Matos Masei - Hard Enough to Survive and Complete the Journey (Staff Training With NCSY Next Step)

2:39 This is not, in general, a positive meeting. We look for people who are flexible and can work with others. If I had to ask, and I'm just guessing based on the five minutes that I was let to sit here while you guys were having your meeting I imagine that a lot of flexibility has already been required from you this summer. Perhaps you stretched in ways that you did not know that you could stretch And yet there's also a value to being a tough person. In a hostile world We're called upon to be tough. We're called upon to be rigid. We're in amkiseh orif. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Especially in Glos. And especially as we look at the world around us, the world that many of our NCS wires are coming from And there's a certain flexibility that we're not okay with A certain malleability.

3:40 Is that a good word? We got malleability. The ability to conform to be part of something. There's a certain malleability that's unhealthy. As our NCS wires take on secular values that are antithetical to Torah. One of the big challenges that we have Especially in our community, how do we negotiate the tension of living in the world we find ourselves in this particular period of time Okay, I think that's a good point. Yeah, so the key is to stay true to our values. Not only staying true to our values, but those values are shining so bright from within us that they impact others. Have a son-in-law. Baruchatov Adam Leilan. Amen. Thank you. The I have a son-in-law Who's he? He's a man. He's capable of taking care of business. And he's a young guy. And we were talking, and he says, "Look, the world is a hard place."

4:42 Person needs to be able to step up. Right for the guys in the audience Whether a girl will be able to express this or not, we know that. What does a girl want in shaduchim? She wants somebody who's capable of stepping up to the plate of life. And providing for the family, being reliable, being safe. We don't really talk about this very much. Girls always talk about the values. I want him to be a ben torah. I want him to be a good father. I want him to be a good husband. High on the list of unspoken things is I want someone who's going to take care of business. There's a certain toughness that's required in life. I was talking with somebody yesterday. Person, the Rebbe in our yeshiva And I asked him. I said, "I want to task you to take care of these five things." He was okay, but I want to be part of the team. I don't want to be the leader of the team. I have to have another conversation with him now.

5:35 Because what I want to go back to him and say is, "You're capable of being the leader of this team." I know you haven't done it yet and you've always played that second role. But we, the yeshiva and the boys, need you to step up and be a captain. There's a toughness that's required in life. So we find ourselves somewhere between in life, negotiating this paradoxical tension of I'm meant to be a pliable person, a malleable person A flexible person. I work well with others. People feel comfortable around me. I can mirror what other people are in that moment to be with them. And at the same time To hold true to our values and standards. Even in the five-minute meeting that I was sitting here, I'm sure it was longer than five minutes. But the five minutes that I got to sit here at the end, I was watching Rabbi Bernstein jump back and forth between these two things, and it occurred to me, I'm about to give literally this year. It's like we have standards, we have values, we want you to come to Mishmar, but we love you by Asher Hu Shom.

6:37 Though that is by definition the tension, and I imagine that many of you are walking away So wait a second, which one? I'm supposed to tell that kid I love you exactly where you are. But also at some point in the future I want you to become something. Whether it's this summer, a year from now, or ten years from now, I heard you say both of those things because both are true. There's a flexibility and a rigidity that we have to have as madrichim, as madrichot. As part of our responsibility. So there's a question: Where does toughness come from? Are we born tough? Where are you from? You know exactly what I mean. He's very soft. So soft, like Disney soft. Listen to me. I know what you're seeing on the outside. He's from Brooklyn. I know what's on the inside. You're able to act like the lamb that you are because you have a lion inside.

7:41 Brooklyn, Brooklyn is, is tough personified. Brooklyn's not the Five Towns. You know what I mean? Shaila, are we born tough? So the Rebbe says, and it's true No kid is born tough. Nobody's born tough. You might meet some teens on the program this summer that are tough. I promise you, they weren't born that way. You've never in your life met a tough baby. When you hold a baby, it's all smiles, it's all love, it's all emotion. They're not tough. Not tough. Tough is something you become. Tough occurs in a state of exile. You learn to be tough. Life teaches you sometimes to be tough. If Klal Yisrael became tough, it's not because naturally we're tough. It's because we had to be. Go back to the difference between the shavet and the matzah. What's a shavet? A shavet is a rod. That's still on some level attached to the tree.

8:47 I went to a camp many years ago. It's funny sometimes you think about the things they allowed to happen in the '80s. I went to a camp called Muginov. Which is a federation camp for poor kids. So it was pretty straight. My family wasn't able to send me to the fancy camps. It was probably 300 bucks a summer, and it was great. I loved it. It was like a quasi yeshiva camp. So they had really bad names for the fields. So it was like the one of the baseball fields was Shia Stadium, and another was Yankee Stadium. And they had like a barn that they converted to be like a gym, and they called it Madison Square Garden. It's like a really yeshivish, real yeshivish type camp. I loved it. So I remember that they had Wednesday nights as cookouts. So we were told to bring knives to camp.

9:43 We were told Arm yourself. Why? Because Wednesday nights you're gonna need to cut a branch to use for the hot dog cookout. See all these little eleven year old boys walking around with Swiss Army knives or machetes that they brought from home, and you'd sit there and you knew you learned right. Don't pick a branch off of the ground. Because if you pick a branch off of the ground and then you sharpen it, it'll be easy to sharpen to make the point. Then you put it in the fire. What happens when you put a dead branch in the fire? The branch catches fire. The hot dog falls into the fire. The marshmallow falls into the fire. And because it was a poor camp, I think they had an allotment of marshmallows. I think it was three marshmallows a person. It's quite a lot. It's quite a lot for a camp.

10:32 In England, I understand they have a rationing of marshmallows. We're heavyset American people. We were supposed to get more than three. I think I do mention. So you took, you cut off a branch, and she saw these little kids walking around in the park sawing at branches. Because a live branch It's still filled with the sap, it's still pliable to a certain extent. It's because we're cut off. We don't realize how cut off we are. It's because we're cut off from our source that we've become so tough. A Jew is naturally meant to be in this country. I don't mean this country. As it currently is, I'm not Especially with all the judicial reform Hack. I'm not stepping in that mess. I'm saying a Jew is meant to be in this country, with a Jewish Medina, with Malkos Yisroel. We're meant to live in a place that's That shines our values so brightly upon the world.

11:31 And because we live not that way, we had to develop over time a certain toughness. Think about it. Just pull it back to a family. If the child is born soft, when does the child learn to be tough? So I'll share with you some of the most painful days for me as a father. It's when you have to bring your kid to school. And they're first starting to go to school At three, four, and five years old And they're going to cry And they should. Because children grow up with adult attachment. Children are not meant to raise each other. Today, there's a wild thing that's happening. It's so distorted. And people say it out loud, not realizing how distorted it is. We're terrified of peer attachment. We're tired. If this kid is around that kid, something bad is going to happen because that kid is going to be mashbiya onto the other.

12:35 I even heard it. Just before, there's that group of kids, and they want to expel the quote-unquote bad kids from the group so that they don't get the reputation of being part of that kid. We're terrified of peer-to-peer attachment. There's a reason for that. The reason is because, in the absence of adult attachment, kids create unnatural and unhealthy peer-to-peer attachment. If you grew up 300 years ago, 400 years ago, do you know who raised you? We have a little bit of this in the Jewish community, but not so much. You were raised primarily by your parents. But you were also raised by grandparents, aunts, and uncles because everybody lived in the same place. There was no such thing as families living in Medallik Camposares. Didn't exist because you couldn't afford to live that way. My mother grew up in a home where it was a two-family home. One family was her mother and father. The next family was her aunt.

13:31 They grew up. They literally couldn't afford to live in a house, so they each bought the house together. So when my grandmother, Ela Shalom, passed away a couple years ago, my mother naturally started calling my aunt every day because that was like a second mother to her. You were raised by real family, not by peers. And not only were you raised by the adults in your own personal family, but you were raised with a deep sense of community because how far could you go? I said, well, you couldn't go very far, so you were raised by that community. If you had a strong adult attachment in your life, these were the values of your parents. Do you think that peer attachment would have such a crippling impact? If there was a kid in the neighborhood who was doing the wrong thing, it would have such a crippling impact because that was that kid from that family.

14:18 Today we absented the parents because so many parents have to work such insane hours to hold a standard of living that's absolutely insane. The kids are going on ten thousand dollar summer programs. Because parents are spending forty and fifty thousand dollars a summer Because parents are spending a hundred and fifty, a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year on tuition, Because you're paying thirty, forty thousand dollars a year on your mortgage, you have to be in certain places in America. You have to make two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year to be poor. Before taxes. So of course the parents aren't able to be there for the kids And the grandparents move to Florida or Israel. Right? And cousins are people you see at Hanukkah chagigos or Pesach slaters. So when do you actually have real adult attachment in your life? What do you have in the absence of adult attachment? You're going to find friends because everyone needs some attachment in order to survive. But that kid is already dead.

15:17 In the absence of adult attachment, that kid has already been cut off. It's like when I brought my son to cheder last year for the first time, and he started crying because he's leaving his parents. That's a hard thing to do. There's a certain death. And death is a strong word, but I do mean it that way. And when those kids leave before they're ready to leave, it's a really hard thing for them to go through. It's traumatic. By the way, it's traumatic for you as a parent when you get there. It's the hardest thing in the world to walk out of that room when your kid is crying. I did all the exercises with my son. I'm sitting with my son in the cheder room and I'm like, 'Mikey, tell me what you're feeling.' So he said, "I'm feeling sad." He's five. So I said, 'Tell me where you're feeling it.' I'm really trying to help him locate his emotion. He points to his heart. He says, 'I feel it right here.' I said, 'Can we hold it together?' This is an exercise we've done before. He puts his hand on his heart, and I'll put my hand on top of him. We breathe into this place.

16:12 Do you also feel like you could be a gebur? You feel like you could be strong. So he goes, I said, Where do you feel your gevura? He goes, Right here, also. So I said, Okay, let's hold it together. So you could be sad and you could be a gebur. We did that for a couple of minutes. I asked, Are you ready for me to leave? He said, No. It didn't work at all. I wish it was like this amazing moment. It didn't work even at Kehuze. Until his Rebbe walked in, who he had already met the previous year because the Rebbe works with them from the time they're really four years old, because he comes into the Gan And then he was like, "Oh" The Rebbe is here. I know him. It's comfortable. But there was a real pacha that he had, and rightfully so. You learn to be tough in those moments. You watch them grow up and be tougher. It's a good thing. It teaches them something. We've learned to be tough in galls.

16:59 Is that a good thing? Well It's how we survived. There was a positive impact. There was a negative impact. Let's talk about the positive impact. The positive impact is that a Jew discovers reservoirs of faith in the absence of the presence of God. You learn who you are when your values are really challenged. A guy called me up this past week. He's in a research facility in Cape Cod, Massachusetts this summer, and I think he told me he's studying squids. He wants to be a Ph.D. I'm not sure why this is interesting to him, but this is what he's interested in. But there are zero other Jews on the program. Shabbos is literally by himself. He's got some rolls. He's got some grape juice. And he's feeling terribly alone. And it's been a slow, slow drift since yeshiva. He didn't make decisions that necessarily would maximize the opportunities for him to grow in yiddishkeit, and now he's finding himself wondering if he'll be Sabbath observant.

18:06 And he called me up And I said, "It's an amazing crossroads that you're at right now." First of all, the fact that you called already says something about the state you're in. But right now, you're gonna find out, you're gonna discover within yourself what level of emuna you actually have? Because for this young man, one of the reasons that he really is so afraid of not being frum is because he doesn't know what it will mean for his relationship with his dad. And that's not a good enough reason for him anymore. Am I going to stay frum just as I want my father to be proud of me when I'm all alone and everyone else is going out? The first night they got there, the professor who's running this research team took them out to a shellfish restaurant. And he's sitting there by himself. Feeling like a doofus when everybody else is having a good time.

18:53 How long can a person stay in that environment and stay true to their values? The answer is that's what you discover. You discover in exile how much this actually means to you. And the answer for some of us is not so much. And for many of us throughout history, it's meant a tremendous amount. It's how we stayed strong. So that's matos. Matos is a rigid rod. Cut off from its root. That became tough to survive. But it discovered reservoirs of faith. There's also masa. I think Bernstein, this was the other part of what you were saying. This toughness that we have It doesn't exist in a vacuum. It gets you somewhere. There's a journey. There's an Eretz Yisrael at the end of a galus. And the gullus is in order to get you to the gula. There's no such thing as a gull buying for itself.

19:52 If you go to exile, the purpose of exile is to be redeemed. So there's masse. There's a journey. So there's matos. You're in that place. You're cut off. You discover those reservoirs of faith. There's mass. These reservoirs of faith that I've discovered bring me somewhere. It's like imagine if you look back on your life. Look back on all the tough things you've done in your life. Now look at what you're doing this summer. Those things that you went through brought you to this place. Let me ask you a question: Have you had an NCSYer this summer that you could relate to, someone who's going through something and that you're looking at them thinking, I get that because I've been there. And of course, knowing that every situation is a little bit different. But have you been able to go I can relate to that. I can find a space within myself where I can connect to that thing that you're saying.

20:47 Again, I was only here for five minutes. So many beautiful things were said in those five minutes. But that deep sense of belonging of just sitting with somebody else and allowing them to be as they are—the reason we're able to do that is because we had to learn to become comfortable with ourselves. That's no small thing. You're sitting with an anxious wire. Can you suspend your agenda? I was like, that's really what I heard there. Our kids on the program right now are really struggling with their yiddishkeit, or maybe they're not struggling with their yiddishkeit. Maybe they're just out And you're coming into the conversation But I want you to come to mishmar because I have something amazing to teach you. I prepared this, what do they call them? I prepared the chaburas. And I spent so much time. Before the summer, did you have that? Before the summer, you like prepare your chabur, and I really have this meaningful thing that I think I want to give over that's really going to change the way they think, but they're not even showing up.

21:41 So you have a lot invested in this. Where did you learn to be able to suspend judgment? Where did you learn to be able to hold space for somebody that's literally going against the thing that you're trying to do with them? It's because you went through that yourself. When you're sitting with that boy who said no books. How many of you heard the pain in those words when the boy said, "I'll sit with you, but no books"? You know the number one rule of chenuches: safety first. If you open up a book. For the guys in the room, they'll get this a little bit more than the girls. If you open up a Gemara, and that Gemara is written in a language that you don't understand, that you can't punctuate, translate, or vowelize And the book is based on background information that you don't know about because you maybe didn't learn all of Tanakh or all of Mishnayos.

22:28 And that book has gaping holes in it, and the Rishonim come to fill in those holes, but you've never been taught how to take that Rishon and plug it back into the hole, let alone to be able to analyze the dialectic. So what do most kids say? What do most boys say if they're in school? I hate Gemara. It's irrelevant to my life. It's not irrelevant to your life. You can't punctuate it, translate it, analyze it. You don't know the background information. You can't see how to figure out the gaping holes in the notebook, and you've never been trained to analyze the dialectic. The book told you you're stupid, so you closed the book. Doesn't that make sense? Which one of us would be willing to open up a French poetry book and break our teeth on it? With some French poet teacher in the front going, "You don't understand. This will change your life." What are most of us going to say in this room Especially if you're from Brooklyn?

23:20 Thank you. Isn't that what every high school is doing to these kids? They didn't get the basics that they needed in elementary school, and now in high school they're saying, "I don't want to open up the book. The book is stupid." So when the kid said to you, "No books," I heard a kid saying "Sounds like. It sounds like you would be a good person to have a relationship with. But this thing that you're coming with I'm allergic to it. I don't want to feel that way anymore. This is a journey. There's a place. There's a destination that we go to when we discover from ourselves all the pain that we went through. It takes us to a certain place in our life. That's the marriage that we'll have, the children that we'll raise, the job that we'll have. All of these things come from this. The person that we became in that particular matzah.

24:11 That toughness leads to a certain journey. And they seem to be at odds with each other. Am I here right now, valuing this toughness that I'm getting, or am I taking it somewhere? The Rebbe explains very beautifully, and we'll finish with this. That's the nature of the duality of matos masay. Why can we put them together? Two things have to be true at once. There's something right now, Bashiere HuSham, in exile, that a Jew is growing from tremendously. And there's no, we're not going anywhere else. This place right here is valuable. There's another thing that happens, which is we're heading in a particular direction. We're going somewhere with it. It's not just right here. It's part of a path that I'm on. I'm not just wandering. I'm on a journey. I'm going somewhere. And at the end of the day. When I get that arrival, I'll have with me all of the armory that I learned along the way.

25:06 Which is why Biniam Bayashi lasts forever. It's eternal. Why is it eternal? How could it be anything but? If you've learned all the lessons along the way, how could it be anything but eternal? Does that make sense? So we'll open up the floor to questions. I would love to hear from you how your summer is going and any challenges that you're encountering, and share with you anything that I've learned along the way in the hopes that it might be of service to you. If you don't mind, just introduce yourself, tell me what your name is and where you're from, so I could get to meet you. Shalom, Browser from Hollywood, Florida. Anybody right now? First of all, thank you so much. That was really beautiful. I was thinking about the last points he said about how we don't teach them the basics and they feel lost. So for a lot of kids in this program Baruch Hashem, we're doing a lot of inspiration stuff.

25:54 But there's only so much time to get skills in summer. What would be your advice for giving them opportunities with this honor and beyond? For really like being able to break into that world, whether it's Kumar or whatever it is, to break into the world of learning Besides the inspiration to do it, practical tips for them. I think the first thing that I would want to say, not just about your particular question, which we'll get to in a second, but in a general sense, is that reasonable expectations are exceptionally important. You're on a six-week program. Four-week program. Nobody's learning skills in four weeks. Nobody. That's not a reasonable expectation. And again, there's a flaw in the system. For whatever reason, kids aren't getting what they need when they're younger. We can recognize that. What we'd like to do is build relationships with these young men and women.

26:49 And if we build relationships with them. Then, even without ever opening our mouths about our value systems, they impute our value systems from the way that we live our lives. And if they've created healthy adult attachment this summer Then we've had an influence, even if the influence is not bolait. Even if it's not like if we never said to a kid, "Come to mishmar," they know that we want them to come to mishmar. So having that attachment right away, you've already done a tremendous amount. The next stage of the game, which is the inspiration There was an article that came out yesterday that has a little bit to do with this, not exactly, but it's an important article. Has anyone here ever heard of Rabbi Yitzchak Adlerstein? It's a rabbi in the yeshivish world. So he wrote an article on cross currents, saying Chabad was right and we were wrong. That was the title of the article. Saw this article?

27:43 Unbelievable article Because right now in Eretz Israel there's a fight. It's a terrible fight, but they want to aser. They want to make it illegal for Chabad people to put out tefillin stands. It's like a big deal And there's been a surge in this country over the last couple of weeks. The craziest thing is that many secular Israelis are now running to Chabad tefillin stands to put on tefillin. It's a crazy thing Because they're misnagged against this law, they fine. Even though I don't put on tefillin, I'll put on tefillin. And they've never had so many people coming to these tefillin stands before. What's the pshat? So Rav Adlerstein wrote, the pshat is we were wrong. We had a chinuch agenda for these people, a kieruv agenda. We want to get you here, and for years all of Chabad has just been saying we love you, do a mitzvah.

28:36 And it worked. It took a slow drip. But it worked. And now you see, there's a real ahava. These secular Israelis are running to put on tefillah. What do you mean? You're gonna knock down Chabad? These are the guys that love us without bias. And he's saying it's a wild thing. He said he wrote. He goes, I'm in no danger of being chabad. Don't worry, I'm a big msnagid. Fine. He got it in. He's a big msnagid. But the idea that he was mota to is huge. To come to a kid and just go forget skills. I'm here with you right now. And then we have all this inspirational programming on a Shabbos at a Tish and a Mishmar or whatever chaburos we're giving over. And then the thing after that is the inspiration has to translate into something else. Now you might have to realize your own limitations on this because you might have to pass the ball.

29:26 And you might not be passing the ball to someone you are confident in. But the reality is you have a life. You said you are in NYU. So you have a you are juggling, I imagine, quite a lot. What program are you in at NYU? In Rosen Zweig Shear. So I never had the opportunity to learn from Rosen Zweig, but from what I hear, Rosen Zweig Shear can be quite complex. So the amount of time that you're dedicating to Rev Rosenzweig is significant. And what are you doing for the college part of the day? The history major. You might have some time. That's the reason. The reality is that you don't have enough time to be a teacher for every kid. That wants to come. Plus, you can have other things in your life. So you can do your best and put yourself out there to a degree. That might mean a once a week havrusa, and it might mean a twice a month havrusa.

30:23 But at some point, that kid has to take responsibility for himself. Right now, he's 16 years old, so he's probably not going to do that. And you're going to pass the ball to the school, and that kid is not necessarily going to be connecting in the school and getting the skills that he needs. But maybe they'll go to Israel. And maybe in that time, they'll be able to be more shakuah and take ownership over their yiddishkeit. And maybe at that point, they'll have to sit and break their teeth and develop those skills, and at some point they will look back and go, "It's because I had that relationship back then that I ended up here today." And I can share with you my own journey. I was a kid who grew up, regular modern Orthodox kid. I was expelled from Haftor in fifth grade. And you're nodding like you appreciate it. Where'd you go to school? Bar Ieshiva in Deerhurst. So Haftor kid for a bit.

31:10 And there was a guy who used to learn with me. Today he's a rebbe in Taraschayim, Tsi, in Eshelaim. He was 18 years old. He was an MTA flip out. He switched out of MTA to Yishiv Rakhway. The elementary school that took me after Haftar was Darche. It was the only other place in the neighborhood that would take me. So I went from one extreme to the other. And my eighth grade rebbe My eighth grade rebbe had a rule. First of all, there was no recess in eighth grade because he was preparing us for Masifta. Masifta doesn't have recess, and you had to learn nightseder. So I'm gonna learn night sing. So you went to Yeshivah Rakhwey, and you hired a guy who was first or second year beis medrash to learn with you twice a week at night. So I and it was like a chavruta tuma. You walked in, and I walked in, and there was all these beis medrash guys and all my classmates, and they were choosing us. It was like a draft. So this guy came over and he goes, "You looking for a chavruta?" I said yes. Introduced himself. He said, "My name is Avi Rosner."

32:03 I said, "Shalom aleichem, nice to meet you." I learned with Avi Rosner my entire eighth grade year. I stayed in touch with him throughout all of high school. When I went to Israel, Avi was learning in the Mir at that point. We stayed in touch. He invited me to the Mir for Shabbos. We had a big Ashbani. If I've become anything in my life, that's capable, it's not because I learned with Avi Rosner twice a week in Yeshiv Frakwe. It's because he kept in touch with me all those years. I understood his value system. I appreciated his value system. It inspired me, and eventually, I had to do the hard work. That makes sense. That's the only reasonable answer. What's your name? It's Laura. Tomorrow. I figured. I can say where I'm studying. But I'm studying marketing. That's lucky with that. I've got two questions, but they are a bit intimate. The first question is I always have this discussion. I'm someone as well, like I've been on my own journey, like you know, being connected, not being connected, but I definitely feel the person I am today is because I went through the experiences.

33:05 I went through that hard time, and I went through that time of disconnect. When I'm talking to these kids, I'm saying I also didn't connect for a bit. It's so much more relatable. But please go one day when I have please go have children. Am I? Do I want to raise my children in the sense of like I went through these things, so you don't do these? But where's the balance of letting your kids make the mistakes that you made, but also stopping them from making the mistakes? So my first question, and then my second question is This is more in relation to being sniffs, and the topic of sniffs and how sniffs society, in communities, and Rabbi Anthony Manley's book, speaking about sniffs in the community. It's very nice just turning around and saying the community Certain communities have certain sniff levels, have certain levels, whatever it is, male and female, even like the not even the dress, but the attitude towards things.

33:56 That is what the communities need, but that's affecting our kids today. It is resulting in people like us making cover-ups. Do you know what I mean? How we like as a society helping make that change. How can we make that change? It means with those relationships, but I feel like. You mean how can we be more modest so that our children are more modest? Or how can we set up? With the kids, I'm not. I'm saying with my children. I'm not talking about like being. To my anything, it could be modest. It could be like modest. It could be. How can we create a community with higher standards? Without having this whole, if you don't do this You know you're gonna be oh Cover up for this and do that. How are we creating a warming society that's helping these kids today? It's a great question. I think what it comes down to is influence versus control.

34:46 And I see how your questions are interlinked, and I like the way that you set that up to begin with. Let me know that these are multiple sides of one question. Let's start here. None of us are in control of any kid in this program. You've been with them for how many weeks now? A week and a half. So you now know there is not one kid that you control on this program. You can create guidelines, you can create structure, you can create boundaries. At the end of the day, these kids are going to choose to do what these kids are going to choose to do. And where we get into power struggles, any time you're in a power struggle with a kid, you've already lost because that kid is much more powerful than you. And if they're smart, then they know. Have you ever seen a three-year-old in a supermarket Like sitting in the Sitting in the shopping cart. They have their legs dangling out.

35:41 And the mother accidentally turns into the cookie aisle. And the kid looks up And realizes that they've discovered this world of cookie aisle. And you ever see the mother try to negotiate with the kid in that moment? The mother's like, they do this thing like Now we had a cookie when we got into the car. And if you behave nicely You'll have a cookie when we leave the car. When we get back into the car, right? And the kid looks at the mother and he's like, "Really? I'm gonna do this now?" Three seconds later, that kid is on the floor screaming their brains out, and the mother's grabbing every box of Oreos she can find, just take them all, take them right. This is because the kids are more powerful than us. If you've gotten into a powerful power struggle, you've already lost. You tell a kid you must come to Mishmar. What are they gonna do? We're gonna come to Mishmar. We're gonna throw you off the program.

36:28 You're gonna throw me off the program. Really? You're gonna throw me off the program? Empty threats, by the way. Not gonna work on them Or worse. Let's say they say, "Fine, I'll come" And now they're sitting there the entire time, letting everybody know how miserable they are, and you, giving the chaburah, are paying attention to them. You could be having a great influence on five, six kids, but that one kid is in there staring daggers. You're only paying attention to them. They've got you. So you never want to be in a position where you're trying to control kids. What we'd like to do is, as parents, set standards. These are things that we do. These are things that we don't do, and they're muvan me'ilav. And you should know we do them all the time. We set up our kids and we say to our children "You just had meat. We're not going to have milk for another." Depending on what your family holds and the age of the kid, right?

37:24 We just had this. My son had fleischik's on Shabbos and then he has white kol in the afternoon. And then there was Milchik's chocolate puddings by Shalosh Shabbos, and he's six years old, and in our family he waits around three hours, and it was really hard for him because he really wanted those chocolate puddings. So I said, Mikey Why don't you hold them? You're gonna hold them, and I'm gonna tell you when it's okay to eat them. And here's a little six-year-old boy walking around. Holding his puddings in his hand, refusing to relinquish them. If you want to put them in the fridge, he goes, 'No, I just want to hold them.' He needed the security of holding those puddings. This is an amazing lesson that we teach in that moment. It's like, no, we're not eating those puddings right now. There's a level of self-discipline and self-control. It's not something you have to force. It's a reality. This is what we do. This is what we don't do. We keep kosher.

38:17 So we're never trying to control these kids. What we are doing is setting standards. That with regards to your community question, one thing I think we could do better on is set higher community standards. Because what I've seen in the last 25 years is this slippery slope And it just sort of We keep redrawing the lines And I'm wondering what happens as we keep redrawing the lines. I'll give you an example. I just give you one example. When I was a kid growing up, even the kids who weren't so from. Dressed Shabbosic. There was a notion of dressing differently on Shabbos. First of all, halachic—how far you want to say the halachic? There is a halachic. You are supposed to dress Shabbosic. You are supposed to have special Shabbos clothing. It used to be that you dressed Shabbosically. Five towns growing up, a boy wore a suit on Shabbos.

39:12 Today, we kept redrawing the lines, and now when I walk around in certain communities, it's basically nice weekday dress. It's not Shabbos clothing anymore. I remember getting shmoozin' from my Rosh Yeshiva. We don't play ball on Shabbos. It's Gemara in Yerushalmi speaks about one of the reasons for the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash was playing ball on Shabbos. A big shmooz. We don't play ball on Shabbos. I was in a certain community last year. It doesn't matter which one. I saw a group of boys coming from one of the regular modern Orthodox schools that you and I all grew up in, walking to play ball on Shabbos in shorts and T-shirts, dribbling a ball down the street. And it's not a meduber. It's not even something that we're saying anymore. We shouldn't be doing this. And I think that because we've lowered our standards for the sake of love, we lost something very precious. And I think that we have to do a better job of living within that duality and saying, of course we love you, and we love you by Hashem.

40:12 But this is not something we do. Lo yasa kamein kol mei. What happened to that? It's like the pendulum swings back and forth. The pendulum swung so far to this very rigid type of Judaism that we swung back to this very flexible thing, and I think along the way we've lost standards. It happens by the way. It goes back to your question also. Why are kids walking out of school with zero skills? Why are kids at 18 years old after a quarter of a million dollars of education reading like they're from public school? It's embarrassing. I'm not talking about the kaddish after a seder. I'm talking about basic things. We had once a boy in yeshiva, a boy who went through twelve years of a Jewish education, quarter of a million dollars. His rebbe said he wanted. Rebbe had a great idea. He wanted every boy to be able to say a dvar Torah in front of the shir for shabbos.

41:02 So this boy got up And he wanted to write the pasuk on the board that he was going to be darsening on. The boy had worked really hard. And he sat with a chumash. And he started writing the words on the board, and he was writing it in the ksav. Of the Chumash Because he didn't know how to write Hebrew letters. So the Rebbe called me in because the boy was really working hard on this, and the Rebbe wanted to say, "Oh, the Menahel of the yeshiva is here! Such a big deal." I said to the Rebbe, "I made such a, I was unbelievable, incredible! What a great tefillat torah you gave!" I said to the Rebbe, "You have to practice literal basic writing with him. It's because we don't want to make a boy feel bad, and at some point the system just gives up on them. It's a tragedy. I think we've done a poor job of setting community standards, and I think it's like cracked windows, right? If you set certain community standards, then other things don't happen, right? The cracked windows theory is that when you have an area of high crime, one of the things you can do to fix the crime is find people who have cracked windows because cracked windows lend an appearance to the community that this is a place where crime can happen.

42:11 If we set standards for our kids, especially when they're younger, we won't move you on until you know how to read. They'll thank us when they're older. How many kids have gone through the system and said, "I had that one annoying ninth grade teacher that drilled me on words, and he gave me five hundred words that I need to learn in ninth grade, and I hated it." But now, when I got to Israel, I appreciate it because I actually know these words. It's, it's. I think that's probably the best I can do with that answer. What's your name? Where are you from? From Betty Frank. From where? From hollywood, florida. From where? Hollywood, florida. Another one. It comes up once in a while here, and I'm sure it's very frequent. This, but here a lot of times I don't know about girls, but guys have a lot of teens in high school that like to be very open.

43:10 Whatever But they say they're not. Practice, they're not so firm. And then ask them why, and they say, "I'll do it when I get to yeshiva. I'll do whatever I get to yeshiva." I don't know if it makes a difference. Girls, say it too. Girls say it also. Girls come to me. I know and I learned things in school. I learned these things. I know it's supposed to be doing them. But like, I'll do it later. So what? What exactly is the question? So should we tell kids on a four-week summer program to defer in high school? Just tell me what that's going to look like. Hey, defer in high school Can I ask a question? Can you say something? This girl who came to me and said those things. I learned this, and I know it's important, but I like wearing pants. What do you say to that girl? He said, I learned all the sources. You don't need to teach it to me. I just don't feel connected to it.

44:12 What do you tell that girl? What do you tell him? Meaning? But it's not changing her mindset. Because we're not trying to change their mindset. We can't change anyone's mindset. That's not something that we're capable of doing. I promise you, if I knew how to do that, I would tell you. I don't know how to change your mindset, let alone anybody's. First of all, I think. Just to expand upon the answer a little bit I always out myself when I do this. But let's say when it comes to dieting and exercise. So when you diet and exercise and you feel good, the first thing you think I should have started this six months ago. I'd already be ripped if I started this six months ago. You might want to try to convey to these young men and women who are, frankly, in a very difficult time in their lives, a tremendous amount of hormones and societal pressure.

45:11 Values that they're not necessarily interested in right now. You might feel foolish when, in two years from now, you go to yeshiva in Israel or a seminary in Israel. You might feel a little foolish when you realize this is great. You might feel foolish that you wasted those years and positioning yourself now. To do something special then is a good idea. But to answer your question, if that girl came and she said, "I know all the sources. It doesn't speak to me." I just enjoy wearing pants. I would encourage you to get curious. What is she saying when she says, "I enjoy wearing pants"? What does she enjoy about it? I think she genuinely believes it looks cuter. Great. Good, fine, but stay there. And if we travel down that road with her, and we just again without judgment, authentically. When I say without judgment, I mean authentically, not like when you know, like kids say, "I'm not judging you," but they really are. I'm talking about like authentically suspending judgment. What would happen if you said "Seems like looking cute is really important to you. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? What would she say?

46:14 Make it up. Wearing the trendiest things or dressing how everybody else around her is dressing, it seems that she's from Chicago, this girl was saying. So it seems that she's probably in a place where that's the normal thing to do. I'm sure it would be along the lines of this what my friends do, and I want to fit in, and this the style, and this what they're wearing when we go out. Can we all understand that? Can we get behind that? I don't mean get behind it as a value. Can we actually get behind that? Are any of us any different? Everyone wants to be part of the group. I can be with a person on that journey. So it seems I would then respond. It seems like it's really important for you to be part of the group. And if you just say those words, I guarantee you shall respond. Do you know that you don't have to ask questions for people to talk?

47:04 All you have, if you just let somebody know that they're validated. Let me teach the link to the guys in the room for a second. There's something called validated. This is what your women, the women in your lives want. They do not want you to solve problems. They don't want you to tell them what you think. We recorded for all the boys. One hundred percent. Listen carefully. I'm gonna record it. Listen very carefully. What is happening? We are the most valuable. Oh, okay. You're she's a must not valuable. This name was for you for other boys who aren't. If a girl comes to you, guys, listen here. The girl comes to you and she says I'm having a hard day And you say. Wow, sounds like you're having a really hard day. Tell me about that. And she says, "Yeah, my boss. He's just He's driving me crazy, and I don't know what to do. And every time I say something, he says something else.

47:55 If you respond as a guy, if you respond and you go Maybe you just need to be clear with what you're willing to do and not willing to do. You have lost the woman that you're speaking to. This is what she wants you to respond. She wants you to say 'I hear you. That's really hard.' And you don't have to do anything else. If you say that, women will continue speaking. Is this not true? Because God gave you nine measures of the ten of speech, and all you have to do is validate and watch people respond. I'm telling you, I've done this for years now. It works with guys. It works with girls. It especially works with teens. If you say to a girl, "Sounds like you really want to be part of the group" She'll say to you something like "There was a time when I really wasn't part of the group, and it was really hard."

48:44 Are we talking about sneers? We're not talking about sneers. We're not talking about pants. We're talking about a girl that's terrified not to be part of the group. And allowing her to explore that, especially if you've already given over the value. There's a lot to be gained from her coming to a recognition of wow, I never realized how important it is for me to be part of the group because it's really scary for me not to be part of the group. All you have to do is validate what that person is saying. Which gives them permission to authentically explore who they are. If somebody was going to change, it wouldn't be because we changed their mind, but because we created the opportunity for change to occur within them by allowing them to explore themselves. I would say 99% of the issues that you're seeing when it comes to a lack of halacha have nothing to do with halacha. The kid's not keeping Shabbos; it's not because he doesn't see the value of Shabbos. I imagine there's a lot more going on. Does that make sense?

49:40 The issue, it's like the issue behind the issue. You guys aren't married yet. This will happen when you have a fight with your spouse. And out of nowhere, your wife says, 'You never liked my mother.' It's like, what? Where did that come from? Because things are simmering under the surface, and you have to know how to hear. You have to know how to hear what's actually going on. You'll leave your socks on the floor. You know what I'm talking about? Do you know? Do girls know this? That guys believe that a hamper exists as a range of space. And if something is near the hamper That's called in the hamper. You know? You understand? Girls don't understand this about us. Our socks belong wherever we take them off. Access an area. It's like, it's good asik. It's love wood. We get into serious halachic And right, we become halachic.

50:44 We become halachic. We're all very salavetchikin when it comes to these things. Sorry. And it could drive a wife crazy. She's like, why can't your socks be at the foot of your bed? Wherever they fall, there shall they be buried. I was there. I was on my bed. I kicked off my socks. At some point later, I'll move them within the range of the hamper. When your wife comes to speak to you about this I promise you she's not coming to speak to you about socks. You know what she's going to say to you? I feel like you don't care about me. It's like, what? I just took off my socks. How did we get there? Because if you cared, then you would put them in the hamper. I'm already doing the laundry. All I ask is that you put it in that particular basket. The fact that I've asked you that before and you continue to leave your socks on the floor. Something to do with socks And then husbands walk around going, "I put my socks in the hamper like they're heroes, like champions now." It's like walking around like he puts in the hamper. He tells his friends in the Shalom Bayis Khabura that he's in on WhatsApp. Just want you to know, I put my socks in the hamper.

51:50 These are real. These are real life challenges. Not for Rabbi Bernstein, I'm sure. I'm sure. You're barely wearing socks, but like the. Which is why some guys don't wear socks. It's much easier. My last name is Socks. There you go. You're in very big trouble. It's not about the socks. It's the issue that always means something else. Shabbos, sneias. It's not about that. One last question. We'll do one more. We're good. One more question. I don't know if I missed this while I was out, but what if you have a kid who wants like the very from the family, or even his family is very from it. Now they're going like they feel like they're burned by all their even their parents, and now they're just trying to. Meaning the family was burned or the kid was burned Even maybe part of them also. That's a real experience that people have.

52:52 So what's your question? So how are you? How am I supposed to like he's interested. He says he's very spiritual. They say he's not interested in learning or really being connected in a real way. Let me just push back for a second. What does "real" mean when you say he's not interested in being connected in a real way? You mean halakah? That's fair. Right. But I do think it's important that we when we say "real," right, we contextualize that, right? Because one man's "real," like. I'll say it straight. There's a guy who davens in the same minion that I daven in the morning. And he shows up to minion every day And relit and he's there before me. He comes early. I don't know when he davens Because he is talking the entire daven And I don't sit that far from him And he's a loud guy, and he walks around. He's the gabay tztaka, so when he walks around in shmon esrei. It's a competition between him and the Shliach Tzibur.

53:59 And you're trying to say Amein, and he is literally not just talking out loud. He's let's go, and he's making his jokes as he does it, and it's like a cute thing, and everyone kind of knows his place in the community. It's not per se halachic what he's doing. He's showing up a minion. These things are a spectrum, and I'm just saying we should give credence to that. He'll say that like he enjoys what he's doing, and he's like I would have wanted everything else. Well you know he's probably telling you a real thing that he went through. First of all, kudos to you because you've done a great job already. That he feels comfortable enough with you to share that. I had a rough experience of it, and you're a person clearly about whom he could come to and say, 'I had a rough experience of it.' So that's great. And again, I hear the agenda I would love to get you to a place where you could be more halakhically involved in Judaism. I hear that, and I think that's okay. Because you're explicit about it, right? You have a value system. They're here on a program, right? It's not like you're hiding it. It's not like a subversive thing. I want you to keep it. It's like we're allowed as a religion to have standards.

55:04 But again, I do think that he will not be able to let go of his pain until he's allowed to experience it and explore it. And so if he's coming to you with a very real thing and saying, my family's been burned by rabbis, I feel burned by rabbis, I'm not interested in this. That means he's carrying pain, right? And he's carrying a ten thousand pound knapsack, and it's hard for people to move when they're so burdened. So just being a space where he can say that to you already ameliorates some of the burden. And if let's say if let's say he would get really angry with you I don't mean with you. I mean let's say he would really get angry with you, sitting in a thing, and all of a sudden he's cursing out the Israelis. You know what that guy did to my sister? You know what that guy did to my brother? You know this rabbi in the shul, and he's getting really angry. Your natural response is you might want to defend because you know I don't want because if he gets really angry, he's going to leave. It's not true. If he gets really angry, he's exploring that anger, and he's actually releasing it. Emotions are meant to be felt. Anger is a very healthy emotion.

56:06 Being allowed to go there and explore that part of himself can be a thing that's healing for him, and perhaps might be a thing that allows him to come back. There are people that hold on to that anger from that fifth grade rebbe. I'm thinking of a specific guy in my head who had a very specific fifth grade rebbe. The rebbe was tough as nails. His kid was ADHD up the wazoo. It was the worst shidduch. The guy today is 34 years old, and if you ask him about his educational experience, damn, many years of education. First thing he'll tell you is about that rebbe in fifth grade. He just can't seem to release it. I think part of the reason is because he has not allowed himself to fully explore what he authentically feels towards that rebbe. If you can be a place where he can really find out who he is That could be a beautiful thing. It could be a gift that you give to him. Makes sense.

56:58 Yeah. Yeah. You could ask one more. What's your name? Where are you from? Tinek. I've heard of Tinek. And kolikowes kitlovei the vodizara Right? So then, how come? How come you let that? How do you let that emotion take over? And especially playing the team in a place where there's 110 kids, and if there's one person who's so angry, it's felt by everyone. Letting them explore that anger. How do we stop that from affecting them, especially such mental And affecting other. I think there's two parts to your question. There's a difference between anger and rage. Anger is a real emotion that people have. Chazal didn't mean to suggest that people shouldn't have an emotion. I don't even know what that would mean. I have an emotion, I'm not allowed to shut it down. It's not the way emotions work. I think what Chazal meant was to rage upon another person.

58:20 Chazal were talking about a level of control that perhaps anger is a form of. Have you ever seen someone sitting on the Van Wyck Expressway? Beating their steering wheel? Have you ever been there? Where are you from? Manhattan, and you travel to the Five Towns, and you've been on the Van Wyck. And you see people like You see, there is a tremendous amount of rage that exists on the Van Wyck. I used to travel the Van Wyck every day. And you, I've literally seen people just beating their steering wheel, like why is nobody moving? It's a horrendous thing to be in. There's a control that's there that Chazal were like, look, where is that control coming from? Who says you're not supposed to sit in traffic? Like the world is not magical, right? It's not the way the world works, right? I don't think Chazal meant to say you shouldn't have an emotion. I think they meant you should have that emotion appropriately. So raging all over another person is not okay. You're allowed to be angry.

59:18 Pouring out that anger on somebody else is not okay. So I think that would be the answer to your Ashkafah question. But I think your second question is a really profound question. Not that your first question wasn't good, but your second question is really profound. Watching somebody experience another emotion. Emotions are contagious. And we know, if there's negativity in the group. We negativity can spread like wildfire. There's always that one Amalekite. That cools off the bathtub like somebody gives a really powerful var Torah, and then one kid rolls their eyes and it shuts down the entire thing. It's it's hard to watch, right? But I don't think that allowing a person to experience their emotion is going to negatively impact the group. In fact,