Parshas Vayishlach - Raising Children In Pain

2:52 That's the last we hear. There's no "I love you." There's no 'it'll be okay. I'll take care of your child. In the last moments, she wants Benoni, and he says, "I'm calling him Binyamin." Obviously, there has to be something more to the story. Now remember to make this a little bit more dramatic. This is Rachel imenu. Yaakov Avinu had four wives. The Torah makes it clear that Yaakov loved Rachel more than everybody else. Yosef is his favored son because he's the son of Rachel. Binyamin He's reticent to let go to Mitzrayim because he's already lost Yosef, and Binyamin ends up being his last ties to Rachel imenu. So this is not. And I don't mean to say it like this. I want to be clear. This is not Bilah Zilpo or Leah. Who of course Yaakov had great love for them too. But this is Rachel.

4:03 This is the special one. This is the one that the Torah puts the dageish, the emphasis that here is the beloved. So for Yaakovinu to not follow her last wish That she says this kid's name is Benoni. And Yaakov comes and he says "No He's Binyamin. That's what the father calls him. Why? Why? In her last moments, let her have that piece that she named the child. Why does he do that? And if we look carefully in the Torah, you'll notice a strange thing. It says, 'Vatikra Shemo Benoni. Rachel says his name is Benoni. Ve'aviv Karlo Binyamin. But his father called him Binyamin. What should the Torah have said? What would we have expected the Torah to say? Yaakov. Why doesn't it say the Yaakov Karolov Binyamin? It says the Aviv Karolov Binyamin. And his father, as if we don't know who the father is, why does it come along and say, and his father called him Binyamin?

5:15 Those are our two questions for tonight. Many years ago Many, many years ago, twenty plus years ago I met someone that had suffered a great tragedy in their lives. And in talking to this person about this tremendous tragedy, it doesn't matter what the tragedy was But it was one of the big ones. It was one of the ones that you hear it and you go, "Oof" Must have been impossible. So in this conversation, I was a teenager. So this person had shared with me that they had gone through this tremendous tragedy. And without pity I just said that sounds like it was really hard. And the person very quickly said back to me It was, but it made me the person who I am today. And even at a young age, I knew that was not true. Because to be able to say. It made me the person who I am today.

6:28 You have to do a lifetime's worth of work. It's not a simple thing. And I don't know you girls But I imagine that there are some people here that have had tragedy in their life. Whatever it was And if you are a person who's had tragedy in your life, then you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's very easy to say. It made me the person who I am today, and in fact, for some people, it's a coping mechanism. It's a way of saying, "this thing was impossibly hard, but it made me the person who I am today. I don't really need to deal with it because I can already get to say that." But that's not true. In order to be able to earn the title It made me the person who I am today. You need to do two things. You need first to grieve.

7:25 And then you need to be strong. If you skip the grieving and go straight to the strength Then it is not the you don't deserve the title. It made me the person who I am today. The first step is saying Ouch, that hurt. Now, why don't we do that? Why isn't that a simple thing? I'll share with you something that I've learned over the last forty years of my life. And it's probably the truest thing that I've learned. I've learned a lot of things, but this is probably the truest one. The single hardest thing to do in the world is to feel your feelings. Now that sounds, at first, when you hear it, that sounds strange. What do you mean? It's not hard to feel my feelings. I feel my feelings. I felt them, and now it's over. How many of us say, yeah, I was really, it was really hard for me.

8:24 It's not that simple, and here's why. When we're growing up From the ages of zero to six Feeling your feelings is the most natural thing in the world. Feeling your feelings is the most natural thing in the world. What does that mean? Take a three-year-old. I have a three and a half-year-old son. For my son to express his feelings It's so easy. I'm so jealous of him. So this morning I got up with him. And I said to him, "Machal" It's a very exciting day. We're gonna get you dressed. I'm gonna pack your teak. What do you want for lunch today?" So Machal said to me, "I want a chocolate sandwich. With the crust taken off, with sprinkles, cut in half. It's a mechal, no problem. You see his face? What does his face look like? Lights up. I'm getting my sandwich. And then I said to my son, after I made the sandwich and I cut it in half and I put it in his bag, I said, "What do you want for snack?"

9:40 And he goes, "Bamba." I said, "No problem." We have bamba by the pound. In my house, and bamba is very light, so you understand when I say a pound of bamba. That's dozens of bags of bamba. No problem. I pour him a bag and we put it in his teak. What else do you want? So he says, "I want biskviten" Which are little chocolate crackers. I said, 'Mikal, how many do you want?' He goes, 'Six, because I'm six years old.' I said, 'You're three' But you can have six because I like you. And you see his face. What's his face doing? Radiating. He's radiating. He's exuding happiness. And then a little later, I see his face. He gets very serious. He goes, "I don't want to go to Saharon." I don't want to go to Saharon today. He's very sad. He's not embarrassed at all about his feelings.

10:30 I said, "I really hear that." You're gonna have a great time in Saharon, but I really don't want to go to Saharon. I said, 'I really understand you. You don't want to go to Saharon. I don't want to go to Saharon.' But Mike, are you gonna pick me up early? I said, 'I'm not gonna pick you up at all. I'm going to work, but.' Zaharon is afternoon. They have like extended gom. Like gom goes till one, but you can extend it till three, and we choose the extended option for him because my wife works, and those hours are prime working hours. And because my daughters are older, they all have jobs now working outside of the house. They're all babysitting for people, so we can keep Michal and Zaharon. And he can come home at three. But he doesn't like Zaharon. And that's a hard thing for a three-year-old, and that's understandable. You can see it on his face. It's easy to see. He's not embarrassed of his feelings. Then I think to myself Imagine I was watching. I know this may not be the most relevant example for you.

11:22 But imagine you're watching a high school basketball game. And you have this really cool high school basketball player. I don't know what the equivalent would be for girls in seminary, so I'll just do the guy version of this. And this guy he's playing varsity basketball for his high school, and he's Big man on campus, cool guy in school, and he dribbles the ball up the court, and then he makes a move. He fakes left, and he goes right, and he pulls up for a jumper, and he knocks it down, nothing but the bottom of the net. You know what his face looks like in that moment? Like it was nothing, no big deal. No big deal. He's the coolest guy in the world, right? He's like, it's fine, it's natural for me. I always hit every jump shot that I take. You know what he's feeling inside of himself in that moment? It's awesome. Have all these people lined up? Friends, family, fellow students. Everybody came to see the game, but I'm acting nonchalantly as if nothing happened, even though of course something big just happened. Why?

12:19 Because we train ourselves. We become accustomed to not feeling our feelings, or at least to not show people our feelings. Why is that? Why do we do that? Why do we become embarrassed to tell people who we are? A fascinating thing happens to us at around the age of seven years old. You ready for it? You become what's called an adolescent. From the ages of seven to eighteen years old, you're an adolescent. And here's the thing about an adolescent: an adolescent has one job only, and that job is to keep you alive. That's the adolescent's job, and that's a good job. Because the only reason you're sitting here today in Tzomar Devora is because from the ages of seven to eighteen years old, your body had one job: stay alive, don't die. But the thing is about the adolescent It has an exceptional fear. And the fear is negative emotions.

13:16 Because an adolescent is an adolescent It's terrifying to feel negative emotions. It equates, in its mind, negative emotions with death. So we have coping mechanisms, things that we do to avoid feeling our feelings. I'll give you a classic And it's one that seminary girls need to be very careful of Because it creeps up on you And it's one that I deeply relate to As is clearly evidenced. It's possible to eat your feelings. Don't laugh at me. That's not nice. I'm a human being standing up here being vulnerable. Don't laugh. Now you don't know what to do. You know it's an amazing thing. Sometimes you come home. You ever do this? The answer is yes. So you don't have to raise your hand. Sometimes you come home. And you walk into the house, and the first thing you do is go to the pantry. And you open up the pantry, and this is what you're doing.

14:15 You're browsing. You're not actually looking for food. There's nothing in there that you have already identified that you want. But you just want to see. I just want to browse. Just want to see what we have, and then after you're done going through the pantry and pulling out the drawers, and you see, okay, we have this and we have that. It's good to know we have flour and sugar and all those things. Good to know that there's Twizzlers if I ever want them from ten years ago. Rock hard, but they're there in the back of the drawer. And you walk over to the freezer. And you open it up, and again, you're perusing. You're just going through. It's nice to see we have some raw meat. There's a ribs and a rib roast, right? And then you'll notice in the back corner of the freezer, there is Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey, right? Calm down, And you start doing this. You go, I shouldn't.

15:05 I shouldn't. I just ate yesterday's Chunky Monkey. I don't know how today's got there so fast. Mom knows how to replace it really fast. And you pull it out. You say, I'm just gonna take a little bit, right? It's gonna take a little bit, just a cupful, right? And that cup is a heaping cupful, right? And you're just like packing every square inch of that cup. In the history of the scientific world, they've never been able to put that much in such a little container. And then you sit and eat it slowly because you want to make it last—you're not going to have another one. And then you have three more. You know what you're doing that you're not even paying attention to. And when I say you, I mean me. We're eating our feelings. You're not even hungry. You've convinced yourself that you're hungry. You're not hungry. Trust me, you're not hungry.

15:57 And you sit there, and it feels good. It tastes good, right? But what it really is the inability to feel that right now I'm sad Or right now I just had a hard day Or right now I'm feeling lonely Or I'm feeling overwhelmed. And so a really good mechanism is to numb that pain. It's a thing that we do. We numb that pain through food. Now that's an easy one to identify. But what if it was drugs or alcohol? I'll tell you a true story. A young man is sixteen years old. I know this young man personally. I'm a couple years older than him. I think I'm three or four years older than him. Young man is 16 years old. And he's suffering in his life. He doesn't know that he's suffering because he's 16, so he hasn't actually processed the feelings. But don't worry Because he goes to shul, where it's a cool thing to have like kiddish out. When I say kiddish, I mean like hard alcohol.

17:07 After davening at the kiddish, the balsimcho puts out. The blue label and whatever glens he's got, the twenty year old scotch and he's put it all out. Somebody says it'd be funny if we gave this sixteen year old a shot. That's a good idea to do. Let's give this sixteen year old a shot. Just something to drink a little bit. And so at sixteen years old this kid had his first drink. He had never had a drink before. And an amazing thing happened It felt amazing to him And he didn't know this at the time because he was only sixteen years old. But he didn't know that what he was doing was numbing his pain. Years later, he would identify that was the beginning of the end for him. And then slowly but surely it got worse because he started to think with an addictive mentality. If you can have a little bit and feel this good, why would you not want to have a lot and feel much better?

17:55 And so he started becoming more excited to go to shul because there was that kiddush club that he would start attending. Everyone there at the time, again, this is a long time ago before people were educated in this area, and so it was the cool thing to do. We have this sixteen year old kid who comes to the kiddush club with us. Enjoy, man, lachaim. And he started drinking himself into oblivion And it all came crashing to a head when one Friday night he broke into the shul's liquor cabinet. And then he got plastered. There at the Shul's liquor cabinet, he just sat there imbibing as much alcohol as he could by himself because he was in so much pain and didn't know what to do with that pain. And so the next morning, when they came to Shul, they found him passed out, blackout, drunk, half dead.

18:47 And they called the ambulance, and Atzala came, and Baruch Hashem, they were able to pump his stomach and get him breathing again. But he literally was dead for a couple of minutes. He was dead. That was the beginning of his journey. Unfortunately, after that, it got much worse before it got better. Today, Baruch Hashem, he's healthy. He's a normal person. He has a wife. He has kids. But because he could not process all the feelings that he was having, he didn't know how to process them. Somebody gave him some alcohol and said, "Hey, try this." They didn't know that they were handing him what would be for him poison. Drugs, alcohol, food But also, I'm not saying this lightly. But also sometimes anxiety and depression are ways of avoiding feeling our feelings. Cause think about what anxiety is. I don't have to be here right now, sitting in my feelings. I don't have to be here right now. I could be sitting and thinking about those anxious thoughts about what's going to be twenty years from now. So I don't actually have to undo the hard work to uncover what's going on.

19:51 People think depressed people are so sad. Depressed people are not sad at all. Depressed people are numb to their pain. If you ask them what they're feeling, they say nothing. When I say depressed, I mean actual depression, not like oh I'm so depressed. I mean like people who are really depressed, people who are really depressed. Who know what I'm talking about? Who hear this here? They go yeah. When I'm depressed, I feel nothing. It's a block because when that pain comes up, we don't know what to do with it. So this person that I had spoken to said to me. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and this made me the person that I am today. The first thing you have to go through is the stage of real grief. It takes tremendous strength Tremendous strength To be able to look into your pain and to be able to say.

20:42 This hurts To be able to do the hard work of saying not just this hurts, but then really tracing that down and saying and what's underneath that pain To be able to say I'm lonely. To be able to say I feel unworthy. To be able to say I feel like it's never going to get better. I've lost all hope. Do you know how hard that is to do? Do you know how hard it is even not to name the feeling. But just to sit there when it comes up physically in your body and to allow it to come up. How many of us work so hard to push that down? This happens all the time. Guy comes into my office. And because he's a guy, he doesn't want to admit or acknowledge that he has feelings. But he's talking about something painful And you see, it's an amazing thing. All of a sudden, his eyes become glassy. They're clearly filled with tears.

21:39 But somehow those tears don't roll down his face. They remain glassy on his eyes. And he's talking And he's choking back the tears. You hear it in his voice. And then I'll say one simple thing. I want you to know that I think tears are a beautiful form of communication, and it's like the waterworks just start And they feel so pathetic because they've been trained that that's like a sign of weakness, even though of course that's a sign of strength. But they don't want to let it happen. They're doing their best to not let it happen. Some of you may have the same thing. Some of you, when a feeling comes up, might like to choke it down and be like, no, I'm not going to let that come. And maybe that's okay. Also, maybe it's okay to say there's a time and a place for everything, and not every feeling needs to be felt at every moment.

22:27 But it takes tremendous strength and courage to be able to look into the hardest moments of your life and say That's going to be transformative. That's not a simple thing to do. You're not gonna understand. I hope that you don't understand. You're not gonna understand the story that I'm about to tell you. There's a friend of mine who had a terrible disease. And it changed his life. It's one of those diseases that when you have it, it changes your life. For him, it changed his life. And years later I asked him. In a moment where we were having a really deep conversation I said, "What was it like?" What was it like knowing that your life was never going to be normal? You get that when you get this piece of information. Again, I'm not going to tell you the name of the disease because it's irrelevant, and I would want to protect his anonymity.

23:46 Just in case anybody here might know. What was it like when you got the diagnosis? And you knew in that moment it'll never be the same. Sometimes you hear words and you know in that moment it'll never be the same. What was it like for you? So he goes debilitating, like your mind doesn't even know what to do. You're like, so now what? So this is it for the rest of my life? And the doctors give you that sentence, and they go, yep, that's it. And then you, you live your life. Is what he's telling me. And then you live your life. And of course, if you could snap your fingers and go back and somehow take away this disease, you'd snap your fingers in a heartbeat. Except I wouldn't. If I had the choice between being healthy and being sick, of course I would choose to be healthy.

24:37 But I would not want the last whatever it was at that point. Let's say ten years of my life back. I like what happened to me. It was important. And I was having trouble wrapping my brain around that. Your life is worse. What do you mean? You wouldn't like if you could snap your fingers and take it away, you would, but you wouldn't. What does that mean? You would, but you wouldn't. He says, you'll never understand. I said, why not? He says, because you haven't suffered. I said I hear you. I guess that's true. I and adiós, ma. I really have had things in my life that have been harder and easier, but I have not suffered. This guy has suffered. My closest friend in the world has suffered tremendously. He suffered tremendously. He lost his mom to cancer. He lost his dad to Lou Gehrig's disease.

25:28 A million other things. It doesn't matter. But my closest friend in the world has suffered tremendously. He's told me that within sixty seconds of meeting someone, he knows if they've suffered or not. It's obvious. It's on your face. The way they talk is different. It shapes who you are. The chaos of this world shapes who you are. And then there's two types of people Those people shaped by the events because they're passively watching it happen. It's like hitting you from all sides. They're just being beaten up by life. You know these people, they're just beaten up by life. They're like they'll tell you the story when you talk to them. They'll say Honestly, I have no hope in my life. Every time I start to have a little bit of hope, everything just crashes. Somehow everything just crashes. There's no way that I could possibly like. It's not like they'll tell you it's dangerous for me to have hope because if I have hope I just don't know what's going to come afterwards. It's not shyach for me to think about.

26:32 And so that's their narrative in their life. They're just the victim of circumstance. All these terrible things that happen. You have people that here's the key words. That lean into the discomfort. That they look at these tragic things that are happening in their life and they say, "I'm going to allow myself not to be shaped by these events, but I'm going to allow myself to at least control the narrative that I have around them." I'm going to allow myself to be able to say, "Ouch, this really hurts" And we cannot even begin to understand how much. That changes you as a person, and yes, when it happens, you say to yourself I wouldn't undo it Because the things that have happened to me in my life—they made me the person that I am today. That's what you get to say at the end of it.

27:29 At the end of Racheli Menu's life She's having her second child. Let's for a moment stop and be Rachli Menu. You're sitting on your deathbed. You know it's coming. It's a hard pregnancy. And you know it's not like your first one. You know it's the end And you have a child. As a mother Not as a person for a second, as a mother, what's the question you're asking yourself in that moment? What's going to be with my kid? How's my kid going to grow up without a mom? There's no one that's going to take care of this kid like I will. That's what worries you as a mother in your final moments. Who's going to take care of my children? And so Racheli Menu, in a brilliant parenting tactic She says, "I have to impart a message. I have to give my last will and testament to my son. Something that he's going to take with him that for the next."

28:31 Eighty, ninety years of his life, whatever it is, one hundred and twenty years of his life, he's going to look and he's going to say This was my mother's farewell message to me. And she says, "Ben Oni" You are the child of grief. Oni means grief, according to the Ramban. She was not saying what many of us probably think Which is like, "What a dreadful name to give to Binyamin." Imagine you're growing up as the kid whose mother died in childbirth, having him. Can you imagine, today in two thousand and twenty, we would bring that kid into counseling as soon as humanly possible to deal with the guilt that you were the thing that caused your mother's demise Could you imagine the unprocessed feelings that such a kid would have growing up? So Racheli Menu comes and she says, "I gotta send this kid off." I got to make sure that he takes with him a lesson for the rest of his life. The lesson was not You're the son of grief.

29:31 You're born into the world in a terrible time. The message was, 'My son, in order for you to become the person that you need to become, you need to understand that the defining moment of your life was your birth.' That you, a terrible tragedy happened in that moment. You were born and your mother died. And she tells her son, "So grieve." So grieve. Look at your life and say, 'Ouch.' "As one therapist once said to me, 'Learn how to flex your TSM.' "What's a TSM?" He goes You're this stinks muscle. You have to learn in life how to say, 'Ouch.' 'That really hurts.' You have to learn in life how to allow yourself to breathe and whatever feelings come up, allow them to pass through you. She was giving her son the single greatest message of his life: Don't be afraid to feel the pain that you're feeling, because that's the only way you're going to become who you're going to become.

30:32 And in this moment, I submit to you that Yaakov and Rachel were not having a machlokas. Yaakov said, "I'm going to follow my wife's lesson." My wife wants the child to become Benoni. Yaakov, holding the baby in his hands, you can imagine the scene. Rachel is dying; her dying breath. She looks at him. She says, 'Ben Oni, v'tikra aviv.' And as a father Yaakov says Ben Yamin. I imagine. I don't know this for sure. It doesn't say it in the pesukim. But I imagine that Rachel imenu passed away with a smile on her lips Because Ben Yamin According to the Ramban Means strength. The son of my strength, Yamin, is the right side. It's the strong side. What was Yaakov communicating to Rachel? Yaakov was saying, "You're telling your son to grieve." You're telling your son Feel the feelings. You were born. It was a tragedy.

31:39 Work through that because it'll help you become the person you want to become. Yaakov says to Rachel, "I wholeheartedly agree with you." It's going to require a massive amount of strength. And let's call him, even though his real name is Benoni. It's the name you called him. A mother gets to choose the name. But let's call him Binyamin So that he knows that he has the strength to do it. Let's frame it in the positive. When this kid goes around and he's in cheder and he's walking around to the other kids and they say "What's your name? Welcome to class," he says. I'm a person of great strength. Where did he get that strength from? So I'll tell you where I think he got that strength from. I'm going to ask you to do an exercise with me. You don't have to write it down now. Just something to think about. It's not like just you could be here. You just be present.

32:49 Imagine that you're about to go on a date. And you're really excited. You're really excited. This is like it's big time, right? Like dating, and not just that. Let's dramatize it, right? The guy that you're about to date You've heard incredible things about him. Like the shadchan that set you up sat you down and said This guy. Like everything you told me you were looking for I found the one. This is the guy you're marrying, no doubt. You've heard about him. Let's dramatize a little more. You've heard the legend of this guy. And maybe even you've seen him in the street before, and you're like, oh yeah He's cute, right? Because girls like they say they go, like he's cute, and like Just the same way guys speak, right? So but you've been told amazing things about him. Your family did some research, and you should hear the way his rebbeim talk about him.

33:52 They talk about him as if he's a kleiner chavetz chayim. This is like, he's a mini chavetz chayim. That's what he is. He's just the nicest guy, but he's not one of those pushover guys, right? He's capable. He's charismatic, but he's gentle at the same time. All the things that girls are looking for that don't exist. But he's that guy. Hashkafically is what you're looking for, personality-wise, because that's what the girls say. You could find the guy with the right hashkafa, but then they don't have a good personality. You could find the guy with the right personality, but then they don't have the good hashkafa. This guy somehow miraculously, of all the human beings in the world, has the personality you're looking for and the hashkafa you're looking for. And so you're getting ready for the date and you find yourself feeling a little nervous. Oh man, I really hope this one works out. And you know this. There are certain guys that you're more excited to date than others. Like not all dates are created equal.

34:47 Sometimes you show up and you're like, this one is to check the box, so the shadchan will get me the next shidduch. I don't want to, I guess we're being too honest here, but that's the reality. Sometimes you say yes even though you don't want to say yes because, okay, was I get a free coffee? What's the worst thing that could happen? It's two hours of my life. But this guy you're excited for. Do an exercise with me. Ready? Who are the people in your life that ennobled and enabled you? Who are the people in your life that, when you call on their voices that live inside of you, it gives you the inner strength to be able to show up to that date with confidence, to be able to say, "Yeah, I'm here" " Like, and I'm me. And I could actually be the person in front of you, which is the hardest thing to do, right? Because we all show up on a date trying to be someone that we're not in order to impress the other person, so they fall in love with something that we're not, so that at some point I could say, this is the person I really am. It makes no sense, but we all do it, right?

35:47 So who would be the voices you would call upon? And I bet you that for all of you, it's different. Because I've done this exercise many times with guys and girls. And it's amazing the answers you hear. I'll give you a couple of examples. The teacher that never gave up on you. The teacher who, even if you were failing, said that they could see you were steadily doing better, and if you needed time after class to go over the material, they would happily give you the time. Or the parent that was there with you in a hard moment. What maybe some of the girls weren't treating you so nicely, and I don't know if you know this about your gender, but sometimes you can be somewhat clicky. Certain people aren't part of the clique, and then that girl has to sit there on her bed crying at night. And maybe it was mom or dad who sat there and put their arm around you, and they didn't have to do anything; they were just there to listen.

36:40 Those people in your life—they gave you a gift. Here's the gift they gave you. Ready for it? They told you You are worthy And you took that message totally for granted. You didn't pay attention to it. It was happening; it was the most natural thing in the world. But that message, if anything in your life has ennobled and enabled you, if it's given you the inner strength to actually take your kudos out into the world and do something, it was those people. That mom that sat with her girl, with her little daughter, and put her arm around her and said, "I'm here for you just to listen. I don't have to fix this, but I'm here for you just in your pain." When that kid is eighteen, nineteen, or twenty years old, and now they're applying for internships and college scholarships. Or they have to get up in front of a class and teach a she'er. Whatever is going on in their life.

37:28 It's that mother's voice that lives inside of that girl that gives them the power to actually say,"Yeah, you can do this. You got this. Yaakov was the dad. There was no mom. Vatikra aviv binyamin. What made him Benjamin? What gave him the strength? Every single time his father looked at him, he said to him, "Bin Yamin, you can do this." Your name is strength. What was Benjamin's real name? Of course, it was Benoni. Yaakov Venu wasn't taking away Chas v'Sholom for one second. He wasn't taking away what Rachel Yemenu had given to his son. Rachel Yemenu said to him, "You have to work through this. You have to do the really hard work. If you want to be able to say this didn't kill me, it made me stronger. It made me the person that I am today. Then you have to focus on your grief."

38:17 So Yaakov Venu said, "Rachel, I wholeheartedly agree with you. I'm going to call him Benjamin. I'm going to tell him he can do it." That's what it means to be a parent. Many years ago, my wife, when she was in seminary A very well known rabbi was a teacher in her seminary, and he said something beautiful and wonderful. Something that I've said many times since. I've ripped this guy off. He said, "To come teach eighteen and nineteen year old girls? No way." I would never do it. But to teach Jewish mothers To teach Yiddish shabbies That I would do. And when I'm sitting in front of you girls, he said, 'This is what he said to my wife. I'm not sitting in front of a room full of 18 year old girls or 19 year old girls.' You're the future mothers and grandmothers and great grandmothers of Klal Yisrael And you are going to have the power in your life to call your children.

39:22 And the question will be, what's the tone that you use? What's their name? What's their name? When you say their name, how do you say it? Sometimes you could bark out a name And sometimes you could call someone. When you're frustrated. You could go like this, Racha. Right? You called her name. You sent a message, Racheli. My downstairs neighbor. I have a daughter, Racheli. And she's Baruch Hashem a wonderful Lebedek kid who has all the letters Baruch Hashem. She's mamish, very Lebedek, very exciting kid. So my downstairs neighbor is hysterically funny. He says, 'You know what Racheli stands for? Rachmanolitslan. God help us.' " When a kid grows up and they're hearing Rachmanolitslan all their life, every time you say their name, you know they're gonna grow up and say. I can't. I'm incapable because the message that I got over and over again in my life is you can't do this. Think about it. Don't we give that message to kids?

40:23 Don't we give that message to kids? It's a. It's a beautiful story. It's a painful story. Rabbi Krohn tells about a kid. Whose father had left? His father had divorced his mother and just totally left. The kid was a quiet kid, one of those kids that never says anything in class. And they were learning the parsha where Yosef reunites with Yaakov after twenty-two years being away. And in that parsha, Yosef says to his brothers, "I'm Yosef. How old are you, Chai? Am I Yosef? Is my father still alive?" The Rebbe asked the question to the She'er. He said, "Boys, little boys. They were like in fourth grade, third grade." He said, "Boys, The whole time the brothers were kept talking about Yaakov. You can't take away Benjamin. It's going to kill our father. Yosef clearly knew that Yaakov was alive. So why is he asking the brothers, 'Ani Yosef ha'odavicha?' And different kids are answering different answers. And then this kid's hand.

41:31 Slowly goes up, and the Rebbe grasping the opportunity says, "I got to call on this kid. It's the first time he's raised his hand all year. I'm going to make sure that make the biggest deal out of this answer." As he calls on the kid, he goes, "Yes, Reuven, what do you think? And the kid says Maybe he was asking Does my father still think about me? Does he still care about me? Because I haven't seen him in all these years. Am I still part of his life? And Rabbi Kron tells that the Rebbe saw the pain. The Rebbe saw the pain in the kid's eyes. Because what a parent says to a kid matters so much And we're human beings. So as parents, sometimes we say the wrong thing. Maybe even often we say the wrong thing. But every time we say anything to our children, they're sponges and they're taking it in.

42:21 Or we could be that parent. And unfortunately, these are not the stories that I hear so much, but every once in a while, you get a couple of guys that will come and say, "I'm so close with my parents." And like my parents were always there for me And my parents just like they gave me this message in my life that I could do anything. And if they can do anything, it's not necessarily because they're capable, but because they have this irrational belief in themselves that they're capable of doing anything, and it works. It really works. If you tell a kid over and over again you can do this Then you are investing in them the capability, the self-esteem to be able to look at their own pain and go, ouch, that really hurts. And when they can feel that loneliness or that unworthiness, they can work through it and they could choose to say, but I'm not lonely. I have people in my life that love me, and I'm not unworthy. I am the Abishur's child, and that alone makes me worthy.

43:21 So it wasn't an either or. It wasn't a machlokus of Ben Oni or Ben Yamin. It was a father following his last, his wife's last will and testament. Make sure my kid doesn't run away from the pain they're in. Vatikra aviv Ben Yamin. Yaakov Vino's response was, "I will communicate to your child." I will communicate to this child for the entirety of his life. You could do this. You got this. So I'll leave you with one exercise. You know that person or persons whose voices inside your head ennobled and enabled you. Call them and say thank you. Because the gift that they gave you, you can never repay. You can only pay it forward to your kids, or to your students, or to your neighbors, or people in your community. You can only pay it forward, but you can never pay them back for the gift that they gave you.

44:21 If it was an NCSY advisor, if it was a teacher, if it was a parent, if it was a friend Don't WhatsApp them. Don't email them. Don't Facetime them, don't swipe left, don't swipe right, don't slide into DMs. Huh? Don't Facebook message them. Don't Snapchat them. Don't do any of that. It doesn't need to be in a story somewhere. Call them. And just say simply, I'm not here to talk about anything else. I just want to say thank you. Because if I do anything in my life, it'll be because of you. And I want you to know If you call them, it's not only going to help them, but it'll help you too. Bringing someone else feel good about something they've done well in their life can be beneficial. Because it'll concretize it for you. You'll be able to look at yourself and go, 'Those voices are real to me.' And the more real they are, the more capacity we have to become the people that we're designed to become, that we're destined to become. Have a beautiful Shabbos, girls.