Parshas Bamidbar - Communicating an Encounter with the Divine

2:37 Rashi continues, and he says Malamed shikola malamed is ben chaver Torah malalav akasuv kiilu yolda. This comes to teach us a fundamental lesson: anyone who teaches someone else's son Torah The Torah treats it as if You are the dad. So girls. I am your father. It's like if I said it in a Star Wars voice. I am your father. James Earl Jones would be much better. So it creates a tremendous amount of daddy issues. The so lefi shalom d'ntorah. I've gotten funnier since I was six. Lefi shalom d'ntorah. Rashi says, 'Why is Moshe Rabbeinu called a dad? Because since he taught them Torah, Malalavakasuf the Torah treats it keilu. What's Rashi's lashon? Keilu yaldah. It's as if he gave birth to them. That is the first Rashi. There's another Rashi. This one is on the second half of the pasuk. Rashi says as follows: 'Biym diber Hashem es Moshe naasu elu hatoldos sheloh.'

3:56 Nadav and Avihu are made the Toldos, the offspring of Moshe. Why? Shalomdan, mashalamad mipiagvura, because he taught them what he learned from the Almighty. Shalomdan Moshe Rabbeinu taught them mashalamad what he had learned mipiagvura from the mouth of the Almighty. Girls, there is an obvious question here. In fact, there are three, but we'll start with the most obvious. What is the obvious question when you're looking at these two rashes? It is an absolute repetition. Who asked? That was you. Excellent, superb. It's an obvious repetition. It seems like we're dealing with the same exact question. In the first one, it says, 'Ela told us Moshe, Aaron, and Moshe. These are the children of Aaron and Moshe.' The problem is, what happened to the children of Moshe? They're not mentioned. So it must be that we're only talking about the children of Aaron. If we're only talking about the children of Aaron, then we want to know why are the children of Aaron considered the children of Moshe? What does Rashi tell us? Since he taught them Torah, the Torah treats it as if he gave birth to them.

5:08 Comes along Rashi in the second Rashi and seems to say the same exact thing. These were the made the children of Moshe. Why? Because he taught them. He taught them what he learned from the Almighty. Seems to be a repetition. That's question number one. But if we look carefully at these two Rashi's There are two small but very important discrepancies between these two Rashi's. Let's see if anybody can get them. I'm going to say the entire thing again quickly. Let's see if you get it. The first Rashi: Lefi shalom don Torah, since he taught them Torah. I'm skipping to the end of Rashi. Malah alav hakasuv ki'ilu yaldo. The Torah treats it; it's as if he was their father. The second Rashi says, "Naasu elu toldoshalow." These children were made the toldos, the offspring of Moshe. Why? Lefishalamdan mashalama mipiagvura because he taught them what he learned.

6:11 The first one is as if it's their father. Excellent, superb Tremendous, and exactly correct. I didn't have more synonyms. I was working and just ran out at some point. In the first pasuk, in the first Rashi, it says it's ki'ilu. It's like they were Moshe Rabbeinu's children, but were they actually Moshe Rabbeinu's children? Of course not. In the second Rashi, it says naasu elu toledo shelo. They are actually Moshe Rabbeinu's children. The Torah makes it naasu elu. It makes it that they're toledo shelo. They are the offspring. That is the first very important discrepancy. There's one more I'd like you to figure out And it's on the board. Yeah, Perfect. We are two for two in Torah Devora. We expect high level analytics, and that's what we get. The first Rashi Very clear, very concise. Lefishalamdan Torah. What did Moshe Rabbeinu do to become? It's as if he's a parent. He taught Torah.

7:15 The second one, where Moshe Rabbeinu is not only as if he is the parent, but he's actually the parent. It doesn't say he taught Torah. What does it say? He taught them what he learned from Almighty God. What did he learn from Almighty God? The Torah. So why doesn't Rashi just say that? If it was good enough in the first Rashi, it should be good enough in the second. Because the second one is probably saying that he taught them more than just the words. Clearly, which is what we're going to have to discuss. I want to share with you. A fundamental yasod, a foundation And not knowing that I had. This is Rosenbach in the room But she will be able to attest to this. I'm assuming you remember. I grew up in Farquharway in the '80s. Farquharway of 2022 is Much different than the Farakway of the '80s.

8:17 It wasn't a completely Jewish neighborhood yet. In fact Many of us were pushed off our bikes and had our bikes taken by some of the local chaver kedusha over there. And there were a lot of kids in the neighborhood, and specifically in the shul that I grew up in Young Israel Farakway. As I look back on it, there were some interesting things. So we had awesome youth programming Awesome youth programming And had little leagues, had great coaches All the good stuff. One of the things we had was Tuesday night groups. So Tuesday night groups, there were different periods. This is for young men, and I think they had for the girls, but it wasn't. It was on Tuesday night also. So no, I was little. I really don't remember. It's not like I am doing the from thing. I actually don't remember. We had karate.

9:16 We had baking with Marla Chometsky. I remember. We had dodgeball in the gym where there was one kid who was eight years old, six foot two, and used to kill the rest of us. Mike Shetrit. One of the groups we had was called Jewish Awareness. Which at the time, being like eight, nine, ten years old, I didn't think anything of that. What they call it, Jewish awareness. We were Jewish, but I guess somebody somewhere up in the hierarchy of the young Israel made a decision about the Jewish programming we had. It literally was that we had to let people know they were Jewish. We were not growing up in the most learned of synagogues. There were actually some learned people there, but I think for the most part, and I was part of the younger generation. My parents were from the younger generation. I don't think our parents knew a tremendous amount of Torah.

10:16 I don't think they did. But what they lacked in knowledge, they more than made up for in dedication and devotion. And that's what sticks with me when I think back to my experience in the Yungfrau Farakwe growing up. I can't tell you that I remember any drasha that Rabbi Goodman gave. I'm sure they were excellent, but I don't remember. I don't remember anything I learned in Jewish awareness. I do remember that I was in a competition with Chaim over which one of us would get a Game Boy and which one would get Nintendo games, and he won the Game Boy. But I won the games. We were one and two, but he was one. Surya might have been like a distant fifth. I don't remember any of those things, but I do remember that our parents cared a tremendous amount about Yiddishkeit. That was clear. Even those parents that acted like they didn't care a tremendous amount And it showed in their dedication to the shul.

11:17 Coming to our little league games, being our coaches, sitting on the board of our youth groups. Our parents gave us something that was Perhaps more important, and I say that with a tremendous amount of caution They gave us something that was more important than the text. My mom is a special woman. My mom did not grow up as an observant Jew. She didn't grow up in an observant family. My grandmother became a balashchuv at the age of seventy. My mother is an insatiable person when it comes to learning Torah. She cannot stop learning Torah. She's addicted. If there is a shearer in the neighborhood, she is at that shearer. In fact, on my parents' wall, there's a magnet, and underneath the magnet, there's an RSVP to a wedding. A regular RSVP to a wedding says whether you will attend or not. So my father wrote in calligraphy underneath it, "Will you attend?"

12:19 " Mitch will not be attending. My father's antisocial. Mitch will not be attending. Paula will be attending, and she wants to know if there's a shir. That's my mother. If there's Torah to be learned, she's there. She has an insatiable desire for Torah. My dad Very different. My dad also did not grow up with the yeshiva education. He didn't become an observant Jew until he was later in his teenage years. He didn't grow up in an Orthodox home. My father grew up without any yeshiva education, so he didn't know how to learn. And my father, when we were growing up, used to say, "A little learning never hurts, so let's learn as little as possible." This is my rebellion. You understand? So we had a friend in the neighborhood. His father was a rabbi. He was a person who had semicha and who cared very much about learning.

13:11 And that kid did not want to learn with his dad because his dad was constantly pushing learning down his throat. So he used to say, 'Can you invite me over for Shabbos lunch? This way, if I stay at your house for Shabbos lunch, I don't have to learn with my dad Shabbos afternoon. Or if I can't come over for Shabbos lunch, could all of the kids come pick me up from my house? Because then my dad won't be able to keep us, and he won't force learning on all of you.' But he was wrong because that dad did force learning on all of us. And so sometimes we would go, and his father would be like, "Okay, boys, before you go out and play, let's learn a little parsha." It was always like a fight, "Dad, please don't do that." In my house Baruch Hashem, we didn't have any learning. We were able to do whatever we wanted, so it was a good place for kids to come hang out.

14:01 I want you to know that I saw in my parents and in my father also a tremendous devotion to Judaism. My father was not a Yoda Sefer. I don't know if he necessarily would have even known that there was a halachic problem that he needed to ask a rabbi about. He just didn't have that life experience. But when it came to his kids' Judaism, there is no doubt that we knew what was a high priority. We knew what our father left behind when he became Orthodox. We knew what he could have been had he chosen not to have this lifestyle. We knew that he sacrificed for it. And the reason he was so involved in our education. Whether it was elementary school, high school Or the shul that we davened in, is because we knew that Judaism mattered then. I want to diagnose a problem today.

14:52 You go to school. And they teach you the menu. Imagine you go to a restaurant. Let's say you went to a restaurant. For me, I'm going to pull up an old restaurant from my childhood. There's a restaurant in the Five Towns called King David, Olivashalom. If you're holding in King David. This is King David. We all had the same waitress. She was there for twenty years, an unbelievable pastrami burger. I still salivate thinking about that pastrami burger. Now imagine I gave you sheer on the menu of King David. Imagine you were sitting in a classroom and I said, "girls" I want to tell you about the coleslaw. King David had great coleslaw that they put out on the table. And two different types of pickles. And I walked you through the entire menu: the steak, the chicken, the fried chicken. The chullen, the kishka, the steak sandwiches, the burgers. I walked you through the entire thing.

15:46 Imagine if you walked out of that class and somebody asked you So, was it delicious? What would you say? You would say, "It sounds awesome. I would love to go visit that restaurant. When I go to that restaurant, I'll be prepared to know what to order, because I know that I'm probably going to want to try a little bit of this and a little bit of that." But you could not say, having left that class That you knew what King David tasted like. How could you possibly know that? What we do in schools today is as follows: we teach kids the menu, and then we wonder why they're not passionate about their Judaism. We say this is what it means to be an Orthodox Jew: you have to learn the following texts, you have to know the following halachas, you have to behave and dress in the following way.

16:33 And then we go to the girls. Are you passionate about your Judaism? Are you excited? Are you on fire? And the girls go, "No, of course I'm not." And the school system is somehow mystified. Why aren't these girls more passionate about their Judaism? The answer is because you would never create this system if you were trying to inspire somebody. If you were trying to educate somebody, that's the system you would create. But if you were trying to inspire somebody, this is not the system that you would create. It's important to educate people. It's important to teach people how to go to a restaurant and how to order. You need to know how to dress. You need to know what the decor is. You need to know which fork is for what. There's certainly a lot of halachas of going to a restaurant. But just because I taught you the halachas of the restaurant doesn't mean that you've tasted the deliciousness of the food, and that should be obvious. It's not obvious.

17:26 And so we have a problem today. We have a problem because we're going in and teaching these kids. And sometimes they're kids that have learning disabilities, and we're telling them you have to learn a massive amount of Torah. So what happens with that kid who's not capable of learning a massive amount of Torah? What happens to the girl or the boy who's not naturally inclined towards being academic? But even if they are inclined towards being academic, even if they're going to get a sixteen hundred on their SAT Is this a system that's going to make girls want to daven with passion? Is this a system that's going to tell the girls in twenty, thirty, forty years from now? Are you still going to be giving this over to your children? And if so, how are you going to do that? Because if you just impart the laws of the game, it doesn't necessarily mean that your kids are going to want to play.

18:14 Take the same thing with sports. We did it with the restaurant, but take the same thing with sports. I don't know this game, but my daughters, when they were little, played this game. Machanayim. You girls know this game. Machanayim. Is this like a girls' game? It's like dodgeball, but for women. Is that what it is? It's intense dodgeball. I understand. It's better than dodgeball. All the boys have it wrong. I've never played machanayim. I imagine Because if I played it, I would speak with more reverence for the game. So I have no idea what you experienced. Now you could tell me all the rules. But I imagine that some of you went to camp. And I imagine that whatever camp you went to, let's say it was Sternberg. You had these insane, intense machanayim games that were designed to torture and murder other girls as they're being pegged with this ball.

19:13 I won't know anything about your game. Why do people pay thousands of dollars to go to a game, and why do they pay thousands more to sit closer down? Have you ever gone to a great game and sat all the way down? Many times, Chaim and I went to games with my dad's tickets to the Sports Illustrated box. There's a difference when you go with the young Israel for Akway or Simcha Day Camp and you're sitting in the nosebleed section right after having gone on a Rivleb bus for 45 minutes that broke down for two hours on the way to the game. There's a difference when you get to the cheap seats and the players are like little Lego people running back and forth. It's still great But it's not the same thing as if you're down right next to the dugout and you could see the players spit right like that. Then you're in the game. You go to a hockey game and you could smell the blood coming off of them as they're walking through. What's the difference?

20:07 Because it's a better experience. You could listen; the music is better on Spotify, but everyone wants to go to the concert. And you know the difference. You know when you're at the concert versus when you're listening to the music on Spotify. There's no doubt the music you're listening to on Spotify is better. But the excitement The vibrancy of the concert. That's what it's about. You don't want to just watch the game on your TV. There's no doubt you'll have a better view, but you want to be at the game. There's nothing like sitting at a baseball game and eating a hot dog. Right? There's nothing like that. That's why for years, until they had the kosher stand, I want you to know, the thing that drove me, like go off the derech more than anything I wanted to sit at Shea Stadium with a hot dog and a beer. I wanted to do that. See these guys; they have it good. They like sauerkraut and a hot dog and mustard, and they're shoveling it into their face, and they're taking the score, and they're drunk. Go to a Yankees game. You see those guys in the bleachers. He's like animals throwing things at the players. This is baseball.

21:06 And then Baruch Hashem, they made the kosher stand, and we didn't have to go off the derech anymore. Now we could just overpay for a hot dog. And I scream whatever, not in that order. And we could have. We can have everything the guyim have. Baruch Hashem. Something different when you go to the game and you're having a hot dog than you're sitting on your couch. Just like there's something different when you come to your shul erakodesh and you're learning Torah here. You're not studying the menu. It's alive. It's something you feel. It's something you taste. It's something you can describe to people, but they can't understand it until they taste it themselves. That's Torah saretsu Israel. That's penimi yishtayra. To teach the soul of Torah is different than teaching the menu. And perhaps this is what Rashi means. This is what the Lebavitcher Rebbe says Rashi means. It's a very important lesson.

21:59 Take a look at the first Rashi. Why was Moshe Rabbeinu considered as if he was the father of Aaron's children? Why Lefishalamdan Torah. What does Lema Torah mean? What did he teach them? He taught them everything. He taught them what he learned. He taught them the Torah of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. He taught them all the halachas. He taught them do this and don't do that. He taught them all the stories, everything that was going to be in all of Tanach. He taught them everything, every Mishnayos, every Gemara, everything that was out there. Moshe Rabbeinu taught Aaron, Aaron's children. But that only makes you as if you're a dad. Why as if you're a dad? Because a father has a responsibility to give sustenance to his children. That's what a parent's job is—to support their kids. So you can be supported by learning Torah. But does that make you a parent?

22:53 It does not. What makes you a parent? Look what Rashi says. What made Moshe Rabbeinu not as if he was not Avinu's father? What made him an actual father? There was a rebirth. They belonged to him as much as they belonged to Aaron, biologically, physically. On a spiritual level, they were his children as much as they were the children of Aaron and Cohen. Why? Because he taught them not Torah; he taught them what he learned from Hashem. Moshe Rabbeinu had an intimate experience with Hashem. Baruch Hu, he went up and he encountered God Almighty. It was a powerful experience. And he came down and he successfully transmitted that. That's a big deal to say. Think about that. That means, girls. Imagine you came to Tormer Tavora this year And you heard a she'er from. I don't want to pick on any one person. You heard a she'er from Mrs. Berg.

23:55 Let's say, yeah. Neptism. I had to choose it. What if I would have chosen somebody else? And you hear a she'er from Mrs. Berg And the she'er really makes you think in a way you never thought before. And in that moment, you saw. A vibrant Judaism. You tasted it. It wasn't just the menu. You saw something that you'd never seen before. Let's say you went to a teacher's house for Shabbos. And you saw the way a mother lights Shabbos candles slowly and carefully, thinking of every one of her children. Is that something you learn in a textbook? When you see someone, small things. When you see somebody whisper. Not loudly because we don't do things loudly. It's not sneis. But you see somebody whispering to themselves, "Lekovet Shabbos Kodesh," as they're putting something in the oven. Is there any halacha that says you have to do that?

24:47 There's no halacha. It's just a sweet, soft, gentle thing to do. When you see people whose lives are not designed, and you'll forgive me for saying this in a crass and crude way There are people whose lives are designed to amass stuff. That's what they want to do. How much stuff can I amass? What can I get the latest Tesla? Can I get the nicest house? You'll see it and you'll know. You'll know what people's values are. Isn't that true? Or you'll see people who live simply because the main thing that they have in their life is not what they own, but what they know, or what they can give. I'll share with you an amazing story. I'm 18 years old. I'm in Mevaseret, and I had a friend who was a couple years older than me, who was my chavrusa. He was a guy who I had learned with in Yeshiva Farakway many years ago when I was in eighth grade. He was learning in Mir Yeshiva, and I guess some sort of Kiruv project. He invited me for Shabbos.

25:43 So he says, 'Come to Mir for Shabbos. You'll sleep right at my room. It's right off the beis medrash, and you'll get to see what it's like in Mir Yeshiva. Eight thousand bachrim. You'll see something you never saw before.' I said, "Awesome." That sounds great. I want to be a part of it. So I told my Rebbe, 'I said for Shabbos this week I'm going to Mir Yeshiva.' My rebbe said, 'Do me a taiva.' When you go for Shabbos, Friday night, don't go to the Mir. I said, "where should we go?" He said, "Go to Karlin Stolin." It's a Chassidus here in Yerushalayim. Daven in Karlin Stolin. " I said, "Okay. He said, 'And when you get to Karlin Stolin, a lot of people are going to ask you if you want to go over for a Shabbos meal, for a Friday night meal. You're going to have a lot of people that come over to you, and they're going to ask you, "Come, come, come to my house."' Say no to all of them. Tell them all the same thing. Say I'm waiting for the American gabai.

26:37 He said whoever the American gabai sets you up with, that's where you go. So I called up my friend Avi. It's now a chasam or rav in Yerushalayim. I said my rebbe told me that instead of davening Friday night in Mir and eating the sudda in Mir, we should go to Karl Stalin and then we should wait for the American gabai and then we'll go to wherever he said. Avi said that's what you want to do. Let's do that. So Friday night we go to Karlin Stalin. Girls, do you know what davening is like in Karlin Stalin? Long. They shout for sure, long. They shout every word of davening. Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad is thousands of Hasidim screaming at the top of their lungs. The only time it's silent is when they say Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Leolam Vodeh. And when they're saying they're quiet Shmona Esrei.

27:23 Every Amen is bekal kochu. Yehi Shmei Raba blows the roof off. It's incredible. I never experienced a davening like this in my life. I was Ashkamim in yonkidd. We don't go. We didn't have every loud amen in the world. It was unbelievable. I saw something incredible. And we're sitting there, me and my friend Avi. And every two minutes You have a place for Friday night. You have a place to go. Tons of people are coming over to us. So I said, 'We're waiting for the American gabai. We're waiting for the American gabai.' Finally, the American gabbai comes over. He goes, 'I understand you're waiting for me.' I said, 'Yes.' My rebbe told me to tell people that I'm waiting for the American gabbai. He says, 'Do you want a Hebrew-speaking family or an English-speaking family?' I said, 'I need an English-speaking family. I don't speak Hebrew so well. I didn't want to have one of those awkward meals.' He says, 'No problem. Stay right where you are after davening. I'm going to bring your host over to you.'

28:16 Davening ends. It's a davening like I've never experienced before in my entire life. Right after davening, the American gabbai comes over with this guy, long beard, long paez, chassidish guy, and he goes, "This is your Friday night suvah." He introduced himself, shalom aleichem. Said, "come home." We're walking home. You know how, if you're walking in Mea Shearim, you're like traveling back in time slowly, like with each block that you go A little bit deeper in Mea Shearim. So I got to the 1600s of Mea Shearim. We were in the depths of the, no car had ever gone to where we were, because the streets were this big. There was no possibility. They don't have to have the signs. No internet in that section, because they couldn't possibly get internet there. They wouldn't, unless it was coming from above. There's no way that they could put those wires in. They weren't phone lines, probably.

29:10 We get to the house, the apartment, and they had a million children. It was like every time I stepped, you had to be careful not to step on a child. The entire apartment could not have been bigger than this half of the room. Tiny. We sit down. We're all cramped in on the table. And we start singing Shalom Aleichem. Beautiful, very nice. All of a sudden There's a knock on the door. Our host jumps up. There's another Oreach. He brings him in. He sits him down. They quickly put out a plate. He sits down. Shalom Aleichem, Eshes Chayil, and then they bring out the food. Girls I'm a foodie. I'm a food. I like food. I like good food. This was the worst food I ever had in my entire life. They bring out the chicken soup. It's chicken and vegetables in water. What could you possibly do wrong? This was the nastiest chicken soup I ever tasted in my entire life.

30:13 I don't know. Maybe the chicken was spoiled. Maybe the vegetables were spoiled. Maybe the water was spoiled. It was coming. Who knows where that water had to get through to get to that section of Mea Shearim? It was probably going through pipes that hadn't been cleaned since the 1600s. It was nasty. And I'm doing my because you know it's like you're sitting there. You got to eat it, right? It's an avoda. I'm working hard. I managed to finish a little bit of soup, and I can't. Fine. Then they bring out the main. If a chicken could be poor, this would be the poorest chicken that ever walked the face of the earth. First of all, it appeared to me that this chicken had not been plucked. It had been shechted. It had been cooked. But there was a lot of it had a full beard. The beard and paeus that this chassidish man had paled in comparison to the amount of facial hair that was on this chicken.

31:11 It grows sufficiently grossed out. It gets much worse. So I'm trying. I know something about the halachas of boer. I'm trying to figure out how to get the. I'm not eating these feathers. I could choke on them. I could floss with them. You know what I'm saying? I can't handle this. And then when I finally got to the chicken, it was like, and I don't know how this is possible biologically. I know what a chicken looks like. I know the skeletal structure of a chicken. Every bite had bone in it. Every bite had bones running through it. It was nasty. But you look around and you see there is not enough chicken on this table for these children. So you're forcing yourself to eat this because you understand this food came out of their mouths. This beautiful smiroz and this beautiful dvoretovra But the food is nasty.

31:59 And then they bring out dessert. Only for the three of us: for me, my friend, and the guy that knocked on the door. There was no dessert for everyone else. There wasn't enough. So I kept saying, 'I don't need this dessert.' They said, 'No, it's for you.' The kids were so excited. The dessert was for them. It was a beautiful thing. And the dessert honestly was edible because it was like a bought thing from a store. It was like ice cream sandwiches. I still remember. It's like Taffuti Cutie ice cream sandwiches. Which is not great, but at least it's edible. We benched We left and walked out of the apartment. And the third guy, the guy who had knocked on the door during Shalom Aleichem, he turns to us and he says, "How do you know that family?" So I said, 'Oh, we don't know that family. My Rebbe told me that if I'm going to Mir for Shabbos, we should daven by Karl Stalin, we should wait for the American Gabbai, and then he'll set us up with somebody.' And so we went home with this guy. How do you know this guy?

32:55 He goes, "I don't. I knocked on the wrong door." I was like, "You did what?" Because I knocked on the wrong door, I knocked on the door to get directions. Because I was lost, trying to figure out where I was supposed to go. But before I could even ask him, he just pulled me in, and I was his guest for Shabbos. I have no idea who the couple that I was supposed to go to were. I have no idea if they like what they did. So I was thinking, I was eighteen years old. What in the world just happened? These people had nothing. They had no food. They were clearly very poor people. I imagine that she went the last possible time and asked the butcher to give her the scraps of chicken. That's the only possible way that she could have gotten that chicken. I imagine she used that chicken. She doubled down on it in the soup, and that's why the soup was so gross. They had nothing But whatever they had, they wanted to give. I remember very few Shabbatot in my life, but I will never forget that Shabbos.

33:45 Because you could tell their kids were growing up. They didn't have a lot of things, but you saw the main thing in their house was having a guest for Shabbos. And the question is What messages are we giving to our children? Let's be blunt about it. If you come home with an eighty on a math test And your mom or your dad say to you "Eighty," you could do better. Is this your best? If this is your best, an eighty, right? But if you come home with an eighty on a Tanach test or on a Gemara test or a Mishnayas test or whatever it is, or a Halacha test and the parents go, eighty, okay. Then you've sent a message. The message you sent to your children is this is okay. Which one is more important? And you will know, and you do know, a tremendous amount about your parents and the value that they give to Judaism because you lived it.

34:43 And your kids are going to get exactly what you give to them. They're going to know you better than anyone in the world. Our children know us better than anyone in the world. My kids could tell you exactly what my value system is. Not because I've expressed it, but because they live it. They see where Abba's a hypocrite and where Abba's good. Just like that about your parents. We're all human. We're all struggling through it. The question is, what message are we sending to our kids? To be as if you're a parent means giving over the halacha Spiritual sustenance. But to be a parent means communicating. Experientially, what your values are. I think that Kallah Yisrael is an amazing place. I think we have incredible communities all across the world. But if you asked me why girls are gaining something fundamentally different when they come to seminary and when they come to Yerushalayim I think it's because it's just different here.

35:52 My wife remarked to me Not that long ago How lucky are our children That when we take a tuiul somewhere It's like which kivrit tzadikim can we stop by? You go up north. If you go up north as a family here in Eretz Yisrael So of course you're going to go to Tiferet. You're going to go on the Kineret, but you're also going to probably stop by the kivrit of the Rambam and the Shloah and Rav Kiva. And if you're going the back road from Beit Shemesh to Yerushalayim. It's nothing to stop at Kever Rachel. And what is a Cholam Oi day? If not stopping at the Kotel to daven in the morning, start your day there? That's a beautiful thing. And it's not the same as Disney World, and it's not the same as going to F A O Schwartz in the city. You used to go to F A O Schwartz. We were the last generation. You have very deep memories of F A O Schwartz and the giant piano.

36:49 I've lost them to a movie that wasn't around when they were born. Girls, I'm not saying Chassvashalom that a Jew can't be a Jew everywhere in the world. Of course you can. But there is something extraordinary about being here. There is something extraordinary about seeing this life, and it is deeply inspiring. And your responsibility, and it's not just a nice thing. Your responsibility to your own children is to share with them not only lefi shalom dantoura But perhaps more importantly, shalom dama shaloman bi piagvura. What will your kids see? What type of mother will they have? Will they see a mother who confronts God Almighty And whose life is about how can I pass this on to the next generation Dedicated to her children Or? Will they see somebody who just goes about it formally and just does it? Doesn't live it, but does it?

37:53 You do the first; it's not bad. That's already a not bad level. But that's like teaching the menu and not showing the kid the deliciousness of the food. And if we want to be successful in continuing this operation, we need to give our kids the passion of Judaism and not just the menu. Girls, have a good Shabbos.