Matos/Masei - The Journey After Failure

3:47 From previous generations of mevaseret and current mevaseret and future mevaseret and apparently very future mevaseret is also in the room. It's been an amazing trip, and I feel unbelievably blessed and unbelievably grateful to the Rebbeinu Sholom. Have so many special people here together tonight. I really feel like I just want to say thank you, just really from the bottom of my heart. Thank you so much. I understand, and I think we and Mevasseret know this very well. Sometimes the Rebbeinu Sholom's plan is hidden from us.

4:45 And things that are not understandable to our small minds can happen. Every word of Torah tonight, every bracha, everything that we do should be in the s'chus of a refuah shleima for Rivka Leah Bas Bat Sheva Friedel, who I understand had a something over Shabbos and is in dire need of a refuah shleima. And obviously, also our thoughts are never far from Rev Hershel and his Rebbez and Ariela Chava Bas Kan Amalca. We should continue to have a rufu shalema. Baruch Hashem, there are small steps, and there's a lot. There's a lot to be hopeful for, Bez Hashem. But continued tefillas also for Rebbitz and Hershel. I also want to just recognize and thank that we're that we're here in Morasha. Actually, this is my first time on campus. My second time, I showed up on Friday to surprise her Ben, but he was somewhere. Wasn't here.

5:42 I slept. I slept a stender all the way from Misora, an hour and a half. But you didn't come to see me. It's. It's so beautiful here. It's really so beautiful, and the eyes are so clear. It's so clear that even though it's very late at night, and even though it's very dark in here, it's also very light in here, and it's obvious the whole world hears about what's happening in here in Morasha, and I. I think it is an unbelievable thing that Kobe is here. And beis Hashem, your bracha that Kobe should be here for days and weeks and years and decades. Beis Hashem should definitely be mekuyim. I want to share a small var. It's a small it's a small var, but it's a very big taira. We're holding now already be matos mase. Forty two encampments, Klal Yisrael makes over a forty year journey.

6:37 And the Torah lists every single one. They traveled from A to B, from B to C, from C to D. The obvious question that all the mafarshim grapple with is: has no relevancy to our lives. Every word of Torah is nitzchias. Every word of Torah has eternal meaning and relevancy to our lives, and it's very difficult for us to understand. Why the Torah records all the different places that they went over the forty years in the Midbar? What relevancy does it have to us? That's the obvious question. Another very well known question is when you look at the pasuk says, 'Vayichtof Moshe es motzaihem lemasaihem al pi Hashem ve'ele masaihem lemotzaihem,' that Moshe Rabbeinu recorded their starting points for their journeys according to the word of Hashem.

7:32 And these were their journeys with their starting points. So the Torah says it in both ways. First, it says motzaihem l'masehem, and then masehem l'motzaihem. So what's going on over here that the Torah lists both? Rashi tells us mashal l'melech she'ayin b'nochole v'olicho l'macham rachok l'raposa. To what can this be compared? Rashi says to a king whose son became sick, and they took him to a faraway place to be healed. Kevin Shayuchozeh and hischil aviv mayne kolam asos, and now they're on their way back from this child being healed. And the father starts to recount all of the journeys, all of the different places that they've been. Amarlo, so he says to his son, Kan yeshonenu, Kanu karnu, Kan chashash des roshecha. This is where we sat. Here we were cold. Here you had a headache. So here's a father. Rashi says.

8:32 That on the way back from being healed from his sickness, the Melech chazars over every single thing that happened. What's this Moshele adding? So I want to tell you a very beautiful verse, and it goes like this: Not everything went well in the Midbar. There were a lot of mistakes that we made along the way. We went to Rfidim. Chazal say in Rfidim we were roughly Yudeim and Atayra. We washed our hands of Taira. We weren't learning anymore in Rfidim. Other places there was a place called Kivros Atayva, where all of those who had Tayva, all of those who were lusting for physical pleasures, there they were buried. Not everything went well in the Midbar. What's the pshat that the Taira highlights? The mistakes that we made along the way. The emphasis: there are three ways that a yid can deal with failure in their lives. The first way, which I think many of us do, is to deny the fact that we failed. It wasn't really a failure. It was just a small mistake. We try to make it much smaller than it actually is. The other way that we deal with it, most classically.

9:59 We have a deep sense of shame over the mistakes that we made. We're willing to talk about the failures, but we talk about them in the most unhealthy way. We get stuck and trapped in the failures because it's like the failure defined me. In truth, both denial and shame are ways of avoiding the truth of a failure, denying that you failed. Obviously denying the failure, but when a person gets so stuck in their failure because they have such a deep sense of shame, when they over-identify with their failure, and they say, 'No, Rebbe, this is who I am. It's not just something that I've done once or twice.' You have to understand fundamentally, I'm a piece of shmutz because of what I've done. I'm a nothing. I'm a low life. That's also not honest. It's not an honest way of looking at your failure. It's not healthy accountability.

10:57 The way that a yid deals with failure is we're able to say, "Einachanami," I was there and I made that mistake, but from that place I made a journey. I was sincerely in that place, and I can stare the truth in the face. I'm not afraid to look at the truth. I'm not afraid to say in my life I made this mistake. It doesn't define me. I'm not stuck in it, but I also don't deny it either. I was there. But from there, I made a journey. Today, it's a very common thing for people to say, "But I grew from it." I don't like when people say that very fast. But I grew from it. Slow down. But I grew from it is a very big title to own. To be able to say, "I was there. I made a mistake. I failed in a certain way."

11:49 But I'm growing from it. That's big avodas. That's a very big thing to say in your life that I was able to really look at the things that I did wrong in my life and to grow from them. And for those of us in the room that are a little bit older, you get to be in your 30s, you get to be in your 40s, and you realize it's a lifetime journey. Some of those failures because they come over and over again until you can finally unpack the wisdom that was in that failure. And that's the real way that failure is the ultimate gift. Because if you fail long enough, but you're willing to pay attention to your failures will teach you something that your successes never can. If you're willing, if you get married and you show bias issues, instead of blaming your wife and instead of falling into shame, if you're able to look at yourself in the mirror and go, 'Taka, she's right.'

12:47 It's something that I have to work on. You'll grow tremendously from that. But people can spend years and even decades of their life blaming their spouse for everything that goes wrong, blaming their kids for everything that goes wrong in their life. I was blown away, inspired. There's a video that's online. I recommend you check it out. Rabbi Y. Y. Jacobson went to a Kesher Nafshi event, and he had a sit down. I wouldn't call it exactly a question and answer. I don't know exactly what to call it. He had a public sit down with Rabbi Shimon Russell, who's a very famous psychologist. And if you see this video, it's an unbelievable video, because basically Rabbi YW was just totally transparent about some of the challenges that he's had in his life. First of all, who among us would be that transparent, even with some of our closest friends?

13:38 But to be that transparent in such a public forum, and then to publish it on YouTube and on Spotify and on Torah anytime to be viewed by tens of thousands of people—it's incredibly inspiring. Because he's talking about not all the things that he did well. I'm Rabbi Y Jacobson. I know an unbelievable amount of Torah. I was one of the memorizers for the Labavitcher Rebbe. He's talking about the things that he made mistakes with, and how he grew from them, and how it's changed his life. I found it to be, and I'm very jaded today. I'm not easily inspired anymore. You get a little bit older. Sometimes you can get caught in cynicism. I've been caught a little bit in cynicism, but I told my wife, 'You have to see this video. It's incredible. I was so inspired by it because it was so real.' I remember the Rosh Yeshiva many years ago, at a conference in the Five Towns. Somebody asked him a question about something in yeshiva that the yeshiva wasn't doing well.

14:34 Usually in these types of situations, you're supposed to Brian Cashman it. You're supposed to not answer the question by just talking around the issues. If you ever saw a Brian Cashman press conference, you know the man has never said a word in his life that answers a question. When's Derek Jeter getting back on the field? Obviously we have our medical staff working on it in conjunction with Derek's medical staff, and obviously we're going to do what's best for the organization. The guy hasn't said a word that anybody's understood in their entire lives. He's a genius at saying nothing. I remember Isaacson got up in front of these parents. He said, "I heard X, Y, and Z in Mevaseret." I remember the Rosh Hashanah just looked at him and said, "Yeah, you're right. I definitely have to do that better. I'm making mistakes, but I don't make the same mistake twice." And then he said, "It was like this. If you know the Rosh Hashanah, you know exactly how he said it. It was like straight, direct to the point, staring right at the person he was talking to. Like, yeah, I think that's the one thing I want to highlight.

15:34 He was chewing on paper. There was toothpaste in his pocket. It was a mess. I want you to know two things that I learned from the Rosh Yeshiva that night. One, have radical levels of integrity with the people that you're talking to, and you will build trust over time, and that's exactly what happened. And he's also right. I've seen we've made many mistakes in yeshiva, but I want you to know the biggest critic of our yeshiva is the rasha shiva. You can ask her of Ben, you can ask her of Glands. You could it's easy to just not pay attention to the mistakes, and the rasha shiva is unflinching. It's something we have to do better. It's one of the amazing things about working in the yeshiva. There's an environment where there's amongst the rebbeim open criticism.

16:30 Open criticism. What can we do better? How can we advance the yeshiva? Some of you here know Rav Ben, so I want you to know. When Rav Ben first joined the yeshiva, it was like Poland, but a little bit more like extended. I understand that in Poland, Rav Ben was quiet for the first two days, just surveying the territory until he spoke. Rav Ben has to get a feel for what's going on before he unleashes himself onto the scene. The Rebbe's first year in yeshiva, I watched. I was watching the Rebbe very carefully. He waited very carefully for the first couple of months, and then he dipped his toes in the water of the yeshiva, showing how he was going to start saying things. And by now, how can we do this better? We need to do this. Reberg, promise me that next year we're going to work on this issue, and I held true to my word.

17:20 I held true to my word. Rebbe knows exactly what I'm talking about. Doesn't matter if anybody else here knows. There was a criticism that Rebbein had of me, and I said we're going to take care of it. And Bez Hashem, we've taken care of it. It's great to fail. Failure is your greatest teacher. The Torah recounts all of our journeys in the Midbar. It tells us the highs and it tells us the lows, and it's unflinchingly honest because you could learn so much from your failures. And that's the depth of Rashi's marshal here. Here you have a king, and his son got sick, and now Baruch Hashem you're on the way back, and that's the best time to criticize yourself when you're already healed when things are good. Now take a look back. Let's see everything that happened, but it has to be a loving father, and it has to be after the fact. You can't do the surgery when the patient is too sick.

18:16 You can't criticize. You can't learn from the failure if you're in the middle of the failure. Fail. Go ahead. Fail. It's okay to fail. Failure is courage. Failure means that you tried to do something great and it didn't work out. It's okay. Take a second. Recover. Get yourself ready. Get yourself well, and then take a look back. This what happened here, and this what happened here, and this what happened here. And every step of the way, you're going to learn from, and you're going to learn from both sides of the aisle. You're going to learn from the beginning how you fell, and you're also going to learn from how you get up, and that's why the Torah says it both ways. And Moshe Rabbeinu records the starting points and he records the end points. He records it both ways because you're going to learn from both sides of the journey. Sometimes you're going to learn from when you fell, and sometimes you're going to learn from how you got up. But failure is inevitable. The only question is, will you pay attention to it? Bal Shem Tov Hakadosh says.

19:12 That the forty-two journeys that Klal Yisrael made in the Midbar, every single Jew in their life makes these forty-two journeys in some kabbalistic way. Everybody goes through these forty-two journeys, and the deep mekubalim that know the depth of every single journey, they could tell you how every one of us goes through these forty-two journeys. That means that every single person in this room is going to have journeys that are going to be gevuldech. There's going to be Yemei Ahava when your davening is on fire and your connection to Shabbos is incredible, and your Limmud Atayr is on fire, and it's amazing. Those are going to be a part of your journey. But you're also going to have times sherufel Yadayim in Atayr, and a Malach is going to attack. You can have times where you wash your hands of Atayr. You can have times where you get buried in your own desires, and that's. That's. That's a part of being a human being.

20:01 Those that strive for perfection will never succeed, but those that strive for completion, for shleimus. Shleimus means failure becomes part of the process. Being a ben yeshiva, which my rebbe defined as being different than a ben Torah, even higher. My rebbe said, being a ben yeshiva means I'm going to the beis medrash, I'm going to minion. Sometimes I'm going to mess up, givaldik. I'm going to stake tremendously from those times. I'm going to become great from those times. But chas v'shalom, ever to say those times that I failed was me. A guy who's coming to yeshiva now. I'm speaking to all the incoming guys for a second. Guys, you have big dmyynes. You have big dreams. That's beautiful. Don't stop dreaming big for what this year is going to bring. But don't fool yourself either. It's going to be hard, and it's not going to be perfect, and that's what's going to make it beautiful. And to all the alumni who are here.

20:59 You know exactly what I'm talking about. Your journey from yeshiva—it's never simple. There's always ups and there's always downs, and it's not easy to hold on. But in the long term, those guys that keep learning from their failures, those are the ones that are big-time, big-time successful people in their lives. And for those of you that are still in the middle of your journey in yeshiva, it's an amazing thing to be in yeshiva. But it's okay to fail. It's okay to dream big, but it's okay to fail. And I just want to bless us all in this room that we should have the courage to do amazing things, and on the way to learn from every misstep that we make.