Emor/Shavuos - When We Feel So Distant From Hashem

1:52 Because there are things a kohen who's a bal mum is allowed to do. For example, a kohen who's a bal mum is allowed to eat the karbanos. A kohen who's a bal mum is still not allowed to marry a grusha, a divorcee. A kohen who's a bal mum is not allowed to become tamei; they're not allowed to become contaminated. Which tells us that a kohen who's a bal mum is what? A kohen. Very good. We're stuck. Is a kohen? This is the shaila in halacha. You'll see something unbelievable from this halacha. We have a shaila: is a kohen who's a balmum, a kohen or a zar? Which one is he? On the one hand, it sounds like he's a zar because he can't do the avodah in the beis hamikdash. On the other hand, we see all these halachas where he's still treated like a kohen.

2:46 Says the Ragu Chavergyn, an unbelievable answer. He's both. Usually we think that's not possible. If you're not a kohen, you're a zar. If you're a zar, you're not a kohen. The Raguachaver says a kohen who's a balmum is a kohen who's also a zar. Since he's a kohen, is he allowed to become tamei? No. Since he's a kohen, is he allowed to marry a grusha? No. Since he's a kohen, is he allowed to eat from the karbanos? Since he's a kohen, is he allowed to do the trumas hadeshen? Is he the hotsos hadeshen? I'm sorry, is he allowed to take the ashes off the mizbeach? Because that might not be considered an avoda. But is he allowed to bring a karbon? Because since he's a zar, it would be aser for him to bring the karbon. Once has a halosheim zar, once has the status of being a zar.

3:37 He's a foreigner and he's not allowed to bring a karbon. So there's such a thing as a kohen who's also a zar. Is there such a thing as stopping nazar, like nazar? If he's a bal mum, he's a kohen u'zasar. But is there like a way? No. Now So that's a beautiful answer to a technical question. Now I want to do the chassidus of this. It's an unbelievable Torah that tells us the penemias of this halacha. My girls, it's so relevant to every single one of us. I learned this Torah this morning. I was so blown away by this Torah. I said I have to share it tonight in shabbatons. This is an unbelievable Torah. The Ishbitzer. Have you girls ever heard of the Haya Ge Ishbitzer? The Ishbitzer. Ishbitz was a great Hasidic master. He was one of the big tzaddikim. You went there.

4:29 So then you know what I'm talking about. The Ishbitzer was an unbelievable tzaddik. The Torah that I want to share with you now is a Torah from the Ishbitzer Rebbe. What beautiful music coming from Lag Baomer from the streets of Yerushalayim? It accompanies us on our journey. So we'll have a little bit of music while we're saying the shir. But listen to the shir. Don't be distracted by the music. Let the music be the background for this unbelievable tirah from the Ishbitzer. Listen to this tirah. It was worth it to come six thousand miles for an entire year just to hear this tirah from the Ishbitzer. The Ishbitzer says, if you look at this week's parsha It's divided into two portions. The first five things that the Torah talks about in this week's parsha, and then the second five. He says the first five. We're not going to go through all five. We're just going to talk about one of them. It's the Cohen Bal Mum. The first five things in this week's parsha are people who can have tainas on Hashem, people who could have complaints against Hashem.

5:21 The first person, the person that we're going to talk about tonight, a person who has a complaint against Hashem, is a kohen who's a balmum. That's what we're going to be speaking about. The next five things in the parsha we should be familiar with are the shalosh regalim. What are the shalosh regalim? Pesach, sukkot, and Shavuos. Sukkot, Pesach, Shavuos. And Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The Ishbitzer says, if you line these five things up with the second five things in the parsha, the Cohen who is the Bal Mum, which we're going to examine in a minute, is Keneged the Yomtov of Shvuas, which is coming up. So we have in this week's parsha the sugya of the Cohen Bal Mum who can have a taina, he can have a complaint against Hashem, and the answer to the Cohen of the Bal who's a Bal Mum The answer is Shvuas. We're going to explain what this means.

6:10 What is the taina? What's the complaint of the Cohen who's a bal mum? It's a complaint that every single one of us has had. The Cohen who's a bal mum says as follows: I feel sometimes like I'm a Cohen. Sometimes I feel like I'm chosen for something special in Hashem's world. I feel like I'm born to serve Hashem in the Beis Hamikdash. All I want to do is spend my life doing the avodas hamikdash. You ever have a day like that? You ever have a day where you wake up on fire and you say, 'I have dignity. I have majesty. I was born into this religion and I'm so blessed. There's something that I can do for Hashem that nobody else can do in the world. I'm sitting here in the streets of Jerusalem on a Thursday night, erev Lag BaOmer, already now Lag BaOmer. And I'm zaycheh to be able to do something with my life that nobody else in the world can do.'

7:07 I wasn't born a gentile. I have a unique mission. I feel like I'm mamish flying. I want to do the avoda in the Beis Hamikdash. Sometimes we wake up like that. And here's the crazy thing: even on days when we wake up like that, in that same day, sometimes even in that same moment A person feels I am so foreign to Hashem. There's such unbelievable distance between me and Hashem. I feel like I have no interest in serving Hashem. I feel a million miles away from serving Hashem. I could be inspired in one moment, and I could do the biggest aviras in the next moment. I could walk into a she'er and I could walk out flying, and I walk out right into the worst place in the world—the avir that I promised myself I was going to stop doing. What was that? Every single person has had this experience. Every single girl in this room, including myself, I've also had this experience. I'm not a girl in this room. I'm a boy in this room. Every single person, I should realize as I said it how it sounds. Every single person, you threw me off. Every single person in this room is not your fault. I'm blaming you. Every single person in this room Thank you for taking ownership of my problems.

8:17 That's a whole different set of therapy. Every single person in this room has had tens of thousands of moments where we felt exactly like I just described. I wake up in the morning. I'm a Meleches Cohen in the Goy Kadosh. I'm a Cohen. I have a job. I want to be close to Hashem. The next minute, I feel so distant from Hashem. I'm disinterested. Sometimes we can be disinterested for months at a time. And what will randomly pop up in our head out of nowhere? Heru Echuve. This is not who I am. I don't want to be this person anymore. The kohen who's a bal mum, remember, the raga chaver told us, he's not a zar or a kohen. He's not foreign and he's not a kohen. What is he? He's a kohen who's a zar at the very same time. That's us. The ish bitzer says this kohen bal mum that we just been discussing his halachas that he could code the base hamikdash and he could and he has to stay away from tumah and he can't marry a grusha. Why not? Because he's a kohen. But he can't do the avodah in the base hamikdash. Why not? Because he's also a zar. What is that halacha reflecting that he's both? It's reflecting every one of us who ever had the experience that at once I feel so inspired to be close to Hashem and I feel so distant at the same time.

9:33 And by the way, for those girls that are specifically in this moment thinking to themselves, I don't know, I've had more zare moments than kohen moments. You're also the kohen bal mum. Just because you've had more zare moments than kohen moments doesn't mean that you're not the kohen bal mum. Because deep inside of us, every one of us knows that we are special. There is something that comes along with being a yid that's different—not just a sense of a mission, but a level of dignity, a level of kahuna that every one of us has. We know that we're different. We know that we're obligated to be something more. Shaliz, what do we do with this? What do we do with this dichotomy of at one moment I feel like a kohen and a zayin? What do I do with these two moments? So the Ishbitzer gives an unbelievable answer And he says the answer to this question is the yomtiv of shavuos. And he explains as follows: Har Sinai had a duality to it.

10:33 What's the duality of Har Sinai? So the Ishbitzer says, at once we said naseh and ishma. We said naseh and ishma because we understood that we were a mameleches kohenim. We understood. We are Hashem's chosen people. If somebody comes along to you and says you're Hashem's chosen people, what do you say? I'm in, nasev nishma. Every one of us, by our sinai, we said we're in. There's a very strange thing that happened right before we were about to be makabul the Torah. Hashem came to Moshe Rabbeinu and he said, make sure they don't touch the mountain. They have to stay distant from the mountain. So what did Moshe Rabbeinu do? He told Klal Yisrael to stay away from the mountain. Don't touch the mountain. They made a fence. Nobody's allowed to touch the mountain. Before Hashem says, 'Anochi Hashem Elokecha,' before He is about to give the Asaras Hadibros, He tells Moshe Rabbeinu, 'Moshe, go make sure that none of them touch the mountain.' Moshe Rabbeinu says, 'I already told them.'

11:29 Hashem says, Go make sure that nobody touches the mountain. Moshe Rabbeinu said again, Make sure nobody touches the mountain. You can't touch the mountain. It's a fascinating thing. What's this? What's this like halachic? I don't want to say the word obsession, but why is Hakadosh Baruch Hu so intense? Make sure they don't touch the mountain. It almost sounds like the situation that we just described. Hashem says, "You're my mleches koanim. I'm going to give you the asheres adimros. I'm going to give you the entire Torah" But stay distant. You're not allowed to come close. No touching. Stay distant. Is that the way we would expect Hakadosh Baruch Hu to behave? If you're about to marry somebody, harsinai is a chuppah. You say, "Come close." A woman walks around her husband seven times. A man puts a ring on a woman's finger. That's how we get married. First, the woman creates a circle around the man, then a man puts a circle on a woman. And what are we really saying with these circular motions that exist by a chuppah? We're saying, "I give myself over to you completely. There is no distance. All there is is oneness. Everything that we do at a chuppah is all about oneness." Why is Hakadosh Baruch Hu so insistent?

12:37 That we stay distant from them. Why is it so important that Hashem says, 'Stay away, don't touch the mountain'? There are two types of love. There's revealed love And then there's something even deeper called longing. Revealed love is when everything in your marriage is going well. You've ever seen a couple like this? Talking about right after they get married, and you just see them walking along the street, and they look like they're flying. They just look like they're floating. You see these couples on Paron? They just look like they're floating. Like they're just everything is magical. Baruch Hashem, mommy and daddy are paying for my life. It's this beautiful. Sorry, a little too close to home. The I'm talking about just they look at each other, and when they look at each other, they're just staring into each other's eyes magically. It's just a bagel store. Nobody needs to see this. We don't want to. What bagel store is there now?

13:34 Sam's Bagels, right? You know what I'm talking about. You know that couple. He comes home from the break. She's got her thousand dollar Bugaboo stroller. Life is amazing, right? It's a very. I'm making fun of it, but there's something. I'm making fun of it. That's it. Period. I'm making fun of it, but there's something very beautiful about it. No? It's something very revealed. There's something. It's like they've never had a fight. If they do have a fight, it's like afterwards, I'm so sorry. Everything is like there's no resentment, there's no anger, there's no fear. They don't have any of the stuff that comes along with marriage. It's very beautiful. Then there's another couple. This couple has been married for a long time. And with you This couple triggers each other deeply. This couple, if you've ever seen these couples, they have microaggressions. You know what microaggressions are? Microaggressions are when the husband says something and the wife goes like this. It's very quick. She goes like this. She's like that, and it's hurtful. That little eye roll. It's just two seconds. It's hurtful to that guy.

14:39 And he's carrying all this resentment from all the years of those little eye rolls of feeling unworthy of love and connection in her space. And when she says something and he's dismissive about it or he's solution oriented about it, she's also resentful. And slowly but surely there's a coldness that seeps into their marriage. Do you ever see a couple like this? That there's just nothing. It's nothing bad. There's no overt fighting. It's just that over time they just seem to have grown apart. It's very sad when you see a couple like that. Two good people that, as a result of time and life, ended up in a place where they're very distant from each other. So the bottom the piece that makes this a good type of love is this next thing that I'm about to say. That's why up until now it doesn't sound loving at all. It sounds terrible. That's why you're like, what type of love is it?

15:35 But they have moments Maybe not very often, but they have moments where they long for the relationship that once was. And they have times where maybe they go out to eat. Or maybe they go on vacation with each other, or maybe they take a walk and it's like they were back to that young couple. In Israel, it's called being zutzie. Zutzie means zug tziiri, a young couple. When you see a young couple acting like a young couple, they call it being zutzie. Sometimes you see an older couple and they're back to being zutzie, just for a couple of minutes. They're back to their old self and they wish they could restore the innocence of their marriage. They wish they could go back in time, take back all the hurtful words, all the eye rolls, all the solution-oriented conversations where really the wife just needed to be validated.

16:28 They wish that they could go back in time and restore the innocence of their marriage. It's called longing. It's a love of longing. It's a love of yearning. It's not perfect. Their marriage is far from perfect. But there's something unbelievable that even after all the pain they've caused each other, even after all the darkness they live in with each other, even though it sometimes feels like they're living in the same room, they're oceans apart from each other. Somehow They still wish that the marriage would be better, and it's not bad. But they are still working on it. 20 years in, 30 years in, 40 years in, they're still working on their marriage. As a therapist here in Eshelaim. He told me an unbelievable story. He told me he's seeing a couple in their young seventies. In their early seventies, he's seeing a couple. Lameisa, how much longer are they going to live?

17:20 But they're going to work on this. What do they have left in their marriage? Ten, fifteen years? Oy, it's true. No. Say and even of the ten fifteen years, who knows when they're gonna? Who knows if one of? I feel bad saying God willing fifteen, God willing much more. But maybe up again very from Baruch Hashem one hundred twenty, but one hundred percent. But maybe one of them will be sick. Chassid Shalom. Maybe one of them will become a little bit less with it. So Lameisa, how much longer do they have left to their marriage? He asked this couple. Imagine a couple comes in. They make an appointment with a therapist. He's a very good therapist here in Eretz Yisrael. Imagine that they come in, they sit down. And he says to them, "You guys have been married for 50 years." For 50 years you've been married. Do you understand what 50 years means? For 50 years you've been married. You're coming in for couples counseling now. Just ride it out. This couple said to him: We made so many mistakes over the last 50 years. We figured let's at least try to salvage the last 10.

18:23 I think that's the most inspiring type of marriage. That even though life has thrown at them so many curveballs, and even though they didn't have the marriage they wanted, they're still not giving up on the marriage. That's an unbelievable thing. Why aren't they giving up? The answer is there's something unbreakable about their marriage. It's called the essence. There's something essential about their marriage. The essence can never be broken. No matter how far apart this couple grows from each other, they don't get divorced. No matter how much they feel like there's an ocean's distance between them, they don't get divorced. You know why? Because something inside of them still yearns for connection. It still longs for the marriage we once had. Girls, which marriage is deeper? Which love is more beautiful? That six-month-old couple living over here in Eshelayim. Or that 50-year-old couple that has an ocean's apart, but they refuse to give up on each other. I want to share with you. I think the 50-year-old couple is much closer to each other because that six-month-old couple—they just have revealed love. Revealed love is very beautiful. I give you all a bracha that you should have marriages of revealed love. But if you're human, you'll have marriages of longing.

19:34 There will be times in your relationships where it won't go well at all. But when you show each other that you love each other so much that you'll never give up on each other, that's when you know how much you'll really love each other. You won't know how much you love each other until the hard times. I want to share with you my father. I didn't know what my parents' marriage was like. How would I know? It's private business. So I asked. I was talking to my father once. My father had lost his job. Baruch Hashem, my father was very successful in business, but there was a three-week period where he didn't have a job. It was scary. We lived in Lawrence. We had bought a beautiful house in Lawrence in the Five Towns, and my father lost his job. And I said to my father, Dad, what's going to be? So he explained to me what was happening, and by Hashem, it'll be okay. After the whole episode was over, my father said to me, "You should know" I never knew how much your mother loved me until I had that job, until I was out of a job for three weeks. I was a kid.

20:33 I said to my dad, "Really?" He goes, yeah. The support, the love, the just companionship that I received in those three weeks. It's going to be okay. We'll figure this out. We're in this together. He said, it's the hard times that teach you how beautiful your marriage is. It's not the good times. It's not when everything is going well that you learn what you're really about. It's when everything is going wrong and you're so distant from each other and you don't give up on each other. You still long for that beautiful connection. That's how you know if you really have real love. Let's look what the Ishbitzer says about Shavuot. It's an unbelievable Torah. Hakadosh Baruch Hu says "Come, I want to give you the Torah." The first word of the Aseret Hadibros is Anochi. What does Anochi stand for? Ana Nafshik Savis Yehavis. I wrote my essence into this book.

21:21 Hashem says, "I'm going to give you me in a book. I'm giving you me in the best way that I possibly can" But don't touch the mountain. Make sure there's distance between us. Why? Because that's what a real marriage is. A real marriage is not constant closeness. That's not reasonable. That's not an expectation that anybody's going to be able to hit. I'll share with you that my roommate in yeshiva was the sweetest, nicest guy in the world. I'm talking about one of those guys who walks around with his hands clasped, and he's very gentle. If you say to him, 'Hey, John, how's it going?' He'd respond, 'Great, Baruch Hashem. How are you?' Just the sweetest, nicest guy in the world. It was chesed. That's why he roomed with me. Mamish, a total act of chesed. And guys would bully him all the time, and he would just laugh because he just loved everybody. The sweetest, nicest guy. And he married a girl.

22:13 And when I first met her for the first time, she said, Hi, how are you? And I said, No way. There's two of them. Ugh. And we went to Baltimore for the wedding. And the menahel of the yeshiva was the masad of kedushin, and I was called up to be one of the adim on the kedushin. So I'm standing under the chuppah, and there's my roommate, and there's this kallah, and there's the menahel of the yeshiva, and there's me and my friend, and we're the adim. And the menahel turns around to me at the chuppah, and he looks at me and he goes, "How much does it make you crazy to know that this couple is never going to have a fight in their life? Like how disgusting is that?" I'm like, Rebbe, maybe now is not the time to have this conversation. Maybe we shouldn't be discussing the fact that all of us have marital discord, except for this couple under the chuppah. Let's talk about it later, by the first dance. You know what I'm saying? It was so wildly inappropriate, but so like par for the course for this minhag.

23:05 And the truth is, I don't know what type of marriage they have. It could be that they're the exception to the rule. It could be that even 20 years later, when they see each other and they come home, I bet he walks in the door and he's like, "Hi." And I bet she looks at him and says "I missed you so much today." I'm betting that maybe that's possible, but probably not. Probably, every couple has their moments of weakness. Probably, they have their moments of distance. Distance is a gift. It's a gift because it means that you have the opportunity to fight for the person that you love. You tap into the deeper dimension of love—not the love that everything is going well, the love that I love you, even when I have no idea why. Our love is so essential that it can't possibly be broken. Hashem says you're not going to be on fire all the time. You're not always going to be like this. You're not going to always have days where you wake up in the morning and say, "Shivisi Hashem lenegdi somid." Please, I can't wait to find my sitter so I can slap him on my face and do this move.

24:01 It's not always going to be like that. Most times there'll be distance. You'll have days when it's great, and even in those days, you might feel like a foreigner. Says Shavuos, that's a feature, not a bug. Our distance from Hashem is not because it's going wrong; it's because it's going right. Hashem says it's not impressive if you serve me because you want to, because you're on fire. That's of course what you're going to do. Serve me even when you feel the distance. Find me in the dark. That's impressive. The kedushas Levi, the haliger Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev. Did you go to his cover? The Berditchever was a tremendous tzaddik. He wrote a poem and he said, "I'm playing hide and seek with God, and I'm finding Him everywhere." It's not impressive to find God in the light. It's impressive to find God when you have no interest in finding God. I'm nispil from guys in yeshiva that are so distant and they haven't felt on fire for such a long time, but they still keep showing up to davening and they still keep showing up to the beis medrash and they're still learning those svarim in the hopes of refinding that inspiration. That's what it means to be a yid. The kohen who's a bal mum. He says, "I'm a Cohen, but I feel like such a foreigner. I feel like such a faker. I feel like I'm so distant."

25:15 I don't have any place in the Beit Hamikdash. I am not right to do the avoda. He comes to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and he says, 'Why did you make me like this? Why didn't you make me a Cohen? Make me a Cohen that I feel on fire all the time. Why do I have to be a balmum? Why do I have to have a defect that I feel distant from you?' Says Hakadosh Baruch Hu, 'That's how I made you.' I made you to be a Cohen balmum. Your identity is that you're a Cohen, but your identity is also that you feel distant from me. But that's awesome because if you feel distant from me, Now you have the opportunity to long for a relationship with Hashem. I think we do a very dangerous thing. I'm not calling out any organizations or institutions. I think we do a very dangerous thing with these one-minute, three-minute videos of inspiration. These everything is awesome videos. It's not true.

26:03 You will not always be excited to serve Hashem. But there's a big difference. People say inspiration doesn't last. It's not true. Inspiration lasts a lifetime. Excitement doesn't last. You can be inspired even when you're not excited. Even when you're not excited about your relationship with your husband, you can be inspired by your relationship with your husband. You could say, even though I'm not in the mood to make dinner, I'm going to make dinner. Even though I'm not in the mood to be the parent that this kid needs, I'm inspired by this kid, and therefore I'm connected to this kid, and I'm going to do it anyway. If you want to know if you're a real person or not, a real person is inspired even when they're not excited. I don't like to be the Rebbe because I don't think it's true. This generation, I don't like to be that Rebbe. But it does appear to me that a couple of generations ago, Jews knew this very well.

26:51 A couple of generations ago, Jews knew very well how to be inspired, even when they weren't excited. They knew how to show up to work and they knew how to chop wood. They knew how to say, "I'm here and I'm showing up to davening, and I'm showing up to learning, and I'm showing up to chesed, and I'm showing up to mitzvos." I do I feel it today? They would say, "What do you mean, do I feel it today?" It's in the space where I don't feel it. That's the opportunity to serve Hashem the best. I think we've become because we're the generation that's seeking so much meaning. I think we're the generation that made one mistake. Just a little bit of a course correction is needed because we're seeking meaning. We say if I don't find meaning, I'm not doing it. That's not the way a Jew lives. We say, I'm a Cohen, even in the moments where I'm not feeling it, where I don't have yet that meaning, but Hashem, I'll find it.

27:39 But if I feel like a foreigner, I'm not stopping to be a Cohen. I'm a Cohen and I'm a foreigner. I'm not saying that I'm not a foreigner. I'm a foreigner. I'm a Zare. It's true. It's not just a passing fad. It's not just that I'm in a bad mood. I sometimes don't feel it. That's also a part of my identity. But it's not a part of my identity that stops me from serving Hashem. It's a part of my identity that gives me a greater depth and profundity and richness in my relationship than I could ever have if things were going well. We're going to receive the Torah from our Sinai in just a couple of weeks, but there's also going to be a tzivui from Hashem. Don't touch the mountain. Hashem says right before I give you the tzidbas, make sure you don't touch the mountain. Distance is not a bug; it's a feature of our relationship. It's how we grow close to Hashem.

28:25 If you see a girl and she looks like she's on fire all the time, either she's a tzadekes or a faker. I'm not going to say which one she is, but either she's a tzadekes or a faker. I don't know that many tzidkamios. I know a lot of fakers. I know a lot of people who are walking around and they're on fire all the time for Hashem. The real people say, 'I'm not on fire all the time, but I'm inspired all the time.' I'm going to be here no matter what. That's what it means to be an adult. An adult knows how to show up even when they don't want to. If a guy in yeshiva says to me, "I just can't wake up in the morning," somehow that guy in a couple of years from now he's going to wake up every morning. You know why? Because he's going to mature. And he's going to be inspired because he has a family and he has things to do. We have to be inspired by our Yiddishkeit. We need to wake up in the morning even when we don't want to. That's the ultimate way to serve Hashem.

29:10 We're holding now by the Yom Tov of Lag BaOmer, and just a couple of minutes. Those crazy kids outside who just built this fire that like the Indian flag on top, and I saw at least a hundred kids running around, and I think those kids. I didn't ask them. But I do think they're trained to build that fire, and I do think they're. For sure, it's not a problem that they're building it right near the forest over there. I'm sure everything will be fine. There's a special malach that protects the fires on Lag BaOmer. I just want to say one thing: Lag BaOmer is the fire that doesn't go out. There's a nair neshama. When somebody dies, we have a nair neshama, a yardside candle. It's a very small candle. It lasts for a small amount of time. Then there's a havdala candle. It's a torch. The madura of Rav Shem Baruch Hayy. We don't just remember him as a yartzei candle. Not even just a torch. We make huge bonfires. Why do we make huge bonfires? Because a huge bonfire lasts forever. The tirah of Rav Shem Baruch Hayy is when you know the pinimius. When you're so deeply connected to Hashem and you know that no matter what you can't escape this relationship. That's how you tap into the longing.

30:15 This is the yamtiv of longing. It's the yamtiv of Rabbanu Shalom. Even when I feel so distant from you, I know I have the opportunity to come close to you. Girls, I want to wish you a freilichin lag baomer. It should be an amazing time to look at the fire, look at those kids dancing. And beis Hashem, we will also dance. Even when we feel distant from Hakadosh Baruch Hu, we'll dance to come close to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.