Parshas Kedoshim: Reframing Life in the Absolute

2:57 You should not cut yourself. So obviously, there's a difference in the way that the Torah expressed it. In Pashas Rei, it says cutting yourself is lotus go to do. The Gemara in Yevamos explains what is the meaning of lotus go to do. Literally, what do those words mean? You shouldn't cut yourself. Today, sometimes people cut themselves. Used to be that people would cut themselves back then. When a person died, it was like a form of avelus. It was a way of mourning. They would cut themselves. The Gemara in Yevamos says, "Lotus go do, Lotasu aguda." You should not make communities and communities. What does that mean? It means as follows. It's actually a machlokus over there. Without getting into the details of the machlokus, you're not allowed to split a city. By having a bes din paskin in two different ways, that's the simple meaning. Practically, how does that apply nowadays? If a person is davening in a particular shul, he should daven the same nusach, or she should daven the same nusach that they're davening in the shul. Meaning, you shouldn't make yourself a separate community within the community that you're in.

4:11 And not only that, but I saw once many years ago from Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach. That even in your quiet shmona esrei, let's say you daven nusach Ashkenaz, and you're davening in a shul where it's nusach Svard. Even in your quiet shmona esrei, you should daven nusach Svard, because you shouldn't make yourself agudus into separate communities. Now I'm pretty sure not everyone paskins that way, but certainly you have to do something to make sure that you're not separating yourself from the community. What's the obvious problem with this Gemara, girls? What was that? Correct. Sometimes we see that Chazal make a drasha. So don't read it this way, read it that way. But usually, there's some connection between these two things. Like I'll agree, Charus al luchos el acherus al luchos. It was engraved on the luchos. It means that the luchos provided freedom. So there, you could see it. It's engraved on you, and that gives you freedom. It's sort of connected. But here we have two totally separate surims.

5:18 They seem to have nothing to do with one another. The first one is don't cut yourself as a state of as a way of mourning dead people. And what do we learn out from there? Don't separate yourself from the community. Don't make a division in the community by having batei din and pasquin in different ways, or by having a bezdin split down the middle and issuing two different Piskei Halacha. Again, whatever the cases of lotus go to do, but that's certainly very far from cutting yourself as a sign of mourning for a dead person. What does one thing have to do with the other? And to make this a little bit worse, if we're actually speaking about not creating division in the community, what does that have to do with banim atem laShem Elokechem? Because your children of God don't create division in the community. I understand you're saying because you're children of God, treat yourself with dignity and respect. Don't cut yourself. Don't abuse the body that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave you. But don't create division in the community because we're the children of God. What is the Torah trying to explain over here?

6:31 I wanted tonight to talk to you about a very deep concept. And one that I think is really important. Especially as you're finishing up your shanah aleph or your shanah bet here in Sharfman's. Mrs. Fuld asked me to start speaking to the girls about preparing yourselves for going back. Some of you, how many of you just went back for Pesach? A decent number of you. You're going to go back for the summer. Maybe you'll come back to Shabbat. Maybe you won't. How do you prepare yourself? How do you take it with you? There's a well-known problem. The problem is called the framing problem. What is the framing problem? The framing problem goes as follows: Every single person in this room right now is choosing to frame this room in a particular way.

7:38 Now we don't do that randomly. We do that because the room itself offers a frame. For example, all of you are sitting in seats that are facing this way towards me. If somebody came into the room right away, even if I wasn't sitting here, what frame would they give this room? A classroom. That's right. There's a drama going on. Somebody's going to be sitting in the front. There's going to be a shir that's going to be delivered. There's going to be listeners. They're going to be engaged. The frame of the room tells you something. So if somebody walked into this room right now and you said, 'Here's five seconds. Take a look at the room.' They walk in for five seconds. When they walk out, what are they going to tell you about the room? They're going to say that is a place of learning. How would they know that? They would take a look at the bookshelves and they would see that svarim are lined up along the bookshelves. They might see that there's a certain climate control. We want the people in the room to be comfortable. That's why we have fans.

8:34 For example, you might notice that there's more seats in the back of the room than in the front of the room. It's not. I'm not saying anything personal. I'm just saying. If you know what I'm saying, I'm not saying. I'm just saying. So I'll bet you they wouldn't walk out and talk about this. This is not a good example. But I bet you they wouldn't walk out and talk about how many tiles were on the floor. I bet you none of you girls right now have ever taken the time to count the tiles on a floor. And if some of you have, it's because the shir is that boring. Then I really apologize. I had a friend that used to do this. He was like a guy that didn't really like davening so much. So he would sit there in davening, and he would count the ceiling tiles. And he'd walk over to me. He'd walk over to me in shul, like in the middle of shul, and he would go. A hundred and twenty-seven ceiling tiles. And we laugh at that because it's like, why do you know that there's a hundred and twenty-seven ceiling tiles? The answer is because the

9:37 The room itself to him wasn't doing what it expected it to do, so he framed the room in a particular way. Now here's the thing: The tiles on this floor are really important, and none of us are thinking about the floor. We expect the floor to be there, but the floor is really important because if the floor gave way, all of a sudden we'd be paying attention to it. Right? We expect that there's going to be a floor and that there's going to be a ceiling, and the ceiling protects us from the elements. And on those days when it's pouring outside, we have these windows that block us. Right? And so we're not really paying attention to it until something goes wrong. Because we've chosen to frame the room not in an absolute way, but we've chosen to frame the room as a part, and that's really important. Every single place you go in your life, you're framing things. Even the people that you're looking at. So let's say you're sitting and talking to a girl. Why did you choose to frame the conversation just by, I'm talking to Sarah? Because you're not really just talking to Sarah. Because Sarah is not exist just as a part.

10:40 She's there's larger parts there. Think about how many things Sarah has gone through in her life that are contributing to that conversation. For example, if she didn't have that mother, would she be the person that she is today? They say in psychology: if it's not one thing, it's your mother. So when you're talking to somebody, you're not just talking to them, but you're talking to their parents. And you're not just talking to them, their parents, but you're talking to their grandparents on both sides, and you're talking to the community members that had interactions with them. Why did you choose to frame the problem as I'm talking to Sarah? You're not talking to Sarah. You're talking to and even looking at Sarah. Why did you choose to identify Sarah by the skin that she has or by the eyes that she has? Why don't you look at the? Sarah walked in. You totally missed it. Why do you think she walked in?

11:29 You're only looking at the part. You're looking at our. If Burke happens to be saying Sarah, and then Sarah walked in. It's the opposite. I said Sarah, so Sarah walked in. That's not arrogant. It is arrogant. And interestingly enough, Sarah chooses to sit in the back. Happy birthday to Sarah. She just said it was. I'm choosing to believe her. I thought it said Sarah Seewald. All the records that they put it on the wall. I take it back. You shouldn't have a happy birthday. But the point is, we're all choosing to frame the people that we look at. We're saying, I see your skin, I see your hair, I see your eyes. Why are you choosing to look at that? There's so many things to look at. And if you follow this to its logical conclusion, both on the micro level and the macro level, look what's going to happen. Every single time you start to blow the picture out, the picture becomes that much clearer. And the more you zoom out from the place where you are, you're going to have a larger understanding of what's going to happen. So imagine you were talking to a girl.

12:39 Let's go back to our marshal before. Imagine you're talking to a girl and you're having an exceptionally hard conversation with her. You don't understand why the conversation is that hard. For example, you came to your roommate and you said to your roommate politely, "It's hot outside. Can we turn on the air conditioner?" I know that this is the big fight in all seminaries. Everywhere I go, this is the big fight. Temperature control can destroy friendships. Why can't you just put on a blanket? Why can't you just take off a blanket? Why can't you wear something heavier? Why can't you wear something lighter? It's an insoluble problem designed to destroy girls in seminaries all around the country. But you don't understand why it's so hard. Because we should be able to work through this. We should be able to have a dialogue where we can figure out a solution that works for both of us. And yet, this person is getting so, so deeply touched by it. They're so angry about it. They're so disturbed. And you don't know what happens. But if you listen to them, they'll tell you what's going on. If you'll just be quiet and you'll listen, they'll tell you what's going on. And this is what it sounds like. I used to have this fight with my sister all the time. My sister bullied me. And so we always had to have it cold in the room.

13:45 Even though I was always hot. And so when you're asking me to have it or the opposite, it doesn't matter. Please don't get caught up in the particular. I just chose a random example. So when you're talking to that person, you're not actually talking to that person. Who you talking to? You're talking to a bullied twelve-year-old girl who didn't know how to get her way when her older sister was dominating the room. But you're even not talking to that because when that twelve-year-old girl used to go to her parents and say it's not fair because my older sister is doing this, and what did the parents do? The parents said, "Well, we're not getting involved. You girls have to figure it out on your own." So now, not only does she have the feeling of being bullied, but she also has the feeling of being abandoned. And why did the parents react that way? The parents reacted that way because they're so busy.

14:27 And they're trying to make a parnasa. The father just got ripped on by his boss that day, and he's talking to his wife about it. She's in no mood to handle it because she has feelings of her own about the way her husband deals with his boss. When they showed up, when the twelve-year-old girl showed up to say her older sister is bullying her, they just couldn't handle it. So now you have the boss coming into account. You know why the boss is dealing with his employee that way? Because he doesn't think he's a very good employee. Even though he's showing up to work every day, he's not really putting in the time, and that's frustrating him. But he never learned how to confront people in a healthy fashion.

14:59 So he's just bearing all of this resentment toward his employee all day. And now, when his employee comes and says you're not paying me enough, he explodes on him. The reason he never developed those skills to begin with of being able to confront someone in a healthy fashion is because in his family his father was abusive. All he ever learned was unhealthy confrontation. And people earlier in his life told him you're an angry person and you're abusive. So what he's learned is just to swallow his feelings and bottle them up with resentment. Well, the reason and you see how we could go on and on here. You're not talking to your roommate about issues of temperature in the room. There's so many people, and if you keep following this back out. You talk about not only the people that are in front of you, but you talk about the nature of the system they grew up in. For example, let's say somebody grows up in Chicago, and it's freezing outside in Chicago. Does anyone here from Chicago? I love Chicago, but only for one reason: because there's Romanian deli over there. But other than that, there's no reason to go to Chicago because it's so cold. And you know I'm right. And if you don't know I'm right, it's because you've never gone anywhere warmer. People should not go.

16:03 I hate going to Chicago because there's always a reason why O'Hare won't land my plane. There's always fog or snow, and I end up in Indiana. Have you done this before? If you haven't, then you don't fly a lot. It happens all the time to me. It's always like I'm supposed to be somewhere, and then I drove. The last time I landed in Chicago, I had to drive from O'Hare to Skokie after a snowstorm. I was driving like five miles an hour in the right lane of the highway, and I thought I was going to die. The car is literally like. The roads, the highways, are littered with cars that had gotten into accidents. And I'm sitting there, just saying 'Enod Movado' over and over again. There is only God. Enod Movado. And I see trucks plowing by me at like 80 miles an hour, honking like you're dangerous on the road. I got to the Holiday Inn in Chicago.

16:49 And I literally dove into the greatest mire I've ever had in my life. It was like two hours long. You spared my life. What would you like me to do with my life now? It was like one of those situations. And that's why I don't like to go to Chicago because it's the place. You understand? And it's not just the climate that you grew up in. But think about the sociology of the place that you grew in. If you grew up in a poor home, if you grew up in a rich home, if you grew up in a poor community or a rich community, there's so many things that go in. So when you're talking to one person, you're not talking to one person. We've just chosen for the sake of utility. To frame the problem as I'm just speaking to you. It's not true that you're only speaking to the person in front of you. There's so much that goes into every single conversation. I don't know how many of you here. I hope the answer is more than less. But I don't know how many of you have ever seen a therapist before. But if you've been to a good therapist. This hospital's in therapy. It is a therapy. That's a positive thing. If you've been in therapy before.

17:54 Then you know that you have times in therapy where you came to a realization that you're like, I never thought of it that way. Why didn't you think of it that way? Because you were framing the problem in a particular way. And really, what therapy could sometimes be understood as is really just reframing the problem. And it's like I really suffer from anxiety. Why do you really suffer from anxiety? Because the following things are going to go wrong, right? And you could also choose to frame it in a different way. All of therapy, on some level, is framing the problem and perhaps enlarging it, or making it a little bit smaller so that you could view the problem in a different way. Everyone understand that. So that's what we call God. Because if you chose the absolute largest frame, what would that be? That would be God. Because this entire world exists within God. He is the place where space exists. So if you kept zooming out and you kept framing whatever it is you're looking at larger and larger, ultimately, what would you come to? You would come to the realization that there is godliness in every single thing, and it would be impossible to see it any other way. All you have to do is frame it in a larger

19:20 In a larger capacity. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to frame things in a way where we can focus on the particular, but through the lens of understanding it from the perspective of the absolute. What would be the danger if you lost sight of the absolute and you only focused on the particular? I'll tell you what the danger is. When you lose sight of the larger frame, and you only focus on the thing that's in front of you, and you don't understand it in its proper context. Ultimately, what you're going to end up with is one very fundamental word. And that word is control. You're going to end up with major controlling issues. Let's play it out. A person who looks at the world through the lens of the largest possible frame. From the frame of God, from the absolute, all the way to the opposite extreme.

20:15 How much control do you really have over anything? Almost nothing. In fact, one could say that the only thing you have control over is the choice that you make. But do you really have control over anything? Not really. The feeling of control is what occurs when you stop framing things from the perspective of the absolute. And that is exceptionally dangerous. I'll give you two ways of looking at a scenario. These are something that happened to me this past week. When I'm home, and I'm not home very often, but when I'm home, I like to make dinner for my family. It's a nice thing that I can do. I happen to enjoy cooking. I like to make dinner for my family. So I was going to make barbecue chicken for my family one night, but we had taken the chicken out of the freezer a little bit late. When you take it out a little bit late, it's still tough, and you're not able to cut it up. So I called down to my daughter, who's 15 years old, and I said to her, "Could you do me a favor? Put the chicken in warm water from the sink. Put it in warm water."

21:22 She takes out little Tupperware, puts the chicken inside the Tupperware, and she puts warm water in it. Now I come downstairs. Half an hour later, I stick my hand in, thinking that the water would be lukewarm, or maybe cold, because the chicken has given off its element into the water, and the water is burning hot. I burned my hand because I stuck my hand into the boiling water, not expecting that I was going to burn my hand. I also ripped out the chicken because I was like, "Ow!" I ripped out the chicken to discover that the entire top of the chicken had been boiled in water. And I don't know if you know anything about cooking, but barbecuing chicken after it's been boiled in water is disgusting. So I was first of all burned, and I was second of all feeling really upset that I had this thing I was making for dinner, and about a third of it now has to go in the garbage. So I turned to my fifteen-year-old daughter. I said, "What did you do?" Right, and that's how I said it. I didn't say it like, "Oh, sweetie, my little tzadikus," you know, because I was on the phone with her.

22:23 And I said to her, "Don't put it in boiling water. Make sure it's lukewarm because we don't want to cook the chicken." And she said, "What?" And I said, "It's boiling hot." She said, "How could that be? I put it in lukewarm water." And then I saw my twelve-year-old start to slink out of the room. Now I love my twelve-year-old daughter with all my heart and soul. I would give up my life to save hers. And she is a girl who is brilliant. Really. She's tremendously smart. She doesn't necessarily always understand the consequences of her actions. And she sometimes does things with great intentions, but she doesn't necessarily put two and two together. Unbeknownst to my fifteen-year-old daughter, my twelve-year-old daughter walked into the room and she said, "Hey, I know that my father is trying to get the chicken to be defrosted before it's time for dinner." She stuck her hand in the water and she said, "It's only lukewarm. That's not going to get it defrosted in time." So she turned on the kumkum, boiled up some water, poured out the lukewarm water that was in there, and poured in the water.

23:26 Now I am a human being. With many frailties, and one of my many frailties came out in that minute. I said, "Don't do that. Just do the thing I ask you to do. Don't do anything more." And I was so upset at her, because my hand was burned, and because now I have to cut away a third of the chicken. And will we have enough chicken for dinner that night? The answer to that question was no. So now I'm going to have to figure out how to make something else for myself. So I was really upset, and my wife is like looking at me like, "What is the big deal?" And I'm like Why can't I just be right once? Because what I was really trying to do in that situation, And I was like so frustrated, And I was trying to control the situation, Which was of course ridiculous because it had already occurred, Right? And even if I'm trying to control future situations, I'm definitely not doing that. At best, all I'm doing is scaring my daughter. That's not a meaningful parenting tool. But if you look at it from the perspective of you don't have control, Right? You start looking at the absolute. Then what starts to happen? This is exactly what was supposed to happen. In fact, as you think about it, Is there anything in your life that doesn't happen unless it's supposed to happen?

24:38 Every single thing. If you believe in God, that means every single thing that happens is exactly what was supposed to happen. And that doesn't mean that it's not painful, but it also means that it is purposeful. So if I reach my hand into that water and it's burning hot, and a third of the chicken is ruined. That's exactly what was supposed to have happened. And so there's no reason to try to be in control. Because it's ridiculous; it already happened. And because exactly what happened was supposed to happen. So your plan is never going to be as good as God's. Does that make sense? So from the perspective of the absolute, how would I have responded to my daughter in that moment if I had had the wherewithal, the mental acuity, the mindfulness to say, 'Ow. I really just hurt myself, and I'm really frustrated over the fact that a third of the chicken just got ruined, and somebody along the line did something I didn't want.' But okay, this was the plan of God. Which means that this moment, everything that I had was bringing me to this moment. It's like if you walk up in the morning and somebody said at five o'clock today.

25:41 Let's make it at seven thirty-five. At seven thirty-five today, you're going to be tested. The person that's sitting next to you is going to want to say something to you in the middle of Reuvenberg's shear. They're going to want to talk to you, and they're going to do it in such a way that you think Reuvenberg can't see them because you're hiding behind the person. Just because you're sitting behind someone doesn't make you invisible. I don't know if that's like a novel chiddush to some of you, but I want you to know that lines of sight. I move my head. Right. So at 7:35 or at 7:36 tonight, you are going to have a test. Thou shall not speak to the person next to you in shear.

26:13 And He has that voice. We all know how God sounds. God sounds like the voice of God, British, right? Because there's no way God is American. There's no way God comes to you. What's going on? It doesn't sound new. How are you? It's like very proper. So God comes down. He says, "Thou shall not talk to your friend." Now it's come seven thirty-six. You've gotten that boss call. It's seven thirty-six, and your neighbor turns to you. Chances are, if you got that boss call in the morning, what are you going to do? You're just going to go. Just give me twenty-five minutes. Why? Because you got the boss call that morning. You're looking at it from the perspective of the absolute. If I had the mindfulness to think to myself that God wants me to respond to this particular challenge in a particular way

26:49 I would have sat down with my daughter and I would have said to her, 'Sweetie, you are so well intentioned. I really appreciate that you were thinking about how we can expedite dinner and make it easier for me because I'm the one that's going to cook it. I want to teach you something. We don't defrost things by putting them in boiling hot water because that cooks them. And actually, I had called down to make sure that didn't happen. So I appreciate that you were trying to expedite the process. But let this be a lesson for next time. And I would have figured out dinner anyway. I wouldn't have had to scar my child.' What was that? Say that. That's not the. We're not talking about how to defrost chicken, right? The question: How you respond to anything in your life comes from how you perceive it. Do you perceive it as a part? In which case you're going to try to control things, or do you see it from the perspective of the absolute? In which case you're going to choose to respond appropriately. If you think that what I'm saying until now is just good advice, let me tell you that it's much more dangerous than that. Because control is an exceptionally dangerous thing.

27:56 Once you choose to frame the world without God, and you choose to control whatever powers are there, you're a stone's throw away from murder. I know that sounds crazy, but just follow the logic for a second. What was worse Nazism, or idolatry? Most of us would answer that question Nazism, because Nazism resulted in the death of six million people. And idolatry just means that I'm going to worship something made of stone. And you'd be wrong, because many, many more people have been killed throughout history. And much more heinous acts have been committed in the name of idolatry. How could that be? The answer is: once you believe in controlling God and not having God control you, once you make that shift. You're going to be willing to do anything in order to control God. That sounds crazy, right? But what if I told you that historically there were people that murdered their own children so that they could control God? When I say murdered their own children, I mean that. I mean they took the baby out of the crib. The baby that they gave birth to, the baby that they love, and they sacrifice that to this God. How could you do such a thing? How could you take your own child and sacrifice that child to God? The answer is, once you are in the control lane, and not the absolute lane.

29:15 You will do anything to get control. And if you think what I'm saying is wrong, pause for a moment in your life and think about some of the really terrible things that have happened to you. And I promise you, they will all come back to control. For example, let's say you had the following case. Make an easy one. Let's say you can remember in fourth grade. I'm not saying anything specific. Let's say you can remember in fourth grade that there was a rebbe who was having a really hard time controlling the classroom. I'm not saying this happened to me. I'm just giving a very specific example. The rebbe was having a really hard time controlling the class. Maybe as a fourth grader, you don't know that because you're just a fourth grader. How old is a fourth grader already? But the Rebbe, looking back on it, you might be able to see that the Rebbe is having a really hard time controlling the class. And maybe the Rebbe is really at his wits' end. And maybe you'll combine that with a kid who's really looking for attention. Positive or negative, it doesn't matter to him. So maybe the kid decides to throw a paper airplane in the middle of class.

30:17 And maybe the entire class starts to laugh, and maybe the Rebbe goes bananas. He goes absolutely berserk, way more berserk than he should have gone over a paper airplane. When somebody throws a paper airplane in class, it's not appropriate. You might have to discipline that child. How would you discipline that child? Probably you should ask the kid to leave the classroom. If you can't sit here in the classroom and not disrupt others from learning, then maybe it's not a place that you can be. Maybe afterwards it's time to sit that child down and have a conversation with him. I'm not saying anything specific, but that fourth grade Rebbe may have unloaded on that fourth grade kid. Because he was just so frustrated, and God knows what else was going on in his life, right? I'm only looking at it from the perspective of a fraction, but from the perspective of the absolute, how many different things were going on in that Rebbe's life? Imagine that same fourth grader is now almost 40 years old, and he can still remember how terrifying it was as that Rebbe unloaded on him, and now he's giving shiur about it as a form of therapy and sharpening.

31:19 It was just a guy trying to control a classroom. And the truth of the matter is, we don't control anybody or anything. We can do our best to manage, we can do our best to make moves, but we don't really control anyone or anything. For example, let's say a person stands in front of the room and says, 'Pass up your cell phones.' I'm not saying anything specific. I'm just saying it's a weekly occurrence. And even that, we don't really control. Because I don't have them. I didn't bring it. Sure, you do. In about 15 minutes, I'll see it. We don't really control anyone. To the degree that we get frustrated, it's because we really want to have control. Think about that from the perspective of anyone in your life that's hurt anyone you know. It all comes down to control. In the name of control, people have done the most heinous acts in the history of the world because they were trying to control things. Take Stalin. Stalin killed an estimated 60 million of his own people. That's not including the deaths of World War II. Sixty million of his own people. Why? Because Stalin knew that the uprising against him could come from anywhere.

32:23 And so he was quick to murder everyone because that was his way of controlling everyone. That's where tyranny comes from. Tyranny comes from control. Trying to control, whenever you're looking only at the part and you're not looking at the absolute, you're going to feel like you need to control everything. And by the way, for those of you who do suffer from anxiety in this room, think about what anxiety is. It's a situation that I don't control, and if I don't control it, God knows what's going to happen. Everything could fall apart. And by the way, if you talk to those people, they'll tell you the craziest scenarios that you know are not going to happen. If I fail this test, I'm never going to get into college. And if I'm never going to get into college, I'm going to have to be a ganenet. And if I'm a ganenet, I'm not going to make any money. And if I don't make any money, and my husband doesn't make any money, because who's going to marry someone who can only be a ganenet? Only another guy who's for sure going to be poor. So then we'll be poor together. Our children won't have anything. They're going to be poor because they're going to come from two poor parents and they're going to have an impoverished mentality. You're just like you're in tenth grade. If you think I'm making this stuff up

33:27 If you don't, if you know someone who suffers from anxiety, real anxiety, that's what happens, and they're totally lost. You can't have a conversation with them because they're not living now; they're living ten years and twenty years and thirty years from now, and it's a. And this is what you try to say to calm them down. You go, that's not going to happen. And what do they say to that? But it might. And it's not something I can control. So what are they really saying? They're saying, if I don't control this, well, God knows what else I don't control. And the answer is, you're right, you don't control anything, because they really are right. It's pathological. It's not a healthy way of thinking. But they really are right. If you think you're in control of anything, that's crazy.

34:06 You have to. By the way, that's my favorite line. God, but I still have to do mine. Of course, but the only reason you have to do yours is because God tells you to. Really, you don't have to. That's a good question. How do you know tachan versus hestadlus? That's like God will give me all my money on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He signs and he seals, and that's what I'm going to get. But hestadlus. And what does hestadlus really mean? I don't believe any of the things I just said before. It's like you know, if you're having a conversation and somebody says, Having said that.

34:36 It means that they're just going to undo the thing that they said right before that. I think that outfit looks really good on you. Having said that, maybe it doesn't really fit so nicely. What are they really saying? Please take it off. Having said that, after the having said that part comes the real part. It's the same thing. It's like, yeah, I believe in God, but having said that, I need to do my istadlus. And of course you do, but because God tells you to. So then, how much istadlus do you have to do? Exactly how much God tells you to do. But we all know the difference between the people that are using hichdalus just as a way of controlling things, and people who are doing hichdalus because that's what they have to do. And I'll give you a practical example because it's really important. If you're making five to six hundred thousand dollars a year, and you're still obsessed with your job because you're like, otherwise I'm not going to make it. As a result, you never see your children and have no relationship with them. You're probably in the lane of control. And if you ask yourself, well, wait a second, what am I? If you reframe and start to zoom out a little bit and think about what you have in front of you, you might start thinking to yourself, well, the whole reason I'm working is to support my family.

35:40 What's the value of supporting my family if they don't have a relationship with me to begin with? I'm paying the mortgage on my house, but I don't even have a home. If I zoom out and start to think about the larger corpus of my life and start to think about where everything is going, things will start to make more sense. Why is this important? Why is this important to know? If you think about If you think about Lotus Goethe, you can think about it in two ways, and maybe these are just two sides of the same coin. Let's think about death. So from the perspective of the part, there's a terrible tragedy. Somebody that I love dearly just passed away. That could be devastating to people. They don't know how to cope with their mourning. It's becoming so overwhelming that they can't recover from it. They don't know how to start to move on from that. What they do is they start to tear at their own flesh. And the Torah comes along and tells such a person.

37:03 "Banim atem la Hashem alokechem." Don't cut yourself because you are the child of God. What does that mean? Remember, it was the way of idolaters to cut themselves. Why wouldn't an idolater cut himself? Because if you're just looking at the death, it's like so overwhelming. How can I possibly deal with that? It's huge. It's enormous. How do people recover from that? It'll never be the same. There's a story in my family. It's a story. I'm not embarrassed of it per se because I was just a little kid. The story goes that my grandfather had passed away, and I think I was just maybe five years old. Have some of you seen the show, Sesame Street? There used to be a character on Sesame Street whose name was Mr. Hooper. And I, as a little kid, grew up on the street. I grew up on Sesame Street. That's what we call it. Cool kids, we call it the street, right? I grew up on the street in the hood.

38:03 With that crazy bird. It's like the craziest acid trip of all time. If you think about the people that made Snuffleupagus, right? Just things I think of. So. So Mr. Hooper had died on Sesame Street. My parents knew that Mr. Hooper had died on Sesame Street. Sesame Street did like a whole episode, or maybe it was a series of episodes. I don't even remember the death because Mr. Hooper was no longer there, and it was a way of teaching children about death. So here I am, a big five-year-old kid, and my grandfather had just died. Everyone is just showing up to shiva, meaning they just came back from the cemetery. I don't think I went to the cemetery. I think somebody watched me in my grandmother's apartment. Then my grandmother comes back, and she's sitting shiva, and it's like the first hour that she's sitting shiva.

38:57 And my cousin, who's a year younger than me, who's four years old, who apparently didn't grow up on the street, and he didn't know about Mr. Hooper, so he looked at me and he goes, "Oh, don't worry, Papa Harry will be back tomorrow." And I looked at him as the older five-year-old cousin, who clearly was well versed in the ways of the world, and I said to him, "No, he won't. He's dead. Dead means you're never coming back. He's never ever coming back." And I'm giving this lecture, like really loudly, like yelling at him. You're wrong. He's dead. He's never coming back. And here is my grandmother Who just started sitting shiva, who just loses it. And my father, again, I don't remember any of this, but my father runs across the room and grabs me up and runs out of the room as fast as he can. Because sometimes children say the truth. And that's really hard for people to hear. And so it became like a thing in my family. Whenever anyone dies, they look at me and you go, he's dead. He's never coming back. He's never, ever coming back. I'm like, yeah. I'm 39 years old. I get it.

39:56 Again, if you think about it in its part, if you think about it not in the absolute, if you don't frame it larger, so then he's dead. He's never coming back, and that can drive a person to this idolatrous type of behavior where you have to bleed just to know you're alive. It's a form of control. When you talk to people who cut themselves, that's what it is. It's like I can control my feelings. I can feel something, and obviously that's very dangerous. It's an idolatrous way of seeing the world, and the Torah says, 'Banim atem la Hashem lokechem, you are my children.' So God is saying, 'Ani Hashem. You are my children.' So if you lost someone that you love, remember you're still valued. Reframe, see it from a larger picture. Lotus votive, don't cut yourself, don't behave in the way of an idolater.

40:49 And then you could look at it. Maybe the second side of the coin. You could ask yourself, What ecosystem are you a part of? So you're not alone. When you do something and you're part of a community, it matters. Being part of a community is an important thing in Klal Yisrael. Don't see yourself as an individual. See, this is what's happening in the world today. Because everybody is just an individual, and we're not part of a larger community. We could say and do whatever we want. And if you want the proof for this, the proof is YouTube comments. YouTube comments are devastating. If you ever take the opportunity, it's not just YouTube comments. But it's all these like somebody writes an article online, and because now you could say whatever you want anonymously, so people will just write the most horrific things, and it's like nobody ever signs their name to these things for real because they're embarrassed, so they just write some pseudonym that they're, some pen name behind it, so they don't have to be called out for it. But imagine if you actually got called out for it, you would never do that if you were part of a community. So if somebody did something in shul that you didn't like, you would never just stand up and call them out and rip them in front of everybody because you wouldn't know that would be inappropriate.

42:01 So you might go over to them afterwards and hopefully in the best way possible. You might say to them, Hey, I didn't really appreciate that you did that. But the reason you would do that is because you're part of a community. And today, when people aren't part of a community and everyone is just fractioned doing their own thing and they're not looking at it from a larger lens, what's going to happen? They're going to create divisiveness in the community. So there's a commandment to the bat din and there's a commandment to the courts. Don't create divisiveness in your community. Make sure that you pask in one way so that everyone can operate in the same fashion. If you're davening in a shul, even if it's to yourself, daven the nusach that everyone else is davening because you're part of a community. Why are you part of a community? Am I not just an individual? Of course you are. Nobody's trying to take away your particularity, but your particularity exists as part of something larger than yourself. And so you're not just one instrument, but you're part of a symphony. And if you don't understand that you're part of a symphony, you're going to lose out on something amazing and incredible. And that's why the Torah says every single person has a unique face; no two people are alike.

43:04 Why is it like that? Because we're each contributing something to the larger whole. But today, it's not like that. Today, so many people are just doing their own thing. I think there's a real danger in the years in Israel experience. There's a real danger, and I want to highlight it for you with the last couple minutes that we have. Because what we have are two lives. There's the person that you are back home, and then there's the person that you are when you're here in Yerushalayim Yerakodesh. When you're here in Yerushalayim Yerakodesh in Benot Torah Institute Growth-oriented, challenging yourself, asking your mechanchot and your rebbeim, how do I work on myself? Hearing shiurim that make you think, that challenge you to think about the world, to frame the world in a larger way. And so that really forces you to think about okay, well, what do I want to do with my life? But then you go back, and it's like all of a sudden, that was like okay, that was like a cute, I was eighteen, nineteen years old, being brainwashed by that rabbi. But now it's real life. And in real life, okay, there was seminary life.

44:17 And now there's real life. But the problem is when you start to frame things in the particularity. You don't take it with you because you're not seeing it from the larger goal. Then the question is, well, what did we send you home with? People say, yeah, if I was going to live in Yerushalayim, I'd be able to do it. If I was going to have Mrs. Fold's life, so then Ein Chananim, I'd be able to do it. But I don't know if I'm capable of doing that back home. The answer is, of course you are. Nobody's saying it's going to be easy. Nobody's telling you that there aren't going to be challenges. But if you have inside of you this feeling of like. What I learned this year had real depth to it. It had real truth to it. If that's true, then it should be true everywhere. So don't just look at the particularity. Look at the larger. What's the larger mission that you're being taught here? Because if it doesn't include going back home and bringing it with you, then what was the value of it? It's lotus go to them. Don't cut it off. Don't be one person here and another person there. Don't be divisive in that way. That's idolatrous. I was one way when I was in seminary. But then I went back. So I went back to real life.

45:19 And in real life, you can't behave that way in real life. Of course you can. Because in real life, everything that we're teaching you here in seminary is to bring back with you the notion of how you frame your life is equally applicable in Eretz Yisrael and in America. And nobody's saying that in America you won't have unique challenges. Of course you will. And nobody's saying that you won't mess up because of course you will. But when you mess up, do you have the capacity to take the lessons that you learned with you and to bring it home and say, okay, this was the moment? You girls know as well as I do. You go on a diet.

45:51 And that diet you're going strong until the day you break it. And if you're looking at it from just that particular day that you broke it. You know how you break it, half a slice at a time. I've never seen anybody eat any girl. I've never seen them eat a piece of cake at a time. We have girls sometimes come over for Shabbos. Offer them a piece of cake. Can I have half of that? Five minutes later, can I have the other half of that. You seem to be under the impression that if you eat half a piece at a time, you won't gain weight. That's not true. I've learned this. So what happens after you break that diet for the first time?

46:23 You lost forty pounds. Now you broke the diet. What's the feeling you have? I feel so bloated. And then you just start to go down that like, nine by thirteen is a serving size. And pizza is meant to be eaten by the pie. I'll have a pie of pizza, two large fries, and a large diet coke because you know, I'll need to wash it down with something that's not going to put on weight. Of course, you're going to put on weight that way. Why? Because you're looking at the particularity. Look at the larger whole. You just lost forty-five pounds. You had a bad week. You had a bad day. You had a bad month. Don't give it all up. But that's only insofar as you have the capacity to frame it in a larger way. Lotus go to do means don't see your life as compartmentalized. Nietzsche used to say, anyone who knows their why can get through any how. You can survive the most incredible things if you know the larger why that you're in. And that's what we've been trying to teach you. Every single shir that you've had this year, every halacha shir, every ashkafishir, every Tanach shir, anything you've learned this year has been geared towards one thing. This is the entirety of your life.

47:30 Being a Jewish mother is not just one particularity, it's part of a larger whole. Every single thing you've learned has been trying to frame. Take the frame back. Zoom out. Have any of you girls ever heard of the book Zoom? Zoom is an incredible book, and there's a couple of them. It'll start off with a picture of a person sitting on a beach under an umbrella, drinking from one of those little cocktail glasses with a little umbrella. And then the next page it zooms out, and you realize that's just a postcard being held by someone. Then it zooms out a little bit further, and you see that the person that's holding that postcard is really on a billboard. It's an advertisement for a travel agency.

48:13 And they're trying to get you to go somewhere. And then you zoom out a little bit further, and it shows you the entire street. And there are multiple billboards on the street. And then it zooms out a little bit further, and every time you zoom out a little bit further, until you can't see the particular anymore. But until you zoom out further and further, and then once you have that picture again, not to lose sight of the particularity. Every one of us is unique, and that's meant to be cherished. There's dignity and difference. We're not trying to lose ourselves to the masses. But understand, you're part of something larger. Everything we learn in our life, it's part of something larger. So when Mrs. Fold asks me, speak about how the girls can take it with them. Girls, if you understood the mission of what every single heir has been trying to teach you this year, then you understand one very simple thing. These are not just cutesy lessons. These are things that are going to fit into the fabric of your life if you're just smart enough to realize that they weren't being taught here as opposed to there. But they're being taught to you, and wherever you go, they're equally applicable. And you see it from the perspective of the absolute. I think that's probably the most important thing that somebody could take with them. Because then no matter what happens, they're prepared for it. Because everything that they've been doing up until now has just been lying in wait. It was all here to get me towards this moment.