Ki Tavo - Collect Your Fruits

1:58 That were secrets. I had so many things in my heart that I wanted to accomplish, and I had these hopes. I don't know that I would have said them out loud because I'm a guy, and we don't necessarily articulate our feelings in a way that human beings can understand them. I'm sure you've had this experience. I want you to know it's a very beautiful thing to see. I'm the Menahel of a yeshiva called Mevaseret Knei Nahar. We have 220 boys in the yeshiva. If I ask a boy how he's doing, you want to hear how it sounds? They just also arrived. Last week, you want to hear how's it going in yeshiva? Good. That's the whole conversation. That's the whole thing. If a guy is not doing well, you want to hear what it sounds like. If a guy's having trouble adjusting, I go, 'How's it going?' He goes, 'Eh.' That's the whole thing. Conversations with the girls. It's the exact opposite. It's like, "How's it going so far?"

2:47 I guess I'm feeling like a lack of belonging right now. I just don't know if this is the vibe I was looking for. I think I'm gonna like some of the classes, but other classes I just didn't feel like they were speaking to me. And I'm not sure if the girls are on the same page. I know I'll have a chevra of some girls, but I guess I was hoping for more girls. I want you to know when that guy said "eh" He meant all of that. He meant all of those words. He just said it in a sound. So I don't know. When I was your age, I would have had the ability to articulate. The secret that I had in my heart was that I wanted to come to Israel and I wanted to really be much more connected to davening. I wanted not only to be better at learning, but to learn things I deeply connected with.

3:34 I wanted to have a Shabbos that wasn't just waiting for Shabbos to finish, or just seeing how long I can make my Shabbos nap. I actually wanted Shabbos to be meaningful. I'm sure that you girls have your own hidden desires and secrets that you have inside of you for this year. And I think it's a tremendous privilege to not teach you. I don't like that concept that I'm sitting here teaching and you're listening, but to share with you ideas and then to see over the course of the year, as I've been, Baruch Hashem, part of Sharfman's the Benot Torah Institute. I've been part of this institution now for a number of years, and I have to say, what's exceptionally impressive about being here is the sense that I see in your eyes. I mean, you can tell that there's a lot of things going on.

4:21 And none of it looks the same. There's not one girl here at the end of the year that's going to end up looking like a Sharfman's type. There is no such thing as a Sharfman's type. We're all very weird. We're very unique. I'm in it together with you. I consider myself a member of Sharfman's. I'm a Talmidah here. I identify as a Talmidah here in Sharfman's. And the idea that we are all doing our own thing and on our own unique journey is one of the reasons I love teaching here so much. To be able to be the one to start off this journey together with you, I think it's a tremendous privilege. I'll be honest with you, I didn't know that I was the first one, and I prepared the sheir for tonight, not knowing that I was the first one. But Hashem has amazing plans, and when I prepared the sheir, it's the perfect sheir. I think Hashem gave us the perfect sheir to start off with for the first night. I want you to know, I have no expectations of anyone taking notes. I have no expectations of any. There's no tests. There's nothing like that in the source language. The only thing I ask is two things. Number one, if you can, to do your best to really be present. When I say to be present, I don't just mean to be here, but I mean to be here.

5:23 There's always a certain drive to be out of here. There's a certain like it could take you away. I'll do my best to keep the shiur as engaging as possible. And if you can, again, I know it's hard. Especially it's late at night. It's almost eight o'clock at night on a Thursday night. In general, you're not going to be jet lagged, but it'll still be the end of a week. I know that this is a hard slot. But I think for the girls that the Shana Be girls will tell you, I think it's a pretty meaningful job that we do here in the Sheer. That's number one. If I ask if you could be here, and the second thing I'll ask you, and this is even harder, is if you could open your heart to these ideas. When I say open your heart, I don't mean open your mind. The ideas I'm confident will be meaningful ideas to you and things that speak to your soul. But what I'd like, if I can, to ask a little bit more than that is to be able to access a part of you emotionally, to open yourself up to the possibility that these ideas can penetrate. These ideas can be something that really How shall I say this? That they can really make a significant change. That word 'change' is a very big word.

6:24 How many people here? You can raise your hand. It's okay. You don't have to be afraid. We're honest with each other here. How many people here are afraid of change this year? I know when I came to Israel, I was very afraid of change. Change is a very big word. It's very scary. There's a lot of vulnerability here because I don't know what that means. Change into what? What does that mean? What I'm asking for change is actually a very healthy thing. We're a caterpillar. We're becoming a butterfly. We're not becoming something other than ourselves. We're becoming our truest self. But I would only ask for you that if you could open yourself up to the possibility that maybe we could see the world in a new way, and that maybe we could take ourselves to a new place. And that's a very chash of a hope that I have for this year. I want to start off by asking two very basic questions on the parsha. Two very basic questions on the parsha. If you're going somewhere for Shabbos and you need a דבר תורה on the parsha, I don't know if you girls have one for Shabbos this week.

7:17 Who's going to be here for Shabbos this week? Any of the rebbeim or anything like that? Rabbi Sharfman will be here for Shabbos. I'm actually going to be down the block for Shabbos. Maybe I'll walk up to say hello. I'll ask Rabbi Sharfman if that's okay. Baruch Ata Adonai Yelain Melacham Shalom Yevavero. I have very little kavanas when I'm making brachas inside groups, because I have to think to myself that I'm a person who has a lot of kavanah. My kavanah when I make that bracha is that you should think I'm a person who makes a bracha with kavanah. I want you to know I had no kavanah whatsoever in that bracha. I don't want you to think I'm from on any level. Very not from. I'll still make a bracha. When you're going somewhere for Shabbos, blessed Hashem, these devar Torah that we say over on Thursday night are good to have with you in your pocket.

8:05 The Torah has a halacha in this week's parsha. I'm sure you all know about it. It's a halacha called the halachas of Bikurim. What's Bikurim? Bikurim is when you bring your first fruits from Eretz Yisrael to the Beis Hamikdash. You girls know that. So there's two things I want to ask. Number one, I want to speak about tonight the Shivas Haminim. There are seven Five fruits and two grains. There's seven species that are highlighted here in Israel. They're special. They're unique to the land of Israel. I want to talk about the inner meaning of each one of those species and what's relevant to our year here in Israel. But there's a second question that I want to ask tonight, which is about the baskets. Did you girls know that when you bring the bikurim to the Cohen, you have to bring them in baskets? It's very important that you know this. If you look inside of the pasuk, I'm going to read the pasuk inside. It says, "V'la'kachta me'irishis kol priah dama asher tavi me'artzach asher Hashem al kachah nosin lach."

8:59 When you get the first fruits of your land, that Hashem gave you, so what do you do to them? Vesamta batena, you should put them in a basket. That doesn't seem to be a halacha that we would expect. The main thing is that you bring the bikurim to the beis hamikdash. It doesn't matter what you bring them in. It seems here that you have to bring them in a basket. There's a highlight here on the basket. Not only that, two psukim later, it says the same exact thing again. It says v'loka ha kohen, the kohen takes batena miadecha. The kohen takes the basket from your hands. Does it matter that the Cohen takes the basket from your hands, or does it matter that the Cohen takes the fruit that you brought? We would think it matters that the Cohen took the fruit, and yet the Torah seems to place a very heavy emphasis on baskets. I want to, with your permission, try to answer these two questions tonight in a way that I think is very meaningful and relevant to all of us in our lives, but specifically to the hopes that we have for this year.

9:52 So I want to go through each one of the Zion Minim, each one of the Shivas Amim. Do you girls know what the Shivas Amim are? The Shivas Amim are wheat. Barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. I want to go through each one and share with you the inner message of each one. They're very important. The first thing I want to say—it's not me. This is a quote from the Labavitcher Rebbe. The first thing that I want to say is that wheat is human food. Wheat is what you make bread out of. Barley is animal food. So the first two grains that we encounter in the shivis aminim. One is for animals and one is for humans. What's the difference? There are two things you have to take care of this year that are very important. The first thing you have to take care of is the thing that makes you uniquely human. The thing that makes you above an animal.

10:43 Every single one of us in this room is endowed with a godly soul. That's what makes you not just an animal, not just alive. That's what makes you a person that has a desire to connect. Every single person in this room, without exception, I don't believe about any person in this room that you don't have a desire to connect. If I asked you if you could snap your fingers, you wouldn't have to put in any work. If I could snap your fingers and davening could be meaningful to you How many of you would snap your fingers? How many of you would snap your fingers just to be in a heartbeat? We would snap our fingers just to be able to say that I don't have to schlepp my way through davening. How hard is it to daven sometimes? How hard is it to open up a siddur and read what feels like somebody else's words? If you could snap your fingers and all of a sudden you could be somebody—not like one of those crazy yeshiva guys who daven like he's having a seizure. I'm talking about a regular, normal human being, somebody that daven like in a way that they're talking to Hashem. When I was growing up, there was a guy whose name was Rabbi Zebrowski. Rabbi Zebrowski davened in our shul. He lives today in Beit Shemesh. My father hates chazanim.

11:51 You know what it means to hate a chazan? If a chazan got up to daven, my father was like halfway out of shul already. You know the guys, especially like they love to sing things that have no business being sung. They add in nigunim, and it's like read the room, buddy. Nobody's in that space that you're in right now. And especially if you're a canter, that's a very specific thing. And everybody should get a notice in the shul beforehand that guy is going to be davening for the amma, so that we can make a choice if we want to daven there or daven somebody else. My father hates a chazan, but when Rabbi Zabrowski davened, my father would get excited. Rabbi Zebrowski didn't have an amazing voice; he had a very nice voice, and he knew the nusach beautifully. But we loved when Rabbi Zebrowski davened. Listen to my father used to say: "My father used to say" He's not putting on a show; he's talking to Tasha.

12:38 How many of us, if we could snap our fingers and somehow find a way to access talking to Hashem, would do it? Because a lot of us feel very stifled by our davening. The first thing you have to know about yourself is that you have a godly soul. That godly soul needs to be fed, girls. Our godly souls. I include myself in this. I'm talking not to you as a rebbe. I'm talking as a member of the group. Our godly souls are starving. I'm not going to make a Sharfman's joke. I'm not going to do that. I promise you. Our godly soul. I'm part of the ship here. And I'm with you. I'm also. They can make Sharfman's jokes about me. I understand. I'm saying that we How many of us have really paid attention to our godly soul? How many people in the last four years really dedicated themselves to focusing on God consciousness in their life?

13:24 The first thing of the Shavas Aminim is if you want to be a godly person, you have to do godly things. You have to feed your godly soul. You have to eat your wheat. You can't turn around and go. I don't know why I feel nothing in davening. If you haven't been God conscious at any other point in the day, if you just open up a siddur and you read the words, it's not fair to turn around and go. The siddur is failing me. Yet you just read the words. Imagine an actor who gets up there and they give him a script and he reads from the script. Is that going to be a good movie? Nobody's going to have a good movie if they're just reading from the script. If you get up there and you go

13:59 Why did you do that to me? It's like the point of a great actor is that we can't see the script. The point of a great actor is that when you're acting, I have certain movies that I grew up on that I love. I'm sure you didn't grow up on movies. I know everybody here never saw a movie in their life. But maybe just in case you did on the plane two days ago, or maybe today on Netflix in a break. I'm not saying. I'm just saying if you know what I'm saying, yeah. Maybe you saw a great movie, or maybe you saw a bad movie, and the difference is how much the actor is acting. So that if the actor has to act, you already notice that they're acting. What's the goal of acting? The goal of acting is I shouldn't even see you acting. You ever walk out of a movie theater? Do you guys know what a movie theater is? You still go. Nobody goes to movie theaters anymore. If somebody, it used to be, you went to a movie theater. Do you want to see how people walked out of a movie theater? If it was a great movie that you saw in the theaters, when the lights came back on, you saw people return to reality.

14:54 As they were in a different reality, they go like this. If you ever see at the end of a movie, people go like this. They blink. It's like this. Blinks. This is what it looks like. You ready? Whoa! You know that it's you've returned from one reality into the reality. It's a crazy concept. Because a great actor, you don't see the script. A great actor, you believe that's actually where they are. The reason why we don't dive in well is because we're not God conscious. We're reading a sitter. If you want your godly soul to feel something this year, the question is: Will you eat godly food? I don't mean physically. I mean spiritually. Will you invest in your godliness this year? That's the first thing we have to talk about. The second thing we have to talk about is: Will you take care of your animal self? You should know that in Judaism, we don't look at the animal soul as a bad thing. Every one of us also has not only a godly soul that seeks connection to Hashem. We also have a human soul that brings us down here into this world and says to be here. And that human soul needs to be taken care of.

15:51 If we're not going to treat ourselves well, and I want to tell you what that looks like, a girl goes to sleep at four o'clock in the morning. What are the chances? As one Rebbe once said, you know, yeah, um, if you go to sleep like a pig. What's the chance you wake up like a lion? If a person gets a good night's sleep and eats healthy food, I know that Sharfman's made a tremendous investment in the kitchen now, so that now when the catered food comes, we have a kitchen. There's an amazing thing that if you take care of your physical person, it helps you be a well-regulated person. I want to share with you again. I'm not here to bash. I'm not here to knock. But if your screen time exceeds Fill in the blank number that's inappropriate. I did this exercise with a guy this summer. I said, 'What are you on your screen a day?' He was on his screen over nine hours a day. So I said, 'Let's do some math.'

16:41 Let's see. Nine hours every day, six days a week. Let's assume he keeps Shabbos. Nine hours a day, six days a week. Nine hours a day, six days a week. What are you? How many hours are you on your phone over the course of a month? You lose days every single month. You lose weeks, months every single year. Over the course of ten years, I think it came out to the fact that he spent three and a half years on his phone of ten years—that's a crazy thing. It's not talking about God now. I'm not talking about spirituality for a second. That's not. Can we agree that that's not a healthy way to live? How many people, if they could—and again, I understand—I'm addicted to my phone, also. How many of us, if we could, have you ever been phone-free because you didn't get a SIM card because something got messed up? How much better was your life?

17:28 How much better was your life? There's a guy in yeshiva right now who still doesn't have a working phone. He's been in Israel for a week. He said to me, 'This is the best week I've ever had,' because we are addicted to our phones. That's not taking care. A human being should not be looking like this. The world is bigger than the screen that's in front of us. I'm not here to bash the phones. I'm not talking about the content. I'm talking about if I walk into a room sometimes in yeshiva, I'll see six guys hanging out. I'll see six guys on their phones and they're talking to each other. How would you feel if you were a child talking to your mother, and while you're talking to your mother, she's doing this? I'm listening to you. It's not a healthy thing. If you want to be a spiritual person, if you want to be a godly person, you can't just take care of your godly soul. You also have to take care of your physical soul. It's very important this year to take care of yourself. Those are two of the easy ones. Now I want to say some things that are a little bit deeper.

18:21 This is the hardest. This is going to be not the hardest one. This is the beginning of a very hard one. The next one that we have to talk about is grapes. Grapes represent wine in Judaism. Wine is nechnasiyayin yotzasod. When you squeeze the grape, you get the wine. When you put the wine inside of you, you girls don't know this. When you put wine inside of you, what happens? People start to become their truest self. Every single person in this room, including myself, I don't. This is not a negative thing. It's a reality. Every one of us is in hiding. Every single person in this room is two people. There's the person that you are. And then there's the person that you present to the world. It's the socially acceptable version of yourself. If you want to know who you really are, you have to say, 'What would I be like if I didn't care what other people thought of me?' It's a tragedy what happens in our lives. We become six years old. Do you remember when you became six and you went to school for the first time? And now you like care what other people think because it's important to be part of the group. What did you do after that? What did you give up? What were you willing to sacrifice to be a part of the group?

19:24 I'll share with you my daughter when she was in first grade. She came home and she said, 'Abba, don't buy me unicorn stuff anymore. Unicorns are for babies.' And it was such—it's terrible because unicorns, first of all, are awesome. And I saw the look on your face because you've returned now to the world where unicorns are acceptable. But for a little girl, she just wants to show up with a unicorn napsack because unicorns are for babies. My daughter loves unicorns. I know she loves unicorns. Her room is one giant unicorn sticker fest. If she has a wallet, it's a unicorn wallet. If she has a watch, it's a unicorn watch. But she was willing to amputate that part of herself to be part of the group. That's a natural thing that kids do. But how sad is that? Every one of us is living with a secret inside of ourselves. There's a person that you want to be, but you won't allow yourself to become that person. I'll share with you. There was a guy in yeshiva, an awesome guy, a very cool guy.

20:16 And he came to yeshiva. But he was one of these guys who was very judgmental. You know what I mean? Like he was the guy looking around and going, "Oh, there's so many weirdos here. I understand why there's so many weirdos here. You know that guy? You've met that guy." I don't mean you've met that guy, but you've met that guy. You've met that girl. I don't think any of you speak to guys. You know that guy? That guy. I'm sure some of you in the room know that guy. You might actually know this guy. So he was very judgmental, and finally, one Rebbe called him out on it. And this Rebbe, in a very nice way, said to him: I feel like you're being very arrogant. You're looking at people and you're standing in judgment of them. And really, it's because you're afraid of yourself.

20:52 Because you're a very cool guy and you're living on the pedestal. If you're a cool guy and you're living on the pedestal, you know what can happen. You could get knocked off the pedestal at any moment. There's a lot of vulnerability to being the cool guy, because you could become a loser just like that. A nerd doesn't have to be worried about becoming a nerd. They're already a nerd. But a cool guy has to be nervous that he's not going to be socially acceptable. And the Rebbe called him out on it. He got the message, and it was a crazy thing. All of a sudden, he started to change. This guy, who was this very cool guy, amazing ball player, became one of the weirdest guys in yeshiva. And I was so proud of him. I said, "This guy's really growing now. All of a sudden, he's becoming a weirdo." And I walked out of the beis medrash one time at eleven thirty at night on a Wednesday night, and I see a guy outside of our yeshiva. There's like a little chater. There's like a courtyard. And I saw somebody. I didn't see who it was right away. He was wearing a giraffe onesie.

21:43 And he was doing lunges. And I was like, "Who is this weirdo who's doing this?" And he turned, and I saw the profile, and it was this guy. I went over. I gave him the biggest hug in the world. I said, "I'm so proud of you that you finally became yourself," and I meant it, because he had to be this very cool guy. You know those guys that are like very macho, and you know that they're not. You know that act that they put on. I know you know. And it's a. I don't mean to use the word. I don't mean it like this, but it's a little bit gross, right? It's a little bit like really just be yourself. So when you actually get to see, because the girls are the only ones that get to see those guys for real. Because they break down their walls enough, and then finally, the girls go, no, I'm telling you, he's really sensitive, and everyone else is going, no, he's not, and they're like, yeah, no, he really is, and the guys are like going, trust me, he's not, he's putting it on for you, but really, really, he's not. Really, that guy is being real.

22:31 It's a very hard thing to get to the secret of who we are. Who would we be in this room? Write it down for yourself. Take a note. Think about it later. Who would you be if you could stop caring what other people thought of you? What would be the secret that could come out? What would you be willing to gift yourself? Would you be willing? There's a class in Mevaser. It's an amazing shir. It's a shir on tefila. One of the things that the rebbe does, which I love, is that he trains the boys to scream. In a room, they go to a room and they just scream. And they have to not be embarrassed when anyone else is thinking. How many of us manage to scream and you hear it and it's like oh that's the screaming shear today. It's a beautiful shear, even though it sounds psychotic from the outside. You think somebody is being murdered. It's a beautiful shear because the rebbe is training them. Stop caring what other people think about you and daven with reckless abandon. You know what I'm afraid to do? Can I be honest with you? I'm afraid to daven for the amud.

23:26 I don't think I have a very nice voice, and I'm afraid that people will judge me. I'm afraid that people will like I'll come down and people will go like I hate when Berg daven's for the Amid, and because of that, I haven't davened for the Amid in over 20 years. I don't have a terrible voice, but I'm afraid of what people will think of me, so I don't allow myself to sing. How many of us don't allow ourselves to dance? You know that feeling when you were a kid that you danced with reckless abandon. You ever see little kids? I have a video from COVID. My son was a very little boy in COVID. I think he was. What was COVID like three years ago? He was three years old during COVID, and a little boy has no embarrassment. He was standing on a chair and just going like this, and he's the worst dancer. But he's just shaking and moving, and I got a video. It's so cute, and that's why I love Google Photos because every once in a while it says three years ago today, and I get to go back and see the little cute pictures. I wouldn't have a phone if it wasn't for Google Photos. I'm not addicted to anything else but Google Photos.

24:20 And I see, and he's this little boy, and he's dancing with reckless abandon. What's sad? It's sad that now, if I ask my son to dance, he would go like this. It's a sad thing. We lost ourselves. A big part of this year, if you want to be a spiritual person, you have to learn Torah, you have to dive, and you have to do spiritual things. You have to take care of your physical self. One of the biggest things that you're going to accomplish this year is that you're going to discover who you are. That's the great discovering the depth of who you are. The next thing we have to talk about is the fig. One of the shitas. Is that the Eitz Hadass was a fig tree The Eitz Hadass. The word Das means to connect to something. Das doesn't only mean to think. Das means to integrate. Das means to become something. I am going to share with you a challenge that we all have in our Judaism. At least I have it. I think you might have it also. A challenge that we have in our Judaism is that it's like this external thing. You know what I mean? It's like there is me And then there is this Jewish thing that I have to do. I wouldn't want to do it, but there is this thing that I have to do.

25:21 And one of the challenges this year is to stop seeing Judaism as something that's external to us. We're not trying to get you girls to become something that you're not. We're trying to teach you how to integrate this thing called Yiddishkeit into who you truly are, because that's already who you truly are. In other words, if I told you this might sound crazy, if I told you that you actually naturally daven, you might say it's not true. I think it's important to keep the original meaning and structure while removing any noise. David Amelech said, "Vaani tefila. Tefila is something organic to the soul. It's something that we are. It's not this external thing. But the only way to do that is to have an attitude of integration. Meaning, this year your job is to take these lessons that you're going to hear from your teachers, from your rebbeim, from your mechanchot, from your rakazot, from Rabbi Sharfman. Your job is to take these things and actually integrate them into yourself." You can't be a bystander. I want you to know. There's girls that they're all wonderful and they're all precious and they're all amazing.

26:24 But there are always girls every time every year. There's girls that I'll call them. They're the girls that are fans, and then there are the girls that are players. And you'll be able to tell the difference very quickly. The girls that are fans, they're always on the sidelines. They're always when I come into cheer, they're always the ones that sit. I'm not knocking. I'm not throwing any shade on the back row, but they're always the ones that sit in the back row first. And they're always the ones that think I'm blind, which is an amazing thing. I'm not blind. I want you to know it's only ten feet from here, and from here. But somehow there are girls that think that I can't see this, or I can't see girls on their phone. I want you to know I don't know what girls think But do you mind if I take whose phone this? I don't know whose phone this. I'm going to borrow it for a second. When girls do this or guys do this and share, it's my favorite thing. What do you think I think you're looking at? What's the better alternative? That you're just a person who walks around like this

27:13 Right? There's girls that are fans. They're here. It's coming in one ear, it's out the other. They have an AirPod in, but they have long hair, so they think I don't see. Everyone has their shtick, and it's it's a fan thing. It's not a it's they're they're here, and I'm not saying it's not valuable. They're here, but it's a fan thing. They're they're they're on the side. They're not integrating the lessons. Then there are girls that they're showing up to work. They're here, and they want it. They want to be in it. It's not just something that's outside of themselves; it's something that's inside of themselves. The secret to this year, there's no magic to this year. The difference will be if you're going to look in eight months from now. If you want to know who's who, you'll be able to tell very quickly. There were girls that were fans. There were girls that were players. The players will make massive strides. It's guaranteed because they took the lessons, they integrated, they were involved. They weren't fans; they were players. That's the lesson of the thing: to be involved. Then there's the lesson of the pomegranate. We only have a couple of minutes left, so I'm going to start moving a little bit faster.

28:09 I apologize. Really, I would want more time with you. It's just that we started late because of dinner, but I apologize if I'm moving too fast. If anybody wants, I'll keep the sheet here afterwards. Anyone can take the notes. The next one is a pomegranate. This is my favorite one. Chazal say about a pomegranate that even our reshaim, even the people that are the lowest level Jews, are compared to a pomegranate. Why? Because even the empty ones, even an empty pomegranate is full of seeds. So if you look at a Jew and you say, 'Oh, that's an empty Jew. That's a low-level Jew,' you should know that Jew is full of mitzvos. There's a there's a certain. Again, I feel badly because I'm I'm going to use a word and I'm going to say it fast and I don't know if it'll make a hundred percent sense. But there's a ceiling that I can sense in this room right now. There's a ceiling. Every one of us has a ceiling. Like if somebody imagine if somebody said to you,"I'm going to paint a picture, and this is what you'll look like in nine months from now." Imagine if a girl said,"No That's not me. They just shut it down right away. That's not me. That's called having a ceiling.

29:11 How many people in this room are coming? And the answer is probably everybody, including myself. It's always the thing that we think we can't do. It's impossible. I would never become that. I swore to myself that I would never be like that. I think it's important to be honest about your feelings. I hated that girl when she came back from seminary like that. I'm never going to become that girl. You know that quiet judgmentalism that you had last year for all the girls that came back, that you were looking at them and going like that. It's very subtle. You want to hear what it sounds like? She did well.

29:35 What in the world does that mean? She did well, right? It's like that word well. I have no idea what that word well means. She did well. I don't know. Look on the outside, you know if a person did well or not. She didn't do well. There's a quiet judgmentalism, but there's always that girl that came back and she's too frum for Hashem, and she's like the frumest girl that ever wore. I'm talking about like the one that daven's right by the mechitza in campask. So that the boys can see her, you know what I'm talking about. She's a very firm girl, and I mean that sincerely. And yo, you had in your head like I'm not going to be that girl. I'm never going to allow myself to be that girl. You should know that that's a ceiling. The pomegranate teaches us that every single Jew, you think you're a low-level Jew, you think you're a low-level girl, you think Rebbe, but you don't know. I've done this avera, I've done that avera. I want you to know, you're not who you think you are. Every single person in this room could be something.

30:22 Beyond what they think they could be, they could even be beyond that. Every one of us has the capacity to be absolutely amazing. Every one of us has the capacity to be something that we never thought possible. The biggest thing that you have to fight this year is the word "impossible." It's impossible. I'll never become that. It's not true. We've seen girls and guys come to their time in Eretz Yisrael and they become amazing bnei Yisrael. They become amazing bnei Tyre. And guys, it's not people you would have predicted. It's not. There's always that Rebbe that goes, "Oh, I could have called it." I want you to know. There's so many guys over the years that I see in yeshiva that I'm like, I never would have called it. The guy is amazing. He's a balmidos. He's a bentira. He hurts for other people. That's the pomegranate. The pomegranate is a certain type of noble hypocrisy. It's like you think it's one thing. No. It's something much bigger than that. You have to fight through the ceiling this year. That's a very big deal of what you have to do. The next thing you have to do, and this is probably the hardest one I'm going to say, is the olive.

31:19 A grape when you crush it, even just a little bit, the wine comes out. But an olive, if you want to get the oil out of an olive, you have to squeeze it all the way to the essence. In other words, this year I'm telling you right now, there's going to be a tremendous amount of struggle. If you're not struggling, I'm sure they told you this in orientation. If you're not struggling this year, that means it's not going well. There's always that girl that says, "I don't know, I'm just having such a hard time." That's the design of what you're supposed to be doing. If this year doesn't involve some sense of struggle, no. It means you're doing it wrong. It's supposed to be hard. You're supposed to challenge yourself. Anything you've done well in life is supposed to be a challenge. I heard already a number of times from guys this week. They're also just getting adjusted to yeshiva. I can't tell you how many guys have said to me, 'Rebbe, this is much harder than I thought it would be.'

32:08 That's good. That's a good thing. If you're having a hard time, that's a feature. That's not a bug. That's the way it's supposed to be. If you want greatness in your life. Struggle is a part of it, so that's the olive. The olive is we don't just squeeze it a little bit like the grape. You have to squeeze it all the way if you want to get out the essence. And the last one is the exact opposite message, but they work together. The last one is the date. We know that there's a type of date tree. The Zohar Hakadosh, the Kabbalah, says that there's a certain type of date tree that for seventy years it doesn't grow anything. It just lies very serene, very tranquil, and then after seventy years it starts growing dates. As much as I told you just now that you have to struggle and it's going to be hard, I also want to tell you this: the ways of the Torah are pleasant. There are darche noam. If this year is not a year of serenity, if it's not a year of tranquility, if you feel like in some way this year like you're being ground down to the ground If it's just rubbing you the wrong way, that means something is wrong.

33:13 It's supposed to be hard, but it's supposed to be natural. It's not supposed to be unnatural. If you hear something from a rebbe this year that you don't agree with, if it's grinding on you the wrong way, if you feel like it's agitating you, and not in a good way that clarifies your thinking, but in a way that is more fluid and natural. Keep original vocabulary unless necessary for grammar. There's supposed to be a pleasantness to Torah. It's supposed to build you up. It's supposed to make you feel, in a certain sense, a sense of tranquility. And only from that serenity, only from that peacefulness, can we give birth to those dates? So those are the seven messages. Number one, you have to feed your godly soul. You have to feed your animal soul. You have to find out who you truly are. You have to find the grape inside of you. You have to get involved. You can't be a spectator. You have to reach beyond the ceiling and, for yourself, believe that you're something more than you think you are. You have to struggle, but you also have to be tranquil.

34:05 Here's the last thing I want to say to you, girls. All of those things are very nice messages. But if they're all these random, disparate movements, if you don't gather them together into a basket Then you're all over the place. There's a lot of girls this year that you're going to see. There's a certain sense of scatterbrained. One day it's this, and the next day it's that, and this next day is this, next day is that. We're not trying to teach you a mitzvah. We're trying to come and build an entire person. That's the goal of sharfman's. We're not here to teach Torah. We're here to build people. That's our goal here. So what we want is for you to gather together all of those kohos and bring them together, and then take all those kohos and give them to the Cohen. Girls, you have tremendous talent. Everybody in this room has tremendous talent. But the question is, are you going to use those talents and give it over to God, or are you going to use those talents and keep it to yourself?

34:56 It's an amazing thing. The amount of talent that's in the room right now. We don't know how much talent is in the room right now because so many people hide their talents. So many people don't have the courage to actually be vulnerable and allow themselves to be themselves. When you see people come out of their shell and they find their talents, it's an amazing thing. There was a boy in yeshiva many years ago. He did very nicely in yeshiva But he wasn't the top guy. He was very good. And then he went back to America and he found out that he was an artist. He allowed himself to be public with his art. And a crazy thing happened. He became famous. He's been on TV. He's a very well-known artist. It was a wild thing. You know what happened? He became an artist, and it impacted his Judaism tremendously. He started waking up at five o'clock in the morning to learn to daven. He started to call a boker. He became a rebbe. It was an unbelievable thing. A guy in yeshiva who we never saw him fly. He flew when he became an artist. If you take your talents and you actually allow yourself to be vulnerable and say yes. I'm a talented person. It will help you tremendously, but you have to take those talents and you have to give them to Hashem.

36:07 That's what we're here to do. We're here in this world for Hashem's mission. I know it sounds a little bit like I'm saying to you, like you're not here for yourself. It's true. You're not here for yourself. It's a much more inspiring message. If somebody comes to you this year and they say, 'This year is about you,' that's not a very inspiring message. It sounds a little selfish. If somebody comes to you and says to you, 'This year, you have the opportunity to do something for Hashem.' That's an inspiring message. You start asking yourself, what will I have to sacrifice? That's a good point. But the point is, we're here to give our basket over to the Cohen. We're not here to keep our talents for ourselves. I want to bless us all. I want to. This is it. I want to bless. I'm not doing do the 10 minute Rabbi thing where you finish for 10 minutes. This end in the last 30 seconds. I just want to say this. I want to bless every one of us. It's the first year, and I hope that at the end of the year we're going to be laughing and going like, I can't believe we've come so far.

36:55 We have these talents inside of us. The question is, will we gather it together in our basket? When we give it over to our Kodesh Baruch Hu, I want to bless us. We should be able to do this. That at the end of the year, we should be able to say, "I know who I am." I know I am. I struggled. I found peace in my life. I really am a person that did more than I ever thought possible, and I got involved. I wasn't just a spectator on the side. Girls have a beautiful Shabbos.