Parshas Chayei Sarah - Love and Marriage

2:45 That's only lust. That's only infatuation. But that's not what the Torah says. The Torah says that Yaakov did indeed love Rachel before he was married. So what's with the three types of love? The unspoken love. The Torah never says anything about the love between Avram and Sarah. Somehow that was the unspoken love. The spoken love of Yitzchak and Rivka after they were married, and then the spoken love of Yaakov and Rachel before they were married. That's our first question for tonight. Second issue that comes up is regarding the nature of Yitzchak and Rivka. In their relationship We find that Yitzchak and Rivka were very different. Yitzchak, as we'll see soon Loved Esav. Rivka loved Yaakov. Yitzchak was tricked by whom? By Yaakov, but at the behest of Rivka When it came to giving the blessing for the b'chor. So Yitzchak's intention. Was to give the bracha of the bechar to Esav.

3:55 Rivka goes behind his back and dresses Yaakov in Esav's clothing. And she's the one that encourages him. Go take the bracha from your father. Really, he's going to think that he's going to be giving it to Esav. But go ahead and trick him. Which doesn't sound like the best relationship ever. One would imagine if Yitzchak and Rivka were living in two thousand and twenty and they decided to go for marital counseling. One could have imagined that in the aftermath of that affair, Yitzchak and Rivka are sitting in the office of this therapist, and the therapist is speaking about the lack of vulnerability and communication in the relationship. I imagine a therapist would have turned to Rivka and said I understand you had feelings about the way your husband was about to behave. And yet, is there space in this relationship for communication to let him know that you disagree with his approach to giving the bechor? Is there an element of codependency here? Are you only okay if Yitzchak is okay? Were you afraid of Yitzchak's rage? You can imagine the scene.

5:03 And yet, the Torah doesn't tell us any of that. In contrast to who To Avram and Sarah, where the Torah explicitly says that Sarah was angry at Avram. And in contrast to Yaakov and Rachel, where the Torah specifically says that there was anger between Yaakov and Rachel when Rachel said to Yaakov, 'You gotta get, you gotta give me children.' What does Yaakov angrily respond? The Torah says he responded angrily. He says, 'Atachas elokim anochi, am I in place of God?' A fascinating thing about their relationship is that Yitzchak and Rivka's relationship is the first relationship in the Torah where there's a description of love. But it's also the only relationship of the avos that doesn't seem to have any anger Though clearly there is some tension between Yitzhak and Rivka. Why is there no anger between Yitzhak and Rivka? Why do they only have what appears to be love, even though we know that they weren't necessarily always acting in harmony with one another? You hear the two questions?

6:12 I want for a moment to step back To talk about three dimensions of life Three facets of our life Three stages of our life, perhaps And how we encounter the world in these three stages. The first stage I'm going to refer to for tonight's share, though it's applicable in many stages in your life. The first stage I'm going to call. The summer before seminary. The summer before seminary is filled, whether you process these feelings or not. Is filled with a fair amount of anxiety. Yes. I see that there is definitely processing of feelings that perhaps is still occurring, and definitely you were aware of. Always admire the Talmud Torah girls for being well aware. By the way, if I gave the same shiur in yeshiva, you know what the guys would say? I don't know. I never felt anything. I certainly wouldn't tell you about it. This is how an entire conversation goes with a guy about the year in Israel that's upcoming in the summer. You want to hear how it goes? You excited about the year? That's the whole conversation. Oh no, I'm sorry. There's another half. It goes like this. You?

7:31 That's the whole conversation, right? Now you girls are laughing because you know that same conversation with you was four hours every night for a series of weeks. And then you got upset at the girl that you were talking to because you feel like she betrayed your trust. And then it was like I had to have that conversation with somebody else, and it got us today. Oh my God! It's about to be a Toma Devora moment. Girls, I all know you experience this. The anxiety that we feel right before something happens. And it doesn't have to be anxiety. It's not just the anxiety, but it's the excitement. It's the build-up. It's the what's coming. We spend a lot of time and emotional energy on what's coming. But we don't necessarily articulate that energy. Often it remains unspoken. Now I know that I'm speaking to a group of people that spoke a lot about it. Here's what I mean when I say it remains unspoken.

8:39 It's possible to talk a lot about something and not talk about it at all. For example It turns out in life And this is something I've learned over the last twenty-two years. So I'm sharing it with you now, so you get it on the ground floor. Turns out in life that one of the hardest things to do is to actually feel your feelings. It's not a simple thing. We talk about it as if it's simple, but it's actually a really difficult thing to do. And I'll bring you the proof. A lot of times, when you ask people how they feel They can't really articulate it. They can't really articulate it. It's one of the reasons that going to therapy is such an incredible gift, because it gives you the language to actually articulate the thing that you're actually feeling. If you ask a guy, I'm gonna move it over to guys for a second, just because it's easier. Less emotional creatures. You ask a guy how this makes you feel. Classic therapy. How did that make you feel? It's especially annoying when you go to the therapist and you go like I'm feeling really angry about this. They go How did that make you feel? I just told you I'm angry and I'm angry at you for not listening to me.

9:45 So that's why therapists have come up with clever ways of asking the same question. We go, 'What was that like for you?' I just told you it made me angry and you're making me angry right now because you're not listening to me. So you go to a guy and you go, 'How did that make you feel?' And they go, 'Sad.' Sad is like you know how in writing when you were taking that English class when you were in tenth grade and they told you you're not allowed to write the words 'sad' or 'bad' or 'he felt good,' right? Like you have to give more descriptive terminology. The reason why we use very surface-level terminology is because we don't really have the language, and we don't really want the language to be able to articulate what we're feeling, because that is an exceptionally difficult thing to do. Instead What we often do is use words like "oh my god, I'm so depressed."

10:33 Which is also not the articulation of the thing that you're feeling, if you think about it Because the thing that you're feeling is probably a lot more sophisticated. And sometimes depression can be a way of avoiding feeling what we're feeling. Because if you really think about what depression really is, it's the lack of feeling. If you're feeling, then you're okay. Anxiety too. Anxiety is very often like I'm not here in this present moment. I'm in the future or in the past at some other moment because I don't really want to articulate the thing that I'm feeling. A young man was sitting in my office. What's today? Wednesday night. Monday morning. Was sitting in my office, and every time he got to the verge of tears He would shut it down. You ever see people do that? How does it well up? You'll know what it's like. It wells up, and then you're like, I'm gonna swallow it. It's hard to swallow tears. That lump in your throat. There's nothing in your throat, so why is there that tremendous lump?

11:28 It's so hard to actually allow yourself to feel. And so what I did with this young man is I said, I'll tell you what, don't give it any words. I don't need you to articulate anything But can you just stay present with those tears that are coming up and allow yourself to feel them? And all of a sudden, it was like a geyser opened up And he was just going. He's like, I don't cry in front of people. This guy is the ultimate man's man. He does not cry in front of people. But sometimes it's so hard because the emotions are so palpable, but they're unspoken. That's the reason why I use the term anxiety when speaking about the summer before you go to Israel. Because think about the unspoken feelings that you have. If we actually were to articulate them, this is what it might sound like. Not for all of you, but for some of you, and probably for all of you. But at least for most of you. But definitely for some of you. But probably for all of you. We're winging it one on one.

12:28 I love Rovanglin. College I've got a whole Rovang. I do him pretty well. I've been studying him for years. That guy's my hero. So it goes like this. If you actually gave language to the thing you would be thinking, it would go like this. This would be one example. I'm going in with one or two people. It's much more sophisticated than that. I'm going in with one or two people. But I guess I'm concerned that I'm not going to fit in with others. I know that I'll probably find some But there's a part of me. I'm giving the language the thing you didn't say. There's a part of me that feels like it's possible that I'm going to be rejected or not really fit in. And the feeling of loneliness is something that's so familiar to me in my life. Because as I start to think back about the feeling of loneliness that I've had before, maybe I was bullied in third grade or fourth grade.

13:42 And I start to think about that feeling of loneliness. And even as you're saying it, you'll probably start to feel something. Again, different people in different places. Maybe you feel your heart sinking a little bit. Maybe you feel the tension in your shoulders. Imagine if you actually allowed yourself to feel those physical things. And then I don't know. For me, when I'm feeling lonely, I often shut down, which then makes it a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I don't really know yet the rebayim or the mechanchod or the rakazot or the teachers Because you girls have a tremendous amount of names for female people that work here, right? Like in yeshiva, it's just like the rebi, right? Like you have all these different roles here. So I don't really know them yet, and I guess will I be able to get what I need? Will I be able to find someone who's going to help me get in touch with this part of myself? Will I actually be able to speak up?

14:31 Because when I don't get what I need, that can also be really challenging for me, especially when I'm going through something and I'm having trouble articulating the loneliness that I'm feeling. And then as I continue to pull back, I'm afraid that I'll end up becoming friends with a group of people that maybe aren't appropriate for me. Maybe they're going to take me in the wrong direction, or maybe they're the girls that I wouldn't necessarily want to be associated with. And that's just one sliver of one moment of anxiety that you were feeling this summer that you didn't articulate And if you did give language to it, it was probably something like this. I guess I'm worried about the girls. And so there's an unspoken feeling at the beginning of every experience. I took the negative, but I could have just as easily spoken about the positive. Let me take a moment to do that. Imagine in the beginning of your day. Or let's not even make it the beginning of your day yet. Let's say in that summer, the feeling that you're having on a surface level is one of excitement.

15:32 I can't wait. Imagine if you actually gave it language. Imagine if you were the girl willing to be vulnerable, because vulnerability is the birthplace of connection, and it requires a tremendous amount of secure attachment to ourselves to actually be able to be vulnerable. So imagine if you grew up and you had that. I've never met yet the person that does at your age, but let's say it was somebody. Let's say you, in theory, had these mythical healthy parents that actually gave you that amazing self-esteem. Again, I've never met anybody, including myself, that had that. But let's just say that it existed. Something about the fact that Rüfus Waingrand was just standing here makes me want to do that. Let's say you articulated and it sounded something like this. I don't know. I've been a good girl over high school. It's not like I was doing terrible things.

16:17 I have been waiting to come to seminary for the year because I'm really hoping that there's going to be some teacher, Rakezet, Mechanech, Rabbi speaker, something who's gonna say something to me that's gonna force me to get honest and authentic with myself because the thing that's missing in my life is just a little bit of authenticity. There's a part of me that knows that I'm much bigger than the person that I am right now, but I'm afraid to tap into that person because how far does that actually take me? Am I living in Lakewood, learning in Colo for the rest of my life? I don't think that's me, but I also don't know if it's not. And is that a problem with me that I don't know that it's not? Does that mean that I'm not being authentic if I don't allow myself to discover that part Or vice versa? Maybe there's a part of me that doesn't even actually believe in this, and even though I so deeply am excited to find out that there is a part of me that really does believe in this and to become that person, sometimes I wonder if I'm just fooling myself. But I have all this excitement. What is it that excitement is? Am I finally going to get the opportunity to be me?

17:14 Right And none of us did that this summer. True. And if you did, it sounded like this. With some exceptions, as I said. Never met an eighteen-year-old who was able to articulate their feelings. Unless they went to therapy at sixteen, generally no. Fine. Great. And one second, and for the record You're welcome. I think therapy is a gift precisely because it forced you to look at a part of yourself that you hadn't looked at before, and it gave you language to do that. But I've never met the eighteen-year-old that naturally was given that language and security from their parents without anything else. And so, therefore, most conversations this summer sounded something like this. I'm really excited. It's going to be awesome. And then the other girl goes, 'Really? Because I'm so nervous, right?' But that's the whole conversation. There's not really a spoken depth of feeling. That's one stage of life. Let's skip to a third stage. I'm skipping the second stage to begin with.

18:15 Let's skip to the third stage. This third stage has a tremendous amount of spoken emotion. What was the second? I'm skipping the second. I'm going from one to three. We went to the third stage. I'll get to it in a second. I'm going to explain now. Now you said it. Great. You didn't miss anything. Just to recap, I just expressed one. Jumping to three, about to say it. Now that we're all on the same page. I really think that's very funny. I want you to know I appreciate you. Rachel, I would expect nothing less from you. That's why you take attendance. The right on the ball. So third stage is like this. The first stage is I have all this unspoken excitement for what's about to come. Third stage is like this. I know what's about to come is not good. Third stage is I know I'm walking into a crisis.

19:31 Or at the very least, I know I'm walking into a stage of uncertainty By the way, these stages are not in order in life. You'll encounter these stages at different times, but these are for our purposes the three stages. This is what it might look like. Here, there's a lot of spokenness, and you'll understand why in a moment. Let's say right before you get married. That's all that unspoken anxiety and excitement. That's stage one. Stage three would be something like this. My husband's coming home. I know that we had a bad interaction this morning. I know that he's about to walk in the door. And I know that there's going to be some uncomfortable tension. That would be on the negative side. And so on a spoken level right now, even if you can't articulate all of the emotions. There has to be In order to succeed.

20:30 A tremendous amount of faith. And now I'm gonna give you another little spiel. This is an important one. Another thing that I've been learning for the last twenty two years We cannot divorce self and faith. We just can't do it. We try And every time we do, the world gets exceptionally worse. So I'll give you an example. On the one hand, you have faith—faith in something larger than yourself, faith that things will get better, faith that things will change. Hope. On the other hand, you have nihilism—the belief that all is nothing, that there is no meaning for anything—and so what happens is, as we move in the world from godliness to atheism, which is happening right now, it's not an accident that we're living in the most overmedicated generation. It's not an accident that anxiety and depression continue to rise. It's not an accident that divorce is more and more common, and the reason is because every time we diminish faith.

21:28 You're also gonna diminish yourself, and every time you diminish yourself, your capacity to cope Your capacity to be loyal, your capacity to hang in there in difficult situations always gets harder. When your husband is about to walk in the door and you know it's not going to be a pleasant conversation There has to be in this stage a spoken faith before he comes home, a spoken, out loud faith where you're able to say this. It's going to be okay. That's the hardest thing in the world to do. Any time you're entering into a crisis, to be able to say, 'I'm going to be able to get through this. We are going to be able to get through this. We're going to find the resolve, not to go to bed angry at each other tonight. We're going to work through it.' I have the faith that I can be a listener. That's a hard one. Even when that person is going to say some nasty things about me, I have the faith in myself to create that double bubble. You know what the double bubble is, girls? Double bubble is a very important concept. The bubble around you, and then another bubble around that. And when somebody says something to us that we don't necessarily want to hear, we can let it penetrate that first bubble, so we've taken it in somewhat, and then we can examine it before we take it into that first bubble.

22:46 We can look at it and say Does this resonate with me? And I have faith in myself that I can allow you to say something negative about me And say what's your truth, what's your truthful experience about me. I can allow. I have faith in myself that I'm not going to take it all the way in if it's not true. I have faith in myself that I'm going to let it come in just so far. And then if I so choose, if it resonates with me, if I think you're telling me the truth, I have faith in myself to be able to admit the truth and bring it into that first bubble. I'll give you an example. Another amazing guy. This is see. These are the guys that you want to marry, not because they're the frumest guys, but because they're the best guys. Hopefully they'll be frum too. This guy, I'm going to give you an example right now. He happens to be a frum guy, but he's the best guy. He came to me on Monday.

23:35 Said Rebbe, I need an emergency meeting. I need fifteen twenty minutes of your time, max. I'm mamish booked, but I'm going to do my best to get you in fifteen twenty minutes. He came to me and he told me an unbelievable story. He said this guy in yeshiva just called me out. He said, and I don't want to give too much of the particulars, so maybe I'll change a little bit of the details. This guy called me out on the fact that I'm with him when he's down, but I'm never with him when he's up. And he called me out on the fact that I'm not really acting like a good friend. And I started thinking about it. This is what this guy said. I was blown away. He said. And I realized it's because I need to be better than him. So when he's down, I feel like I could be there for him because I'm the man. But when he's up, it's hard for me to be there with him.

24:21 I have a real need to be better than him. And I've brought that into our relationship. And so now when he's looking at me "You're not really my friend," I realized. I really haven't been a good friend. And I guess, Rebbe, this was his question: two things. Number one, how do I make amends with him? And number two. How do I work on my own self esteem so that I can be there with my friends even when they're doing better than me? I was blown away. It's not a fifteen to twenty minute conversation. How am I supposed to answer that in fifteen to twenty minutes? You could be in therapy for years just on that one question alone. But I was blown away by the honesty. I started thinking to myself, did I have that honesty at eighteen or nineteen years old? No way. No way. I had that honesty. But this guy has a tremendous person of faith in himself. He has the capacity. To really say, I can admit that I'm wrong, and I'm going to be present in that darkness. How hard that is Because otherwise you won't get through that darkness. Otherwise you'll lose yourself to the darkness; it swallows you up.

25:20 Spoken faith is the antidote to crisis. It's the antidote to friction. It's the antidote to tension. But it has to be spoken. The faith that's inside of us, if it doesn't come alive Might be there. But it's not of much use to us. Sometimes what happens is that in really difficult situations, our faith has to come up. That's why we see throughout history that Jews, in times of crisis, very often have given their lives to be mikados shem shamayim. Even if it meant death, even if they weren't religious in their lives. So many Jews in the Holocaust who weren't religious, observant Jews died Al Kiddush Hashem, given the opportunity, because their faith had to come out. Sometimes that's what crisis does; it forces our faith to be spoken. It forces our self to be present. That's stage three. But stage two In many ways Is the best stage.

26:18 We'll go back to stage two. Stage two is like this: everything is going well. Everything is fine. There is no friction. There is no tension. It's a little boring. This stage. It's a little boring because it's like I'm doing the same thing day in and day out. What would it be compared to? Here's what it might be compared to. If you're on an airplane. So and I Before Corona, I was traveling a lot. And Baruch Hashem for Corona because I think it's the longest I've spent with my family in a row in a very long time. But I'm used to going into America. Last year, my schedule was supposed to be that I went into America in December, January, February, March. I was hoping to go in April as a scholar in residence for a Pesach program. Obviously, that didn't work out. I had booked the trip for May and for June, seven months in a row.

27:23 I travel a lot. The first thirty thousand feet that climb to thirty thousand is the exciting part of the trip. Right? You sit down You squish in. It's not the happiest part of your trip, but it's the most exciting in terms of the plane ride itself. You feel that initial jolt, and then you could feel the plane is at an angle. You're going up, and then the pilot says something like, "We've reached thirty thousand feet. We've reached our alt. We've reached our cruising altitude. And then the plane levels off." Then the plane levels off. In terms of excitement The first thirty thousand feet are way more exciting than what happens after that. But in terms of actual progress and actual movement, you haven't moved very far when you are making that climb to thirty thousand feet. Once you hit cruising altitude Then you just go.

28:19 The time of the flight is when you're actually stable. If you're constantly going up and down, you're probably not moving very far. When does real growth occur? Real growth occurs in the monotony of everyday life. When you're in that committed relationship And everything is fine, which is not to say that you won't have two people who think differently from each other. But marriage doesn't require two people to think alike. It requires two people to think together. Which means that there are going to be times when your husband is acting differently than you, or perhaps has a different world view than you. That's okay. You don't have to think alike. You have to think together. So in those places where there's no friction, where you're okay with yourself and he's okay with himself. That's when the relationship actually grows. Engagement is exciting. Or anxiety provoking, depending on who you are. The beginning of marriage. Very exciting or anxiety-provoking, depending on who you are.

29:25 There's a lot of movement. But not necessarily a lot of stability. You haven't leveled out. And at least in the time that I've been alive, what I've seen is that couples go through these stages, especially when they're younger. First, when you're married, it's like you're just playing house. You don't actually have any children. You just think to yourself, yeah, we got this. We're good at this, right? And I'll tell you. I'll share this with you. It's a little embarrassing, but I'll share this with you. My nephew's my niece. I did with my nephew also actually, but my niece Zahava. We used to bring her over to our house for Shabbos when she was two years old. Because it was like were we like would tell like my wife's sister would be like. No, you can get rid of her for Shabbos, we'll take care of her. For us, it was yeah, we're a real couple, we could do this right. Then they would pick her up Matzei Shabbos and we would be bye. We really did it right and then you have a kid.

30:25 But it's like now you're just like a couple playing house and you've got like a stroller like with a doll in it. You know, like you're not real. You're still playing two on one. Right, like you can still switch off. And then you have another kid God willing and then it's like you're playing two on two. And then you have another kid, and now they've outnumbered you. And then they start going to school And then it's like, we're running around, and we're doing carpal, and we're making sure this one gets what they need, and this one gets sick, and this one had to go to the hospital because they broke their arm worse. Chas v'shalom. Then you have a fourth kid, and now it starts to be dynamics. How does the oldest one interact with the third one? How does the second one interact with the fourth one? How does she interact with your wife, and he interact with your husband? I'm saying it's all a mess. Then you have your fifth kid and your sixth kid, and by that time you have teenagers. And then teenagers are a whole different set of like I don't know what happens. I try to remember what it was like to be a teenager. Very often I try to hone in and understand why this thing that's absolutely not important is now life or death important.

31:29 When the issue is the bathroom, there's no reason. I'll tell you straight. I bought a house from scratch. I built a house here in Israel. How special is that? I got to build a house in Israel. I built and designed a house, but I didn't know. I didn't know such a naive guy. I didn't have any teenagers at the time. I thought what I needed to build was bedrooms. So I built a house with seven bedrooms, but what I really needed was a house with seven bathrooms. Each one of them should have their own shower and their own toilet, and they could go whenever they want, as often as they want, without having to be interrupted. This would be my dream because so much of the fighting in my house would be diminished if there was just more porcelain in a corner. You understand how ridiculous that is? I like that bit. I don't have enough. I have four bathrooms, and that's not nearly enough. One of them is mine, and I'm not letting them use that one. One of them is downstairs, and it's just a toilet. Then there's two others for four teenage girls.

32:33 Which is not nearly enough bathroom space. But at some point, like in the beginning, it's all exciting. But then at some point, you realize when you look back on your life. When did your life actually start? It wasn't those beginning years. You weren't actually doing anything. You were just playing house. You were just figuring it out. At some point, it's like life just starts to happen. You're at that cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet. And that's the good stuff. That's like there's. I'm not saying there's not a lot going on. There's a lot going on. But if you're in self, if you're present in those moments, and you're just negotiating all of the challenges, and you're doing it well, and you're together with each other. That's like the good stuff. That's like when you look back on it. It's like, yeah, that was life. We just did that.

33:22 I'll tell you an amazing story. Maybe it won't be amazing, but I think it's amazing. My Rebbe Shlita Yudaparnas, who's Kneinerhar over 90 years old. I think he's 93 years old now. So I went to his house many, many years ago. I was sitting in his kitchen in a small apartment in Borough Park. And I was sitting in my Rebbe's kitchen, and I noticed on his fridge that he had magnets of people's weddings, like the pictures of the weddings. So there's a picture of my Rebbe's family. On the fridge. Now my Rebbe Keninahar had, I think, it was eight children, and each one of those eight children had eight children, and each one of those eight children had eight children. So the wedding is like fish lens wide angle, like from a hundred feet back, like you can't make out anyone's face, like it's like one of those things where you let your eyes rest, and it's actually a picture of a ship. You know what I'm saying? Like one of those types of things.

34:11 So I jokingly said to my Rebbe, Rebbe, it looks more like a clan or a tribe than a family, like just so many people there. And he said something from, I don't remember exactly what it was. He said, Baruch Hashem. But his Rebbitzin Who's an exceptionally emotionally intelligent person, she was one of the top marriage therapists in Brooklyn for many, many years. So Rebbitzin Parnas looked at my Rebbe. And their eyes met And she said to him. And all from a couple of kids that had no idea what they were doing And then they looked at each other for what could not have been more than a split second, but to me felt like ten years. And I wanted to run out of the apartment because it was so exceptionally uncomfortable. Because the love was so present, so spoken, so clear that I felt like I was in the place of the shkina, like I had no business seeing that. You really don't have a place. You shouldn't see that. That should just be behind closed doors. And I'm so glad that the Rebbe's thing is so comfortable.

35:15 But like, no, like it's not. So But I think what she was saying is when you look back on your life, there was all this stuff. That's where life happens. So if you had to put that into different words, it would sound something like this: shachris, mincha, and maariv. Shacharis is the unspoken. I have no idea what's about to happen today. That's why we daven first thing when we wake up in the morning and nothing has happened Like nothing is supposed to happen before Shacharis. Let's just say that one more time, just so you get it in your head, like a thing you put away in your pocket. Like nothing is supposed to happen before Shacharis. You're supposed to wake up in the morning, just a general good idea. You're supposed to wake up in the morning, and then the first thing you do is you daven because it prepares you for the day ahead. What's the preparation? I have no idea what to say. It's unspoken.

36:03 It's the excitement, it's the anxiety that I don't yet even know how to articulate. What is happening today? That's step one. Step three is Myriah. It's night time. In the night. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know I won't be able to see. I know there's going to be some crisis. I know it's dark outside. I can't make my way through this. Tremendous amount of faith. That's why after Krioshma at night in Maariv we say Emes veEmuna as opposed to in Shacharis we say Emes veYatsiv Emes veEmuna because it requires faith to daven Maariv. I have no idea what's coming, but I know it's not going to be paschal. And then there's Mincha. And Mincha is that time of day that's so boring You're in the middle of your day and what do you do? You just stop and you daven. There's nothing going on. There's no particular tension at that moment. There's no friction. It's not the nervousness or the excitement of what's about to come, and it's not the faith in the night.

36:58 It's just right there in the thick of things. That's what it actually is. It's not faith-based. And it's not the unspoken emotion. It's just the spokenness of life of what is occurring around us. And that's Avram Yitzchak and Yaakov, right? So Avram had friction in his relationship with Sarah. There was anger. There was their love, of course. But the love was unspoken. Not that the love wasn't there, but it was all the unspoken. What's about to happen? It's Avram Avinu. Here's what's about to happen. I'm about to father all of religion. That's going to be important for the next several thousand years. That's a big deal. It's a big unspoken. What's coming? The love between Avram and Sarah is never explicitly stated in the Torah. Let's skip to Yaakov. The love of Yaakov and Rachel. Yaakov sees Rachel right away. What does he say? I love her.

37:50 She's the one Big flex. Take that big shoulder off. Pick that big boulder off the well. This wasn't like. Just to be clear, this wasn't the WWE. Yaakov Avina wasn't doing this like Hulk Hogan. It wasn't doing that thing. He wasn't jumping off the top rope. The emotion that he had was of deep faith in the night. That was to follow. And by the way, look at Yaakov Avinu's life—not exactly pashat, right? His brother tried to kill him. He ran away from his parents. His sons tried to kill his other son. He lost his wife. He couldn't marry his wife. He went down to Mitzrayim, the beginning of Galus. Yaakov Avinu's life was the nighttime. That's why when does he fight with the Malach Avesav? At night. But it's the faith of Yaakov Avinu. It's the mitzvah of Yaakov Avinu. Was the love there? The love was the spoken faith that occurred before anything even happened.

38:43 That's Mairth And then there's Yitzchok. Did Yitzchok and Rivka have friction in their marriage? The Torah doesn't tell us that Rivka was ever angry at Yitzchok, or that Yitzchok was ever angry at Rivka. In fact, not much is spoken about Yitzchok's life at all. He dug a couple of wells. But what we do know about Yitzchok is he loved Rivka after they got married. When the relationship was solid, there was love there. When life was happening in the tedium of day to day life, in the middle of the day. That's where love actually occurs. That's where growth actually occurs. Let's bring it back to us. You've been in SEM now for two months. It's not Shachris anymore. And it's not Ma'ariv either. We're not at the end. It's not the part of the faith of what's about to come. Will I be able to hold on to the things that I learned in seminary when I go back in life? It's not Ma'ariv either. Right now, you know what you're in. The really boring part of seminary. You've reached cruising altitude. You kind of know exactly what you're gonna do every day. Hopefully, nobody goes in to be dud.

39:46 That's the myruf part, right? I just don't know what's coming. But the mincha part is like, girls, you've met your teachers. You know who you like. You know who you don't like. You know which classes speak to you. You know which ones don't. You know more or less how it's going. You've reached your cruising altitude. What you don't realize is that right now in the not exciting part of the year Is when the growth actually occurs. It's the day-to-day capability of showing up. It's the loyalty that you have to this project, to the person that you thought about last summer, and you said, "I want to be that person." It's happening right now. And for so many of us, you're about to hit burnout. If you haven't already, you're about to hit that winter burnout. Some of the Shannet Bet girls can tell you about this. That winter burnout of like, can I really do this for another couple of months? It's getting dark at like four o'clock. We already did.

40:31 And for a lot of us, and it makes sense for a lot of us. It's like. People will start to ask themselves, "Am I really accomplishing what I want to be accomplishing?" I don't know if I'm doing it. There's all this self-doubt and anxiety that occurs. Girls The real growth in life is the love that occurs after the marriage. The real growth in life is the day-to-day tedium. It's very popular. It's very in vogue for a bannim to get up in front of a group of people and speak about being more passionate about their Judaism. I believe the exact opposite. It ought to be in vogue for us to get up in front of a group of eighteen-year-old and nineteen-year-old young women and say, 'It's okay that you're not passionate all the time. It's okay. It's not a normal expectation. Nobody, not even the people you think are, not even the greatest rabbanim, nobody is waking up every single day and saying, 'Shivici Hashem lenegi tamed' like it was the first time they ever did. I remember the first time I ever put on tefillah in eighth grade. It was super exciting the first day.

41:33 I wish I could tell you that I had that same passion. Perhaps there's a part of me that should work on that. But I put on tefillin this morning, and I wasn't sitting there going, "Oh my God, I'm putting on tefillin!" I've been thinking about this moment for so long. You know what I did? I put on my tefillin like this. It was two seconds. It was on. I'm so good at it. It's like a lasso now. I'm like one of those cowboys. I'm on. Like that's what they do in Nachal Haridi. They walk around checking. Like I like a man who wraps them tight. Like tight tefillin and strong. The whole idea that you have to be passionate the whole time. That's a myth. So let's dispose of it now. It's an unrealistic expectation that's only designed to mess with your head and to get you to challenge yourself in a way that perhaps you shouldn't. Which doesn't mean to say that you shouldn't work on becoming more passionate about your Judaism. But it's also okay to say that there are going to be times in life when my Judaism is just tedious and it's just the day to day showing up and doing the same thing over and over again. You've reached your cruising altitude.

42:28 That's when real love occurs. It's spoken. It's boiled. It's obvious, but you have to pay attention to it. You're going to look back on your life, and you're going to look at these months, not the beginning and not the end. You're going to look at these months right now, in the darkness of winter, from now until Purim. You're going to look at these months, and you're going to realize this is when I did it. The only question is, will you be conscious of the growth that's occurring right now? Have a good Shabbos, girls.