Purim - Experiencing Joy By Connecting to Absence

2:31 So why do these two things go together? Why are they not two disparate halachas? Lastly Chazal say kol hamesavel ayushalayim zoyche v'iroya besimchasa. Anyone who mourns. Over Yerushalayim will be zayche to see it in its state of joy, in its state of simcha. But it's interesting to note if you look carefully at the words It doesn't say kol hamisaval a Yerushalayim zayche v'roya be binyana. Doesn't say that we're going to see Yerushalayim be rebuilt. It says that we're going to see Yerushalayim once again in its state of simcha. What does that mean? What does it mean that we're going to be able to see Yerushalayim in a state of Simcha if it's not rebuilt? Must be that Simcha means that it's rebuilt, but that's not what it says. It should have said Zaycheviraya bevinyanus. What's the pshat over here? I want to share with you a ma'isa shahaya that happened last week.

3:44 I don't know if you know. I've basically been in America for the last month. For two weeks, I was here. I have seven mivaseret weddings, starting from three weeks ago, all the way until March twenty ninth, and I'm basically just jumping back and forth between Eretz Yisrael and America. So my first wedding was on January thirtieth. January thirtieth and thirty-first, I had weddings, and I set up all the interviews in between until February tenth. February tenth, that's right. And then I went back to Mitzvah Shabbos, and now I'm back here. So. One of the days I'm interviewing, and it's like you know, at some point these interviews—probably remember—they get a little bit. Imagine they get tedious. It's like asking a boy, What do you want to get out of your year in Israel? And he says This very creative thing I really want to grow.

4:37 I want to learn. I know I don't learn as much as I would like to be better at it. The same standard answers, and you have to sit there and respectfully. Good. You write it down. You try to be nice to people. In the middle of the interviews In between interviews, I check my phone. My family needs. My wife needs. And I saw a message from one of my oldest friends. His wife messaged me. And she said that his father just died. His father just died. He's on a plane to Eretz Israel at four o'clock that afternoon. So I can't believe it. His parents live in Eretz Israel. I'm in America, and the Levaya is going to be in Eretz Yisrael, ten minutes away from where I live. So under ordinary circumstances, if I was in Eretz Israel, I would have dropped everything and of course would have been at the Levaya.

5:39 But it pained me so much. I was in America. I wasn't able to be there by the levaya. I wasn't even able to say goodbye to him because he was already on his way to the airport. He had to catch the four o'clock flight. And I said to her, "When's he? When's he coming back? When's the shiva? So she said, 'He's leaving back to America, matzah Shabbos,' and I was leaving back to Eretz Israel, matzah Shabbos. So mamish, missing one of my oldest friends in the air. No opportunity to be menachem avol. No opportunity to be by the levaya. I called my father. My father, Baruch Hashem, my parents live in Eretz Israel. I said, "It'd be very important to me if you could just a teiva" If you could go. He grew up in my house. So please go to L'vaya. My parents are very COVID conscious. They're not the youngest of people.

6:25 So I said, "If you could go to the L'vaya, it would mean a lot to me." My father went to the L'vaya, but it's not the same. I grew up in this man's house. He was a very special person. He was a rav. He was a lawyer. He was a doctor. So I felt terrible. So I woke up. At least I could watch the live stream of the lavaya. Even that. It's not the same. You're able to see, but you're not able to participate. You want to make eye contact as a gift. I remember one. I heard from Moshe Tzvi. It wasn't from Moshe Tzvi today. We were in the baseret together many years ago, twenty three years ago. There were two mats in yeshiva, Matt Berg and Matt Weinberg. So I guess it was a school for growing a beard, anyway. The so I once heard Moshe Tzvi say that when you're listening, when you're in an audience, there's a gift that you could give to the speaker that you could pay attention and you could look and you can make eye contact, and people go like, "Oh, you're listening."

7:22 You'll notice this if you ever get up to speak. There are some people that listen like this. They go And you're talking to them. You're okay, it's a conversation because you're paying attention. Now everyone has a pressure to pay attention. There's some people. I once taught in a certain seminary and a girl came and she was knitting. I don't know what she was knitting, but it was massive. And she was sitting there knitting while I was. I was so happy to be the entertainment. While you can, it's different types of listeners. So you want to be in the audience. You want to be able to look your oldest friend in the eye, and you want to be able to say, "I'm here for you," and I remember these memories and I cherish them with you. And he was talking about how his father was a formidable person, and his father indeed was a very formidable person. Some of my friends and I were joking that we were the friends that his father never wanted him to have. It was like we were not exactly. It wasn't exactly like Baruch Hashem. It was an open home. It was a warm home. But when we came, it was with a sense of trepidation. Like don't say the wrong thing in front of his father.

8:18 But I wasn't able to participate like that. And then I got a phone call that his mother asked him to extend his stay in Eretz Yisrael and not to come back on Shabbos. Why? Because for fifty five years, she's been waking up next to this man. For fifty five years, they had a beautiful marriage. And when he leaves, because he was sleeping over in the apartment. Nobody will be there. Imagine waking up after fifty-five years, rolling over, and there's no one there. So she said, "I know you want to go back to America. I know you want to have your own shiva with your own chaverim coming. Of course, that's understandable." Please Stay with me a couple more days, like the Rebbeinu Shlom on Simchas Torah. Stay with me a little bit more. I just don't want to be alone. So the wife called me to say he's gonna be there.

9:20 So I'm landing Sunday night. Shiva is over Tuesday morning. Medina Yisrael demands that you do a certain amount of bidud. Either you have twenty four hours until you get your test back. I went twenty one hours. Most of the way, I made it most of the way. And then I said, forget it. I have to go to Peshevkel. I went from Yishlai to Peshevkel. I walked in. And as I'm walking in the door, his sister says, This is what he needed. He just needs his old friends to come sit with him. So I'm sitting with him And he says to me "You know what's crazy?" Next week Next week, let's be serious. I'm going to be in my house And I know what's going to happen. I'm going to pick up the phone to call my father. Kilu like He's not really gone. It's almost like a phantom limb. You know that people who are amputated get pain.

10:20 One of my closest friends in the world had his leg amputated. He had cancer when he was a child. He lost his leg. And I remember when we were becoming friends. He said he would all of a sudden grab his leg and be like, "Ooh!" I was like, "What? What? What's the matter?" He said, "My leg is hurting." So I remember the first time I was looking at him Should I tell him? So I said, "Does that mean your leg is hurting? You don't have a leg." Such a thing called phantom pain, that a person imagines their leg is there. It's all in your head. Which is really where most of the pain comes from. He's like, I know it. I'm going to pick up the phone as if none of this happened. I'm going to call my father, and he's not going to be there. And then he said, "But what I'm really sad for" I'm really sad for my mom. He says, "My dad was a pretty calculated person. He was a mathematical guy."

11:13 The mom The wife She was the. I don't want to say she was the emotional one because it was more than that. She was patuach. She was like This is a safe place where everyone could be. She had a real social worker type of affect. And it was interesting because It was a ying yang. You wouldn't expect these two people to like, but maybe she was able to connect to him deeply more than other people were because of this nature that she had. And he was saying how his mother, who's such a deeply feeling person Said, "What's going to be if I'm feeling this way?" So what's going to be with her fifty-five years? So I shared with him something that I want to share with you. And really, it's from this past week's parsha. In this past week's parsha, we know that Klal Yisrael donated. Everyone donated a machzis hashachar. I didn't say the Dvar Torah. If you go to a shiva house, don't say the Dvar Torah. Nobody wants to hear the Dvar Torah. You could just sit and listen. But old friends. I just got to the point. But I'll share with you the Dvar Torah.

12:21 Ma'achzah shekel. Everyone asks the question: What's ma'achzah shekel? Donated shekel. We're not talking about so much money. It's a shekel. What's ma'achzah shekel? Our world is a place that's lacking by definition. A physical world is incomplete. The difference between the spiritual world and the physical world is that in the spiritual world, there's a notion of completion. In the physical world, there is no notion of completion. In the physical world, two things can only ever become close. They can't really become one. There's no such thing as oneness within the physical world. Even right now, let's say this cup on this table. It's as close as it could possibly be. It's resting on it, but the table is not the cup, and the cup is not the table. In the physical world, there's no such thing as shleimus. There's no such thing as completion. Masha'ain came in the spiritual world because the nature of the spiritual world is that it's the banish lom's revealed world.

13:17 So by definition, it means that there's a music of oneness, there's a music of deep connection And we know this intuitively. Every one of us knows this because, for example You hear this all the time in yeshivas and seminaries. People say it's so hard to daven. It's not like talking to a person, because with a person you could actually see them. And really, it's just the opposite. When you're talking to a person It's the physicality of the person that's distracting. Because we all know that when we're talking to each other, we're not talking to the protoplasm, we're not talking to the flesh of another person, we're talking to the pneuma, to the inner essence of a person. When we're deeply connecting with another, we're not connecting on a physical level; we're connecting on a real level, on a true level. Does that make sense? Which is why sometimes you'll notice that even the physical world changes a little bit when you connect deeply to something, when you connect to its essence.

14:11 The physical world begins to change. La Marshall. You have in yeshiva. This happens more in yeshiva than in the seminaries because I'm not really too involved in the seminaries. Let's say a rebbe gives a shmooz about platonic friendships. You have such a it's like a classic shmooz that happens in yeshivas, and it always upsets a couple of boys. They make their way into my office, and I really didn't like what this rebbe had to say. He was saying there's no such thing as platonic friends. Rebbe, you don't understand. I've been friends with this girl since I'm a fetus. Our families grew up together, and nothing could ever happen between us. Nothing could ever happen, and then they say the magic words. Rebbe, first of all, she's like my sister. It would be the weirdest thing in the world. Then they go, 'So it sounds like girls on the other side' And honestly, Rebbe They don't know how to say it out loud. It's she's not. I'm not. It's not.

15:03 Would never Six months later They come back. Go. Do you remember that girl? So I said, but I thought it was not. I thought she's not. I thought you didn't. No. What was can change, because the more you connect to the inner essence of a person, right? It's like all of a sudden, there's somebody there. There's somebody underneath. There's somebody that like now the attraction can start to elevate. You ever have a really bad first date? Doesn't matter. I had a girl once who told me she said I had the worst first date ever. She said this guy was known to be such a good-looking guy. So by the end of the day, I didn't see it anymore. I pasha didn't see it. I didn't connect him in that way. And the opposite is true also. Attraction builds over time. In the beginning, maybe it's not so good.

15:54 Four, five, six dates in All of a sudden it changes. What's the pshat? Because the more you connect to the inner essence of the thing The more you're truly in the world of oneness, truly in the world of shleimus. So there's a music of completion, and then the physical world is malleable; it changes itself around the spiritual world. And because of this, many people make a very big mistake. They try to leave the physical world because there's a deep desire to connect to the inner essence. They want to leave the physical world behind because they want to be attached to true oneness. That's what people want. The Muslim like that. Leave the physical world. Go be a Buddhist monk sitting on a Tibetan mountaintop and just leave the physical world. Only live within the world of the spiritual. And in Yiddishkeit, it's exactly the opposite.

16:50 What a kadosh baruch hu desires most is to have a dwelling place in the world down below, which means as follows: There's a greater expression of oneness in the physical world than there is in the spiritual world. We just got done saying that the only possibility for shleimus is within the spiritual world. The cup and the table will never become one. But there's a mistake there. A deeper idea that I want to share with you. So it goes like this And this is what I told my friend: grief is unexpressed love. Grief is unexpressed love. What does that mean? He lost his father. For 41 years, this was his dad. She lost her husband. 55 years. She's going to roll over in the morning, and there's going to be an emptiness in the apartment. She's going to wake up in the morning. She's going to make a cup of coffee, and she's going to have no one to sit down and share that cup of coffee with.

18:04 He's going to call his father. It's going to be that phantom dial, and he's going to realize I'll never be able to make that phone call again. And in that moment, grief is going to begin to well up within them. And there are two choices. Choice number one is to run away from that grief. Choice number one is to run away from the painful feelings. From the brokenness of our lives. The problem with doing that is that it actually paralyzes you. Because you're never able to feel those feelings, you're never able to discover the beauty that's within those feelings. So, for example, if we understood what grief really was, if we leaned into the discomfort of those painful emotions, what would we discover? Within that grief, I have all of this love, and now I have no cleave to take it anymore. We actually keep a person alive within us by feeling that grief.

18:59 And there's nothing wrong with feeling that grief, Adarabu. It's paralyzing, and this is a paradox. It's difficult to understand this. It's paralyzing to not feel grief. When we don't feel the grief, it paralyzes us. When we recognize the beauty of our most painful emotions, we become the bailam on those emotions. Now we take ownership of those emotions. So when a person feels that sense of grief and they close their eyes and they literally physically feel it coming up within them and they hold on to that feeling and they say I have all this love, and I have nowhere to put it. But I can hold on to it. And then maybe they'll cry And maybe they'll write, and maybe they'll sing. And for a couple of moments, it will be this exquisitely painful emotion. And on the other side of that is joy. If you can't feel the painful emotions, then you can't feel the happy emotions. If you can't look into the brokenness of your life and discover the shlemus that's hidden within that brokenness, then you'll never be able to move past the brokenness of your life.

20:07 I'll give you another example. One of the things that I'm learning more and more is this musliq of heartbreak. I'm spending a tremendous amount of time thinking about this and speaking to people and working with people. Heartbreak is exceptionally painful. You have the marshal. A young woman, a young man And they're mamish on the verge of getting engaged Mamish on the verge of getting engaged And then for whatever reason It doesn't go. Whatever the reason, maybe it's a good reason, maybe it's not such a good reason, maybe it's anxiety, maybe it's not anxiety. It doesn't matter. But for whatever reason, it doesn't go. So I get these phone calls. I don't know what to do with myself now. I'm a mess. I don't know what to do. I can't. I'm sitting in my room. I'm crying all day. I'm trying to distract myself. I'm this. I'm that. I'm taking a vacation with my friends.

21:02 Heartbreak is not sadness. Is that not true? Heartbreak is something that's fundamentally so much more powerful than sadness. Sad is like A sad thing happened. Heartbreak is like I'm a shaver clear. I don't even know where to go with this anymore. So if you start to unpack What is heartbreak? It's in its essence, what it is, I had this desire for connection with another. And that connection no longer exists, but the desire has already been brought up to the fore. It's already started to express itself within me. And now with nowhere to put that desire for connection, you are going to be the person upon whom I bestow all of my essence. When that has nowhere to go, the feeling is so exceptionally painful. It tears a person apart. It's a dreadful feeling, right? So most people, what do they do? Because it's a dreadful feeling, they run in the other direction.

22:00 But it's really just the opposite. As long as you're running away from it, it's going to follow you. But if you run towards it and you say, 'It's okay for me to feel these really difficult feelings,' because embedded within those really difficult feelings are these amazing expressions of who I want to be in my life. This guy wants to love his father. Could there be a more beautiful emotion than that? But as long as he's not willing to feel the grief, he'll never discover that desire that he has to love. As long as this person is not paying attention to the heartbreak they're feeling, numbing their pain with all of the things we numb our pain with, with food and with all sorts of things. We all know our own pain. We all know how we deal with it. As long as we're not doing that, as long as we're running away from it, we'll never discover the beauty of that painful emotion.

22:54 And that's what the machzus hashekel was really all about—that a Jew has a choice of what they could do with the brokenness of their life. Everyone knows that the gematria of shekel is the same gematria as nefesh. That when a Jew gave a machzus hashekel, when a Jew said, 'This is what it means to be counted' What does it mean to count in the Rebbeinu Shlom's eyes? What does that mean to count? The Rebbeinu Shlom counts me. The Rebbeinu Shlom is counting our shleimus. The Rebbeinu Shlom is counting our neshamos. The Rebbeinu Shlom is counting the machzus hashekel, the half a nefesh, the brokenness of our life. The Rebbeinu Shlom was saying, 'You have two choices. One is to take this machzah shekel and put it in your pocket. You hold on to it selfishly' Or this can become the mishkan. This can become dira b'tachtainim. This will be the greatest expression of how I'm brought into the world.

23:46 I saw. I saw from the Batsheva. The Chassidic Kodesh of Rosh, but the Baal Shem Tov said that the term Yehudi Yehudi, what does Yehudi mean? It means from Shevet Yehuda. But in the Megillah, it's not used that way. La Yehudim, ha'isa a'ira v'simcha v'sasam v'yikar. It wasn't la Yehudim. What's the fashion of Yehudi? So the Alter Rebbe and Tanya says, "What is the essence of a Jew? When is a Jew called the Yehudi?" So the Alter Rebbe says a very powerful thing, and we know throughout history that this has been true. That Jews, throughout all of time Have been willing to die al Kiddush Hashem, regardless of their level of observance. Sometimes the least affiliated Yidden were willing to die al Kiddush Hashem. It's a famous story. Some of you probably know it. Maybe even most of you know it, but it's a good idea to repeat.

24:49 You know the story of Shnevis. Have you heard the story of Shnevis? Shnevays Shnevays was a kapo. Kapo was a Russian Jew. Who worked for the Nazis in the concentration camps. Shnevays was a particularly cruel kapo. I believe I might be getting the story wrong. I believe it was the Klesenberg rebbe, but it might be a different rebbe. That he told the Hasidim to go ask Shnevays. Yom Kippur is coming up. And we don't want to go chop down trees in the forest. If you could please give us something to do, we're going to be fasting at Yom Kippur. Not that they had much to eat anyway, but they don't want to chop down trees on Yom Kippur. They could please give us some other type of duty that will be a little bit less physically taxing, so that we could keep Yom Kippur. So they said to the Rebbe, Rebbe, what are we talking about? To go to Shnevayz is never going to say yes to this.

25:42 So the Rebbe said, Go to Shnevayz anyway. And they went to Shnevayz. And in a shocking turn of events, Shnevays agreed And he got permission from the Nazis Yimach Shemam that those Chevra of Yidden should be able to work in the barracks. They should not have to go out. But the Nazis and Shnevays didn't know this. The Nazis had a different plan. Why did they say yes? Because they knew that it was Yom Kippur. They knew that it was Yom Kippur. So on the day that they were sitting there and they were cleaning out the barracks, the Nazis came in with the most delicious food. Hot food, delicious food. They put it out. They said, "Chaver, anyone that wants to eat could eat." What a torturous thing to do! People who lived on potato scraps, people who lived on nothing, and now all of a sudden they have like a marina drey smorg in front of them. It's going to be unbelievable.

26:32 And of course, they wouldn't eat. So the Nazis turned to Shnevays. Shnevays was not an observant Jew. Shnevays was a Russian. Shnevays tortured them. They noticed Shnevays wasn't eating. So the Shnevays eat. Shnevi said, "No, not eating." Shem Kipper. So the Nazi Yimachshemo pulled out his gun and put it at Shnevi's head. He says, "Shnevi, eat or you die." Shnevi said, "I'm not eating" And they murdered him on the spot. It's a powerful story because it doesn't make any sense. Why in the world? Why in the world would a yid who didn't live for Hakadosh Baruch Hu die for Hakadosh Baruch Hu? The Alter Rebbe and Tanya say that's exactly the point. The Jewish soul, when threatened with extinction, can't do anything but try and save itself. This, Zalter Rebbe says, is what it means to be a Yehudi. So listen to what the Rebbe's diac was. La Yehudim In this matziv, how long was the gzeirah? How long was the gzeirah of Haman? Anyone know? It's about a year.

27:38 For a year, all of Klaliyus Shal stood with a proverbial gun to their head, and they said, 'We are willing to die al Kiddush Hashem.' That was the matziv of every single Jew and girls. It wasn't like the Jews were so frum back then. It wasn't like they were all tsneis and it wasn't like they were all not speaking lashon hara and keeping g'lat kosher. There were plenty of Yidden that were assimilated. Plenty of Yidden that were assimilated. But every single Jew, without exception, was willing to buy al kiddush Hashem. Says the Rebbe as follows: Listen to this. It's unbelievable. Art. They were called Yehudim. They went exactly the opposite from everything in life. If a person puts a gun to our head, what's our initial response? Take my money, take everything that I have. It's the exact opposite for a Jew to say, "I'll die, I'll Kiddush Hashem." It's v'nafochu. It goes against every single grain in our body. Instead of running away from the difficult moment, a yid turns towards it.

28:33 And what do they discover within it? Where does joy come from? Joy comes, and this is the hard thing to learn. Joy comes from doing the exact opposite of what we would think. I was recently asked, "Why is it that today we see so much more anxiety and depression than ever before?" So, first of all, it's not a fair question because today we diagnose and back then we didn't diagnose. But let's say it's true that there's more depression and anxiety today, which is probably true. Why would it be? It's a pasul cheshbon. If a person spends their life running away from difficult things, there's going to be no joy. You pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. If you run away from anything that's painful in your life, how in the world would you ever come to a place of joy? Where would you get it from?

29:25 Where would it come from? I was thinking about this just this morning. I went out to get a bagel with the Talmud. He shows me a picture of his four-year-old daughter. And he says, "Reb, you have any advice?" Four years old Big buck teeth Purple glasses. She's very sweet. She's a very sweet kid. I said, "I'm only mentioning it because I said Put away money for braces. That wasn't the piece of advice. Damn it. Bought a house in West Hampstead, like you know, a good Jew from the Five Towns does, like the whole he's on that maslo now. Any advice? So I told him as follows: My daughter is in seminary this year. She shan'alef. She's in a seminary that's ten minutes away from Gaza. It's going to be okay. When she got to the seminary. Once she got to the seminary, I asked her. I said, "They have a" They have a miklat there. They have miklatot. They have a safe room for people to go to if Chassid Shalom rockets fall.

30:44 So she started laughing at me. She said, "No." I'm like, "Why not?" She's like, "Because you'd have to already be in it for it to make a difference. It's 15 seconds to impact from siren to impact." "So what do they do if there's a war?" They're like, "We go home. It's like a snow day. It's like you don't stick around if the rockets are falling." It's an interesting one. It's probably what your parents went through when they sent you to Eretz Yisrael. This is exactly the same. She gets off every other week for Shabbos. So because I was in America for two Shabbatot in a row, I missed her. So I said, I can't go a month without seeing her. So on a Friday, even though I was very tired, I drove out an hour to Ovakim to be with her for an hour, and then drove back out of Shabbos just to hang out with her.

31:32 We went to the bakery. She got a roll. We sat in the park. It was a beautiful time. So I told my talmud, was like one of the things I look back on. And I'm not chas v'shem sad about it. Baruch Hashem, I've used my life so far, I think, for decent things. But one thing I feel like my wife has an advantage. She got there. She got to be home. She got to be for all those moments. That's not a small thing. When you start to look back on On. Baruch Hashem, 19 years of marriage. We start to look back. I provided for my family, Baruch Hashem. But it's different when you're living it, no? It's different when you're in the house and you're constantly there and you're able to tend to all the boos and you're able to give all the kisses and you're able to be there for all the dinners. But I wasn't necessarily able to be there for it. But I was able to be there on that Friday. I thought that was a special time.

32:25 A special time to go out. So I told this Talmud. Don't miss. Don't miss these special times. Baruch Hashem, he works only a couple minutes from his office. I said, be home, don't stay in the office till eight thirty at night. Come home if you need to go back and do work afterwards. Come home. Make sure you're there for bedtime. Make sure you're there for dinner. Make sure you're there for the important moments. Because of the nature of the system that my children are being raised in, I've never gone to anything. I have five daughters. I've never gone to an Asifat Horeim. I've never gone to a sitter play. I've never gone to a graduation. I've never been invited. I now have a five-year-old son. So I'm starting to be invited to things. They have a mishim bad otio. I'm okay, this awesome. This great. This what I've been missing all these years.

33:11 I learned with my son Aleph base. It's a beautiful thing. I push it. I didn't have that in the same way with my daughters. Not chas v'sham that we didn't have that we don't have a close relationship, but it's those incredible moments. But I found myself. As I'm telling this to him, I found myself like Not chas v'shalim at all, in a sad way But in like There is a feeling. I don't even know if I know the word for it yet. I have to really meditate on it. But there was something that came up Like a hole, like a lack. I don't know exactly what the feeling is yet. I haven't put words to it. But there's something. I'm like, but embedded in there is this exceptional desire to be close to them because I know. My daughter is going to be in Shaduchim.

34:00 Like any minute now, and then it's like it goes fast. Do you remember when you were sixteen? You blink, then you're here. You'll blink again, and you'll blink again, and you'll blink again. A couple of blinks later, and you're eighty. It's a crazy thing. It flies. It flies. I'm telling you. It's funny. My friends and I were talking; we're still eighteen, right? We have this WhatsApp group where we still act like a bunch of eighteen-year-olds. We're still eighteen, right? And we're not And we're not 18, and now when I'm going around and I'm speaking in different seminaries, like girls will come over and they'll say Just so you know Plony is my father. That's crazy. He should never be allowed to have children. I remember him when he was 16. You should be able to. You should have a license for these things. Somebody should just pass a test.

35:00 The painful feelings. The painful feelings are exactly where the joy is. It's hard to know that there was a lot that I missed. But in the desire to connect so deeply It comes from feeling that there was stuff I missed. It's a good thing to feel. I think this is what it means. Jews. They say Jews are still complaining about the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash. I think I heard a comedian once say, "Don't ever talk to Jews about how they were slaves in America, because they'll go back thousands of years with you. Oh yeah, well we were slaves in Egypt." And the Crusades, and the Spanish Inquisition, and the Holocaust. You can't beat a Jew at suffering. We hold on to suffering. It's not true. It's not really what we do. It's we know that in order to hold on to Yerushalayim, we have to be misavu.

35:58 It's so easy to let go of your shalayim. Because who wants to pay attention to that? Wants to pay attention to the fact that as great as life is, and Baruch Hashem, life today is better than it's been in so long. My Rosh Yeshiva was born in a concentration camp. That's where he was born. He grew up. The Nazis didn't know about him. He was barely five feet tall. He wasn't even five feet tall because the Nazis didn't know that he was in the concentration camp. They put him in the bathrooms. They put them in the latrines because it was so disgusting in the latrines that the Nazis would never go there. So they would hide their children. If they had children, they would hide their children in the bathrooms, and they would feed them the meager table scraps that they got. They would feed them to the children, but of course it wasn't enough for the children. So those children never became very tall. They never became fully developed. My Rosh Hashanah was barely five feet. I one time saw that someone came to visit him. I said, "Who is that?" The guy was like six foot three. They said, "That's his son." I said, "You're joking. He's like a foot and a half taller than." He said that's the height he would have been had he not gone to the Holocaust.

36:58 Even with the three hundred percent rise in anti-Semitism in America, still Still, you walk around the Five Towns today. I was in Amazing Savings. I was in Coal Save. I went to Gourmet Glot. I went to what's called Closeout Connections. I spent four hundred dollars this morning on cereal. Am I really kidding? I didn't feel anything. Kolam is avalo yishalayim. It's so easy not to be misavalo yishalayim. It's so easy not to be misavalo yishalayim. A couple years ago, Rav Weinberger came to Eretz Yisrael and he made a fabregan on the roof of Yeshivat Akhuta. So of course I wanted to go. I wanted to see the Rebbe. So I'm standing on the side. There are chavers that are mamish in it with him, and then there are viewers on the side. I'm a viewer on the side. I study the Rebbe. I want to watch him from afar. I want to see how he does it.

37:59 So I saw that as he was looking at Harabayas, I saw his whole complexion change. And afterwards, when he was speaking, he was crying but screaming. We can't be satisfied with the kota. That's what you said. We can't be satisfied with the kota. There's a mosque on Harabayas, and I remember it hit me. It's so easy to feel comfortable. It's so easy not to remember that we're still in Galus. It's so easy not to be Misaval Yerushalayim. But if you're not Misaval Yerushalayim, then you go. You don't get to be Besimcha about Yerushalayim either. You don't get to. You know the people who are Misaval Yerushalayim. For them, Yerushalayim is not a tourist attraction. Today, Yerushalayim is a tourist attraction. Unfortunately, for many. You come, you spend money. Supporting the Israeli economy, Baruch Hashem. And they come where they go out to eat. What's the place in the shuk? What's that place in the shuk?

38:57 Crave, right? You betray yourself. I was waiting to see who was gonna say beer bazaar, but it was okay. Crave was a good one. Crave was a good one. You come and you go to the hotel and you go to Kever Rachel, right? And it's like you are going to Disney World and you go to Cinderella's palace, and you go to the teacups, and it's a small world, and then you visit your daughter in seminary, right? And you take her out to Mamila. It's like, come on, high no mach, right? Because we're not Masavla Yerushalayim, so we're not besimcha about Yerushalayim. How could we be besimcha about Yerushalayim? To be besimcha about Yerushalayim means to focus on all the really hard things. And that's not a pasuk thing to do. I don't mean to be motzi l'azankal Yisro. Most Yidden, I'm sure, are Masavla Yerushalayim.

39:43 But can we say that we're misaval Yerushalayim? Rav Yisuf Chaim Zunenfeld was misaval Yerushalayim. Rav Yisuf Chaim Zunenfeld lived in an apartment that overlooked Harabaya. It was a decrepit, disgusting apartment. And the head of the British Mandate, the governor of the British Mandate, he came to visit Rav Yisuf Chaim Zunenfeld in his apartment. And he said to him, 'Chief Rabbi, why do you live like this? Why don't you have a beautiful, fancy apartment? You know they have beautiful, fancy apartments in Yerushalayim. Why don't you have a beautiful, fancy apartment?' And Rav Yisuf Chaim Zunenfeld pointed out the window and he said, 'When his house is built, my house can be built. That's Misaval Yushalayim.' Misaval Yushalayim is like the tzaddikin that you hear when they were coming close to the kodesh They were crying as they were walking down the stairs, and for many of us, we don't cry when we walk down the stairs. Talmidim and Talmidot came to me and said, 'I feel so badly that I don't cry when I walk down the stairs,' and I have to feel now so much shame that I didn't cry. I don't mean to say that everybody has to be like that. But a sense of misa veYerushalayim, and then you could be besimcha about what's going on—the real simcha, the simcha of RvKok.

40:46 The real simcha, the simcha of we have Yerushalayim. Where else in the world would we want to be if we could be there? Not everybody could be there, but if we couldn't be there, of course we want to be in Yerushalayim. How do we speak about Yerushalayim? I remember the first time I was—maybe eighteen or nineteen years old—the first time I heard Rav Weinberger say the word Yerushalayim. Rav Weinberger says he says it if you've heard him speak. It doesn't say Yushalayim because Yushalayim, like it's falling out of his mouth. It's like with gaguin. It's painful for him to say the word Yushalayim. It's so much like Yushalayim. Such a beautiful thing. And I think that's what it means. Mishaneknas av mematim besimcha. Mishaneknas adar marben besimcha. If you want to feel the simcha of Adar, you have to feel the not so much simcha of Av. You have to be willing to say.

41:35 There are hard times in Yerushalayim, but if you lean into those hard times, that's when you discover the joy. And I think that's what it means that the nature of Purim is different than every other yantef. In every other yantef, you have a yantef; you have to be besimcha, not yantef. Not so with Purim. Purim is simcha. Purim is simcha. Why? Because it was the day that Haman decreed We're going to kill all the yidden. He built poor. He made it poor. He made a guerilla. He made a lottery. On this day, all the yidden are going to die. So it was in the day itself. The day had so much tsar, and because the day had so much tsar, and because all of those yidden were willing to say, "I'm leaning into the tsar. If there's tsar, it means there's an opportunity here. I'm willing to die al kiddush Hashem. I'm going to access the deepest dimension of self."

42:31 That's why it became a yom simcha. Simcha is not just an accoutrement for the day. Simcha is the day. And that's something that requires a tremendous amount of preparation. We have two others this year. Probably most of you know the Lubavitcher Rebbe famously said, "When you have sixty days of Adar" So that means that all of the pain is batal b'shishim So you can have complete simcha. Any pain that we have in our life is batal b'shishim. But what did the Rebbe mean to say? The Rebbe meant to say that you get rid of the pain in your life. He meant to say that, of course, there's pain, but that pain is battle. Why is the pain battle? Because you're the bilaam on it. You own it. We're living in a day and age when this is not a pushot thing. We're living in a day and age when it's not so simple to be able to show up to something and say, "I'm willing to actually be present" Because there's a tremendous amount of fear when it comes to the present.

43:23 Like what would it be like? This is a scary thing, even for me to say it right now. What would it be like if we showed up as our whole self? What would it be like to show up that way to our relationships with our friends, with our families? What would it be like if we were dating and we showed up and were just This is me and I'm real. Not to say that there'll be no fear. Of course there'll be fear, but I could hold that fear. The possibility for rejection is massive. And who wants to be rejected? So we show up, tip tippa at a time. You have to let out your crazy just a little bit at a time. You show up and you go like I'm just gonna dip my toe in the water. There's always two types of kids in the pool in the summer. You always know who a kid is based on how he shows up to the pool. There are some kids who start off in the two feet and walk in slowly but surely. And then there's those lunatic kids that just jump in right away.

44:16 It's like that with dating too. You have people who just jump in right away. They're like, 'hey, shalom aleichem, nice to meet you. Want to hear everything?' There are people like that. And most of us are not like that. Most of us are like What's your family like? Regular, typical family. This is Pasha the Shaker, right? And it makes sense. Why we do it? It makes sense. It's very close to home. And it's such a chabad right because the world deserves to see us for who we really are And we deserve to be seen for who we really are And that's a very hard thing. It takes a tremendous amount of courage. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be very real. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to show up and be present. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to feel the hard feelings. Because only if you're willing to go to those places. Are you really capable of experiencing the fullness of life? In the name of Hashem, we should be zeicha in our personal lives and in our national klal yisrael lives to experience that simcha. Amen. Thank you very much for coming out, girls. Thank you so much.