Noach - The Teiva as a model for the Jewish home

2:08 It says, "V'ze'shertasa osa shloshem os ama orach teva chamisha amarachba u'shloshem ama komas." The size of the teva should be three hundred cubits by length. Fifty cubits by breadth, and thirty cubits by height. And then, fascinatingly, the Torah returns to the structure of the teva. The Torah tells us, 'Zohar tasse la teva, you should make.' We'll see what zohar is. I'm sure you, many of you, already know what type. It's a certain type of window. Ve'al ama tichalena milamala, and it should come at the top of the teva. Should come to a point that should be one ama. It says, "Upesach ateva betzida tassim tachtiem shnayim u'shloshin tasse." You should make a door on the side of the teva, and there should be three levels to the teva: the bottom level, the middle level, and the top level. Those are the things that the Torah tells us about the teva. Most of us, I imagine, when we're learning these things in the text, when it comes to the Chumash, most of us probably run through them quickly. They don't need to be perfect, but they should be clear and concise.

3:20 Probably most of you know that Chazal say the garbage was at the bottom level, the animals are on the second level and the top level was for the people. But more than that, does anybody really think about the details of the teva? I imagine most of us don't. So, tonight, I want to talk about the details of the teva. The teva is often used as a marshal for the Jewish home. A Jewish home, more than anything, needs to be a place of tranquility. Which is why the teva is built by Noah. The word Noach means a sense of rest, a sense of serenity in tumultuous worlds. The job of a home, more than anything, is to create a sense of tranquility. And then before we even enter into all the details, I just want to say the following. I saw once from Rav Matzus Yaakov Solom in the Mashgiach of Lakewood Yeshiva.

4:10 He said a very beautiful thing. He said, "What do you think it's like for a child when they walk in the door after a long day of school?" And the first thing that the mother or father says to them is, "What do you have for homework?" That's not a safe feeling for a child. I think most people don't realize, and I think this is especially true today. Children are having a very difficult time. We could point to a lot of different reasons why children are having a very difficult time But even for yourselves, let's take a look at the last four years of your life. How much social struggles did you have in the last four years? Remember, in ninth grade, the question of where do you belong. In tenth grade, I finally feel like I'm in. I do belong in a particular group. Then halfway through tenth grade, you found out that you don't belong in that group, and you actually belong in a different group. Eleventh grade when you lost your best friend, and then you had to find two new best friends to decide which one was gonna be your best friend. Twelfth grade where you might have finally figured it out. Do you remember these? The drama of being in high school. It wasn't that long ago. Perhaps many of you remember this. The feeling of tumultuousness

5:18 And I don't just mean tumultuousness in the world of what's going on around us, the craziness of the world that we live in. Even in a person's internal world, most people are beset with a deep feeling of anxiety because there's a tremendous amount of pressure in our world. Does that make sense? This is not even getting into the constant gaze of social media, and where do you stand and who went on this vacation or that vacation? There's a lot of stress that exists in the world. The most important function of a Jewish home is to be a place of safety, to be a place of serenity and tranquility, and that's no small feat. We spend a lot of time in the Jewish community today. We spend a lot of time in the Jewish community today talking about the impact of friends. But very few people are stopping and asking themselves the question: Why are friends having such an impact to begin with?

6:16 In other words, naturally, logically, if you were thinking about it, you would say to yourself: If a child has the influence of two parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and a community, and the community is saying go one way, why is it that a child is so heavily influenced by their three friends that if the friends say, 'Oh, we're going to go to this party,' then all of a sudden they are not sure what to do? Why is that? Very few people are talking about that. Most people say you have to make sure your kids are with a good group of friends, but they're not asking themselves the question of why friendships are so powerful to begin with. One of the reasons that today friendships are so powerful is because we used to raise our children with a deep sense of safety from the family.

7:01 People grew up because they couldn't afford to live in separate homes. People grew up with their cousins living either next door or literally in the same house. Parents who couldn't afford to buy homes would get together with their siblings and they would buy homes together. And so you grew up literally in the same house as your aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents. If you look at old movies, right in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, I think it's a good example of how we can apply this method to other scenarios. There was a reason for that. It was because of the lack of financial resources. It was a very difficult time. What do you think? Okay, let me know if you need anything else. But who loved him? It's an amazing feeling to be a kid like that. To know that. I'm not coming home to friends. I'm coming home to a family where maybe it's loud and maybe everybody's running around, but here is a deep place of love and belonging.

7:50 What do you think it would be like if we lived in a world where everyone is treated equally and the same opportunities for success, where everyone knows each other? Our communities have become enormous, enormous. It's possible today to walk around in the Jewish community and to have lived there for thirty years and not to know the people who live two blocks away from you. It's a crazy thing. A Jew who grew up in the shtetl knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody. There was Shloimeh the baker. There was Mendel the tailor. Everybody knew everybody because the towns weren't that big. So the reason I'm not saying that people didn't struggle back then, but the reason they didn't struggle in the same way that we struggle with anxiety, with depression, with all of these things, is because our children grew up with a deep sense of serenity and belonging. Noach builds the teva. Because more important than anything, when somebody's building a home, it begins with this is a place of safety and serenity. That's what every one of us wants. There's a reason we feel disconnected from our homes, and it's because our homes are not necessarily safe places.

8:54 There's something extraordinarily painful about walking into your house at 5:30 in the afternoon after a long day of school and hearing yelling. That's an uncomfortable thing. My mother used to say that when she yelled at me It would go straight through my ears. Like no matter what I was doing wrong, my brother would hear it, and I would just totally ignore her. Nobody feels comfortable when one parent is yelling at another sibling. That's not a safe place. That's not a serene place. What we want more than anything as kids is to come home to a safe place, to a place where I know it's not just chilled. There's a deep sense of everyone here is loved and cherished, no matter what, unconditionally. People, because they don't get that unconditional love when they're younger, they start to look for that unconditional love when they're older. As you get older, life doesn't give you unconditional love. The people that are meant to give you unconditional love are from your family.

9:48 So it's not by accident that Noah builds the teva. As we look at the three psukim The first pasuk deals with the wood. And the compartments and the tar that's inside and outside of the teva. The last pasuk talks about the window, the door, where the door was, and the compartments that are inside the teva. The middle pasuk deals with the dimensions of the teva. Why is that in the middle? It seems to be a little bit out of place. I would have thought that if we were going to write this, how would you have written it? Where would the dimensions of the teva have been? We put them in the middle. Does that make sense? Where would you have put it if you were writing the Torah? Certainly, you would have put them first. You would have said, 'This is the size of what's going to be. This is the space that it's going to take up.' 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.

10:49 The tuna is the main thing. By putting the dimensions in the middle, the Torah is sort of highlighting for us: this is the essence of a Jewish home. I want to share with you an amazing idea from the Vilna Gaon. It's a little bit kabbalistic, so stay with me. But the idea is super important. We know that there are two forces of tuma in this world, two forces of impurity. And they go by two different names. One is called the Nachash, and the other is called Samael. The Samach Mem. Have you ever heard of that term Samael before? So the Nachash. What's the? If you had to look at the words of the letters of the Nachash, which letter would you say is the letter that represents the impurity? We wouldn't say that it's the nun, because nun is from the shame adnos. The shame of Hashem is adon. The nun comes from the shame adnos. The concept of Hashem is master.

11:39 We wouldn't talk about the shin because the shin stands for shakai. The grove says that stands for Hashem's name. Which letter is going to be the letter that represents impurity? It would be the chet. And after all, why would the chet be the letter of impurity? Because chet stands for sin itself. In the letters Samael, Samach Mem Am Aleph Lamid, which letters would you say represent the impurity of the word? The Samach and the Mem. Because the Aleph and the Lamid represent Hakadosh Baruch Hu's name. If you look at the dimensions of the table, you'll see something very fascinating. If we look now, we said what were the three letters we had? We had the Ches, the Samach, and the Mem. So if you look at it, it goes as follows. There's three hundred. What does the pasuk say? It's three hundred cubits of length.

12:36 Three hundred, three hundred amos of length of the teva. Which letter is the three hundred? No. It's not going to be the same. It's going to be the shin. Very good, excellent. It's going to be the shin, right? Because remember, we're doing not the letters that represent tuma. But the letters that represent the kedusha. So the shin is three hundred. After that, what did we have? What was the next one we had? Fifty. What's fifty? The nun. Very good. Then after that we had the height, which was thirty amos. What letter is that? That's the lamed from Samuel. What letter are we missing? We're missing the aleph. Where do we see the aleph? In the size and the dimensions of the teva. Remember earlier we said the teva comes to a point, one ama One ama across the top of the teva is meant to be a slant, one ama across. That's the alef.

13:37 So if you look at the dimensions of the teva, even though that was a bit cabalistic, stay with me because the idea is amazing. The teva is designed to counteract the evil of the world, the evil of the world as represented in the ches, the samach, and the mem. The teva highlights the kedusha of the world—that's how it counteracts the evil of the world, through all the different dimensions that represent the nun, the shin, the aleph, and the lamad. That's what the Vilna Gaon writes. What does that have to do with us? I want to share with you what is an obvious, simple idea, but it's the essence of a Jewish home. We spoke about the fact that a Jewish home needs to be a place of serenity, but that's because the Jewish home has a purpose. The purpose of the Jewish home. Is to counteract the evil forces of this world.

14:25 In other words, we recognize that as Jews, we are in the world. A Jew is in the world. A Jew recognizes that they're always going to be surrounded by worldliness. The only question is how we deal with the evil that's out there in the world. A lot of people spend their time listening carefully. A lot of people spend their time talking about defensive measures. The Jewish home is not a defensive measure. The Jewish home is an offensive measure. I want to explain to you the difference between an offensive measure and a defensive measure. I'm not saying we shouldn't have defensive measures. I'm saying that when we only have defensive measures, we're losing out on something that's mission critical. Let's say, for example, let's take smartphones. A defensive response to a smartphone is what? Put a filter on your smartphone. So a parent might say to a child, "We're going to allow you to have a smartphone, but only if you have a filter. We're going to allow you to have a smartphone, but only if there's a limit on your screen time every single day. And if we see that you're dipping into your homework, then we're taking away your smartphone." Those are defensive responses to a challenge that exists.

15:35 In Yiddishkeit, we believe as follows: If the Jewish home is a home that counteracts the forces of evil. Then you're not just taking defensive measures; you're taking offensive measures. So I'll give you an example of this. If a kid says, "I'm not keeping Shabbos anymore because I'm going on my phone" What's the problem? The problem is not only the phone. What's the bigger problem? Why does the kid not want to keep Shabbos? Do you understand? In other words, it changes. Everyone's spending their time focusing on the symptom, but very few people are spending their time focusing on the root cause of the problem. The root cause of the problem is not the phone. Everyone likes to point to the phone. The phone is a symptom of the problem. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't have defensive measures in place when dealing with a symptom of a problem. Of course, medicine has to deal with the symptoms of the problem, and not only with the.

16:34 The actual problem itself. You have to deal with the symptoms, but anybody that only treats the symptoms and doesn't deal with the root problem is missing the point entirely. A Jewish home is meant to be something that counteracts the forces of evil. A kid who grows up in a Jewish home should have, in the ideal circumstance—obviously, it's always not going to be ideal—but in the ideal circumstance, I should want to keep Shabbos. The Shabbos table in my home should be so inspiring. Should be so uplifting that why would I not want to keep Shabbos? Do you understand the difference? Because Shabbos should be a force in our home that counteracts the evil in the world. So when a kid comes into a home, let me ask a question: When you think about your Shabbos table, right? I remember I grew up in a home, a friend of mine's home.

17:22 Where we would take bets on Friday night how far his father would make it into the sudda before falling asleep. Now. This guy worked very hard to support his family. I'm not at all throwing shade at him. I'm not casting aspersions on this man. I can understand that by Friday night he was very tired But do you know what it's like to have a Shabbos table where your father is snoring like a truck driver? This man was a larger man, so when he snored with gusto. Some people have like a light snore. It's like a nice little, like sort of like just a breeze that comes in and out. This man was like a truck driver. It was like a semi on the I ninety going down. And he's like one of those guys that sounds like he's dying when he's snoring. You know that guy. And his soup, I always took the under. I was like, there's no way he's gonna make it past the soup. And my friend, who was his son, he was the one who he would say, "What do you think tonight? You think my dad will make it through the soup?" I'm like, "There's no way your dad's gonna make it through the soup." He's like, "I'm telling you, my dad's gonna make it to dessert tonight." I'll be like, "I'll give you odds on dessert, man."

18:21 And he never made it past the soup. And it's not that it wasn't a beautiful Shabbos table because there were certain elements there was a beautiful Shabbos table It was lacking a father's presence at the Shabbos table you know what I mean you know like there are certain Shabbos tables where the kids just get up in the middle of the meal and they go to the couch in the middle of the sunda that's a tragedy that's a tragedy it used to be that there was a thing we stay at the Shabbos table together until we're done eating the sunda. There's no such thing as you disappear. Where'd they go? They're at the couch. We're in the middle of a suudah A family that sits together. I'm not even talking about zmiros and the very Torah for a second. Of course, zmiros and the very Torah need to be there, and they need to be age appropriate for the children that are there. But a Shabbos table should be a geshmakh place. Why would a child want to leave the Shabbos table in the middle of the meal?

19:10 It should be a place where people are joking around and having fun, and there's an ambiance of ruach at the table. I wouldn't want to leave Shabbos. Our homes need to be places that are such a magnet. There's so much positive going on to counteract the evil of the world that we don't even need to spend so much time focusing on the defensive measures. Of course, we have the defensive measures in place, but we're playing offense. We're playing offense against the evil of the world. The middle of this tava says most people spend their time talking about the nun The chest and the shin. The tava is a place that spends its time. Talking about, I'm sorry, the ches, the samach, and the mem. The tava is a place that spends its time talking about the nun, talking about the shin, talking about the aleph, and talking about the lamet, highlighting the beauty and the positivity of Yiddishkeit.

19:59 And with that in mind, I want to take a quick look. I know we don't have much time left, but in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I want to go through some of the incredible lessons here. I hope you'll listen because these things are of the utmost importance. I'm going to go through them very quickly. The first thing we see about the teva, which is absolutely mission critical, is this concept called atze gopher. Atze gopher literally means gopher wood. But if you look in the Gemara in Sanhedrin, it tells us what is gopher wood. Gopher wood is cedar wood. Correct. Gopher wood is cedar wood. And the Yalkut Shimoni tells us what is unique about cedar wood. Cedar wood has strong roots, many strong roots. That's what it means to be a cedar tree. I want to give you the number one thing, and it's the reason that it's the first thing in the Torah. The number one thing that you need for marriage is strong roots.

20:55 There's a there's an idea that you hear sometimes in yeshiva. I'm sure you hear it in seminary also, but I certainly hear it in yeshiva. Guys, go like Rebbe, I feel like I'm missing something. I feel like only through marriage am I going to find the thing that I'm missing. That is a terrible, terrible idea. Marriage is not meant to complete the incomplete. Marriage is designed to complete the complete. I'll say it again because I want to make sure everybody gets it. Marriage is not designed to complete the incomplete. There is nobody that can complete you. Only you can complete yourself. Only a person who has strong roots firmly planted in their own soil is capable of truly connecting to another. Once you have reached this level of completion, you can now share your completion with someone else. Do you hear me? Yeah, I think that's right. Do you hear this idea?

21:51 So the Atzey Gofar tells us: if you're going to enter into a marriage and you're going to be pulling from somebody else, make me feel okay. Nobody can do that for you. If you show up to a marriage and you say, "Here's my inner negative belief," and you turn to your husband and you say, I don't want to feel this way anymore about myself. Can you make me feel better about myself? There's nobody that can make you feel better about yourself. It might be wonderful to be married to somebody who gives you good, positive vibes, but unless you complete yourself from within yourself, you're not a vessel to receive somebody else's love, nor are you a vessel to give to another. Because the truth of the matter is that if you're incomplete, you know why you're giving to somebody else in the hopes that they'll complete you.

22:39 You ever do this? You ever like have a friend who's cooler than you, so maybe she gives you a little social credibility. You ever have something like that? Or the desire to be friends with someone who's cooler than you, because then if I'm with them, I get that social credibility. You ever make a decision that sounds like that, like I don't want to go to that sem because I don't know what the impact will be socially. But if I get into this one, it's going to be a lot of work. What are you really saying when you say those things? You're saying I'm not okay. But if I'm with that person, it'll make me feel like I'm okay. It'll fill this other half of me. I tell the guys all the time. I'm like, let's be honest. How many of you dated that girl in high school because you wanted to be able to walk down Central Avenue with her? It gets very uncomfortable in the room.

23:27 And it's understandable. I'm not saying that in a judgmental way. If you're a fifteen-year-old kid and you're dealing with a lot of your own inner negative beliefs, it makes sense that you would want to reach out to somebody else and hold onto them to make sure that you don't drown. But that imagery is a very powerful imagery. You ever see somebody who's drowning and then a lifeguard comes to rescue them? What do they do? They're willing to push the lifeguard down so that they can get some air themselves. We create toxic relationships when we're not firmly planted in our own soil and we're pulling from other people. And especially in a marriage where we're trying to build a Jewish home, if you're married to somebody who's not okay for themselves, and you're not okay for yourself, it might initially feel like the relationship is great. People say this all the time.

24:13 It's cliche, but they say it and they don't even realize what they're saying. They're like, "I feel like our weakness, our weaknesses complement each other. What exactly do you mean by that? What exactly do you mean by that? It gets very uncomfortable when you start to ask. She's more talkative. This is what I hear from the guys. Like, she's more willing to talk, and I'm more in my cave, and I don't really want to talk. So she talks enough for both of us. I'm like, how do you think that's going to go in a marriage. If you're not sure, just say so. If you don't want to share what's actually happening with another I feel like it's good. She'll talk enough for both of us. I'm like, dude, that's not the way this works. You have to be willing to be vulnerable and share. And then on the other side, you see women that are constantly pulling from their husbands. They're not okay with the way that their husband shows up. It's not okay for them not to talk. You need to tell me what's going on inside of you. It's very uncomfortable when you have two people that are not okay pulling from each other. We have to go into a marriage like Atze Gopher, fully planted in our own soil, okay, and enough for ourselves, and now we're capable of giving to somebody else.

25:14 That's the very first lesson of the teva. The second lesson of the teva, and this is also a very important lesson, is that the teva has compartments, and Rashi tells us that meant there were individual dwellings within the home. There's a concept called boundaries. This is not a simple concept. People think once I get married, it's like it's me and him, right? Like we're together. We're in this together. There's a notion of privacy that exists within a marriage as well. There's a notion of compartmentalization, and what that means is that you do not need to know. This might come as a shock for some of you. You do not need to know what your husband is thinking. If he doesn't want to share it with you, you do not need to know. And by the way, to the husbands, I'll say the same exact thing. You do not need to know everything that your spouse is thinking.

26:11 What you need to understand about a marriage is that a marriage is like three rings. I'm sorry, I don't have a. It doesn't really matter. It's not really that important. But let's say you have. These are the three rings of a marriage, right? So the marriage, let's say this is the male and this is the female. The marriage takes place in this shared space in between. That's called the marriage. But there's still a male and a female within that marriage that may only occupy some of that shared space. You get to decide what you want to bring into that shared space. He gets to decide what he wants to bring into that shared space. But you don't spend your time trying to get him to bring everything into that shared space, because he may not want to bring it in. It might not be safe for him to bring that in. He'll decide when and if he's ready to bring that in. But there are people that spend their life pulling from their spouses all the time. People who read the private things that their husbands and wives write in a diary, because they need to know what's going on inside of the other person.

27:18 That they don't know how to allow another person to experience their own emotions. They don't know how to let them go back into their space. So it's like, no. We have to talk about this right now. Why do you have to talk about this right now? Because you have a need to talk about it right now. Because I need to know what's going on for him. Why do you need to know what's going on for him? Again, if you're strongly rooted, go back to that first concept. If you're strongly rooted over here and you're okay and enough for yourself, then that means you're okay with whatever exists in this shared space. And if he's not bringing a part of him into that shared space for whatever reason, that's okay. Even within the home, there's something called rooms. And rooms are very powerful. We share a room with our spouse, but it's okay to have a place to go, whether that's inside of yourself or outside of yourself—a place to retreat, to recoup, to recuperate, to rejuvenate, so that you can participate in the relationship. A lot of people think now that I think this is okay, but a marriage with no boundaries is sloppy.

28:21 There's times that are mutter, there's times that are usher. Not everything in a marriage is all in all the time. Intimacy is the highest level of oneness because there's boundaries. But boundaries don't just exist outside the marriage; they exist inside the marriage as well. So far, two lessons. Number one, atse gopher. You have to be enough for yourself. Number two. Each animal had their own private dwelling place, a place where they could be uniquely themselves, and that's also what it means to be a part of a home. The third lesson is a very powerful lesson. It's called Tar Yer Teva from the inside and from the outside. Rashi compares the Teva to Moshe's Teva when he was going down the Nile River. If you look at the Pesukim by Moshe Rabbeinu's Teva, that little bundle that he was in. It was tarred on the outside, but there was mud on the inside. But if you look at our teva here by the mabul, you'll notice that it's tarred on the outside and tarred on the inside. And Rashi says the difference is obvious. The Nile River was basically a tranquil river, but here we were talking about raging storms. When there's raging storms, there needs to be a seal from the inside and from the outside.

29:32 What does that mean to us today? The next concept in building a home is something called radical safety. Radical safety. Radical safety means that when I walk into my home, I am completely protected. I'm completely protected from anything that's happening outside of this home, and I'm completely protected from anything that's happening inside of this home. When I walk into my home, the number one feeling that I have is safety. If your child comes to you And your child walks in the door. You ever have this where you walk in the door and you're on the verge of tears but you don't want anyone to see But everyone knows. Let's say you have a good dad. And let's say he knows to walk into your room. Sometimes it's good to leave somebody alone, but let's say you're the type that wants somebody to come into your room.

30:27 And let's say you have a dad who sits down on the bed And he says, 'You don't have to say anything. I just want you to know I'm here.' And he just gently rubs your back, and then you burst out crying. You ever see that? You know this scene. Everyone here has experienced some form of this scene. That means you have good parents. You have good parents, right? What's beautiful about that is that means you went through something And you walked in the door to your home. What did you need permission for? You needed permission to be as you are in this moment. That's called creating safety. Radical levels of safety. A child, especially today, is living in a Mabul. It's so hard to be a child today. It's not enough to have what Moshe Rabeinu had in his teva. It can't be just safe from the outside. It needs to be safe from the inside as well. And I want to share with you an idea. And this is the number one thing in creating safety. If you look at the lashon of the pasuk, look what it says: the chafarta osa mi bayis umichutz ba kofar.

31:31 It has to be covered v'chafarta. It should be caulked both from the outside and the inside with tar. Listen to what the Meishilowach says. This is an unbelievable idea, and it goes beautifully with what we were saying. The chafarta comes from a lashon of kapara. Do you want to know what it looks like to have safety in your home? Make your homes places of forgiveness. Where children are forgiven for the things that they've done, where parents can forgive each other. I heard a great line once: 'Yes, and.' It's a simple but powerful way to build on someone else's idea. If children see parents who make up, then they know ours is a home where you can be imperfect and still be forgivable. Do you know how many kids think they're not forgivable? Do you know how many kids are living with a deep sense of shame?

32:23 I'll give you an example of this. I've said this once here before. You know the line that you crossed, summer after tenth grade, that you promised yourself in eighth grade that you would never cross. That line is called shame. Yeah. When you cross that line, a little bit too close to home for some of you, by the way. Thank you for revealing yourself. For those of you that did this, the quiet smile just now. I want you to know I'm with you. Yeah. The line is called shame. Once you cross it, I'll never do this, and then you did it. The question is now: Are you forgivable? Will you allow yourself to be forgiven? How many people here? The answer is almost everybody. So you don't have to raise your hand. How many people here hide from their parents or their siblings things that they've done because they'd be devastated to see the look on their parents' face. If my parents would know that I did that, oh my gosh, would kill them, right? So most of us spend our lives hiding from the people that love us the most because we don't know that our homes are designed to be places of forgiveness. That if a child comes to their parents and says, "Mom, Dad, I messed up" That's the unbelievable opportunity for a parent to say to a child

33:31 It's understandable that you made a mistake. It's okay that you made a mistake. You're forgivable. If you want to have radical levels of safety in your home, if you want to protect your children from whatever is going on in the tumultuous waters of the outside world, make sure your children know that they're lovable and acceptable and forgivable, no matter what they've done. If you look back on it, for those of you especially just now that were laughing and smiling quietly, I'm talking to you now. For those that don't know what I'm talking about, I'm still talking to you, but I'm talking to the people next to you that did this when I said it before. That person that made that cringe, I want you. I'm talking to you specifically of all the people that laughed and smiled. I'm talking to you. How badly would you have wanted to tell your parents, and for your parents to go? That must have been really hard for you to say. I really appreciate the courage you shared with me. Thank you so much.

34:18 I want you to know I'm not sitting in judgment of you. You probably didn't do that because that was your best self. You probably did that because of whatever it is you are going through. And I want you to know I'm here for you. What we want more than anything is for our parents to know who we are. And the problem with telling our parents who we are is we don't know if we're forgivable. If we want to teach our children that they're forgivable, then our homes need to be places of forgiveness. There's nothing wrong with a parent getting the child in trouble. But if the child gets in trouble and doesn't know how to recover, it's okay to say to your kid, "I'm holding you accountable for the thing that you did." So let's say, for example, your kid broke curfew. The curfew was at 11 o'clock. They came home at 11:30. There's nothing wrong with saying to the child, "What you did was not okay. We have a curfew in this home, and we're asking you to respect it. And because of that, we have no choice but to have a consequence of an earlier curfew for the next two weeks." There's nothing wrong with saying that.

35:12 The question now, as a parent, now that you said no, is: What are you going to do over the course of the next two weeks to make sure that your child knows that they are still loved and still okay, despite the fact that they made a mistake? That child now needs more time, not less time. The child needs to know I'm forgivable in order to have that radical sense of safety that we want to permeate our homes. The next thing we see is the window. What was that? There's a skylight. The window. Shiloh, what the window actually was. The window might have been a window. Maybe it was a skylight. The other thing is that the window was a precious gem that gave off its own light. I want to share with you something. You might understand what I'm talking about. You might not. But I hope that you'll at least bear it in mind because one day I promise you this will be useful to you.

36:01 Sometimes your homes will have natural light from the outside. Sometimes the windows will be open and there will be light shining in, and those are beautiful times. Every home has to have windows. And by the way, if you're smart, get big windows. You know, if you ever had a living room with like a nice big window, and you walk in the middle of the day, and it's just like perfect in there. You know I'm talking about like light is an amazing thing. People stay indoors in windowless places. Even in this room right now, it's dark. It's dark even with all the light. There's a certain darkness that exists in the room. It's not comfortable, it's not a good feeling. That's why when it gets to be springtime, what do you always ask your teachers? Can we go outside? Can we go outside? We have class outside. Everybody knows they're not going to learn as well outside. What's the big desire to go outside?

36:48 I just want to be outside. Outside is a very normal, natural place for us. Windows are a beautiful thing. Your teva has to have windows, but there are times where your teva will need artificial light. There are times when you guys won't feel the warmth just coming into your home from the outside. That means you, as parents and as wives, are going to have the responsibility to be your own source of light for your family. That's what everyone in Israel is going through right now. Now it's dark outside, but strong parents are doing their best to make their homes places of light on the inside. Nobody wants to live in a home with depressed people. No kid wants to wake up in the morning and go "Is Abba going to get up today?" That's not a comfortable place to be. You understand what I'm saying? Part of being in a home means yes, there's light coming in from the outside, and you have to have big windows, allowing your home to be permeated with the light from outside. But sometimes you have to be the light. Sometimes when there's no light coming from the outside, you have to find a place from within yourself to provide the light from your home. And even if you feel like you have nothing left in the tank, you have to dig deep into a place where there's nothing left and find something there.

38:04 This is a great story with Rav Shaya La of Karastir. You girls have heard of the great tzaddik Rav Shaya La. There's a story about Rav Shaya La. I forget who Rav Shaya La's rebbe was, just for a moment. Rav Shaya La was the shamus for his rebbe, and he would give out the what's called in Yiddish the balkalach. You girls know what balkalach are—the Shabbos rolls, the like little rolls. And anybody who would come, he would give out the rolls. And the rebbe was watching Rav Shaya La give out rolls very intently to all the people that were coming. He was giving out the rolls from this bag. One of the chassidim asked the rebbe, "what are you studying so intently? Watching Shyela just take the rolls out of the bag. What's the big deal?" " So the rebbe turned to the chassid and he said,"About fifteen minutes ago, there were no more rolls left in that bag. Shyela is pulling out bulkalach from a bag that has nothing in it. Now, at first glance, that just appears to be a cute chassidish story about a miracle. But I heard Rav Moshe Weinberger's take on this story, which really inspired me. Rav Weinberg said, The pshat in this story is that Reb Shyolah knew how to dig deep into a bag that had nothing left and pull out a bokkach.

39:06 He knew how to pull something out and give it to somebody else. As parents, we often have responsibilities to tap into the reserve energies that we didn't know that we had to be a light in our home when everything else is collapsing around us. You know what it's like to go. Especially today. I'm going to talk about it from a Jewish mother perspective. Even though I'm not a Jewish mother, I've been married to one for quite some time. I've seen how it goes. You have to wake up in the morning, and you have a whole bunch of kids to get off to school. I want you to know that getting children off to school is an avoda. You would think that it's what? Kids get dressed. How long does it take to make sandwiches, to get the kids to put the right thing in their bags to be out on time for the bus? This is an avoda atzuma. By the time a wife gets her children to school.

39:53 She could be a shmata for the next five hours. You know, you have the teenagers fighting. She's taking too long in the bathroom. She stole my shirt. I used to have that shirt. I wanted that shirt. She took it yesterday. She knew that I wanted it. How come she's always taking my socks? You know, the little kids are taking too long in the bathroom because they don't know how to use the toothpaste. They don't know how to squeeze the tube enough. And the shirt that you thought was yours ripped, and they just came to you today and said, 'Oh, by the way, I'm also the apes Shabbat, so I need you to go out and buy forty candies in the next hour for my kids.' I have a test today. I'm not going to school. I can't. I have a stomach ache, right? And like you're dealing with all of this, even if you only have four, five, six kids, to get the kids off by the time eight thirty in the morning comes, you could already be a shmata, and then you go to work.

40:39 To sometimes a condition that's not always the easiest. You have to get home because of the kids coming home. Let's say you're working late and come home at four thirty, and now at four thirty the kids walk in. How do children walk into a home? Do children walk into a home and put their knapsack in the designated place? Children feel like the floor is their world, and they just throw it out, right? Then you're like, okay, how are you doing today? Yeah, I'm good. You want to sit down? No, I don't think so. You're very ten. You're loving parents, right? So you tend to them very nicely, and then after treating them with kindness You go, you have any homework? They say no, and they ask if they can see your bag. Then you see the thing they have for homework, and then they take over the entire dining room table. They say they don't know how to do any of this. The teacher didn't teach it to them.

41:24 Nobody knows how to do this. Everybody failed this test, right? And then, as you're digging through the bag, you find the test that they hid from three weeks ago. That they got a forty-three on that test, and you say, How come you didn't tell me that you got a forty-three on the test? And the kid goes, Because everybody got a forty-three. I actually got the best mark in the class. Ask anybody. I got the best mark on the class. It wasn't even worth showing it to you. And you, as a parent, know that that's not true. Maybe you're going along with this, and then your husband comes home. And that wonderful, beautiful man who spent his entire day working, he comes home and he's like,"How was your day?" And then, because you've had a hard day

41:55 You say, "Not great." I just can't deal with this anymore. Everything is not good. And it's like, "Do you know where I've been for the last 12 hours?" Do you know where I've been for the last 12 hours? And then there's this, I'm reaching into this bag and I have nothing left. I have to stop. I have nothing left. And what are we working for? For me, it's working for the vacation to go on that our kids will complain the entire time that they're not on the vacation that their friends are on. It's very possible to feel like there's just no light at all, and yet it's accessing that light from the inside. Very often we get to access the light from the outside, but sometimes it's about accessing the light from the inside and saying I'm going to illuminate this home from within because it doesn't feel like I can illuminate this home from the outside. People are all going through something. I can be a rock for my family, and I can make our home a bright place to be. Two more things I want to share with you very quickly.

42:41 Number one The top of the Teva is slanted. And number two, the door is on the side. Why isn't the door on the top of the teva? So Rashi tells us, if the door is on the side of the teva, then no water gets in. Why is the teva slanted so that the rainwater will just wash off of the teva? Our homes need to be places where we can have a respite from the deluge of the outside world. That means to say, we need to create a situation where nothing seeps in. That this is a sealed home, so to speak. That if there's a door, of course we open the door to let people in, but we also know how to close our doors, and our doors are on the side of the teva, because when you walk in this home, you get to leave the deluge of outside of this home.

43:30 It's one of the tragedies of homework. I'm sorry for picking on homework, but I have big issues with homework. One of the challenges of homework is that they're trying to take the school and bring it into the home. The school is for the school, and the home is for the family. I prefer for my kids to learn thirty percent less and do their review in school, than have to come home and spend all their time at home doing homework. Home is for home, school is for school, and when a child walks into the home, they have the right to close the door behind them and to know that none of the rainwater is going to seep in. I don't want to bring the anxieties of my day into my home. I want to be able to know that as soon as I close that door, it's over. Whatever water is pouring down on my house, it's just going to wash off the house. I don't have to be that person here.

44:18 It's a tragedy that we give our Jewish children. I don't know why we do it. Sometimes five, six hours of homework a night, and even though we've gotten better, and people make testing schedules and this and that, somehow it always gets messed up. Every school says we have testing schedules. Every girl that comes to Tomer Devorah goes. But until one teacher messes up the testing schedule because it didn't work for her, and then all of a sudden we had five tests on that day and eight papers due in the same week. How did that happen, and what's the negative impact of that? The negative impact of that is I come home and I'm a shmata. And then we wonder why our kids cheat in school. Because who wants to do three hours of homework a night if a kid gets home at 5:30, and especially if they have clubs or games or teams? Who knows, right? That's not even the point. That's just the start. The real issue is that no kid has the bandwidth to do that.

45:05 And it's bringing the anxiety of school into the home. It's a beautiful thing here in Eretz Yisrael, and I'm not picking on America, but there's a beautiful thing here in Eretz Yisrael that children get out of school early. They get out of school when they're little, one or two o'clock in the afternoon. And they're getting a great education. And when they come home, they have chugim. They go to dance. They go to art. It's not therapy, by the way. It's just dance. It doesn't have to be dance therapy or art therapy. It's just dance or art. They put on performances. They're part of shows. It's an amazing thing. I have a daughter. She's in. She calls it gymnastics. She doesn't know that it's gymnastics. And with you, I'm hoping she never learns. I want her to be forty years old and have a child of her own. She's nine years old. She's the sweetest, tiniest. You met her over. She's a tiny little happy thing. She's like, she's like her smile. She's like this the entire time. She doesn't know how to stop smiling. It's Wednesday, Abba. You know what I have today? Gymnastics.

46:05 It's the best thing in the world as a father. And the rule in my home, I always tell my girls, "What's the rule?" There's one rule. There's a couple rules. No choking. That's a rule. They're not allowed. So the example is, they don't do it. But the other rule is, don't forget to check if you're using the right pronoun. And my nine-year-old, she tells me, 'Right, everybody didn't listen.' And I say, 'Right.' She goes, 'I'm listening.' I'm like, 'You're doing your best, sweetie.' Right? There's a beautiful thing about a kid that gets to close the door on school and do gymnastics and play outside in the street with their friends and have dinner. And go to sleep, and just play games with each other. There's something beautiful about that. Instead, there's this deluge of stuff that comes in through all these different portals. People bring these portals into their home. You know what it's like for a kid to have to sit there on Snapchat. Let's say you have a kid on Snapchat who's sitting there all day and night. We had to go through this with our own kids. We brought these portals into our home. The social pressures and anxieties of our lives have come into our home.

47:04 You have to learn to close the door behind you. The rainwater has to fall off. Last but not least A home has to have three levels. I saw from one of the Balik Chassidus. He says as follows: the three levels are the garbage The animal, and the humans. And he said it represents three stages in a person's development. When you're very little, you're not even an animal. When you're very little, you know what you are. It's like garbage. It's just like you know these little kids. They'll do anything. They're not even animals yet. They're just tiny little bits of protoplasm. Then a kid gets older and they're selfish. They're six, seven, eight years old, and what do they care about? They care about me. What do I want to do? And I want to do anything that I don't want to do. That's the next level. That's a level of selfishness.

47:56 And then there's finally becoming a human. Our homes need to be, and we'll finish with this, age appropriate. Do not ask your child to be a teenager. And their children. Sometimes you hear these stories about a kid says, 'My father said to me, "Why are you acting like a six-year-old?"' And the kid says, 'Cause I'm six.' You ever hear that? Like a child, "Why can't you act your age? I am acting my age." A little kid is supposed to be a little kid. A three-year-old is supposed to not want to take a bath. A three-year-old boy is not want. A three-year-old boy doesn't want to be clean. A three-year-old boy just wants to play. They don't want to sit in the bath. Yelling at your child, get in the bath, is not teaching your child to be age appropriate. And when your kid is a teenager They're supposed to be behaving like teenagers. The question is, can you make space for them to be teenagers? Teenagers are, to adults, I don't know how to say this nicely, obnoxious. Teenagers can be ungrateful. That's why very often as parents, what will we say to children? We'll say, 'Don't you realize how hard I'm working for you?' And then you'll have children that will say literally out loud, 'To go, that's what you're supposed to do.'

49:08 And as a parent, you want to say to this child, especially if you're a successful Jewish parent in the working force. If you're making a decision, you need to know what your options are. If you're a successful Jewish parent in the working force, that means you're making probably quarter of a million, three hundred thousand dollars before taxes in our community to be poor. Do you know how much it costs to raise a child? If I'm making three hundred thousand dollars a year and I don't have you I could have retired by the time I'm thirty-five. I would never have to work again. But a teenager is supposed to be a teenager. A teenager is supposed to, on some level, be ungrateful. And your job as a parent is to create space for them. And even until they're an adult. Just because your child has become an adult doesn't mean you're not a parent. I know. I don't understand this fully. I have married children now.

49:55 My mother always says to me, "You're always going to be my kid." Sometimes I want to say to my mother, "I'm 43. Do you really still need me to call you and tell you that I got home safely?" And you might think it's sweet, but I'm like "I'm okay." And she said, "Just do me a favor. Call for me, or at least message me." It makes sense. You have to parent your kids from the time they're at the lowest level, the middle level and even the highest level. You have to be there for your kids. You're there for your kids no matter what, creating a space for them. These are some amazing lessons to review very quickly. Our Jewish home, the nature of our Jewish home. Number one Tranquil, serene. That's what we want our homes to be. Number two, we fight the evil not by creating defensive measures, but offensive measures. We focus on the positive things about Judaism. Number three, two strong people, firmly rooted, complete in themselves. Connecting to each other. Number four, privacy boundaries, even within the home. Number five, radical safety that's built on an attitude of forgiveness. Number six, if the light can't come from the outside, which we hope it will, make sure the light is there from the inside.

51:09 Number, I don't remember what number we're up to. Number seven The rainwater has to be able to fall off the sides. Don't let it penetrate your home. A kid walks in and gets to close the door and feel the safety of being at home. And finally, accept your kid, no matter what stage of life they're at. What they're going through is normal and understandable. Raboza, have a good Shabbos.