Noach - Finding an Inner Strength Amidst the Flood

2:46 And I'm not going to do a perfect analysis here because to do all of that would take us a very long time. But first, the pasuk again says this lashon of vayivarech. It's not exactly clear what vayivarech means. Is it a bracha? Is it a tsevoy? Rishonim go back and forth on this. Vayivarech alikim es nayach veesbanav vayyamer lehem peru orvu u'melu es aretz. So again, we see this notion that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is giving them a bracha. There's some sort of tsevoy of piriya verivya. And again of filling the land. But here. Six psukim later, the pasuk sort of repeats itself, but with some interesting subtleties here. It says, 'Va'atem peru urvu shirzu ba'aretz urvu ba.' " Shirzu from a lashon of like swarming upon or spreading out across the land, and multiply on the land. So if we look at the psukim, there's what appears to me to be three fundamental differences, aside from the fact that In Bereishis, it was all one pasuk, and in Noach, it's two pasukim.

3:57 But this lashon of vikivshua that were commanded in Bereishis, that Adam is commanded to conquer the land And this lashon of urdu b'dgas hayam of ova shamayim of v'chol chayar and meshas al arets to somehow control, to conquer, to rule over all of the animals in the world. That is missing from Parshas Noah. We don't find that anywhere in our parsha. The lotion of conquering the land and controlling or ruling over the animals. That's not found anywhere in our parsha. In addition, in our parsha, there's this extra tsivoy which we don't find in Parshas Bereishis. This lotion of shirtsu ba'aretz, spreading out, swarming over the land. Shaila is what's the difference between These two piriya verivias. What's the difference between the piriya verivia of Berechias and the piriya verivia of Parshas Noah? The idea that I'm going to share with you tonight is based on an idea that I learned from the Levavitcher Rebbe's Echad Tzadik Levracha. But I do want to say at the outset that some of the mshalim that I'm going to be giving are my own, not mshalim that the Rebbe gave. But for me, they're the best way to understand it, and so I hope to share them with you.

5:11 What I want to talk about is the process of change. Okay, how does change occur? Something that I think is relevant to us in our time here in Eretz Yisrael, especially at this stage of life And more particularly now, as we go through this process, how we can understand the process of change. So I want to present this module to you in order to understand this. Imagine you have a person who's a raging alcoholic. And their life has basically reached a tipping point. Their wife decides to leave them. She's taking the kids. Okay, the bank has foreclosed on his house. He's homeless. He no longer has a place to live. His family is not willing to give him money under the table to support him anymore. Nobody's enabling him anymore. He's living under a bridge. He's willing to do, or he's been willing to do, despicable acts in order to maintain his habit.

6:14 There's a process of destruction that's going on in his life. But as we examine this process of destruction a little bit more carefully, there's an element of destruction to it, but there's also an element of healing that's happening to this alcoholic. Because all of the systems that were in place. Have fallen away. Everything is crumbled. And as long as he's living in this olam hadimyon, of my life is working, he can continue behaving the way he's always behaved. And so the process of being broken down, of life falling apart, in many ways, is also the process of rebuilding. Even before we get to any rebuilding, the etzem falling apart itself is already part of the process of tikkun, because as long as his wife stays married to him, as long as he can have the image in his mind that he's a loving father and that his children love him, as long as he gets away with lying to his boss, so he can continue to live in this olam adimion.

7:25 That I can be a raging alcoholic, but more or less things are working. Of course, they're not working. But as long as the systems are in place that allow him to believe that things are working, life is basically going to continue as it always has. Rather than look at it as exclusively a destruction process, we would do well to think of this process as a sozer al minas livnos. There's already a rebuilding that's occurring from within this process of destruction. That's what we'll call level one of this marshal. There's a second level of this muscle, which I think is perhaps even a little bit deeper. And that's an inner serenity that somebody finds when everything else in their life is falling apart. They don't find the serenity from without. It's not some sort of support system that was there for them. At times of great crisis, there is no support system that could possibly do anything to bolster you.

8:28 If a support system could bolster you, then we're not talking about an essential level of crisis. We're talking about the type of crisis from which there is no coming back. And in those moments, as everything in your life is falling away, a person discovers in a very In a very interesting type of way I'll call it like an ein hadavar type of experience, but I think you get the idea. The key is to have that inner core of strength and serenity that somehow allows them to manage the storm. In other words As they've taken our marshal of the alcoholic, as he's hitting rock bottom, as he sees that his wife will no longer respond to his WhatsApps and that his kids have no interest in seeing him, as he's literally living under a bridge, there's a peace that he finds within himself, and that core becomes the place from which he rebuilds his entire life. It's the part of him that says there's still hope. You can get help. You can join a 12-step program.

9:34 There are ways to improve and rebuild more stable structures in your life. And again, so as we look at the two levels, there's two levels. Level number one we spoke about is a type of destruction, but it's actually like really the dismantling of a system that was fundamentally not working. And then, in addition to that destruction, there's an inner core of clarity, an inner strength, an inner resolve that a person discovers. The word I think we would want to use is something like a wellspring. A person discovers something from within that they can draw from. They're no longer drawing their strength from outside of themselves. They're drawing their strength from inside of themselves. And that process Again, I gave a very extreme example for it. But that process is, on some level, what every single person goes through as they go through any change in their lives. Take, for example, a high school teenager, a ninth grader who's very much drawing straight from outside of himself. You remember being a ninth grader? You remember showing up to school? You were just the. Isn't it cute now when you look back and eighth graders talk about how they rule the school like they run.

10:49 Now, as an adult, you look back on that and you're like You were like this big, like you're the biggest kid in your class was this big. You're not running the school, you're not running anything, but there's a vision of I rule the school. And then you come into ninth grade and you're a freshie, you're the low man on the totem pole. And there's a process. I remember I went through this. I'm sure some of you went through this as well. There's a process of who am I friends with. Because even though you may have come into high school with certain friends To continue to be friends with those people may not give you the How should we say this nicely, the social status, the sense of worth, the security that you need as you enter into a new stage of life. What happens is that you have to be careful with your relationships. You might hold on to some of your old friends, but you'll loosen some of those relationships and sort of develop like, I want to be friends with that guy. There's a certain you're drawing power from outside of yourself. Of course, you know, your old friends talk about you behind your back, and they go, 'Yeah, he's too cool for school now. Now he's friends with all those guys. He's not really friends with us anymore.' But that person who's going through this

11:59 It's an understandable type of thing. He's fourteen years old, but he's drawing power from outside of himself. That will only work for a certain amount of time. If you're still drawing power from outside of yourself at eighteen, nineteen, twenty, or twenty-one years old. That's probably not going to work for you for very long. Those systems need to fall apart in order for a change to actually take place, and so a person will sometimes go through a painful process of destruction, which is where all of a sudden that cool group that you were a part of no longer want to be your friend. You're no longer cool enough for them, and maybe for a minute you're sort of between worlds, like you don't have your old friends from elementary school and your new friends from high school dumped you, so you're sort of in this amorphous type of very tenuous position where you have nobody.

12:47 But if a kid goes through a real process, let's say, a twelfth grader, an eleventh grader goes through a process where they're sort of falling apart, what they can, if they choose to look inside, is that they can discover from the lack of self worth, they can discover a nikkuda of self worth from within. That process of change is very healthy for a young man. When you lose all of your friends, what are you left with? You're left with no choice but to look within and say, 'Am I enough for myself, even when I'm not surrounded by the coolest kids?' That's a very complex change process for a teenager to go through. We see it in marriage. People who came into marriage with certain levels of incompleteness are drawing from their spouse, pulling certain psycho energy and things they need. They married that person to fill their needs. It will work for a period of time, but there's a very painful process of destruction because nobody really wants to be married to somebody who's draining them of their energy. It's not a comfortable thing. But as the marriage

13:56 Falls apart in a certain sense, that destruction is actually a good thing because those systems are falling apart, and it allows someone to say, 'Oh, I think I need to learn more about this. I need to learn to draw that energy from within.' So all processes of change follow this pattern. There is a destruction of the systems, and then there is a discovery of an inner core of strength that one did not know existed before that. We see this very much in the whole story of Noah. The Medrash The Medrash and Berechias Rabba tells us that the world changed; that Noah stepped out of the teva. And he saw a new world in front of him. The question is, what does that mean that he saw a new world in front of him? It's very difficult to understand the concept of a new world, especially if we believe that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is Mechadish Betuva B'Chol Yom Tamed Maisa Beresius, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu's constant energy that he infuses into the Bria is what keeps the Bria afloat. It's very difficult for us to understand the idea that Noah could walk into a world and see something new that wasn't there before. In other words, forty days earlier

15:13 Or a little bit longer than that, right? But let's say before the flood, Noah lived in a certain type of reality. When he exited the teva a year later, he walked into a completely different reality. This is what the medrash says. The shi'lu is what was the difference between these two realities The Rebbe explains as follows, at least to the best of my understanding. Before Before the flood The world, even though it had been created, was in a tenuous position. The world was not settled. And that word is going to be very important because the nature of what Noah does is he brings the world to a state of rest. That's why his name was Noah. Even though Hakadosh Baruch Hu had rested on Shabbos, that's more referring to Hakadosh Baruch Hu's rest. The bria itself remained somewhat tenuous. What does that mean that the bria remained tenuous? The idea is as follows: It's a very sophisticated idea.

16:14 The world in its infant stage received its godliness from above, not from within. In other words, its reality was attached to something higher than itself, but it itself could not transcend itself. The nature of the bria at that time was that it had no capacity for self-transcendence. There was nothing internal, so to speak, about the bria that could reach beyond itself to become something that it's not. A good example of this would be a talmid who's learning from his rebbe. You ever have an experience where you can only understand the idea as long as the Rebbe is talking But as soon as the Rebbe starts talking, the idea sort of floats away. You ever say those words like I had it and I lost it. What is that? What if you actually think about it? What does that mean? Like you understood it for a minute and then you weren't able to grasp the idea. That's why Chazars Hashir sometimes is so hysterical.

17:12 You ever have that where you're like doing Chazar on Shir and you have five guys that were all sitting in the same Shir. Each one of them says something completely different that the Rebbe didn't say, but each one of them is convinced that's absolutely what the Rebbe said. And all five of those ideas make no sense. You know what I'm talking about? You ever have an older guy who comes over to you and says, in a very sweet way, 'Maybe let's listen to the recording again?' It's like there's very difficult sometimes to grasp the idea fully. You're only grasping the idea as long as the hashpa As long as the input of the Rebbe is coming in. Another way of putting this is. If you ever had a situation where Where let's say you were feeling really low, like a really melancholy type of feeling, and so you reached out to a couple of chaverim and they sat with you and you went out for a slice of pizza and you were just chilling out, and then as soon as they leave, you're right back to where you were. In other words, the feeling that you had of being okay wasn't because you were drawing from within, but because you were sustaining yourself from without.

18:13 And the thing about sustaining yourself from outside of yourself is, by definition, you're subject to the vicissitudes of life. In other words, there's no sense of stability in such a case, because if Hakadosh Baruch Hu is sustaining the bria from outside of itself, meaning if our capacity for godliness was only something that was coming from outside of ourself, then what happens when we behave in such a way that the world deserves to be destroyed? The nature of the world, if it's drawing from outside of itself, is only going to last as long as the thing that's sustaining it wants to sustain it. It's like imagine if you had friends that were sustaining you through an emotionally difficult time, but you were treating your friends like garbage, and they say, "Okay, well, if you're going to treat us like garbage, we're not going to be there for you anymore," because you're not drawing, you're not okay for yourself. So you're hoping you're holding on to them for your okayness, but as soon as they leave, your entire system crumbles.

19:11 That was the nature of the world in post-maisa baracious pre-flood. In other words, there was nothing inherent about the world that had the capacity to become godly. Whatever godliness it was receiving was from above. The greatness of Noah And really, it's an inspiring thing to think about that one person was able to create this incredible change. Noah represents an element of stability within the tenuous nature of reality. In other words, the world that was created post-flood, that we'll examine in a moment, it came about because of the personality of Noah. It was because he had a sense of self, a sense of serenity, a sense of truth for himself, regardless of what was going on around him. He was actually able to usher in this new world. And that's no small thing. I think a lot of people today take one of these two routes. Either they take the route of just bashing Noach, if you know, and you have no idea what he would have been in the times of Avram Venu, quoting Rashi, but let's say to the extreme. Or they sing Noach was a big tzaddik. It's like that's like a Meimor Chazal now, and it's from his Kepalach to his Fizalach.

20:25 It must be some medrash that I didn't know about. There's this vast divide about who Noach was. In actuality, I think just to focus not on the persona, but just to focus on what he was able to do, that's no small thing. In other words, to be able to say that he ushered in an era of a fundamental shift in the world because he held on to his integrity in a time where everything was falling apart around him is no small feat. So what created the change in the world? Before we get to what the change was, what created that change? The change is twofold. The change is the mabul, which, as we know, many sources in Chazal already point to the mabul being not only a destructive period but also a type of a mikva. Just like the mabul went for forty days, the mikva has forty sah. Find in many places this parallel. But the idea that there was a cleansing of the world, that all the systems of the world needed to fall apart is not only a destruction.

21:28 But it's also a cleansing process. Because now that there's no more holding on from without, the world is forced to discover an inner core of clarity, and that inner core of clarity is the teva. I just want to pause for a moment to say this because I think it's a very big thing. When the world is falling apart around you There are people who have no choice but to leave. They don't know how to access some sort of inner okayness and rise to the occasion of whatever they're confronting. There's an opportunity. There's something that's happening now. I'm going to talk on an individual level before I talk on a klal yisrael level. There's something happening on an individual level for every single person that's in this room, and I'm seeing it from all the talmidim and all the talmidot that are here in eretz yisrael.

22:22 The notion when people say, "How are we? How are we in this country?" to say that we're okay is a lie. We're not okay. We suffered a devastation unlike anything since the Holocaust. To say that we're okay is not true. What I'm hearing people say is more subtle, and I think it's a very beautiful way of saying it. We're not okay, and we're okay. Which I think is really the appropriate thing to say. Things are not okay. To say that things are okay is a lie. How many boys from this yeshiva are out there on the front lines defending us so that we could be in this room right now learning Torah? It's not true to say that we're okay. We're not okay until those guys, every single one of them, comes back to this base madrich and is learning Torah. We're not okay until all of the fathers and all of the brothers and all of the sons and everybody returns home.

23:13 And yet we're okay. We might be more okay than some of our parents in America. Who are watching the news all day and struggling with the anxiety of what they're hearing? Again, I'm not even commenting on the quote-unquote reality of what's being reported. That by itself is an unbelievable thing to see with your own eyes how what's being reported and the reality on the ground are two separate things. There's a sense of like This terrible, this awful. But every one of us is discovering an inner source of strength, of clarity, of stability, of serenity, a place of okanus within the lack of okanus. That means that every single person in this room, every single person who's in this country right now, is discovering about themselves an incredible level of change. If you were a person who was reliant on your family and now you're here six thousand miles away from your family, things are frightening. You're not sure what to do.

24:15 But you've been able to successfully turn inwards and discover that you are a Mayan, that there's a wellspring of strength from within you. That means that massive levels of change are taking place every single day that you're here. Every single day that we're here. Massive levels. There's a certain if you'll think about it like this: a sixteen-year-old growing up in his home. There's a certain infrastructure of stability. You don't need to discover inner stability. Because you you've been gifted with stability your entire life from without. People who go through crisis situations where especially they can't lean on people for support in the same way, the gift of that is the discovery of that inner strength and clarity from within. So every one of us in this room, including myself, every one of us in this room is experiencing massive amounts of change right now.

25:01 The growth that's happening is exponential. Most of us don't even realize it because we're in it. But there's no doubt that six months from now, ten years from now, we'll be able to point back to these times and identify that these moments of strength were so critical. One can almost imagine, imagine a chassan on his wedding day saying, "Oh my gosh, I'm leaving my family. I'm about to marry somebody, and I'm about to start my new job. And will I be okay at doing this?" I remember myself when I started when I was married. I got married in June, so I was starting to learn in kodesh in September. And I remember turning to my wife and, on the verge of tears, saying, 'What if I can't do this? What if I've set myself up for this cola lifestyle? I wasn't so much worried about the money. I was much more worried about whether I would be a London. Would I be able to meet these goals that I've set for myself? There was a lot of pressure that I was feeling.'

25:52 And there's something uncomfortable about that type of pressure. Imagine going into a moment already having the discovery of strength that you know you can do hard things. That's no small thing. We tell our children have a good day, right? We don't tell our children And again, it would be a weird thing to say as they're walking out the door. I happen to say a very weird thing when my kids are walking out the door. I'll give this to you as a gift. First of all, I think that's a good idea. As a father, you're going to learn the geshmack of saying strange things to your kids, especially in front of other children. Combine short, choppy sentences into fluid sentences. Fix punctuation errors to ensure grammatical correctness. Preserve original vocabulary - do NOT replace words with synonyms unless grammatically necessary. But the my kids hate that for now, but blessed Hashem, soon they'll discover for themselves how awesome it is. But I tell my children as they leave, I say Especially my teenagers, I have to say they're like walking out. If I miss them, I'll call out from the window.

26:48 Make good choices. That's what I scream out the window. Make sure you're not in a situation where you have to do something, but you don't want to. And like my sixteen-year-old won't even turn around anymore to acknowledge that I've said those words to her. It's so deeply embarrassing because I'm screaming out the window. In Ramat Echemish, which is like a bungalow colony, and every person here is Berg screaming out the window, 'Make good choices.' What we really want to tell our children, though, if we could say anything, we would say, 'Do hard things to them.' What happens to a society that doesn't go through hard things? Where did these kids learn to have strength from? It's a wild idea. Again, it seems to be a very elementary idea. It's not an elementary idea. If we send our kids to camp for eleven months of the year. If their high schools are camp type of experiences, and the only time they're not in camp is during June, because that's their off time from camp before they go to camp. If a kid doesn't have to struggle through taking a test and working hard and discovering a sense of responsibility and accountability, if they've never done anything like this before, then they've never had to find that source of strength from within them.

27:49 The tefillah is not just this Safety type of experience through the deluge of the flood. It's the discovery of an inner sense of serenity and stability when everything else in life is falling apart around you. Of course, what follows is Noach walking into this new world, and the new world that Noach encounters is a world that's discovered its own inner godliness. It's no longer drawing from outside of itself, but it's discovering its godliness from within. And if you look at the mitzvah of peri, you can see this. In Gan Eden, in pre-flood reality, the world was something that was meant to be conquered and ruled over. There was an element of kibush that's still fundamental to the world. Of course, that's the basis of everything, but it's a more childlike, infantile type of experience. If something doesn't have the capacity to draw from within itself, you need to rule over it. For example, I'm not going to have a conversation with my six-year-old about the value of looking both ways before you cross the street. It's not something that they're intellectually capable of handling. I'm just going to be very dogmatic about it.

29:06 If you don't look both ways before crossing the street, then I can't let you go out. It's dangerous, and you might get hurt. That's a very simple, practical conversation. I'm not going to sit there and talk about the existential value of life as we confront man's mortality. And the dialectic tension between one's desire to leave this world and maintain his own dignity within this world. I surely encourage you to look both ways before you go across the street, so you don't splat. I'm not having that philosophical, psychological conversation with the child. Because I don't believe that they have the capacity to really find these ideas from within themselves. It's a very simple, dogmatic, heebush type of experience. It's ruling over the animals of the field. We don't find that in post flood reality. In post flood reality, the world has matured. Of course, it has to go through the process of falling apart in order to discover its inner maturity. It has to reach a certain distance from Hashem, where Hashem is no longer sending in His godliness, because from within that distance is the discovery of one's own inner godliness.

30:15 And so, there's no vision of kibush, there's no vision of erudu over the animals of the field. But what there is an added compelling idea that a person is now meant not just to fill up the land, but to swarm all over the land, to spread, to be everywhere in the land. In other words, there's a certain capacity for expansion when a person has found an inner core of clarity from within, and that's really what I just want to highlight as we finish this year. When a person discovers the inner core of clarity, they don't stay within their daladamos anymore. As once you're okay, now you're okay to be a part of larger things than yourself. True leadership takes the following form. A real leader is not somebody who's just going to be like, 'Oh, I'm a leader.' A real leader is somebody who's okay for themselves, and because they're okay for themselves, they find this inner compulsion to share with others.

31:13 There is no doubt in my mind that that's what's happening in Klaish Israel right now. I was just speaking to one of the YU Russia Yeshiva about I don't know what time it is, but at 10:20 tonight And. He was saying, I of course was not alive in 1967, but based on what he's hearing here in Eretz Yisrael. And based on what we're experiencing here in Eretz Yisrael, he says there has not been achdos like this in Klal Yisrael since 1967. Why is that? Why are we experiencing this level of achdos? Why is there so much expansion happening in the world right now? There's no more lines. It's a very beautiful thing. There's no charedim, chilonim, mizrachnikim, datilu mi. There's no lines anymore. It's wild to see that in certain charedi neighborhoods, they're cooking. They're used to cooking for large families, but cooking for entire bases of people. It's wild to see. My brother-in-law is in Sava, and we sent with him some. He's an intelligence, so we sent with him just a couple of cakes and cookies for the base. And he messaged me that one of the generals was picking at my daughter's cakes, and he's like, send more, he liked it.

32:43 So I mean, let's just take a second and appreciate how Jewish it is that we go to war and everybody's like, what can I make for you? It's like the. It's like the most exceptionally. You like brownies. Every soldier was like, "Yeah, that's what I need before I go into Gaza." You know, you have good chocolate chip cookies. I like the soft ones. It's ridiculous. Imagine like a guy running and going,"I shouldn't have had that last bar. " The I don't know I don't know if we have enough bulletproof vests, but you know Pizza there's a ton of the it's it's an amazing thing. So my I said to my daughters, my sister called me up and she said Benji wants more cakes. So I called up my daughters and I said, girls, hit the kitchen today. Like just like whatever we have, make it all. And I said I suggested to my daughters. I said maybe call your friends and have your friends call their friends and have their friends call their friends. So that was it around.

33:47 Ten o'clock in the morning, so I got home at around seven, and then I had to take care of something. So till I was able to actually like get downstairs was eight thirty at night, and there was not walking room in my kitchen for the amount of things that had been baked, And I put everything in the car. It was the entire back seat, the entire front seat, the entire trunk. You couldn't see out the back, and my daughters were under the food. When you go away for a while and your parents pack things, I don't know if you guys all flew stuff, but when I was a kid, we put stuff on our bodies as we drove down to Boston. I showed up to my parents' house where my sister is staying, and we started unloading the car. And it just kept coming and kept coming, and it was like eight trips, nine trips, ten trips, and each one of us is carrying like you know fifteen trays at a time, and my father starts crying.

34:41 My father's like I just never knew that we could do this, and I was like, Dad, we did this in a couple of hours. This is not a big deal right now. And it's a crazy thing to think about. What happened? What happened to democratic reform? I was driving today to yeshiva, and I noticed on the overpasses there used to be all these signs, anti-democratic reform and pro-democratic reform, and those signs are gone. Instead, there are signs that say, 'One nation, that's how we win.' I'm like, look how the signs change. It's like I don't know if you saw Back to the Future. You know how the picture changes. I'm like, look, look how the bridge changed. What happened? Tarit says this. Every system that we had in place fell apart. Everything we knew about stability and reality in Eretz Yisrael is gone. Nobody thought for one second that this could happen.

35:33 We all were relying on this sense of security that we had. It'll never happen. It couldn't happen. It's a billion dollar fence. It's like nobody in our wildest imagination could have imagined such devastation. My wife saw a woman and her daughter who needed a tramp. So she gave them a tramp. It turns out they're from Stirote. And they told this girl, this teenager in the car, was telling my daughter Like their neighbors. I don't want to say the words. It wasn't like it's not academic to any of us in this room, but for them it was like their neighbors, their immediate neighbors. They heard the sounds outside. They got rescued in a miraculous fashion. It's a crazy thing. Our entire system fell apart. We all went through a Mabul. We went through a Mabul. We don't even understand what happened. Every system that we had fell apart, and yet there's a core of inner clarity that's been discovered, a strength that we all found within ourselves. And not only did we find that strength within ourselves, but because we found it within ourselves, there's this expansive quality that's happening right now in Eretz Yisrael. Every Jew is finding each other.

36:48 This has the capacity. It has the capacity to usher in a new era in Am Yisrael's history. If we do it right If we do this right, if we want this to be more than just a passing phase, this can't be this sort of external. We relied on each other in times of crisis because if we do that, then we haven't really discovered anything. If we lose one system, so we just discover another system, then we haven't really done what needed to be done here. In other words, if it's like we were relying on the border fence. Now that we're not relying on the border fence, we're relying on our unity. That's not what we mean here. That's not good enough. For this to be a reality, it needs to be we're okay. I'm okay. Everyone in this room is okay, and from that deep place of every one of us being okay, we can reach across the divide to our brothers and our sisters, to our cousins, to everybody in Am Yisrael, and we can stay united even after the enemy passes. And there's no doubt: Netzach Yisrael lo yishakir. This will pass. I don't know how long it will take, but this will pass just like every other time in history.

37:57 The ending here is already written. We don't know how it'll play out, but we know that we're going to be okay. But if we want, what's going to happen? If the war ends, God willing, very soon. Let's say it ends in a week from now. What's going to stop us from going back and protesting about democratic reform? What's going to stop us from being in a situation where we're clarifying what the capacity for Tel Aviv is to hold an outdoor minyan on Yom Kippur? What's going to stop us from fighting again? How do we know that we're not just going to revert back to our old ways? Do we want this to last or not? If we want it to last, then something fundamental has to change. If it's only a system, then the system, like every system, will eventually fall apart. Unity in Klal Yisrael is not a system that we rely on in order to make it through.

38:46 It's the discovery of a shared inner essence, and that can only come when each one of us, on an individual level, discovers our own inner strength. The opportunity right now for every person in this room is enormous. The reason I'm excited to participate tonight, and I'll be honest with you, I shouldn't share this with you. I really wasn't going to come tonight. I really have a concussion. I'm not joking about that. I really, I didn't go to yeshiva this morning. Two nights ago, I got a concussion. I'm really not supposed to be here. I pushed myself to be here because of how valuable I think this really is. I'm not saying that from a I'm a hero type of way. It could very well be a very stupid thing to do because I'm going to drive back tonight. If you're my mom, I'll let you know. I'll text you when I get home. This is a really important thing. You're not just in a beis medrash sitting and learning at eleven o'clock at night in the s'chus of a chayal. This is not a small thing at all. I don't mean to minimize it, but you're doing something more than that.

39:40 You're expressing a shared essence by participating in this program. You're expressing a shared essence with every single Jew in Chol Yisrael, wherever they are. That's no small thing to be a part of. That's a game changer. That's a paradigm shift in the way you think about yourself. We really can do this. It's not gonna come from people my age. I promise you, change never comes from people who are in their forties and fifties and sixties. Change has always come from the youth. It will come from people like you sitting in this room and reaching inside of yourself so that you can reach out to others. If my generation hasn't done it already, then your generation is up. It's your turn now. And I daven for all of us that you guys make the change that we need to see in this world. Don't pull from outside of yourself Not even from other yidden.

40:34 Discover your inner clarity, your inner core, and memela reach out to everybody. If we can reach out to everybody, then we will be zayecha to usher in the next level of creation, which is not only a post Noach reality, but a post reality where we usher in this new era of Olam Habah, where we live like they did in the Tever. Where all the animals, everybody in the Tever lived in harmony And that concept of peace in the world comes from a Tever-like reality where a person discovers their own inner strength. Yiratzim of Ne'avinu Shabashamayim that we should be zayecha to it bekar of mamish.