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Parshas Truma. I ask you one question about the wedding. After, Parshas Truma. The construction of the Mishkan. The creation of the world is only like thirty something pesukim. But the Mishkan takes up several parshios in the Torah. Clearly, the implication. Is that it is less fascinating that God could create a world But much more fascinating is that man can create a home for God in this world. And so the Torah spends significant amounts of time telling us about every detail in the Mishkan. In order that we should be able to gain insight into what it looks like to build a dwelling place for God in this world. And so I'd like tonight to zero in on one aspect of the Mishkan, which is the Atze Shitin Or the akatsia wood. The atze shitin The Atze Shitin were both a part of the Mishkan itself. And tonight we'll focus on the Aaron. The Aaron was made from these Atze Shitin.
The first thing that we need to discuss is where Klal Yisrael got these Atzei shitem from. Rashi says What does Rashi say? Yaakov Avinu, very good. Girls are well versed in Chumash and Rashi. Rashi tells us in the name of Rabbi Tanhuma that Yaakov Avinu saw that ultimately we were destined to build a Mishkan in the desert. So he brought with him these cedar trees, these atzei shitem. To Mitzrayim, and he planted them in Mitzrayim. And he instructed Klal Yisrael, his children. That when the time comes for you to leave Mitzrayim, you are to cut down these atzei shitim and take them with you. There's an obvious question here. The first question is Atzei shitim are natural to Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim and Eretz Yisrael are right next to each other. If there are cedar trees in Eretz Yisrael And there are cedar trees in Mitzrayim too.
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If Yaakov Avinu meant that we should take with us atzei shittim into the Midbar in order to build a mishkan Then Yaakov Avinu should have simply said When you leave Mitzrayim, make sure to take with you the atzei shittim. But that's not what Yaakov Avinu does. Yaakov Avinu plants. He uproots. He takes atzei shittim from Eretz Yisrael to Mitzrayim. And it's not just any random cedar trees that Klal Yisrael takes with them into the desert. It's specifically the atzei shittim that Yaakov Avinu brought from Eretz Yisrael. So the question is I understand why Yaakov Avinu told them to take atzei shittim. But why did Yaakov Avinu need to bring with him atzei shittim from Eretz Yisrael to Mitzrayim And then ultimately those atzei shittim come from Mitzrayim into the desert? That's our first question. Secondly We know from the Rishonim that in the Midbar itself Where Klal Yisrael journeyed for all of those years, there were atzei shittim there too.
If that's the case, then what Yaakov Avinu said really doesn't make any sense Because if the whole point of the Atzei Shitim was that Klal Yisrael needed them to build the Mishkan to make the Aron So then he should have just told them in the future, one day you're going to build the Mishkan, there'll be Atzei Shitim there. Use the Atzei Shitim to build the Mishkan. They were mamish in the Midbar So why did they need to take them from Eretz Yisrael? Our first question was, why does Yaakov Avinu need to take them from Eretz Yisrael and bring them to Mitzrayim if they could just take them from Mitzrayim and bring them into the Midbar? Our second question is, according to some Rishonim, the Atzei Shitim were already in the Midbar. So why do we have to do any of this? Let Klal Yisrael just use the Atzei Shitim that are already there. Must be that there's some special significance to the fact that Yaakov Avinu took these Atzei Shitim with him.
Brought them to Mitzrayim and then transplanted them into the Midbar. That's our first two questions for tonight. Another question: the Aaron we said was made of atzei shittim. The Torah commands that the Aaron be made of atzei shittim and to be covered both within and without with gold. So if you heard that, if you read that pasuk, what would you assume? You would assume that the Aaron is made of this cedar wood. These atzei shittim. And that it should be covered with gold, both within and without. That's what we know as gold-plated Gold-plated. You take a piece of wood, you put gold on the inside, you put gold on the outside. That's called gold-plated. Rashi says that's not what it was. There were three boxes. Three boxes, not just one piece of wood, gold-plated, but three separate boxes. The larger box, which was the visible box, was made of gold.
Pure gold. Inside it, they had another box, and that box was made of the atzei shitim. And then inside there was a third box, and that box too was made of pure gold. So the question is Why not just do the simple thing? Why not just take the atzei shitim and put gold plates on the inside and on the outside? Why was it critical that when they were building the aron, there be a separate compartment? Called atze shittim, separate from the inside that was made of pure gold and the outside that was made of pure gold. That's our third question. And our last question for the night. I'll review it really quickly. Our last question for the night is the word atze shittim. It means literally cedar trees. But atze shittim could also mean trees of foolishness, like from a lesson of shotim You make a mistake, you're a shot, you're a fool.
So what's the relationship between atze shitim and this notion that these are trees of foolishness? And especially in light of the fact that what do we use these trees for? We use these trees to make the aron houses, the luchos. If anything, this is the exact opposite of foolishness. So why would we have atze shitim, which could be understood as trees of foolishness, trees of folly? Where we're putting the luchos in. I want to talk to you tonight about three aspects of a person. I don't think anything I'm about to tell you is a chiddush, but I think this is a very important and fundamental idea. There are three parts of ourselves. Everyone knows this. Most of us don't live this, but everyone knows this. The first part of you, what we'll call the golden middle Representa a neshama. Most people in this room, including myself Make the following mistake: we mistake our actions Our lowest moments, with who we are.
That is not a Torah hashkafah. Eloki neshama shan asat be tauri The soul that you gave me is pure. God, the soul that you gave me is pure. It is not possible to sully a godly soul. Afal pisha chata yisroel Even if a person doesn't aver They are still considered a Jew. There is nothing you can do to sully the Jewish soul. It doesn't matter how many averas you've done. It doesn't matter how many times you've done the averas. It doesn't matter if it's the worst avera in the world. You are essentially good. Why is that important to know? If we walk through life defining ourselves by our actions And a lot of people, even right now, are thinking in their head. For those that are listening, a lot of people right now are thinking in their head. Yeah, nice Schmuzerberg way to be chassidish, but really I know who I am. That's the lie you tell yourself. That's the lie you tell yourself is yeah, but I know who I really am. No, you don't. Just because you behave in a particular way doesn't mean that's who you are really on the inside. Your essential level is pure gold. It cannot be sullied. It can be tarnished on the outside. It can be covered.
But what it is fundamentally is golden. Can't do anything about that. That's what it is. If we knew that It would change the way we see everything. For example If you know that you are godly and that nobody could take away that godliness from you How would you show up to anything in the world? How would you show up to a relationship? Let's take a relationship because that's the easiest example. You show up on a date. Now you have an impoverished mentality. Everyone's like, "Shoot, I'm not enough." Well, if I'm not enough Then I'm going to have to overcompensate for the fact that I'm not enough, because I'd like for you to like me. So I have to be something that I'm not. I have to pretend to be someone that I'm not in order to gain somebody else's approval. How crazy is that? That's nuts Because it's not who you are. You are your unique self. You're a godly soul. You are an individual by your very nature. If you knew that, you know how you'd show up to a date. You'd be like, "Here I am."
This is me, in all my weirdness. Now you got to dole out your weirdness a little bit at a time. Because you don't want to scare people off. But every one of us is weird. There's a boy in yeshiva who From a place of low self-esteem, it was a cool guy. From a place of low self-esteem He was looking down on other guys in yeshiva. He said, so many weirdos here. And finally, one rebbe called him out on it And he's like Stop looking at people that way. The only reason you're looking at people that way is because of your own low confidence. And this rebbe and this boy developed a very beautiful relationship, and the boy started to be a kabbalist. He's like, you're right. The reason I'm sitting in judgment of others is I have this thing that I have to be cool, and it all comes from my low self-esteem.
And this boy completely changed at a total 180. Not only did he start befriending these kids, not only did he start like Like really appreciating them for their uniqueness, he became one of the weirdest guys in yeshiva. And all of a sudden, it was like Oh my God, look who became a weirdo. And his rebbeim, who knew the real story, were celebrating it. He wasn't just acting like a weirdo; he was himself. He was finally allowing himself to be free, to not have to be seen through the prism of 'he's cool.' So one night I was in yeshiva till very late at night. And I came outside And this boy was doing certain exercises outside in a giraffe onesie, and I was so proud of him. Because he was a weirdo the whole time, but you know what it was like to be him? He had this terrible impoverished mentality that I'm not allowed to be me.
If we knew that we are a golden neshama, we could be free to say, "Here's my flaws" Here's the things I do that I'm not so proud of And know that somebody else will treat you with kindness and compassion because they're going through the same exact thing. Do you know how many of us in this room? The answer is everybody. You don't have to raise your hand. You know how many of these people in this room are doing things that they're not proud of, but will never say anything to anybody else because they believe that thing they do defines them, so they can't possibly talk about it with anybody, even though everybody in this room is probably doing more or less the same things. It's a room full of people, not you, but a room full of people Not you. You know what I'm saying? Not you. It's a room full of people pretending to be somebody they're not, in the hopes that everybody will accept them for who they are, even though every single one of us is doing the same exact thing.
That's crazy. The thing that holds the luchos is gold. That is your neshama. Can't be sullied. Can be tarnished. Afal bishachot to Yisrael. The outermost part is gold too. And this is what I'm about to say is a little hard But it's true. You're golden on the inside. You're obligated to be golden on the outside. It's an obligation. You can't just act however you want. You have, for example, you have children, right? You're in a bad mood. Just because you're in a bad mood, and again, we're human and we make mistakes, but what we aspire to is appropriate levels of behavior. You're in a bad mood. It doesn't mean you get to pour out your emotions all over your children. It doesn't mean you get to pour all of your emotions all over your husband. I tell this to the guys also. Just because you're in a bad mood doesn't mean you get to go home. You know they say nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it. You know what I'm talking about. Like somebody comes in a bad mood. Psychologically, this is what's happening. They come home in a bad mood and they can't hold their bad mood.
So they have to create a fight with somebody until the other person gets angry. Then there's a certain At least now they're angry with me. Not allowed to do that. It doesn't mean you won't make mistakes. I'm not suggesting that we have to be perfect, but we have to aspire that the inside golden person that we have inside of us has to be the way that we treat others. It has to be the way that we interact with the world. That's the aspiration. Golden inside, golden outside. The way you show up to relationships is with acceptance, tolerance, kindness and compassion, vulnerability, and empathy. The golden inside has to match the golden outside. That's the arum. Not just gold plated. These are three separate boxes. Box number one, that's your neshama. Box number two is how you interact with the world. The golden inside has to meet the golden outside. If you knew about the golden inside. It's hard.
But it's just that much easier to be able to say, "I can show up to this relationship for real." I'll give you an example. The difference between sympathy and empathy? Sympathy is I see you're in pain. And it's external from me. You're going through something, and a lot of times, if I'm showing sympathy, I'll try to make you feel better. Because I'm not okay with the way that you are. So I'll tell you, but at least At least you have your health. Or it's called giving it a silver lining. At least you have a husband. You're having marital difficulties, but at least you're married. That's sympathy. It's creating distance between two people. Empathy is vulnerable. Because empathy means that when you share something with me. I have to access that pain inside of myself to be able to relate to what you're going through, and every one of us can do that because more or less we all go through the same general levels of pain.
So if you share something with me and I have a golden neshama and I know fundamentally I have enough, I am enough. Do you know what I'm going to allow myself to do in our interaction in that golden outside when you come to me and you share your pain? I'm going to close my eyes. I'm going to access the pain inside of me, and I'm going to go. That's really hard. I'm with you. That's what it means for the golden inside to match the golden outside. If you don't have a golden inside, if you're not aware of your golden inside So then it's going to be sympathy all the way. It's going to be instead of genuine relating to your emotion, it's going to be pity. Anyone here ever been on the other end of pity? So for about the 30% of you that know what I'm talking about, because I would say that's about 30% gauging from the room If you've been on the other end of pity That's one of the worst feelings in the world.
Because that means somebody let you know you're pathetic. That's what pity feels like. Pity is so much different from empathy. Empathy is you're going through something and I'm there with you in it, and I can be there with you in it because I'm okay and you're okay. When somebody shows us empathy, it's so inspiring to us. It's like, thank you, finally. It's these ridiculous things that people say Um, When somebody has a broken engagement And it's like Somebody has they feel like they have to say something, which by the way you don't have to say anything. And word of advice, don't say anything But people go, Mazel Tov Because some rabbi somewhere thought that it was a good idea to say mazel tov because really it's a good thing that this happened, so I should say to you mazel tov. You know what it's like to be on the other end of a mazel tov when somebody breaks their engagement? It's like that's not a nice thing to say. That's a horrific thing to say. Somebody's going through an exceptional amount of pain. Do you have enough in the tank to sit there with them in that pain? Do you have enough to be quiet and just go like this?
Tell me what that's like. I'm open to hearing it. I'm open to being there with you. That could be a very draining experience. But if you have a golden inside Then you'll bring out that golden inside into that golden outside. But here's the thing: there's a dimension that I skipped, and it's really the important one for tonight. And that's the second box. The second box is the Atzitshitim. It's that wooden box. The thing about wood in Israel, we don't have a lot of it. You'll notice we do like a lot of tiles. You go to America, it's like wood everywhere. Wood is stunning. If you have really beautiful cedar wood, polished up nicely and sanded down, you sit down at a beautiful table. Not like sand, like they have that compressed wood. They call it sandwich. Where they take all the different shards and press them together. That's not beautiful wood.
When you have a real wooden table, people like to step back and go. Wow, that's a gorgeous table. You come in and there's gorgeous wooden floors. Something amazing about that. It's much nicer than carpet. Carpet feels good, but we have beautiful wooden floors. It's special, right? The feature of wood is that it can be gorgeous. Or it can be rotted. That's the difference. So when you walk into a place that's made of wood and the wood is rotted through. It has a nasty smell. It has a look that's haunting, like if you walk into an old house and it's creaking and it's mildewy smelling and it's rotted wood. It's just camp bunks, for example. I don't know where you go to camp, but like Sternberg. So I have to be careful not to say anything. I'm being recorded, but your wife went. I can't say anything. When my wife went to Sternberg, they literally had her camping outdoors.
It's an amazing program. They charge you full tuition. They go, it's pioneers. You're gonna go sleep in a tent. We should have pioneers for seminary. There's a shower. We did that. I promise you didn't. Words. Wood. Wood is the part of us that vacillates. What is that in between stage? Wood means it's not my neshama. That's golden. It's not my actions. That's meant to be golden. But you ever have this inner struggle where it's like sometimes I am totally not because I did anything bad, but like a total state of not interested in anything holy. Months or years. Those who are shaking their head, I know you're definitely with me. I'm confident. I'm confident. You know what I'm talking about. You're shaking. I'm confident. You know what I'm talking about. If you look, there are people. There are people. I understand. There are people that And I would say most of us, in general, we're good. In general, it's like that's what I want. That's who I am. It's good. That's the beautiful wood. There's something amazing about that. But there are also times inside of ourselves where we feel like Rotten wood, where it's broken and nasty, and it's just not a good place.
And we think that in Judaism, that's not something that should be part of our Judaism. It's like I should have golden inside, golden outside. That holds the luchos. That's a Torah. That sounds like a Torah. A Torah should be held. The luchos should be held in a beautiful golden box, golden on the inside, golden on the outside. But the Torah recognizes that there's a need for integration of all of our parts, not just the parts that we show to the world, and not just the essence of who we are. There's this part of us that vacillates, and sometimes it's really good and it's beautiful and it's exquisite, and sometimes it's really not. And that's called atzei shitim. Remember earlier, we spoke about atzei shitim as trees of foolishness. Chazal say, "Ein Adam chotei el mkei nichnas ba ruach shdos." A person only doesn't have vera if a wind of foolishness has overtaken them. And you know this because for example I can think of a zillion examples. I'm trying to think of the one that's most appropriate.
Here's a good one. You feel better. If you like Take care of yourself well. Like if you stay off the sugar and you go for a good run and you, of course, in a diff way, But like you like, and you just like have a nice salad, right? And like I'm not confident I know what this looks like anymore, but I remember the times. And it's like I don't eat the food that my food eats. So you have like you just feel like. Thank you. I just got that joke too. The like how these letters. You feel really good if you do that for a week or two. Right? And then there's this thing. I promise you, it's not that important that you understand the joke. If you didn't get it, it's really not a problem. You do it for a week or two and you feel great, right? You get a good night's sleep.
You stayed off your phone. And then as my wife says, it's hard to remember not to forget. It's hard to remember not to forget. You're feeling really good and then it's like But I'm in seminary and there's a pie of pizza there and that feels like a serving size so I'll eat it half a slice at a time. You know what I'm talking about? You ever even out brownies? Like when you make a line straight. This line feels uneven, so I'm just gonna even it out. Nine by thirteen is not a serving size, right? And by the way, I won't call her out. But one girl is sitting in the room, going like, "Yes, it is." And I just want the girl who said that to know. You're from my tribe. You know what feels good. You know what feels organic. You know what feels right. We all do this, right? And yet somehow we vacillate between this rotten wood and this beautiful wood.
It's not you. You can't mistake the atzichitim for the neshama. But there's this wind of foolishness that overtakes us. Nobody would ever do an aveirah if they were. Imagine a person who went like this. I know there's a God. I know that God doesn't want me to do this. Literally, God is infinite. The cosmic reason, the divine reason, I'm here in this moment. It's because God wants me to behave in this moment in a particular way. Nah, not interested. I'm just going to go back to sleep. I'm not going to daven today. Nobody would do that if they were thinking correctly. So why don't we wake up for davening? I'm not saying you. I'm saying why don't we do that? Because this wind of foolishness overtakes us. That's the atzishtem of our lives. The atzishtem of our lives. It's like this thing inside of us that's like. Why don't I just do the right thing?
Because there's a foolishness in our life that needs to be integrated. What does it look like to integrate that foolishness? So I want to share with you the most amazing pshat. I heard this pshat. I was so inspired by this pshat. This foolishness cuts both ways. Because we have this foolishness, it's true we do the wrong thing. But with this spirit of foolishness, we often do amazing things we never thought possible. Like this spirit of foolishness on a spiritual level Tells a girl who perhaps came from a particular family, perhaps came from a particular background, perhaps has a particular psychological makeup. No, I can do it if I really wanted to. I could really like completely work on myself and become like an enhanced version of myself if I wanted to. And if you were sitting in a behavioral psychologist's office, they would say, 'No, you can't. It's all predetermined. You're gonna end up like this because this is your nikkud sabachira. This is where you came from.'
But it's amazing that when people don't believe the boxes that we put them in, they can do things that are astronomically better than we ever thought possible. I'll share with you a story that I was privileged to participate in. There was a young man who came to my rebbe. And at the time I was learning with my rebbe bechavrusa, and part of my job was to put out the Maar Mikolmos in the morning and to help out some of the younger guys in Sheer to help them understand what was going on in Sheer. And there was one guy who came to Sheer, and Hashem did not bless him with tremendous intelligence. He didn't have a high IQ, I guess they would call it. And with you, it felt like to us that he had no idea what was flying in my rebbe's shear. And my rebbe wanted what was best for this talmud, and to be in such a high level shear and to be learning at such a high level when you don't have any understanding of what's going on, it doesn't make any sense. So my rebbe would say to me, Mordechai You have to convince him to go down to a lower level shear because he's going to do better there. He's going to build up his skills and work on himself.
I said, Rebbe, I don't know what to tell you. The guy has irrational levels of confidence in himself. He believes he's really going to do it, and the crazy thing is, he's working so hard. And he's in the beis medrash Yomim Ve'layla, and he's pounding and he's really doing his best. And I know you look at him on the outside and you're like, I don't think he's going to do it. But how can I go over to this guy and go Go to a lower level shir? And my rebbe would say back to me, Mordechai. If he's such a hard worker, let him go to a lower level shir. He's actually chapping so that he can feel the taste of success. I said, Rabbi, I don't have the heart to go over to him. And this conversation would happen every couple of months. And years went by. At least two years went by And he was still in the shir.
And one day, my rabbi walks out of shir and he pulls me over to the side and he goes, Mordechai, you are not going to believe it. This boy gave an amazing svara in shiur today. He like it was abstract, it was on point, the language was right, everything that my rebbe looked for. Yagati umatzasi, it was a gift from Shamayim. And after that, it was unbelievable. He started to become the strongest guy in the shiur But one of the mainstays of the shiur, a guy who was able to perform and show up and do. And it was astounding. Because he had a certain holy chutzpa to him, a certain foolishness, a certain irrational confidence to say, "I can do something that's never been done before. I can go beyond what I'm capable of." You know what's amazing, girls? Mashiach has never come. Mashiach has never come.
In the history of the world, Mashiach has never come. Olam Habah has never arrived. We're a nation of foolish people. Because we foolishly believe that we can bring Mashiach. And you know what? Because we're foolish, we will. Because we don't allow people to tell us what we can't do, we will do unbelievable things. Because we're foolish The spirit of folly that atzishtim, that same atzishtim that makes us do those silly things, that makes us feel like this, like even though it feels so good to do the right thing, maybe I'm going to do the wrong thing. That same foolishness, when you put it in the positive direction, is capable of doing tremendous things. This is the nature of the arum. You're good on the inside. Be good on the outside. And if you have that spirit of foolishness in you You should know that cuts both ways.
Don't stop being a foolish person. Be so irrationally ambitious. Be transcendent. You think like no, but it'll never work for me to do this. You've already lost the battle. The people who change the world do so because they believe they can, not because it's possible. Imagine what it was like to be in Mitzrayim. Imagine you were born in year 125 of the slavery And people didn't live to be 100 years old back then. People lived 30, 40 years maximum. So you're born into slavery. Your father was born into slavery. Your grandfather was there in the beginning of slavery. Was there hope? Was there hope to leave? It had never been done. Imagine being enslaved by the American government today. Imagine the American government today said, "We're going to enslave you." Do you think you could break out? Because we're way more sophisticated than we were in the 30s and 40s when the Nazis locked us up.
What would it be like with modern technology? Where they could literally track us. Imagine they put a thing on you, not just a yellow armband. Imagine they put a chip inside of you And it tracks you wherever you go. What would you do then? I don't know. If you can, right? But maybe nobody's ever done that before. Maybe they have drones flying all over the place. It would be very hard. If a person wants, the American government wanted to enslave us today, I would say it would be almost impossible to create a revolution, let alone for anybody to go free. If I was living in Mitzrayim back in the day I imagine I would have had total hopelessness. And the thing about breaking out of Mitzrayim is, if you want to break out of Mitzrayim, you have to believe that it's possible. But nobody's ever done it before, so how could you do it? How could you overpower the mightiest army in the world when you're a nation of slaves? What would you possibly do?
So for this, Baruch Hashem, we had Yaakov Avinu And Yaakov Avinu said. I'm going to come into Gullus as I journey down. Yosef HaTzaddik. I find out he's alive. We're heading down to Mitzrayim. What does Yaakov Avinu do? He takes with him trees. You know how hard it must have been to transport trees. He takes with him trees, atzei shitem From Eretz Yisrael And he plants them in Mitzrayim. Why? Because if you were a Jew growing up in Mitzrayim and you went out into the fields and you looked up and you saw those massive cedar trees. What did you think? Whose cedar trees are they? They're not Egyptian cedar trees. They're my cedar trees. They're the cedar trees that Yaakov Avinu said, "Atzei Shitim" Don't give up hope, because it looks like on a natural level you won't be able to leave. We are foolish people that never lose hope.
Think about the history of Klal Yisrael. Think about how amazing we are. You could never lose hope if you're a Jew. Right now, again I know it's a very hard historical context. Just stay with me for a second. Imagine you could travel back in time. Anyone here have a great-grandparent or a grandparent in the Holocaust? Okay. Imagine you could go back and talk to your great-grandparent right now. Imagine you could tell them that you're learning Torah in your shalayim erakodesh. That millions of Jews have immigrated to Eretz Israel. What would they have said? I imagine people said they never would have believed it. It's not true. They believed it. That's how we got here. They had atse shita mentalities. They said we've survived worse. We'll survive the Nazis. They came to America. They came to Eretz Israel. They came to England. They came all over the place after the Holocaust. And what they do? They said, okay, so we'll rebuild.
And they rebuilt palaces. Our beis yakovs, our yeshivas, our shuls, our communities today are palaces. How do they get the capacity to do that? Atze shitim. These are foolish people. Every time a Jew walked out of Eretz Yisrael, he said, "I know it's temporary." How do you know it's temporary? Because Yaakov Avinu brought atze shitim. One day we're going to bring those atze shitim into the midbar. Everywhere a Jew went, they took with them the atze shitim. So we left Mitzrayim. We took with us atzei shittim. Who's atzei shittim? Zadie's atzei shittim come with us wherever we go. The same irrational hope that Yaakov Vinu had—that one day you're going to be in the midbar, and one day you're going to build a mishkan, and one day you're going to build an aron—you're going to need these atzei shittim. I, but Zadie, there's atzei shittim in the midbar. Why don't we just take those atzei shittim? Those atzei shittim are not your atzei shittim.
It has to be a foolishness that's a mesora for you. It has to be something that you take with you. Your grandmother, your great grandmother, her great grandmother. That atze shitem that she had in her life. That I'm going to do something amazing, something that's never been done before. That's your atze shitem. That's what holds an arum. I want to share something with you, girls. I don't know who. But somebody in this room Guaranteed, somebody in this room in 20 years from now will be saying about her It's wild. I was with her in Toma Devora. I don't know who it's going to be, but it's going to be somebody. Sadly, some of us We're not going to utilize our atzei shi'itim. We're going to be like, I don't want to be foolish anymore. I don't want to do any more averes. So I got to get rid of my atzei shi'itim. That's not what we do with our atzei shi'itim.
Take that foolishness and we do something amazing with it. I want to share with you. I want to share with you an Atze Shitim Jew. He was my roommate in Mevaseret in 1999. His name is Dr. Jonathan Donath. Dr. Jonathan Donath, when he was in Mevaseret, roommate, regular, average, run-of-the-mill guy Became a chiropractor. That's a good job. Specializes in pain Helping people feel better. One day, Doctor Donath Married with kids Puts a dollar in the tzedakah box And he says to himself, "What's my dollar going to do?" My dollar is not going to do anything. What one dollar is going to make a difference anywhere? So he says, 'Wouldn't it be awesome?' If we could somehow get everybody in Kallah Yisrael to give a dollar a day That would be amazing. Because then our dollar wouldn't just be a dollar; it would be like here's a hundred thousand dollars every day to a different sadaqa to make a massive difference.
Most people probably would have said, "Nice thought," and they would have kept going. But Doctor Donav, my roommate, a regular run-of-the-mill guy, couldn't have called it back then. He's not a Shetim Jew; he's nuts. So he says, "I'm going to do it." Builds a website. Gets a rabbinical board Starts letting the word out, starts going everywhere, talking about this concept he has called daily giving. Dollar a day to tzedakah. Daily giving's been around now for a couple of years. Daily giving gives out over thirteen thousand dollars a day now, over thirteen thousand Jews, because one day Dr. Donath put a dollar in tzedakah. And he says, "I'd say shietim, let me start this crazy organization, let me see if I could change the face of Klal Yisrael." So far, he's gotten over 13,000 people to join. That's pretty incredible. They've given out over eight million dollars in stocker because he's a Nazi Shittim Jew. Because he's nuts.
Most people would have told him, "what are you doing? You're gonna get a couple of people together. You're a chiropractor. You have a job." But he says, "No" We don't know what could happen if we do it. If you think about all the great Chesed organizations that have started. Somebody started High Lifeline. You know what that means? Somebody said, "What if I could make people who have cancer? What if I could just make their life so much easier? Sari Shneer says, "What if I just start Bais Yaakov?" Rav Chaim Brisker just says, "What if I revolutionize the entire system of learning?" There's a person in this room right now that's the next daily giving. That's the next High Lifeline. That's the next Camp Ask. There's a person in this room that's an Atzei Shitim Jew. It's your mesorah. It's your heritage. My only question for you is Which one of you is so foolish to believe that you can actually change the world?
People will say you have to be normal, you have to be regular, you have to live within the boundaries of society. That's for most of us. But remember Hope is everything. You can leave your Mitzrayim if you believe you can leave your Mitzrayim. This world doesn't have to be the way it is. And it's always been. The kids that changed the world. It's never been the adults. It's always been eighteen and nineteen and twenty-one year old kids that said, "I'm going to change it. I'm going to make a difference." It's never been the adults that have been stale and built into the system. And this is how it always was. So this is how we're going to do it. It's been irrational kids that said, "Who said we can't change the world?" This is your responsibility. This is your job. The Torah demands golden inside, golden outside. But foolish in the middle. We have the foolishness of sometimes we do a terrible avera. Let's have that foolishness to go change the world.
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