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The pasuk says Right after Hakadosh Baruch Hu destroys sdom amora And right after Lot's wife turns around and is turned into a pillar of salt It says that Avram got up early in the morning to the place. That he stood before Hashem. It's two gemaras. Two gemaras on this pasuk. The first gemara says that the word amad that Hashem, that Moshe, that Abraham Avinu stood before Hashem. Amad is a lashon of amida Like Shmona Esrei. And from here, the gemara learns out that Abraham Avinu was the first person to daven Shemona Esrei. That's one drasha in the Gemara. There's another drasha in the Gemara. May Hashem Avraham B'bokeh El Hamakom. And from here, the Gemara learns out that a person should have a makom kavua in davening. The Rishonim discuss what a makom kavua means. What does a makom kavua mean?
According to some rishonim, makom kavua means that a person needs to daven in the same seat in the same shul. Maybe within daladamos of that seat. This can create a lot of problems. As I'm sure you may know, I showed up to shul and someone was sitting in my makom, so I had to kick them out of my makom. I remember when I first moved to Eretz Yisrael. So I was davening in a particular shul. They were very frum. So whenever I came to shul, they would say to me, "You're sitting in my seat." So every single Shabbos for an entire year, I came to shul, and somebody came over to me and said, 'You're sitting in my seat. Can you sit somewhere else?' After a year, somebody came over to me and said, 'You know, you've been here for a year. Maybe you should pay membership.' That was my last Shabbos in the shul.
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They only knew how to tell me two things: one, I didn't belong, and two, they wanted my money. You want my money? The first thing you have to tell me is that I belong. They kept telling me I'm sitting in somebody else's seat. There's clearly no seat for me. So I made my own shul. But that's unfortunately a true story. Some say it doesn't mean that you need to daven in a specific place. Some say it means you need to daven in a shul. A space that's designed for davening Which means that maybe even if you slept in late, better to daven in a shul than to daven at home, because that's a place that's designed for davening. Perhaps it means, and this is a halacha that's very relevant to women That if you are davening at home, which many women do, you should have an established place where you daven in your house.
That it shouldn't be haphazard. Today I daven in the dining room. Tomorrow I daven in the living room. But there should be a set place that you daven. And the Gemara makes such a serious issue about having a makom kavua. The Gemara says, first of all, it'll give you a special siyata d'shemaya with your davening. The Gemara says you can tell that a person who has a makom kavua is an anav. Is a humble person. You can tell that they're a chassid. That they go lefnim mishures adin, they follow the letter of the law and beyond. The Gemara says that somebody who has a makom kavua is a talmid of Avraham Avinu. These are very, very big things to say And at first glance, it seems extraordinarily strange. You mean to tell me that if I daven twenty feet in a different direction in shul That I'm not a student of Avraham Avinu That I'm arrogant, that my tefillos won't be accepted That I'm not a chassid? Because I daven again, let's say according to those shtates that you need to sit in the same place in shul, I daven 20 feet to the left, and all of a sudden I'm arrogant. I'm not a humble person.
It doesn't seem to make much sense. That's question number one. Why do Chazal extol the virtues of the person that daven's namalchum kavu? Second question. It's fascinating. Whenever we learn. Two halachos from the same pasuk means that on some level, those halachos are deeply connected to one another. So here we have a situation where Shemona Esrei is learned out from this pasuk that Avram Avinu davened the first Shemona Esrei, but not only does Avram Avinu daven the first Shemona Esrei, but it happens by makom. It happens in a makom kavua, which means that the halacha of Shemona Esrei. And the halacha of makom kavua are somehow deeply tied together. What is the connection between tefillah and makom kavua, which we really see in the Gemara—that your tefillahs are neskabel yosur, that you have a sense of siyata d'shemaya, if a person is saying shemon esrei in a makom kavua?
I want to share with you something I think is pretty sophisticated and it's pretty real. Sometimes And Baruch Hashem, 99% of the time I don't feel this way. But sometimes, when I'm speaking here in Toma Devora Or to young women like yourself Sometimes I feel like you don't know what I'm talking about And it's not your fault Because at 18 or 19 years old I also would not have appreciated what I'm about to say. But the adults in the room, people that have lived a little bit more life than you—not because we're wiser, just because we're older—will know absolutely that what I'm saying is true. Here's the one line, very simple line: Life is exceptionally chaotic. Life makes no sense. You have no idea what's coming and going. You cannot know. It's one of the harshest realities of life: not knowing what will happen next, except to know that whatever comes next, you will not be in control of.
For example I'm sure you all remember where you were when Corona hit. I know where I was when Corona hit. If you remember. The first reported outbreak of corona in New York was in S. A. R. A school in Riverdale, New York. I was in S. A. R. the day before they announced the corona outbreak. I was there that day with your uncle. And later that day, I was in Y. U. And then it came out that it was in Y. U. too. And then I flew back to Eretz Yisrael. It was right before Purim. And the Rosh Yeshiva of Mevaseret, Rav Isaacson, he walks into my office and he goes, "I think we have a problem. I think Corona is a problem." And I remember saying to him, with typical arrogance, It's not coming to Israel. It's going to be like SARS. It's going to be like something that's in Hong Kong. It's not going to be real.
It's not going to be. This is not something that's going to disrupt our lives. And he said to me, 'He goes, no. You're wrong. This thing is coming.' And within a day It was like. People are shutting down the world. And it was Purim. Purim in Mevaseret that year was the most depressing Purim we ever had. Purim is supposed to be the time where the boys let loose, where there's great Purim shpils and everybody's into it, and there's no holding back. I remember that the Purim mishuba was empty Because every guy was on their phone trying to book a flight out, we didn't know if America or Israel were going to shut the borders and people were going to be tracked. And guys were asking me, Rebbe, what do you think? And I remember telling them, get out of Dodge, get out of here as fast as you can, because I don't know what's going to be. And in times like this, the best place to be is with your family.
And if you, or any of you, heard about what was happening here in Israel amongst the seminary girls and the yeshiva guys, you had a kid here that year? I don't think so. They were chartering planes. People were making a fortune chartering planes. They were hired planes, private planes that people were saying, "we can get 100 seats on this plane." And there were these WhatsApp groups, and people were signing up right away. People were literally doing everything they could to get back home. Shortly afterwards, it was Pesach time, and my mother called me. My parents live here in Israel. My grandmother, Alay Hashalam, lived in America. And she lived in an assisted living facility. For those of you that remember what happened in the assisted living facilities all across New Jersey If one person got corona, it wiped through the entire place. In my grandmother's assisted living facility, 60% of the people got corona and passed away.
And my grandmother was walking in the hall. She was going to her doctor's appointment. She wasn't feeling well. And she walked by somebody who had corona. Within two days, she was in the hospital. Within a couple of days, she was totally healthy before this. 90 years old, totally healthy. My great aunt, her older sister, just celebrated her 100th birthday. In my family, the women, not the men, but the women, have arichas yamim v'shanim. Can you imagine living to a hundred? My grandmother could have lived, but in theory, she could have lived to be a hundred years old. Within a week, she passed away. I felt exceptionally helpless And I'll share with you. I'm trying with you girls. I'm a Both of my parents are balei tshuva. My grandmother became a balei tshuva at 70 years old. My mom's sister also became from. My grandmother had two daughters. They both became from.
I imagined many, many, many times. I imagined to myself. That I'm going to get the news that Grandma is sick. And that I'm going to be on standby and I'm going to get the phone call. Get on a plane. It's time to go say goodbye. I'm sure you could imagine what that was like. And being the rabbi in the family I knew that I was going to be the one to officiate at her funeral. I knew this. I knew that I was going to stand up. I knew that I was going to eulogize her. I knew that I was going to pay my last respects. I knew that I was the one who was going to teach people there because not everybody there knows what to do. Most of my family is not religious. I knew that I was going to be the one to say, "we do this now," and I was going to give her a kavod achru.
And I didn't. I couldn't. I couldn't be at the funeral. I couldn't leave the country. I watched my grandmother, who was a second mother to me. When I say a second mother, I'm not exaggerating. This was a second mother. This was a woman who came on all our family vacations. She called every single night. Exactly when we were having dinner. I don't know how she knew when we were having dinner. She had some ESP that she said they're eating dinner right now. I should interrupt their dinner with a phone call. I remember my father many times the phone would ring. He goes, "How does your mother know exactly we could have dinner at 5:36, 6:37? It didn't matter. My grandmother only called when we were having dinner. And she was part of our lives. She raised us, even though I lived in the five towns and she lived in New Jersey. We were always there.
She was always by us. There was a very, very deep family connection. Everything okay? We're not going to die. And I lost a second mother. And now Just think of it as an adult. You girls were in high school. Think of it. What it was like to be an adult. And I teach in Talmud Torah. And I teach in Sharfman's. I teach in Mevaseret. I teach in NCSY summer. And now I'm being told All the Mevaseret boys are going home. They're not coming back. Ninety percent of the Tomer Dvora girls have left. And even those that are here, you're not coming in to teach them. The Sharfman's girls weren't here. NCSY summer didn't come in. Girls, I want you to imagine what it's like as a father of six children, knowing that your parnasa. The way that you support your family no longer exists.
No longer exists, and all the yeshivas, everybody did this across the board. They had to, for the sake of the security of the yeshiva, they did what's called furloughing their staff. Furloughing the staff means that you say, look, I can only pay you X amount of your salary for at least the next couple of months because we're in a wait and see pattern because we didn't know if any girls were going to be able to get back into the country. We didn't know if any guys were going to be able to get back in the country. And that summer NCSY did not make it into Israel, and that represents a significant chunk of my salary. I'm the mashpia for NCSY summer. They didn't come. So I'm sitting there, and my grandmother has passed away. We're all stuck in the house. Trying not to get corona. Schools are closed. Schools are closed. My kids were on the phone taking classes all day long, trying to keep your kids entertained.
And knowing. That I have no income. I have zero income. I've spent a long time building up my career, and like that, it was gone. If you were in business and you were working anyway, like you know these Ramat Pechamas guys that work American hours, those guys were fine. But people like me, who relied on guys and girls to be able to come into the country, didn't know what was going to be. And I remember I was talking about it with my wife. And I said to her, I was trying to figure out what was bothering me. And I was working on it in a real psychological way. I was really thinking about it. I'd been doing a lot of yoga. I know I don't look like a yoga person, but I am. I'm not so flexible, but I'm decently flexible. Why are you laughing? I know exactly why you're laughing. I'm laughing with you. Just know.
I was in a really meditative place in my life. And I finally hit it. I was like. I told my wife and I remember saying to her I know what's bothering me. She said, 'Okay, what's bothering you?' I said, 'I miss the illusion of control.' I miss the illusion of control Because in our lives, what do we do? We walk around saying 'We're fine,' and I'll bring you. This is a sick thing that we do. I'm sure everybody here does this. In case you don't want to admit that you do it, I'll be the first one to admit it. I do this. I know you all do it too. When somebody dies You know what I ask and I know you do it too. What happened? What did they have, cancer, a heart attack? What was it? Why do you need to know? Why do I need to know?
Because there's a control element that comes along with it. Once we hear They died of a heart attack. I'm good then. It's like I'm not gonna have a heart attack. Heart attacks are for other people. They got cancer. I don't have cancer. I'm right? There's a control that we believe we have over the world. If only we could know exactly what's going on. The illusion of control isn't true the entire time. Life is tremendously chaotic. So what we do is we convince ourselves that we have some measure of control over anything. And the truth of the matter is, we have almost no control over anything. You get older. And you know that mostly in life Things work or don't work for no rhyme or reason at all. Isn't that true? For example, you're going to put yourself out there in life. And you might think your career is going to go in one direction. Maybe you'll be Some form of therapist—a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, an aromatherapist. What are the other therapies they have today? Aquatherapy. Whatever it is, you'll be a teacher therapist, whatever type of therapist you're going to be in your life.
You're going to go to school and you're going to get trained for that. An amazing thing is going to happen. Why? You're not going to be a therapist. You'll be a therapist. Hang on one second. I'll get right with you. You're going to push yourself out there and maybe it works, but maybe it doesn't. It won't because you didn't do a reasonable thing. It will simply because sometimes in life It doesn't go. It's not because anything bad happened. It's just like, I tried to do this. That's why people sometimes have more than one career. There's the thing they began doing. Then there's the thing they pivoted to. Then there's the thing they finally found that worked for them. And by the way, until it works for you, it might not work for you. I know a guy growing up. He was $100,000 in debt. Whatever he and his wife did, it didn't work. My parents, who are wonderful people, were good friends of the family. My parents wanted to support them, but you don't want to just hand them a check.
It was uncomfortable. What my parents did is, I remember that they would say, my mother would know, if they didn't have food for dinner that night, my mother would sometimes come to us and say, 'It's bowling and pizza night with this family.' And as a kid, I knew in my heart I didn't say it out loud because it was impolite, but in my heart I was like, 'Okay, kind of glad they don't have any money because now we get to go pizza and bowling.' And I knew what my parents were doing. He was an accountant, and he was not matsliach. He didn't have a good client base. He had one client that started a business. The business started getting bigger, and he went to this. This client came to him and said, "Look, the business is getting bigger. Do you think you could take us on and be the accountant for the business?" He said, "Sure." They were college roommates. He said, "Sure, I'll be the accountant for the business." And then the business grew and it grew. And finally, he said to him, "Look, I think calling you the accountant at this point doesn't make any sense. Do you think you could be the CFO for the business?" He said, "Sure, I could be the CFO for the business."
And on the day that they went public, this company went public, it was on the cover of the business section of the New York Times, and it said that this CFO made fifty million dollars in the IPO. I remember that we used to get the New York Times in my house, and I remember my father was reading the New York Times, and he said, "Well, no more pizza and bowl." I was like, "What?" He showed me the thing, and I was like, "Wow, I'm so happy for them." Maybe they could take us bowling now, like Woodmere Bowling Lane. It's not that expensive. You don't need fifty million dollars to go, especially if you're eating a pizza pie afterwards. Go to Dave's. Don't be cheap. The life is exceptionally chaotic. Sometimes it goes, and sometimes it doesn't. And it's hard to be rooted. It's really hard to be rooted in life. It's hard to be able to say, "I'm okay with the chaos of life."
You had a question beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. So if I heard that someone died, I wonder how they died. And it's a way that applies to us, but it's the guy, then I wouldn't feel control. You still might panic. But then you'll start to see, okay, how could I take care of them? By the way, you won't be able to. That's what you were saying about COVID and everybody who's died. COVID was the complete loss of the illusion of control. We're never in control if people get cancer. We can do things to not have a heart attack. We can eat right, we can exercise. But at the end of the day, sometimes healthy people have heart attacks too. There's a tremendous amount of chaos in life. And when somebody Chassid Shalom passes away We come to these people and we're Menachem Av. You're young. You're young, so you don't necessarily yet know what niham avelim means. I'll tell you what niham avelim is.
If something tragic happened to you And you lost someone that you loved dearly in your life, you lost one of your kroven. The gift that we, the Jewish people, will give you is that we will come and hopefully say nothing and just sit with you in your pain. And when I say hopefully say nothing. It's because if anyone here has ever been to a shiva house where people say really inappropriate things Don't do that "Don't do that," I sat. I never sat shiva. Baruch Hashem, but one of my friends lost his dad, and I sat shiva with him. I sat shiva with him. I flew back to America, and in seven days I sat in his house with him. He's one of my closest friends in the world, and I said I had to be there. So I sat in the house for seven days, and the things that some people said in that house I was sitting behind them, cringing. I'm like, please stop talking. Just stop talking.
And if you know what it's like to go through shiva All you want is for people to be there with you. They don't actually need to say anything. They come, they sit down. You acknowledge their presence, and then they say something like Tell me about your mom. Tell me about your dad. Tell me about your brother. Tell me about your sister. And you see that the people that are sitting shiva There's just a certain Like it, it just there's like a release valve. It's tiny, it's minuscule But for those moments when they're speaking, it's just like they're not that the person is alive. It's not that the tragedy has diminished in any sense. But they're just sitting with people in their community, people that love them, and they're saying, "I'm part of something." The redemption of pain is not being alone. That there's a space in the world where you are, and that other people can come and accept you for who you are.
Without in any way saying that the way you show up is not okay. And sometimes you go to hard shivah calls. Some, sometimes you go to an easy shivah call. It's never an easy shivah call, but an easy shivah call. You sit there. It's an elderly person. They had a wonderful life. They passed away after many years. It's very sad. And usually the avelim themselves will say, of course it's very sad. And she had a wonderful life, and they'll tell you about it. And you can sit there and you could do this move. You know this move when you go to shiva. My father once wanted to make a shiva promo video, where it's just a video of you going like this. They could put it in front of the aval going. What's that like? I hear you. Most of the time you can do that, but some of the time.
Some of the time, people show up and they're angry because it was tragic, because it was out of nowhere. The Gemara says that sometimes the Malchamavas comes in through the door, and sometimes it comes in through the window. Sometimes the Malchamavas comes in through the door; it knocks on the door politely, you open it up, it comes in. Malchamavas spends some time with you; it's a couple of months, maybe a couple of years until the person passes away. But sometimes the Malchamavas comes in through the window and just scoops the person up and takes that person out of your life. And when you're at these shiva calls They could be experiencing a range of emotions. Maybe you're sitting there and they don't want to talk. And the gift you can give that person in that moment is just to say Whatever you need right now, I'm just sitting here with you. That space is the key word. That space is a gift.
To show up to somebody's life and to be able to say, "This space that you've created, it's okay." Whatever you are in this space, it's okay. That's why at the end of a shiva call, what do we say? Hamakom yenachem eshem. Why do we refer to Hashem at the end of a shiva call as hamakom? Why do we say hamakom? The place. Why the place? Why is that what we say? The Medrash says that Hakadosh Baruch Hu does not exist within the world; rather, He is the place of the world. The world exists within Hashem. And what we tell someone who suffered a tremendous tragedy is that we say you should know that in this state that you're in right now, where things are so exceptionally painful in your life This space you're not disconnected. Whatever's happening right now, Hashem is with you in that space because that space is within Him.
And it doesn't in any way tell you that you're not allowed to feel upset. Or that you're not allowed to feel sad, or that you're not allowed to feel afraid, or that you're not allowed to feel angry. In a space, in a truly healthy space, you can be whoever you want to be. And you have permission to be. And that's not a simple thing Because if you think about it in your life How many times do you actually have permission to be yourself? Here in Talmud Torah, do you have permission to be yourself? Let's think about what the. That's wonderful that you shook your head yes. I'm so happy. That says a lot about what we're doing here in Torah Devarim. Let me tell you about some of the impediments to entrance. You showed up in the beginning of the year. And not on purpose, just naturally.
Every one of you was judging each other. Oh That was an interesting thing that just happened in the room. You were sitting there going. I don't know if this is my chevra. I don't know if I want to be with these girls. I'm going to try out being with these girls, but it's complicated because I came with these girls, but I'm not hanging out with them so much, and I know they're upset that I'm not hanging out with them so much. But I don't understand why they should be upset at me because part of what we're doing here is branching out. And yes, I wanted to come with them because I wanted to have these girls with me, but at the same time, I also want to branch out. You remember those conversations? And then the other side of the conversation was, I don't understand why she's leaving us. Like the whole point is that we came together, and it's one thing to branch out, but like, why you just have to leave your friends in order to branch out, right?
Now we're getting a little closer to home. And if she's going to branch out already, maybe she should just go live in that room because she spends half the time in there anyway. And there's other girls that want to live in our room, and we're also branching out. Then it's like now there's resentment that's coming up, and there's fear, and there's anxiety. Ooh, and a little bit too close to home. Thank you for that. That was a tremendous gift you gave me. I appreciate that move. How could you possibly be yourself if everyone is judging you and evaluating you for who you are? What's more likely to happen? More likely is that you're going to put on an act to be someone that you're not. To be acceptable to somebody else. That's the challenge of dating, though. I want to be accepted by you. But I think you're going to reject me for who I am.
So I'll be somebody that I'm not, in the hopes that you'll accept that person. And then I'll introduce you to the real version of who I am. That's what you say. This is what you sound like. So at what point do I tell him this? What are you really saying when you say that? Do you think it's okay by the seventh date to tell him what I did in high school? What are you really asking? You're really saying I'm not going to show him who I am in the beginning. Why would I want him to know that? So I'll be somebody until I see that he's trustworthy. Of seeing who I actually am. The problem is that so many people in life show up to life as actually different people. Not deeply in touch with ourselves, not authentic, not even striving for authenticity, because it's a terrifying thing to be rejected by the world. It's not a simple thing. Who wants to be rejected?
And people do this all the time. People do this in business. People do this in school. People do this with their children. Who knows? I might be doing it right now. It's not an obvious thing, right? And on some level, let's be honest. I am doing it right now. I'm pretending to be Rav Berg. This is not who I actually am. My daughters say this to me all the time. They're like, 'Abba, when the girls come to our house for Shabbos and they say, "So what's Rav Berg like as a father?" What do they want us to say? You're not Rav Berg at home. You're just Abba, right? There's a version of myself that I put up here in front of you to keep you entertained in a classroom. The idea is to make sure that you're not falling asleep and to make sure that if you're on your phone, I somehow get your attention. There's an act that we're putting on. It's not a bad act. It's a decent act. We might show up to a business meeting and pretend to be more confident than we actually are because we want someone to buy our product, and that's okay.
But where do we get to be comfortable? Where do we get to actually be ourselves? In a couple of months from now, you're going to go home. Payoff time, God willing. You're gonna go home, and you're gonna you're gonna go to your room. You're gonna have all your stuff, and you're gonna unpack, and everything's gonna be put away. The door is gonna be closed. And for at least a minute, nobody's gonna be in your room. And you are going to feel For the first time in months Comfortable. And you'll be like I haven't felt this for a long time. You mean there's no dorm? All there are my siblings, my parents. There's a place where you could finally be yourself. Hamako means that we're telling somebody that in this state of chaos, in this state of pain, in this state of tragedy There's a place for you, a place where you can be grounded, a place where you can be planted, a place where life's chaos may blow you in the wind, but it never uproots you from who you are.
So we tell someone Hamakam inachem eschan that this place, this shiva home Hashem, this place is where a person is comforted. Because if you think about it, what does a person need when chaos strikes? What they need is comfort. What they need is comfort. They need someone to say, it's okay to be you. That's the gift that we can get. People today will pay thousands of dollars, rightfully, and it's a beautiful thing. People will pay thousands of dollars to a therapist to create that space for them. That there's one girl once told me I'm real for one hour a week. For one hour a week in my therapist's office, who I love, who's created this amazing safe place, I can say everything that's really real for me without any embarrassment, without any shame. I could just be me. And of course, people are paying thousands of dollars for that because we're living in a world where the last thing you could be is you.
Met a guy in Mevaseret many years ago. He was a TikTok superstar. This is not an exaggeration. He had a quarter of a million followers. And we went the first week of yeshiva. We always take the boys to the beach. And so everyone's playing football on the beach, going in the waves, doing what guys do, barbecuing. This guy is sitting in front of the waves on the beach. There's another guy taking pictures of him and he's doing this. So I walked behind him. And I started doing it too. Now the guy who's taking the pictures knows that I'm behind him. But the guy who's making his TikTok poses and he's doing his whole thing. He doesn't know that I'm there. So the guy who's taking the pictures says, "You're doing awesome," and I'm behind him the entire time. Then he takes the pictures and sees that I've been photo bombing him in the background the entire time. He laughs and says to me, "Oh man, I got to do it all again." I ask, "What are you taking these pictures for? I didn't know he was a TikTok superstar." He says, "Yeah, it's for TikTok."
So I said, "I thought TikTok was only for 14-year-old girls." I meant it seriously. I didn't know that an 18-year-old guy would be on TikTok doing that. He said, 'Yeah, no, I'm kind of a thing.' I asked, 'Why? How many followers?' He was expecting to tell me he had 5,000 or 10,000 followers. He said, 'Yeah, I got a quarter of a million followers.' The next week, we go on our Galantiu And up in the Galan, we go white water rafting, and we showed up, and there was a bus full of Israeli teenage girls. When he got out, they said, "Oh my God, it's him." And I was like, you're legit. People know you. But his life This is so sad. His life, when you spoke to him, he was so broken inside. But on the outside, he was a good-looking guy, and he had this life that made everyone think it was awesome. And of course, it makes sense that he doesn't have a place where he could be himself because everywhere he goes, he's known as this guy. When does he ever get to be himself? Who will actually accept him?
If you look carefully at the pasuk The pasuk is telling us something unbelievable, and we'll finish with this. Avram Avinu davened for Stom to be saved And Hashem's answer was no. And Hashem destroyed all of Stom and all of Amora. And Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt. Look at the pasuk again. Listen very carefully, girls. Look what the pasuk says: Bei Ashken, Ba Avram, Ba Boker. And Avram Avinu got up in the morning. Remember, after tragedy struck, and the people that he was davening to—this is the case, girls. This is that case. Remember, you asked that question in your life. You go, but I was davening for it this whole time. I was davening for it this whole time, and in the end, Hashem didn't give me what I was davening for. This is that case, but to the extreme. Avram Avinu was davening for Sdom to be saved, and they were destroyed. It was a terrible tragedy.
Terrible tragedy. And he got up the next morning and now he has to confront the reality of chaos. And where does he go back to? He goes back to his place. He goes back to his muckel. He doesn't just stam go daven wherever he is. He says there's a place in the world where I belong, no matter what, even if Hashem's answer to me is no. I know how to go back to that place. There's tremendous humility in that. There's tremendous humility to be able to say, "I'm returning to this place no matter what happens." A person like that surely must be deeply connected. A person like that has to be a chassid. A chassid here doesn't mean that they have long peys. A chassid means that you're someone who's deeply connected to the Ebeishu. You're deeply connected to Hashem. This is what it means to be a Talmud of Avraham Avinu.
To be a student of Avraham Avinu means there's a place in the world where no matter what happens. I feel Hashem's loving embrace even in the most difficult of times. Surely, a person like that will get extra siyata d'shemayim in their davening. A couple years ago There was a tragedy in Meron. You girls weren't here for that. You wake up in the morning. And I opened up my phone. Sometimes you wake up to 40 WhatsApps, 50 WhatsApps. If you wake up to 200 WhatsApps, something very bad has happened. And I woke up to hundreds of WhatsApps. And you wake up and you learn what happened in Meiroun the night before. I had talmidim there. I had talmidim that were trampled. I had talmidim that had to be pulled out. Their shoes were left behind. They were literally pulled out and their shoes were in the pile.
Moments away from death. And now we're figuring out as a yeshiva Baruch Hashem, we've gotten everyone back together. We got to get them back to yeshiva for Shabbos. Remember, it was an out Shabbos; they weren't supposed to be there. The kitchen staff came in and they cooked an entire Shabbos. We sent out a message: anybody who wants to go away for Shabbos is welcome to go away for Shabbos. Anyone who wants to be in for Shabbos is welcome to be in. Most of the guys chose to stay in. And unfortunately Danny Morris, Olvashalom. Five of his best friends were in Mevaserim. And I told my wife I've got to go to yeshiva for Shabbos. And my wife stayed home with the kids, and I went to yeshiva for Shabbos. And somebody posted on social media A couple hours before Shabbos I wish I was in Eretz Yisrael right now Because if I was in yeshiva There would be a rebbe who would get up And he would just make sense of everything. And everything would be okay.
And I read that And my heart dropped because I had no idea what to say. What do you say to boys who just lost their best friend? A kid that they had gone to nursery school, kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, every single summer they spent together? This was the first year that they weren't together. What do you say to the boy who was with his best friend 10 minutes earlier, 10 minutes before he passed away? What am I gonna say? What do you say? I knew I had nothing So I got up and told the boys I have nothing to say. Friday night, I told them I have nothing to say. There's no words that I could possibly say right now that would be meaningful to you. There's nothing I could say to you to make you feel any better. All I can tell you is this: this Shabbos Do whatever you want. This Shabbos, there's no rules.
We're gonna have davening. If you feel like you can come to davening, come to davening. If you don't feel like you can come to davening, don't come to davening. We're going to have a tish. I don't know what the tish is going to be. I don't know if it's going to be laughing or crying or singing or nothing. If you don't want to come to the tish, don't come to the tish. If you want to talk, we can talk. Whatever you want. All I can tell you is this Shabbos, however you show up is okay. And we were up. The rebbeim that were there for Shabbos were up till three, four o'clock in the morning, schmoozing with those guys that wanted to speak. And some guys didn't, and that was okay too. And some guys came to davening. And one guy got shlishi. I got Levy. He got shlishi, and he had to bench Golmal because he was the kid that was pulled out. And he's benching Golmal, and I'm holding onto his hand because his hand is shaking. I'm holding onto his hand as he's saying the words of benching Golmal. I'm holding onto his hand, and I whispered in his ear, "If you don't want to stay in davening after this, it's okay. You could just go back to your room. You could be whoever you want to be."
Of course, we had the Lava'ya the next day, and over time, like all tragedies in Klal Yisrael, we inculcated it. We did our best to learn from it, to grow from it. But the tragedy remains. A couple of months ago, that boy He called me up and he said, "You should know that was one of the most important Shabbatot of my life." Why? Not because there was any great shmuhs, not because there was any great conversation, but because in the healing, he was told 'Here is a place you could be yourself.' Here you could be grounded. Here you could be connected, even amidst the chaos of life. And girls I just want to remind you that the greatest gift that you can give to yourself, the greatest gift that you can give to each other, is giving people a space. A space to be connected, a space to be themselves.
The way that we do that as Yidden is we daven. We daven no matter what happens. We daven and we say Hashem, we are here. Hineini. We showed up. We're in the same spot. Whether that's in our house or in a particular shul or in our place in a particular shul, there's a place that we belong to. We should never forget that no matter where we go in the world There's a place inside of ourselves that we always belong to and that can never be taken away from us.
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