows how she's literally learning computer programming. She's in tenth grade. It's really amazing what they're learning.

43:31 And they're not. She's not yet at a stage where she even needs the internet to do the work that she's doing. And they specifically do it like that because they don't want them engaging on that level. And because of that, I do not have internet in my home because I don't see the need for it. So it just doesn't exist in my home. I have a phone. My wife has a kosher phone. She doesn't feel the need to do it. We do our banking in person. We don't live off of Amazon. We go shopping in the stores. We're a little old school like that. And I'm not saying that there's not times when we need it or times when it's not frustrating. But those are small price to pay from our opinion. For example, right now we go in like different phases with different games.

44:08 Right now we've gotten very into Boggle. So I love Boggle. If you don't know what Boggle is, you should definitely get involved in Boggle. First of all, Boggle's a great thing for my Israeli kids to make sure that they have English words and English spelling. But second of all, you know how fun it is to sit around your table with like your daughters and your wife. You're just sitting there and you're playing the game. It's awesome because you're actually engaging with each other. They fight because kids fight, but that's part of it. They're actually engaging with each other, building relationships as they get older. And when they need more, we'll deal with that appropriately. And if I do need to bring internet into the home for them Then we'll do so with probably a filter called Etroge. Which is a serious filter, and the inconveniences of having to work around the filter will just be part of the process. Because I wouldn't want my son to be exposed to these things at such a young age, and unfortunately, so many people have been exposed to these things.

44:59 Yeah. Thank you. So we just gave a couple brilliant examples. Clever kids getting around filters, and yes, I can attest to that. How do you make it so it's not like you have to be sitting here constantly battling your kids in a game of wits? You're sitting here like, What will my kids think? That you have to outthink them. Is there any form of education you could give them beforehand to use them down? What does that conversation look like? Absolutely, that's an amazing question. I'll tell you how the conversation goes. Kids are exceptionally smart. Even when they're young, and girls. If you don't believe me, just think back to yourselves. Like you knew so much, and you knew so much more than your parents thought you knew. It's like those parents that have shalom bias issues. They go like, our kids don't know about it, and I'm like, your son told me about that three months ago.

46:04 We know about things. We're not stupid. The question becomes. How to be transparent with them about the challenges. And we'll talk to our children and say to them, This is what's out there. We believe in Rabbi Nachman. We believe in doing his mission. We believe in engaging the world appropriately. There's a reason why we do these things, and we share with them that reason. With you, one of the reasons that I live in Israel is that I don't have to have the following fight. But Abba, every other family is doing it. And that is so hard. Because if you're going to come and you're going to say, 'Okay, this is my approach,' and then when I was growing up I had to do my reports online. You needed two online sources. That was something they needed in your kid. I didn't have internet. We all looked at him like he was from outer space.

47:02 He was just from Bridgeport, which is kind of like outer space. That's very close to outer space. But like. I can tell you what happens to those kids, the kids that the parents have more rules than the community they live in. Those kids ended up at my house watching television. That's how I grew up. It was like all my yeshiva friends came to my house because it was incongruous with their lifestyle, and as the community didn't have the standard that the parents had. And I'm avoiding the issue to some extent because the way I presented it is more or less the way the kids in my school get. My kid's friends in school have the same ashkafa. The school has the same ashkafa. The neighborhood pretty much has the same ashkafa. Even though we all are different people, we've basically created a community with a certain standard. And I don't have to deal with the competing values question.

47:56 I didn't say in Israel. I said in my community. That's true. You're definitely right that there are always going to be things that never reach 100 percent. But I think there's a difference between 50 and 90. When the school has certain policies, my kids can feel absolutely comfortable going to any one of their friends. I'm friends with all these people. They just don't have it. I'm not saying there aren't places in the community where they do. I'm saying that's not the community we've built around. It's not where my kids are engaging. It's not like, in their face. You're right that kids can always find other kids. We're not trying to create a system that's absolutely perfect, or our kids won't be exposed. We know that's not true, but we can do our best. And we try to do our best. And you're right. When kids have questions, we have to talk to them and discuss what's actually going on out there, why these are competing values sometimes, and how we negotiate when there are competing values.

49:03 Is that fair? So before you were talking about the good side of the internet and how there's so much Torah to be gained and so much this and that. But sometimes I'm using the internet not necessarily for good or for bad. It's more for the middle, but it's not necessarily Torah. I won't be listening to a she'er in my free time because I get burnt out. I can't always just put on a she'er. Is there a negative to putting on friends in the background or some stupid entertainment? I know it's a waste of time, but at the same time I can't be sitting here. First of all, I totally agree. I don't want you to believe that I am totally cut off from these things because I know, for example, that the Knicks did not get the first pick in the draft last night and they got the third pick in the draft last night. Not that either. Trust me, it's true. As a long-suffering Knicks fan, I promise you it's true. But I don't want you to think I'm perfect. But I think there's a difference between things that are parve and things that you might think are parve, but you might consider that they're not so parve. So what do you think about what you just mentioned friends?

50:02 What was that? So not friends. But it's a well. It's a right. I hear that. But like everything I'm watching, I'm like, oh wow, your life has no meaning. I still need the entertainment sometimes. It sounds terrible, but it's not. It doesn't sound terrible. It sounds human. But you really have to consider again. Would you want your kids to grow up on a show like that? Again, without getting into the details, I was the one that referenced it beforehand. I remember I would watch it live. I remember when those shows are actually happening. I don't know if I want my children being raised by Monica and Chandler. I'm saying that's And that would be tame. Without it, it's much harder. A lot of people say that. They say I feel it's inevitable, and you know maybe it is and maybe it isn't. But I want to tell you something. We all have to make decisions, and every time we make a decision, we're going to get some on one side, and we're going to lose some on the other side. And the question is, what are we going to gain, and what are we going to lose? What community we raise our children in is definitely going to have a very large impact on who we are. And we shouldn't, in my opinion, just say we'll throw up our hands because it's over, because we have to prioritize decisions.

51:13 Guys, people tell me all the time, Rebbe, I want to make a parnasa. I guess that's it. I'm not going to become a talmudacher. Slow down. There are people that are working towards being talmidei chachamim and positioning themselves so that they could do college and yeshiva at the same time. Because life is complex. And it's not like it's one or the other. If you think that this is a value that's paramount to you and you realize the dangers there, then you might make certain uncomfortable decisions. Because you say that is more primary than the other decisions that you're going to make. Your natural reaction is like, "Come on, but that's what everybody does. Everybody lives there." Well, maybe challenge that assumption. That if you, we're all coming from a certain place. So where we come from, that's what I'm gonna do, cause that's where I come from. But then you start thinking yourself, cause for me, it'd be much more comfortable to live in America than Israel. Most of my friends are still there. I feel like I feel much more comfortable when I go back. I know those streets. I grew up on those streets. If we didn't move to Israel, I would for sure live in the Five Towns, cause that's where I'm from. And it would have come with its unique set of challenges.

52:17 And I would have had to negotiate that. But it shouldn't just be that because that's where I'm from, that's what I do, and therefore I can't have the life that I want. We all have to make choices. Really, I want to live in LA. I love LA. I would never raise my children in LA, but every time I go there, I'm like it's the best place in the world. Last question. Yeah. So next year I want to go to school that requires you to have a cochlear bone, and that's something that I really want. I want to go to Malo, and it requires me to have a cochlear bone, and that's something that I want long term. But like how you were saying with the whole good side of the internet, I'm very into that. I love listening to Nitozos and Tishiram, and I love recording classes. Even if I was able to have my phone and prioritize myself.

53:15 Then you know I would, but I can't. I really want to, and I don't know how to pursue that. You're asking such an important question. I don't know that I have a clear, black and white answer for you. But I think instead of maybe answering your question, let me speak to the hashkafah of the question. The hashkafah of the question is great because it's like I have these competing values, right? Do you think it matters to me one kiyuzef I wear a white shirt and black pants? It really doesn't matter. I promise you. It's like in my life. This is the color of my stuff is not important. So many years ago, I didn't always dress like this. And then I thought to myself What community do I want to live in? Where do I want to send my children? I didn't want my kids to be the ones that said, "We're in a school that says you have to wear a black hat, but my father doesn't wear a black hat, and it gets all complicated." So I said, "Just put it on because who cares? It's not really important to me. If it's a way of identifying with a community that'll make my children more comfortable, and it's a community that has higher values than that, then it's an easy sacrifice. Because you're going to have competing values, and eventually you're going to have to make a decision of what's important to you."

54:20 What yarmulke I wear is not important to me. If I wear a hat, or what color that hat is, the shirt, the etzem, none of these things are important to me. So since there were competing values, I chose things that were more important. People say, 'Oh, you're just a sheep because you wear those clothing.' I don't know. I made a choice. I don't think I'm a sheep because I wear these clothing, but at the same time, I don't go around saying everybody has to dress like that because I think that's equally ridiculous. And I'm happy to teach in a yeshiva and teach in a seminary where that's not what they're teaching you. Because we're more internally focused. So you have a competing value. Have a place that you want to go. It's going to give you a gift that's going to enable you to do certain things with your life. There are going to be some sacrifices that you're going to have to make that are uncomfortable for you. The question is, what's the more primary value to you?

55:02 I don't know how you're going to answer that question because I would never be pretentious enough to tell you, Well, this is how you do it. That's Adaravah. That isn't a great thing for you to discover? Because once you discover that, you're going to know it about yourself and you're going to take that with you forever. Girls, there are a lot of hatslacha in this mitzvah.