Lag BaOmer: Retract to Reveal

2:48 With fires being lit And everybody is together, and it's this amazing night of simcha. Now imagine Chassid Shalom, we lost someone in our life that we loved very much. And we were going to have a yartzeit suva, so I imagine the yartzeit suva would be quite somber. It would be a day of mourning, as this is the day where we remember that last year, two years ago, three years ago, this is when our beloved passed away. It's not a day of simcha, and yet Rishim Bayochai said that his day of passing was a joyful day, so he celebrated joyfully. So another question is, why do we celebrate Lag B'Omer the way we celebrate it with dancing and singing? Even if you want to say Rosh Hashanah is really the ancillary reason, we're dancing and singing because of the Rabbi Akiva reason. That's also equally strange. It's the day that everyone stopped dying.

3:41 Let that sink in for a second. Twenty-four thousand Talmidim Rabbi Akiva died. They stopped. Let's have a party. I'm glad they stopped dying too. But shouldn't it be a day where we go like, Yeah, we have to recover now? You just spent twenty-four thousand talmidim, Twenty-four thousand in thirty-two days, Thirty-three days is nothing. It's like a crazy thing. And by the way, who were these twenty-four thousand talmidim? Each one of these twenty-four thousand talmidim was a tana. Each one of these twenty-four thousand talmidim could have easily written things that ought to have been in the Gemara. The only reason we don't see them in the Gemara is because they were loaned. But still, twenty four thousand. Could you imagine how Klal Yisrael was rocked? It's like in the Holocaust. People say, how many? How many people died in the Holocaust? Six million. It's not true. The impact was much more profound than six million.

4:36 But I'm saying aside from we don't have to get involved in the numbers because that's not where the loss was. The yeshivas of Europe were destroyed, the entire system of limuratayra and raising people up. Is a rebbe in Mavasair. His name is Rav Chananya Berzan. He tells a story that Rav Mordechai Gifter, Zechariah Levrach, the Rosh Yeshiva, tells, used to say that before the Holocaust, he remembers and tells that there was a bacher who was dancing outside the beis medrash. Who was dancing outside the beis medrash? So they thought that he had gotten engaged, and he was very young. In those days, if you were a real talmudachem, you got engaged much later in life, when you were already in your thirties, because you were sitting and learning seriously. So they said he got engaged. How could he get engaged at such a young age? And they went outside to see, and he wasn't dancing because he got engaged. He was dancing with his friends because he had just figured out a pshat in a rashi, and that was worth dancing over. And Rav Gifter used to say, "That's what we lost in the Holocaust."

5:43 It used to be that it was regular for a person to dance when he had a chiddush. Twenty-four thousand talmidim of Rabbi Akiva died. Do we have any concept of what that means? Take a look at Shas. Shas is thirty-six volumes. It's big. Add twenty-four thousand talmidim to that. It'd be massive. We wouldn't even know what to do with it. So we celebrate the ending of their death. That seems to be a very strange thing. Why do we celebrate the ending of the death? We just had a plague that wiped out twenty-four thousand talmidim of Rav Yekiva. So those are the questions we'll ask tonight. We all know that Rishim Bayochai wrote the Zayir And he was a link, a very important link in the chain of Kabbalah. So I want to explain to you what Kabbalah really is. People hear Kabbalah and they think rabbis making people float and making people turn into chickens. I don't know exactly what image you have of Kabbalah.

6:48 Where did Kabbalah start? The truth is that Kabbalah started with Adam Harishon. Adam Harishon had an understanding of Hakadosh Baruch Hu that we do not have, and it was passed down generation to generation. Naiach. Avram Avinu, Yitzchak Avinu, Yaakov Avinu, to the Shvatim, Moshe Abinu. There's a reference to it in Perkei Avos. Moshe Kibel, Tiron Misielai. Why does it use the word of Kibel? It's a reference to Kabbalah, and it was passed down generation to generation. And Rabbi Akiva passed down. Rabbi Akiva was, of course, a great Mekubal, and Rabbi Akiva passed down Kabbalah to Shem Bayochai. Shem Bayochai, the Arizal came and explained from the Arizal, Rav Chaim Vital. And then all the great mukubalim, the balshamtof, of course, brought it to Chassidus, and it's progenated out to the rest of the world. But what is it? So I once asked my rebbe, 'What is Kabbalah? How do you define Kabbalah?' He said, 'Kabbalah today is very easy to understand, because we all know that what you look at is not real.' What do you mean? If you look at an object, what are you seeing of the object? You're seeing the object's form. You're seeing the object's presentation to the world. But we know today that things are made up of things.

8:13 So water is not water. Water is hydrogen and oxygen. It's a certain amount of hydrogen, a certain amount of oxygen. When you look at a table, you see a table, but what's really beneath the table? There's atoms. There's molecules. There's a lot of things going on that make up things. Today we know for sure on a scientific level, it's foolish to look at something and say this is what it is, because that's not even true. We used to think the atom was the smallest thing in the world, and then we cut open an atom. One hundred thousand Japanese people. And we found out there's much more to the world than just an atom. Kabbalah is. I'm going to say this. I'll say it probably more than once. If you don't get it on the first try, please try to get it on the first try. Which means be here now. But if you don't get it on the first try, it's okay. But be here now anyway. I'll say it a third time for the people that are not here now. Be here now anyway.

9:19 I'm just saying. If you know what I'm saying. To quote the great Rav Wengler. Just like everything is made up of atoms and molecules, everything is made up of DNA. The world has a spiritual DNA. And the spiritual DNA is not just the spiritual worlds. The spiritual worlds are what impart meaning on the physical world. So I'll try to explain it with a muscle. If somebody tells you, 'My computer broke.' What broke? What do they mean when they say 'my computer broke'? They don't mean the box. They don't mean the screen. They mean what's going on inside. Because what's going on inside is what imparts meaning to the screen. So in other words, it's like 'my computer broke' and now I can't recover any of my data. So you're not really worried about the computer. The computer was just an object. What you're really worried about is the meaning that gives the object its whole purpose.

10:32 So when we speak about Kabbalah, what are we really speaking about? We want to understand what's called the Sisrei Torah, the Sodas of Torah, the secrets, the hidden secrets of Torah. Why do we want to understand that? Because everybody wants to connect to the internal thing. The easiest example of this is in a relationship. When a person is in an external relationship, what does that mean? It means I don't really care about you, and you don't really care about me, and nobody wants to be in a relationship like that. For example, let's say you knew that you were dating a guy who didn't care about you at all, and in fact, every time you open your mouth, he thinks, "Why is she talking?" Every time she's talking, it's like I can't take it anymore. I just want to rip off my arm and beat myself with it. I just can't take it. So why are you staying with her?

11:28 She's really pretty. So what? What do you, the person in the relationship, feel? That's horrific because you don't care about me. Aren't you your external self? Almost not at all. That's a presentation of who you are. It's why when we're attracted to people you can be initially attracted to someone who's very physically beautiful and then once you get to meet them all of a sudden that level of attraction diminishes or the opposite. You can meet someone who's not attractive at all and then you start to meet them and all of a sudden The attraction rises. Why is that? Because what's being, what's driving it is this spiritual DNA. It's like until I know you, I don't care about you. But now that I know you, it's like of course we're supposed to be together. This is why beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Because when you meet someone and you're like I don't understand how that person goes together with that person. What are they really saying? Saying because I'm not in that DNA. I'm not in that relationship. So many years ago, there was a guy in yeshiva that got engaged. You come to the lachaim. You come to the vort. Whatever it was. And you saw his kallah. And there were some whisperings, lashon hara. But there were some whisperings because this person's collar. She didn't have the most attractive appearance.

12:51 I'm saying it nicely. What these people didn't know is that this girl had gotten sick. As a result of her sickness, she had to take steroids. And as a result of her steroids, I don't know if you know this, but steroids sometimes cause a person to put on massive amounts of weight. Here, you see, there's like cool, good, from nice guy. You show up to the Lachaim, and it's like. And those that didn't know were asking the question. And those of us that knew that he had been dating his wife since he was fifteen years old, and he didn't see her that way. So it wasn't the pshat that he didn't find her beautiful. He did. How could that be? Because the relationship was so much more than that. And we all know that that's the real thing. We all know that the more you meet a person, that's where the attraction is. Attraction is not. Beauty is not skin deep. Attraction is real. That's the DNA. What are people frustrated by in today's generation?

13:50 This is so important. They're so frustrated that they have a pornographic—you'll forgive me for using that word—relationship with God and the Torah. That's what people are so frustrated by because they were taught their entire life. Here's what Judaism is, and they were never taught the meaning that was driving these things. People expect us to get excited because we showed them the menu. Halacha is the menu, but that's not what tastes delicious, right? When I go to any restaurant, I'm pretty much going to order the same thing. It's going to be a burger. I'm a burger guy. I love burgers because to me, a burger is a work of art. What you can put on a burger and like, the whole thing. When I see a burger, it's a pretzel bun, and if it's a thinly sliced tomato, and if it's a pastrami burger. And if it's got the sautéed onions and mushrooms, you could tell I'm a little hungry. Avocado, saying to me like it's a platform. Like a steak is just a steak, unless it's a 36-ounce steak, and then it's a really big steak. But a burger is like that's like the Mona Lisa of what you can order.

14:54 So if so, when I'm looking at a menu, I'm excited by the menu. Because I know what the burger is going to taste like. So if you're teaching me the halachas of Shabbos, that's nice. But I've never tasted Shabbos before. So what do you want from me? Aren't you excited? You're not allowed to do bore on Shabbos. Not at all, because I have no idea why that would be. So don't ask me to get excited by the halacha. Invite me to your house for Shabbos. Show me the beauty of Shabbos. Show me the meaning of Shabbos, and then teach me the halacha. And the problem is, they go hand in hand. You can't have the beauty of Shabbos without having the halachas of Shabbos. But the reason we're so frustrated

15:32 And we say it in the worst ways. But really, what we mean when we say things like, 'I want to go. I want to come to seminary for the year because I want it to be my Judaism. I feel like right now I'm only doing it because I'm supposed to or I should do it. But I really want to know why I'm doing it.' You're saying it in what appears to be a narcissistic way, but you actually mean it. I want to know why I'm doing the things I'm doing because I know that if somebody shows me a computer screen and doesn't turn the computer on, there's no value in that screen, and there can't be value. In this Judaism, if you don't teach me why. And that's why people say, 'Does God really care if I do borei on Shabbos?' And the answer is yes, He infinitely cares, just like He cares about everything. He infinitely cares about it. But the reason you're asking the question is because you've only been shown the menu of Shabbos. You haven't been shown the atzmius of Shabbos. You haven't been invited into the palace of the King. And so, if somebody comes along to you and they say, 'I want to tell you that. I have a very special day. Like to me, this is the most special day.'

16:34 And I want to invite you to participate in it. And it's somebody that loves you and that you love. The answer to that question is, Of course, you don't look at your calendar and go, 'I don't know.' It kind of seems boring. But when God says, 'When I created the world in seven days. Six days I worked, and on the seventh day I sat back and I had brought my admiration into the world.' And it's really special. I relive it every seven days. And you are the chosen people. I'd like you to. I'd like to invite you to participate in that. But it's boring. Of course you don't say that because you're part of the relationship. So when people say they're bored on Shabbos, what they really mean is I'm not connected to Shabbos. So everything in the Torah exists on multiple levels: pshat, Remez, drush, and sod. What is the secret of the Torah? The secret of the Torah is its inner meaning. That's what Kabbalah is. That's what sod means. So does Kabbalah. So does the inner meaning behind the Torah. And by the way, that's why it's called a secret. The secret of every relationship is the thing that only you and your husband know. That's the beauty of it. And if you start sharing that secret with everybody else, what happens to the relationship? It's gone.

17:37 The things, and this is so important. I'll give it to you as a lesson for your life. Hopefully, you'll take it with you. The things that your husband tells you in private, or the things that you experience in private, don't share that with your best friend. That's for nobody but you and your husband. That's why it can be so devastating when husbands find out that their wife is sharing certain things. Why are they so devastated? It's because it's a gam in the relationship. There are certain things that only stay between a husband and a wife. That's where the relationship is. It's in the secrets. That's why Moshe Rabbeinu was afraid that Klal Yisrael would be unworthy of redemption because we were telling secrets. The secret.

18:14 That's what Dason and Aviram said. We know your secret and we'll tell your secret. That you killed a Mitzri. We'll tell the secret. The secret was what held us together. The fact that we can keep each other's secrets is the value of the relationship. What's the secret of Torah? A guy can come and learn the Bible, but he doesn't know the secret of the Torah. The secret of the Torah is the meaning. The relationship that comes with it. Does this make sense? Yeah. When somebody asks you, 'What's Kabbalah?' Kabbalah is not. I want to be clear. Kabbalah is not that you went to some Hasidic Rebbe and he looked into your eyes and he told you in ten years from now. He goes into oh. In 10 years from now, that's not what Kabbalah is. It might be true that somebody with a deeper understanding of Kabbalah has certain understandings of the world, perhaps of ourselves that we don't know. But that's not what's relevant to us. What's relevant to us is the revelation of the inner essence of Judaism.

19:08 Ask your average 16-year-old why they're frustrated with their Judaism. What are they going to say? I don't get it. I'm just doing it, but I don't get it. And if I don't get it, I'm going to stop doing it. The meaning is always more important than the thing that you're doing. So I'll give you one more example. With me? Sure. I do that sometimes just to see who goes. The meaning is always larger than the thing that you're doing. What's a classic example of this? I hate it when Rebbeim make fun of sports. I hate it. Same. I'll tell you why. Because this is what they do. They take something, they remove its meaning, and then they say See how stupid it is. You could do that with anything. Let's do it with basketball. I've done this. We did it with the teacher. I'll do it. I'll do it in my way.

20:18 It's with any. It's with any competition, right? If you remove the competition aspect, yes. So then, of course, you can make it sound stupid. But that's the meaning was the whole thing. What's better to play basketball when you're shooting around by yourself or to play in a game? Everyone knows that to play in a game is better. Shooting around by myself, I'm only challenging myself. Playing in a game, we're challenging each other. Keep elevating the importance of the game. What if it's just a pickup game? What if it's an organized game? What if we're part of a league? What if that league is the greatest league in the history of the world? What if it's the Eastern Conference Finals? What if it's the Western Conference Finals? What if it's the championship? And we tune into these things because of their meaning. Your average sixteen-year-old is frustrated with his Judaism because he has no idea what it means. And so, what's our answer to that? Our answer to that is well, the reason he doesn't know that it's relevant to him is because we haven't taught him the halacha. That's the last thing in the world that's relevant to him. I'll tell you, I'll be very honest with you. In high school, I didn't daven. So I was talking in davening one day.

21:25 So I remember a rebbe, a very well-intentioned, very foolish rebbe, pulled a shulchan aruch off the shelves, came over to me and said, "I don't know if you know how?" By the way, the rebbe that does that, he always somehow has that sort of yeshivish astamer, maybe Maybe you don't know But like it's, it's. I'm sorry, I'm having a Vietnam flashback right now. Maybe you don't know, but it's usher to talk during davening right now. I'm like, Oh okay, thanks. Did you notice I haven't been davening for the last six months? Why would you tell me it's usher to talk during davening? Let's have a real conversation about davening. I don't want to say the words of the seder; they're repetitive. I have no idea what they mean. It's not relevant to my life. Come on, let's have a real conversation about it. That's what Kabbalah is. Kabbalah is the real conversation. Now you could have that conversation on many different levels, but ultimately that's what it boils down to.

22:20 So I want to tell you a story that you all know about Rishon Baruchai. Everybody knows this story. Rishon Baruchai had to run away from the Romans because he had said certain things about the Roman government. He and his son Eliezer went to a cave. In that cave they sat and learned for twelve straight years. They were fed in a miraculous way. They were clothed in a miraculous way. After twelve years, they made a decision to come out of the cave. When they looked around in the world What did they see? They saw people working. After having been hidden away in that cave, living exclusively with Hakadosh Baruch Hu for twelve years, everywhere that Rishon Bayochai looked, he burnt up everything around him. What does that mean? He burnt up everything around him. It means he was highly critical of anybody that wasn't totally dedicated and deserving to serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu. They were just working, and he was like, "How could you just be working?" So Hakadosh Baruch Hu, a Baskel came out of Shamayim, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu said to him, "Is this why you came out of the cave to destroy my world?"

23:23 Go back into the cave. He went back for another year, and when he came out, he was able to live and be more tolerant within the world. What changed? What changed between his twelfth and his thirteenth year? So I'd like to offer a pshat. What is the significance of the numbers twelve and thirteen? When a girl is twelve years old, she gets her nefesh shalokis. Till you're twelve years old, you don't have a nefesh shalokis. You have a nefesh abahamis, and you're preparing. You have an animal soul, something that animates you. But your mitzvos don't count because you don't have a godly soul yet. When a person becomes twelve years old, then they get that godly soul. For a girl, for a boy, it's when that happens when they're thirteen. Now we all know that women have an extra level of spirituality that men do not have, and that's why women are so elevated that they don't need For example, mitzvahs. Some mafarshim say that a man needs more mitzvot because otherwise he's less naturally spiritual. He needs more mitzvot. A woman accesses that just from within her being. That's why she gets a year younger; she's more mature in that way. We know that, by the way. You look at a girl who's 18 years old. You look at a guy who's 18 years old. Those are two different species. It takes time to catch up.

24:42 So Rishim Bayochai came out, so to speak, of the cave at 12 years old at his bat mitzvah. A spiritually sensitive man, with high spiritual attention, and when he looked at the world, all that he saw was acts of service that were not, by definition, spiritual. In that elevated spiritual place, he was destroying the world. Hakadosh Baruch Hu said to him, "You've missed the point of spirituality." Go back another year. Your spirituality needs more maturation. You're not capable of holding this high level of spirituality. You need another year of maturation. He comes out after a year. Now he's got his bar mitzvah neshulikis. What does that mean? It means as follows: You have two ways of looking at the world. You could look at the world and say these activities are not spiritual. He's just planting. He's just reaping. He's just sowing. He's not doing anything that's uniquely spiritual. But if you look behind it to the inner meaning of it You'll see that it's no less spiritual than the person that's sitting and learning in the beis medrash. And this is a revolution. If you understood what was just said, this by itself is a revolution. Where do we serve God?

25:56 Everywhere. And if you don't understand that, you've missed the entire point. People always ask the question. It's about that time of year that we have to ask that question. How do I take it with me? What a foolish question! How do you take it with you? Implies that it's here and not there. No. How do you take it with you? What Torah have you been learning this entire time that it's like Torah exists in Eretz Yisrael and how do I take it back with me to America? Just the opposite. The Torah that you've learned, hopefully, here in seminary, is that it's everywhere. That serving Hakadosh Baruch Hu is as much when you're changing a baby's diaper as it is when you're learning a remban. And the problem is that people are being taught today that it's in the beis medrash. It's who's to say that it's not a greater service to Hakadosh Baruch Hu to sit with your crying child and console them when they were bullied in school or made fun of or did poorly on a test than it is to sit in beis medrash to sit there and struggle over a remban. Who's to say that one is a greater spiritual achievement?

26:54 That's not what that means. Talmud Torah Kneged Kula is a statement about the value of Torah, not the value of the service. Torah is for sure equivalent to all other mitzvot. But does that mean that we? Let me ask a question: If Talmud Torah Kneged Kula, why don't we learn all day on Rosh Hashanah? Why do we stop in Daven? Why do we listen to Shipher? Why do we do anything else other than? Because everyone has their role at their time. I'm not denigrating the Ramban. I'm saying that the role of a Jewish mother is equally important. And if we set up our generations of girls to say that, and for guys too, by the way, if we set up the generation of girls that the only place to serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu is in the basement restroom.

27:30 What does that mean about the rest of their life? And it's the same thing when it comes to the guys. A guy says, "now it's time for me to go to work." Well, I guess I'm not pursuing spiritual things anymore. There's something fundamentally off about that. There's a reason that we're being sent out into the world the way we're being sent out. It used to be a person could work a couple hours a day; he didn't leave the shtetl. Today, a person is out there in the world. There's something going on in the world. There's shifts going on. We have to understand that these shifts are spiritual. That's the mistake, so to speak. That Rishon Bayochai was making. He was right. He looked at them planting the fields. And he's like, "Where's the spirituality?" It looks like a mundane activity, and there is. It's not a spiritual activity like learning Torah. So he was saying it's mundane. Why are you involving yourself in mundane? Sit and learn all day, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu will take care of the rest. That's your Shemba Yochaishtah. And at the same time, he came back out a year later and said, "Hey, I see that there's opportunity to sanctify the mundane." And that was the message that last year that he learned in the cave.

28:26 And this is why there's a minig on Lag BaOmer to play with bows and arrows. Ever hear this minig? What's the value of a bow and arrow? There's a yosod when it comes to the concept of a bow. The Gemara says that in the times of Roshim by Yochai, there were no rainbows. The Bnei Yissaschar explains that we have a rainbow. We all know what the Torah tells us. Except in the days of Rashi, because he saw to the essence of every single Jew, even the Jew that was so far moved. Rashi brought to the world was that when you look at their essence, it's not shyach to think about their chait. It's like were they doing the avera? They were doing the avera. Is that who they are? Of course not. Rashi saw to the essence, so there was no rainbow. So that's why we have bows and arrows. It's that rainbow. It's saying in the world of Roshim Bayochai.

29:32 Don't look at the avera. Don't define a Jew by their avera. That's why the Lubavitcher Rebbe was very against the term 'secular Jew.' There's no such thing as a secular Jew. There's a Jew, Observant Sahin, Observant Saher. Some people are more, some people are less. In front of you, you have a Jew. That's why Kiruv. If you don't do it, if you don't do Kiruv right, it has the opportunity to become so abusive. Because it's like I'm gonna make you a good Jew. They're already a good Jew. You can introduce them to mitzvos. You can share with them observance. But they're already as beautiful as you are. And the fact that you think you have more than them is the mistake. We're all in the same relationship. The Jew that has never done a mitzvah a day in his life, that never learned a block of Gemara, that never came to Yerushalayim Yerakaydash, that Jew is not fundamentally any different than any of us. That's why when you're shooting a bow and arrow, it's not like fighting with a sword. Because when you're fighting with a sword, you're confronting the person directly. How do you nail someone that's behind a fortress that's off in the distance?

30:34 The answer is you have to pull the bow back close to your heart. That's the inner essence. The more you pull back close to your heart and then let go, you'll have massive impact in the world. That's what Rishon Bayachai did. He pulled every single Jew close to his heart and he had hashpa in the entire world. It's not an accident that half a million people are going to come to Meron tonight and so many of them won't be observant. Because Rashi was for everyone, Rashi was every single Jew. He reached every single Jew and look at the impact. How many thousands of years later But still, every one of us is so makusher to the concept of Rishon Bayochai. That's why on Rishon Bayochai's yard site, on a regular yard site you light a candle, because the pasuk says Kiner Hashem Nishmas Adam. But Rishon Bayochai's his neshama was so big that it could only be called a bonfire. So we light bonfires all over the country because Rishon Bayochai wasn't just a neri; he was a madura. Every aspect of his being lit up the entire world. The impact was so far and so wide because he drew so close to his essence.

31:36 The word pshat remes yushin sod stands for. It's an acronym for parades. Take off the samach at the end, and what do you have? If you take out the sod, if you take out the meaning, if you take out the secret of Torah, you're left with the word parad. Parad means a donkey, incapable of having children. Because when you only give someone the menu and you don't give them the seudas of Torah, you don't give them the secrets, you don't teach them the meaning. It's incapable of building on itself. It's incapable of progenating, of having a family. It's a relationship where there's no meaning. It's pornographic. I want to take the last couple minutes to explain the deeper message of what was going on with the talmidim of Rabbi Akiva. What does it mean that they were lo nagu kavod zebeze? Each one of the Talmidim of Rabbi Akiva was a gadol b'taira like we've never seen in our lives. What does it mean? They were like spitting at each other, pulling out the chairs from behind them, making noise at night when they went into the dorms.

32:36 Rabbi Akiva, we know, famously said, "Va'hafdalarecha kamocha ze klal gadol b'taira." So, what did they understand? We have to love every single person like we love ourselves. Ze klal. What does klal mean? This is the general principle. So they said, 'Amazing, Rabbi Akiva is teaching us that every single one of us is like every other person in the world. We're all connected. We're all one. We're a klal gadol. It's one giant principle. But girls, if it's one giant principle, if it's a klal, what might you forget? There's a rule in halacha. What's it called? Klal uprat uklal. That's why we learn things out. And then there's a whenever there's a general, what's there going to be? There's going to be a specific klal uprat. So what did we do? We did something amazing. We said every one of us is like every single one of us. We share the same neshama. So what type of respect should we treat each other with? The same respect I treat myself with. But that's wrong. That's dead wrong. You don't treat people with the respect that you would give yourself.

33:45 You treat people with the respect that they deserve, which is different than the respect you would give yourself. When we say v'hafta l'or echa kamocha, it means the same quantity, not the same quality. What's respectful for one person is disrespectful for another person. A person says, "Well, I wouldn't care if they did that because I hold myself to be a nothing, because I'm a humble person. I can treat you in that same way." No, you have to look at every person. You have to see their differences, their distinction. See, when you boil it down, it's all different. Somebody once said to me, many years ago, they said, "I think I know what Judaism is all about." So whenever you hear something like that, you really want to hear the answer. You can give it to me, Alregalachas. You can give me the entire thing. I said, "Okay, what is it?" They said, "All of Judaism is just fighting hedonism, the pursuit of physical pleasure." See, if you look at every single yontif, that's what it's about.

34:41 There's an element of truth to that. But that's like the klal, maybe? But what about all the pratim? See, all he kept doing is he says it's so stupid. I'm doing the same thing over and over again. And by the way, some of us feel like that. Some of us feel that whenever we hear a shmuz about a particular yontif, it's the same shmuz as every other yontif. But that's because you're getting the general sense and you're not getting down to the specifics. And here's where I really want to bring it home. I want you to open your hearts for a second, if you can, to hear something that I think is important for every single one of us to hear. We all have to serve Hashem differently. Sometimes the chinuch system tells us that we all have to serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu in the same way. In a general sense, that's true. We all have to do the same mitzvot. We all have to abstain from doing the same averus. But if you're doing the mitzvah the way the girl next to you is doing the mitzvah, something is fundamentally off. God didn't make doubles. God needs you. And when you learn the siddes of tayr, when you learn the tayr of Hashem by achai, when you learn the tayr of the balshamtof, when you learn that. The Taurus Achassidus

35:43 The whole side of Taurus Achassidus is to say, Who are you? What are you contributing? What's your unique soul? Your unique soul is one, just with every, and it's totally one with every other soul, and yet it's unique. Just like we're all human beings, but every single one of us is different. That's why the Gemara says that there's no such thing as two people that have the same exact face. Even identical twins, you can tell them apart because they're so different, and you can see that subtle difference in their face. It's our job, on Yom Tovim like Lag BaOmer, to ask ourselves, 'What am I contributing? What am I doing?' Because when you live in a soulful place, it changes your whole life. For example, if you live in a soulful place, you understand that death, while tragic and sad, is also an exceptional moment of joy, because the soul is rejoined in an unencumbered way with its maker. So that's what Rav Shimba Yochai was saying. Rav Shimba Yochai was saying, my soul on the day of my passing will be connected, because he lived in such a place of essence, such a place of atzmios.

37:00 So he said, the body is like getting in the way almost. I can see the meaning behind every single thing. Don't be sad on the day of my death. Tap into the aspect of death. That's happy. That's what Rashi Yochai wanted. On a regular day, how would we celebrate someone's death? We would be sad because we miss them and we miss what they brought to the world. But Rashi Yochai, who was all essence, what did he say on the day of my death? The only thing you can experience is joy because the soul is reconnected with its Maker. And that's the same bechina that happened. The Talmidim Ravi Beigiva. They weren't living in a soulful way. They were living on the level of every one of us is one giant soul. But they didn't get it down to the bare essence of the soul, which is that we're all so different. You can be one and you can be different at the same exact time. So we celebrate their death or the ending of their death in the same way because we're being metakin the chait of the talmidim of Rabbi Akiva.

37:56 With the last two minutes that I have, I want to share with you where I was this past Shabbos. On Wednesday night of last week, I ran to the airport and flew to Connecticut, Stamford, Connecticut. I flew to JFK and then got a ride to Stamford. Connecticut. And I was there for an NCSY Shabbaton. NCSY staff training. Six hundred people came together for Shabbos in the Stanford Hilton. It was a who's who of leadership in American Jewry. Every madrich, every madricha, dedicating their summer to trying to bring Jews closer to Hashem. Every regional director of every region in NCSY was there. Anyone who was a director or an assistant director on any of the summer programs was flown in from around the world to be there. They flew in, Rav Judah Michel. They hired Charlie Harari and Dr. Palkowitz for Shabbos. Rav Moshe Sfui Weinberg from YU. David Rabbi David Bashefkin was there. He was the educational director of NCSY. Moshe Bain, the head of the OU, was there. Rav Micha Greenland, the head of International NCSY, was there. Everybody was there. It's like if you weren't there, I don't know what you were doing.

39:28 Community partners, people that are supporting this endeavor. I cannot tell you what the ruach was like over Shabbos. It was something to. It was like out of a godol book, almost like don't believe it. Tish Friday night, Tish matzei Shabbos. Just the speakers were incredible. The feeling of like, okay, we're here to do something special was so there, was so present. And here I am, and it's now, I flew back on Sunday night. And I'm still inspired, even though my role will be more global. I won't have the same impact that these madrichot and madrichim will have over the summer. So I was talking with some of the boys in yeshiva today. I said, if we had fifteen million dollars to spend. Because somebody told me that the NCSY summer budget is around fifteen million dollars. If we had fifteen million dollars to spend, where would we spend it? Would we spend it trying to be makari of public school kids? The chances of success are so few. Let's take that money and invest it in the yeshiva world. These girls and guys are already bought in. Let's double down.

40:43 The impact is going to be ten times as great. And some of the boys were saying, "That makes more sense. Let's pull out of the world of kiruv." And I said the opposite. If you don't spend that money trying to share with every single last Jew in the world that they have a chelak el kamimal, that they're entitled to the tayrak doisha just like we are, then there's no point in the yeshiva light to begin with. We save our brothers and sisters wherever we go. We pull back that arrow to the essence to reach the farthest places in the world. If you're not willing to throw away the numbers, throw away the statistics, and just say that's my brother, that's my sister, and you're not willing to see their neshama as equal to every other neshama, then what's the point of this whole endeavor? When you live on the level of a soul, so kiryuv, even though numbers-wise it may not be as successful, but in essence it's so important. And even if you have someone in your life that you're trying to reach out to, and you're trying to share the essence of who they are and the essence of who you are.

41:51 And you're trying to come together with them. Even if they don't keep Shabbos, even if they don't keep kosher, even if they don't send their kids to yeshiva, you've still won. We make the stories like it was a massive success because after that summer, they chose to go to yeshiva, and then they chose to go to yeshiva in Israel. And because of that, they married a frum guy or a frum girl and raised the family of bnei Torah. That's awesome. But it's equally awesome if none of those things happen, and just you've shared with them. You've pulled back a little bit and you've shared with them. You're a Jew. You're a soul, and because of that, you're worthy of dignity and respect. You have a mission in this world. Your life has meaning, and I'm just trying to share that with you. And whether or not that person accepts it, it makes no difference.