Purim - Finding Joy In A Fragmented World

2:25 And people say it's snowing. Kids are home. How can we have a shir? Adar Aba, we're home. Where else are we going to go? What else could we do? Prepare for Purim. This Purim is a very unique Purim. Not only here in Eretz Israel, certainly here in Eretz Israel, where we are watching Hakadosh Baruch Hu's Megillah unfold. No doubt that when they write Megillahs Hamashiach Hakadosh Baruch Hu is going to say, 'I told you that the last milchama was going to be with Persia. I told you that it was going to be a re-reading of Megillah Esther.' And we are literally watching in our final moments before Mashiach comes. We are literally watching the showdown on the Iranian doorstep. As the Ayatollah is managed, are you hearing that echo, or is it just me? The Ayatollah is now standing with the American Army. The Israeli Army. The entire world is watching what's happening in our backyard. But as Hashem, this should be the culmination of the coming of Mashiach.

3:39 And so there's a question that we're asking ourselves here Which is. How are we meant to be besimcha with everything that's going on in the world? How are we meant to be simcha with all of the fragmented nature, all of the tsara, all of the pain in this world? How is a yid meant to be simcha? It's not only a question that we're asking ourselves in modern times; it's a question that even the Gemara says "Akati av de'achashverosh anan." Even at the end of the Purim story, we remain servants of Achashverosh, meaning we are still in this state where we are not truly free. We're not truly liberated. We remain in a state of exile, even in the end of the Purim story. And so, how could it be? How could it be that there's a state of simcha That there's a state of joy when Klal Yisrael remains in our state of exile?

4:39 In truth, Megillus Esther represents the dawn in the darkness. She is the light in the darkness. Esther Amalca, as the Gemara tells us, is from the pasuk Va'Anoich Yehaster Esther Panay Bayomahu That Esther Amalca represents the light in the deepest darkness. That's why Shushan is Begematria two times Chosech. Not just one regular darkness, but the darkness within the darkness. And Esther Amalca represents the dawn. That's within the deepest darkness. That's why Rabbi Nachman writes that even in the deepest concealment, the concealment that is within the concealment, a person can find Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That nikkuda of finding Hakadosh Baruch Hu within the deepest darkness is the nikkuda of Esther Amalke. And so, certainly Esther Amalke represents the dawn, but in truth, Esther Amalke represents the beginning of the era of Torah Shabbal Pe. The beginning of the era where we move from Nefuah into the world of Chachma, where the conversation between Klali Yisrael and Hakadosh Baruch Hu shifts dramatically, and it is now our time to talk to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Hakadosh Baruch Hu spends the first several thousand years of creation speaking to us. That was the bechena of Torah Shabbosav.

6:03 The Megillah begins the era of Torah Sheba'al Peh, where we develop the Torah and talk back to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so to speak, where we move from a monologue into a dialogue, and there's still thousands of years of galus ahead of us. And indeed we're still in that galus. So how could the Megillah say that we are in a state of simcha That the state of simcha that we experience on Megillah is the same bechina as the simcha that we will experience in Olam Habah? How could a yid live in that state of simcha, given that we're still in a state of being servants to achashverosh? That's our first question for this evening. The second question for this evening, which is not necessarily a question on the megillah, but a stamazoyah question Is the marral says that the only simcha is from shleimus. Simcha means that when a person lives in a state of completion. There's a state of simcha. L'marshal, if you've married off a child That's an exceptional level of simcha. There's a level of completion. There's something very beautiful. I see we have a number of young women with us who are, as Hashem, going to be married b'kar of mamish

7:20 But not yet married. So to you, you don't know the pleasure that some of us old folk have. Of having walked children down the aisle, there's something very special about being able to walk a child down the aisle, to hold their hand, to stand under the aisle with them. There's a certain shlemus. There's a certain completion of we've arrived at a moment where this stage of the journey is complete, and there's something unbelievably beautiful about being able to look at this child. That we remember when this child was born, we changed their diapers, we wiped their tears, we picked them up when they fell, and now they're walking on their own, and they're standing with their own chassan or their own kallah. So the maral says that simcha comes from shlemus. And on a deeper level, what that means is that a person is besimcha when they have the experience of being fully settled within their own existence. I'm okay with myself. There's a certain level of completion that I have. I'm settled within myself. I've come into self. That's the greatest level of shleimus that we exist, that we can experience within our own existence.

8:35 Which means that the opposite of simcha is not sadness. The opposite of simcha is deficiency. Or the opposite of simcha is fragmentation. A state of lack, a state of incompletion. That's why Chazal say Ein Simcha Kataras Asfekos. When we're existing in a state of Sufik, which is BeGematria Amalek, that's the whole episode of Amalek is to put us into a state of Sufik. There's a state of incompletion that we live in. So in that state, it's impossible to be BeSimcha. So there's Simcha, which means completion, and there's the opposite of Simcha, which means Chisaron, fragmentation, lack. In that state of lack, we find ourselves in a state where we're not besimcha. But fundamentally, to be besimcha is not to chase simcha. That's the big mistake that they made in America: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Happiness was never something that we were meant to pursue. Happiness was always the symptom of a life well led.

9:42 That when a person comes into a state of completion, simcha was the natural consequence. Which means that it would have been much more valuable to say life, liberty, and the pursuit of shleimus. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of completion, and then happiness would have been the byproduct. The drug and alcohol culture that exists today is because we have this feeling that I want to pursue happiness, and so if I can take this substance, then I can be happy. So why should I have to work to get to my happiness? The answer is because the moment you leave that state of artificial happiness that was induced by those external substances, you haven't really achieved any state of simcha because the moment that the artificial happiness is gone, you're left in your state of deficiency. And if anything, the deficiency feels even stronger now than it ever did.

10:35 So there's a state of being where we can either work towards shlemus and experience true simcha, or we can artificially induce simcha and deepen the fragmentation that we have in the world. The challenge of this approach, which is our second question, is by definition. Our world exists in a state of fragmentation. Because only Hakadosh Baruch Hu possesses an intrinsic perfection And so since only Hakadosh Baruch Hu experiences perfection, everything else, by definition, experiences fragmentation. Let me spell this out a little bit more. Hashem has no cause. Okay, so Hashem exists. He's the ultimate existence. He always existed and he always will exist. So he wasn't caused by anything else. By definition, creation is caused by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. It's sustained by something beyond itself. Which means that creation begins with a deficiency. The deficiency of creation is that it needed to be created by something other than itself.

11:53 So to be in a state of creation means that I, by definition, exist in a state of lack. I am not whole. Only Hakadosh Baruch Hu is whole. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is not caused by anything else. His existence is perfect, and because his existence is perfect, he is shalom. But anything that comes from Hakadosh Baruch Hu is not shalom, because Hakadosh Baruch Hu, by definition, had to create it. If it was created, that means there's a lack. It lacked the ability to be self-caused. So how could there be in our world of deficiency and fragmentation? The bale chesedus want to know if deficiency is not an accident of creation. If deficiency is the definition of creation, that means that creation by definition means partiality. So if Hakadosh Baruch Hu is the only thing that's whole and creation means partiality, how can we ever be besimcha?

12:58 How can Chazal say? How can David HaMelech say in Tehillim, "If do es Hashem besimcha"? What simcha? We're not shy about the world of simcha. How can our Kadosh Baruch Hu tell us Misha nechnas ader marbim besimcha? What do you mean marbim besimcha? There's no such thing as simcha, let alone the increase of simcha. How can I, in my state of deficiency, experience any joy whatsoever? So a person might say, and there is an element of truth to this, that you can experience some simcha in a state of lack. And so, obviously, we can't experience a full simcha until the world achieves its full shlemas. But still, it's difficult for us to understand because, by definition, we exist in a state of fragmentation. If we exist in a state of fragmentation, how are we supposed to experience any simcha within ourselves? Meaning, I myself, by definition, feel this existential lack. That I am created by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. There's a void of godliness in my life.

14:06 So how are we meant to experience any simcha? Those are the two questions that I want to tackle for tonight. Number one, what does it mean that Akhti Avdei Achashverosh Anan, that we remain in our state of exile Enslaved to Achashverosh And yet we're meant to be besimcha? Simcha seems to be impossible. Simcha means that I'm meant to be in a state of shlemos, and I'm not in a state of shlemos. Regardless of whatever shlemos I do feel in my life, lemaisa I am not in a state of shlemos. Which means by definition that shlemos must somehow be accessible even within deficiency. In other words, we're used to thinking of this in binary terms: there's shlemos and there's deficiency. But perhaps there's a deeper way of looking at this. Not that there's two categories called shlemus and lack, wholeness and deficiency, but rather there's a shlemus that's accessible to us even within the world of deficiency. Meaning either simcha is impossible, or we have to redefine the nature of shlemus. Shlemus must not mean the absence of deficiency.

15:28 Shleimus must mean something that incorporates deficiency within it. And so this is going to take us on a very beautiful but radically innovative journey as to what is the nature not of simcha, but what is the nature of completion. So it goes something like this. This is what the Hasidic masters tell us. We naturally assume that completion, that shleimus, means nothing is missing, nothing is unresolved, nothing is incomplete. But obviously, that state of being exists only in Hashem. What does shleimus actually mean? Shleimus means that deficiency exists within the larger framework of wholeness. Which means we're not trying to eliminate deficiency; we're trying to locate deficiency. If deficiency exists on its own and it has no context So then it's true. That's called deficiency, and that's called shlemus. But what if shlemus itself incorporates deficiency? That true completion doesn't mean there's no absence. True completion doesn't mean there's no lack.

16:47 Rather, true completion contains deficiency within it. And because true completion contains within it deficiency, in our state of deficiency, we have to have a GPS locator. You know that thing that you're trying to figure out where you are. You ever zoom out on ways to try to figure out where you are? In our state of deficiency, when we zoom out and we now look at deficiency rather than looking at deficiency from within deficiency. If we look at deficiency from above deficiency, then what we see is that actually the larger picture is shlemas. And we are but one aspect of this entire picture called wholeness. There's a book that I like. I think it's called Zoom. You ever see these books? It starts off with a person on a beach, and then it zooms out, and that person on a beach is on a postcard, and then it zooms out again, and that postcard is actually a billboard.

17:50 And then it zooms out farther and it keeps zooming out until you're in outer space. It starts off as a very small picture. The challenge of what it means to be a yid in galus is when we look at ourselves in our state of lack We have to zoom out and instead of just seeing the lack, see the completion, the state of shleimus that contains the lack. Let's try to unpack a little bit of what this means. We know that there is a concept called Ein Od Melvado. There is nothing else that's independent of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. In the world of Chasidus, Ein Od Melvado means that creation does not exist independently of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That every single moment of every single day, the world exists within Hashem's sustaining reality. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is called Hamakom. He is the place, and existence exists within His reality. Our creation is constantly being sustained by Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

19:12 This is a radical reframe. Because it means that deficiency exists within Hakadosh Baruch Hu's sustaining reality That Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't sustain a reality that's perfect. Hakadosh Baruch Hu sustains a reality that's imperfect. So our imperfect world is constantly in a state of being held by Hashem, and not just held by Hashem But sustained by Hashem. The deficiency that's being fueled into existence is being fueled by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. So this is an unbelievable thing to know Because once we shift out and shift perspective. That's one of the features of being in self. If you want to know if you're being in self, what's the nature of your perspective? Do you have a narrow perspective or a broad perspective? The more broad the perspective is, the more true the perspective is. So people who are in self have a true broad perspective. So from the narrow perspective of creation, what we see is lack, what we see is deficiency. That's from the perspective of creation.

20:26 But when we zoom out, we have to see what is the context in which we exist. Not I am complete, because if the word is I am complete, then I'm also incomplete. Rather, shleimus in this world means my existence is held within the context of shleimus. This is a very—I'll say it again. I want to make sure everybody gets it. There's two different visions of shleimus. One vision is I, the creation, am complete. If I'm complete, then the next logical thing I'm going to say is but I'm incomplete. And I know that's true because I am a created being, and if I really dig down on that, I'm going to say my life isn't complete. Here are all the things that I would have wanted. Here's the laundry list of things that have gone wrong in my life. And here's my own personal deficiencies. Here's the list of averos that I can't stop doing since I'm a little child. I'm still saying the same lashon hara that I said when I was eight and nine years old, and I'm still again fill in the blank your laundry list of avera's that we all do. So from our if the if we're looking for completion By definition, our lives are incomplete. We're incomplete. The nature of creation is incomplete. We're never going to find satisfaction that way.

21:59 Which is why the world is such a miserable place Because everybody's looking for a completion. That can't exist. If what you're searching for is being complete, you're banging your head against the wall. It's like the fly who's trying very hard to get out through the window. I know it appears to be clear, but it's not a question of how hard you try. The fly will never get through the window. No matter how hard we try to be complete, we will never be complete. This is a big yisod in our avodas Hashem. That's why so many of us get so frustrated in our avodas Hashem because what we think we're meant to be is perfect. So as long as I'm attempting to be perfect, I'm never going to be perfect. It's not going to work.

22:43 And so there's a frustration that exists within our own avodas Hashem. We're like, why am I not perfect yet? I promised myself I was going to be perfect. Remember when you were 18 years old and you promised yourself, by the time I leave seminary, then I'm going to be perfect. Teila, you remember that? Remember when you said when I'm standing under the chuppah. Remember when you said to yourself, I'm gonna do it better than my parents. How did that work out? Everyone thought that we were going to be in a state of completion, and eventually we just get very frustrated with the reality of our lives that we're not in a state of completion. And we're never going to be in a state of completion. And in our state of yish, people throw in the towel and say, "Why should I bother trying if I'm never going to arrive there?" Because it's a fundamentally distorted way of thinking about completion.

23:33 And they're right to give up. They're right to give up, no matter how many mussar shmoozes and they hear from their rebbeim. They're right to give up because, by definition, I'm never going to be an adam shalom. You hear all these, and I'm not saying it happens to be meaningful, but people say there's a difference between perfection and completion. You might not be perfect, but you can be complete. You're like, I'm never going to be complete. I'm always going to be deficient in some way. So you want to retitle it. You don't want to call it perfection. You want to call it completion. I'm always going to be incomplete. And so there's a frustration that exists that we have that I can't be besimcha because I'm incomplete because we're using the wrong definition of completion. Shleimus means not that I am complete. But that my existence is held within Hashem's completion And Simcha emerges when my consciousness aligns with Hakadosh Baruch Hu's Shleimus, rather than when I'm exclusively focused on my fragment of existence.

24:41 So this is the radical reshift. I am a fragment. I am one piece of the puzzle. But my piece of the puzzle exists within the puzzle itself And so the fragmented nature of my reality does not diminish my completion. The fragmented nature of my reality forces me to zoom out and to see my existence within the larger context of shleimus. And this is what Chazal mean when they say, 'Ezehu Asher, who is wealthy, hasameach bechalco.' How could the maral say that shlemus is a function? That simcha is a function of shlemus when Chazal say what would we? What should we be besimcha with? With our chilek But that's not shlemus. That's my fragmented universe. I'm living within my small fragmented place. So how could I possibly be besimcha if I'm only looking at my chilek? The answer is, it's true. If you're only looking at your chelak, then you're not going to be happy.

25:48 But what it means is the recognition that I possess one fragment of this entire picture. And so, in my fragmented state, I recognize ena chenami, I am a fragment, but a fragment of what? A fragment of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. A fragment of history, a fragment of this family, a fragment of this country, a fragment of this nation, a fragment of this moment in time. But this moment in time cannot be separated from the larger whole. We always exist in the duality of, on the one hand, my existence is linear, but Hakadosh Baruch Hu is Hayahovah VeYeh. So I exist in this one moment of time. But this one moment of time is part of a larger picture of reality that's unfolding. And so there's a patience that exists within our nature, where we have to say it's okay for me to be in a state right now of fragmentation, because I know that my fragmented state is just one piece of the puzzle.

26:56 Just to bring this down into practical reality for a second, before we talk about the avodah that comes with this. Lamashel, we have people in this world that are struggling with a moment that they're waiting for that has not yet arrived. A parent who is lo alenu struggling to have children. Parents, married couple that's struggling to have children, and they're waiting for the moment to arrive where they're going to be able to bring home their own child. A young woman who's awaiting her shiduch. And she's watching her friends. Pair off one by one, and she's terrified that she's going to be the last one left. And she's waiting for that moment when she too will walk down the aisle. Everyone is waiting to see how things will shape up. But the truth is, there's two ways of looking at it. From the perspective of this fragmented moment, I'm in terrible pain because I'm not yet in my state of completion. And so, how do you want me to be besimcha when everything in my life is going wrong?

27:56 But another way of looking at it, which is not to minimize the pain, chas v'shalom, the pain of being in that fragmented reality is meant to be met and experienced. We're not meant to go to a funeral and say I'm not going to cry at a funeral because I know that this is part of the unfolding reality. The fragmented moment of reality contains within it very meaningful and powerful emotions that are meant to be experienced. And to be an emotionally mature person means to hold multiple conflicting emotions at once. So yes, I can be in my state of frustration, sadness—not despair, but a deep sense of longing for something that has not yet occurred. And so this is a very painful reality to live within. And yet I already know that before 40 days before conception. Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, 'Ploni will marry Plonus.' My shidduch has already been assured. It's just a question of when that process will culminate.

29:03 And so I live within the greater context of the unfolding reality. We know the end of the story. The end of the story is Mashiach is going to come. There's unbelievable sadness that comes with the tragedy of what we live through. Especially living here in Eretz Israel, I know every yid is deeply connected. I don't mean to say chas v'shalom that yids that are living outside of Eretz Israel are not experiencing the pain of what it means to be a yid living inside of Eretz Israel. Chas v'shalom, I'm sure every one of us is emo anochi betzara, recognizing that we're all going through this together. And yet, it is very difficult. How am I supposed to survive and even thrive in these moments of catastrophe? How were we able to rebuild? Torah in this world, yeshivas and seminaries, beis yachovs, chadarim, camps Communal infrastructure. How did our bubby's and zaydis do that after the Holocaust? What gave them the strength to be able to do that? We sit here today in 2026.

30:03 Acting as if we built this infrastructure. We improved the infrastructure that was already built. They started those shuls that we built into palaces. I remember when I was a kid in Darche. Darche was a trailer park for those of you that are from the Five Towns. If you remember the old Darche, Darche was trailers. Darche was every day we would come into school, and some people get excited when there's snow days. We were excited because it was common that our school would be broken into and they would steal our books. So we couldn't learn because we had no textbooks. That was the old Darche trailers on Secret Boulevard. Today, Darche Torah is an airport. You need a passport, you need a social security number, you need to go through TSA in order to get into the building. Everett, all of Ashalom, is guarding the entrance to Shamayim. For those of you that know Everett Today Darche is built like crazy, but it wasn't always that way. Where did these people get the gall, the chutzpah, the strength to say, when everything was destroyed, we're going to rebuild?

31:10 The answer is that moment in time of catastrophe for them, they had the faith, they had the amunah, that was but one moment in a series of unfolding moments that culminates with the coming of Mashiach. So the reason that they were able to rebuild, the reason that they were able to find the state of simcha. Even though things were very broken, is because they understood that moment was but one chapter in history, and it would be followed with the surety that the next chapter in history was meant to rebuild from the ashes. So our bubby's and zaydis knew something that today we don't teach our children, which is it's okay to feel sadness. You can feel that sadness within the context of simcha. Because the shleimus that we're meant to teach our children is that life is always in a process of unfolding. This one moment in time, in its fragmented state, contains pain. But in the context of the wholeness, in the context of Hakadosh Baruch Hu Shleimus of Ain Oid Malvado, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is holding this reality as it is, then it's also in a state of unbelievable completion. And because it's in a state of unbelievable completion, there's a simcha that we can find in every single moment.

32:29 How are we meant to do this practically? So practically, there's an avoda of bittol. Bittol means that we have to diminish the ego's experience of itself. The nature of the ego is that it experiences itself as an independent reality. When the self experiences itself as a separate, independent reality, then chesaron is absolute. Because I, the fragment, believe that all I am in my fragmented state is alone. Bittul dissolves the illusion of separation. That's our avoda to align our consciousness with the fact: Ein od malvado. I never existed once as an independent reality. Hakadosh Baruch Hu was constantly fueling and sustaining this reality into being, and I am deeply aligned with that truth. And what happens is, the more bittul, the more the separation dissolves. The more I recognize I exist within the context of Hashem, and then simcha naturally emerges. Not because my state of deficiency disappears, but because the deficiency of this world exists and is experienced within Hashem's unity.

33:51 So that's part one of the sheir. All of that is part one. Part one, in a nutshell, is I exist in a state of simcha. In truth, I exist within a state of shleimus, a larger shleimus. I can experience the chizaron of this moment within the larger shleimus of Hakadosh Baruch Hu's existence, sustaining reality. My avoda is to be mevatel my ego so that I'm aligned with that truth. That's all part one of the shir. Part two is much deeper. Part two goes like this. The truth is that chisaron deficiency is a necessary step for the revelation of shlemus. Deficiency is not a bug. Deficiency is a feature. So we grow up thinking chisaron is a problem. Chisaron is not a problem. Chisaron is what paves the way to shlemus. What does that mean, and how does that work? So it goes as follows. Before there was a state of creation, all there was a kodesh baruch hu.

35:06 The existence of Hashem is perfect. What does Hashem create? Hashem creates what the Arizal calls chalal panoy, an empty space. And in that empty space where He is not. In that empty space is where creation occurs. In other words, Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates chaser. Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates absence. That's the nature of creation itself. Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates an absence. If it's not absence, then it's not creation. The nature of creation is that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created absence. Which means That chesaron is what Hashem desires. That our state of living with a fragmented consciousness doesn't mean that something is wrong with us. It's exactly the way that Hashem wants us to be. Hashem wants us to exist in a state of chasser.

36:10 Why would Hashem want something to exist in a state of deficiency? We would never create if we were creating something. Right? If we're creating a vacuum cleaner, we would create the vacuum cleaner to operate as perfectly as possible. Nobody would ever create a vacuum cleaner that, by definition, doesn't do its job. Although I sometimes think that's the only thing that vacuum cleaners do, just like a 90% job. I don't know if you have that frustration. Baruch Hashem, I moved to Israel. We have very, very little carpet here, but now we have some new. Technology—I don't even know what it's called—a Tanaka. Some sort of Japanese thing that my wife bought us. It's like a vacuum cleaner for tiles, and it works. But not exactly. You still have to end up doing a small sponge afterwards. We create things to be perfect. Why would I, Baruch Hu, create something that's chaser? Why would I, Baruch Hu, create something that's deficient?

37:09 Elamai. What must it be? The purpose of creation is for a deficient world to move towards a whole God. The nature of creation is not to be complete. The nature of creation is to be in a relationship with completion. And again, this is a radical, revolutionary way of seeing the nature of creation. We always think the purpose of creation is to move towards shleimus, but perhaps we have to modify that. Not that the purpose of creation is to move towards shleimus, but that creation itself is meant to be in its state of deficiency, but in a relationship with shleimus. Which means there are two perspectives on chesaron. There's a destructive perspective and a constructive perspective. A destructive perspective on chesaron is that to be a chaser means to be disconnected from Hashem. If I think that my state of being a chaser means that I'm in a state of disconnection from Hashem, then the natural result of this is despair.

38:24 And this is what happens. We tell our children, 'You do an avera, now you're lacking, you're somehow distant from Hashem,' and then we wonder why our children turn around and go. I didn't haveira, so now I can't be perfect. So now I'm not in a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This is a destructive perspective of chesaron. The constructive perspective of chesaron is not chas v'shalom that I'm disconnected because I'm chaser. Adir Abba Because I'm a chaser, because I'm distant from Hashem, that's what creates my relationship with Hashem. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created Michaser not because He's asking me to be shalom. He's shalom. But Hakadosh Baruch Hu counterintuitively says, 'I don't want to be in a relationship with shlemos. I am shalom. I want to be in a relationship with something that's deficient, but that's searching for me.' And that creates simcha. Now, how does that create simcha? This is the process.

39:31 Chisaron crée le désir. When I'm lacking something, when I feel deficient, when I feel distant The feeling I have is one of longing. Tzamalacha nafshi. Why are we thirsting for Hakadosh Baruch Hu? We're thirsting for Hakadosh Baruch Hu like we're parched in a desert. It's the absence of water that creates the longing and the craving and the burning desire for water. So it's not chas v'shalom. I'm chaser, and therefore I'm distant. I'm chaser, so that I will long to have this desire to come close to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Desire itself creates movement, and movement creates connection. So longing for Hakadosh Baruch Hu is already a form of connection. If we're longing for Hashem, we're already in a relationship with Hashem. If we're numb If we're disconnected, and because of our state of disconnection we don't long, that's a problem. But once we're in a state of connection, we're in a state of shleimus, and once we're in a state of shleimus, we're in a state of simcha.

40:45 So the process is very simple. I feel distant from Hashem. I feel lacking. I feel like I'm in goulas. I feel like I'm in a state of achash of the achash ve'roshanon. I'm still a servant to Achashverosh. So how am I supposed to be besimcha? Comes along the Megillah and says La Yehuda, my soire of the simcha of the sasam the yigar that we had gevul dekasimcha. How could we have gevul dekasimcha? We're still in a state of galus. We're still in a state of distance from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I feel like a fragment. Exactly. What happens when you feel like a fragment? I yearn for my connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. You know, it's not just about the language itself but also the way we use it. If you're yearning, that means you're in movement. If you're in a state of movement, that means you're already in a state of connection. If you're in a state of connection, you're connected to the divine. If you're in a state of connection, you're already in a state of shleimus. If you're in a state of shleimus That means you're already experiencing simcha.

41:36 So this is how Yidden have always been able to maintain our simcha in galus. Simcha emerges not because I possess Hakadosh Baruch Hu in my life, but because I'm in a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I don't need to eliminate the distance between myself and Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I just need to make that distance meaningful. So the avoda of galus is how can I make the distance that I'm experiencing with Hakadosh Baruch Hu meaningful? Because if it's meaningful, then it creates vitality. Understanding that galus in no way severs our relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. In fact, it's just the opposite. Galus intensifies my relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Because specifically in Galus, I find myself longing for Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And Simcha emerges not from my completion, but from my relationship with completion. So where does Esther Amalca begin the process of moving towards Melech Achashverosh when she says, "If I go to him, I'm going to die"? That's in other words, she's so distant.

42:48 But in her state of distance, she reaches out towards the king, and that's why the king extends his scepter. We know the king, of course, is referring to Akal Shem Baruch Hu. Esther Amalke is that bechinen, as we said, of that double choshech of Shushan. Meaning, even in the deepest depths, even in the concealment of the concealment, that's specifically where I find my relationship with Akal Shem Baruch Hu. Because I'm longing to be held by Hakadosh Baruch Hu in that distance. This is the great secret of Klal Yisrael. The great secret of Klal Yisrael is we know not like the Christians say. You see, Hakadosh Baruch Hu clearly hates you. You're no longer the chosen nation. Ad Raba, we know that where there's the greatest darkness, that's Hakadosh Baruch Hu creating the opportunity for us to long for Him. And this is what we do.

43:40 At the end of this Purim story, the Beis Hamikdash is not yet built. So how could we be besimcha? Because I know number one, it's all unfolding. I'm just in one fragment of the wholeness, and number two, my current state of fragmentation gives me the opportunity to be in a relationship with Shlemus. The secret of what's going on in Eretz Yisrael right now is we're watching everything unfold. We're watching all the battleships. We're not unaware of what's happening. We're not foolish. We see CNN the same way you do, and we see the battleships off our coasts and off other coasts. With Trump, you never know—he could say one thing and mean something else. The rhetoric keeps getting ratcheted up, and yet people are still talking about it. Yes, I think it's important to keep the original meaning intact. Amy, I don't know if you're in Eretz Yisrael or America right now, but Amy Leftco has a din of being in Eretz Yisrael because every time I turn around, she's always in Eretz Yisrael. So it's like the Leftco's are here. The Leftco's are here. We're having the Leftco's for Shabbos. She has a lot of different names.

44:58 People here are walking around going, 'Yeah, Purim is coming.' They're figuring out who we're going to give our mishloach manos to. How many mishloach manos do we need for the kids? And you'll hear people say, 'I mean, unless Iran, unless we attack Iran, or unless Iran attacks us,' and it's like Did those words just come out of your mouth? You know what I'm saying? Like, is that like now part of the rhetoric of what it means to be a Jew living in Eretz Israel today? That you just go, unless there's a, like in like a war with a superpower in the Middle East, that's like a thing that rolls off the tongue now. Like there was that there were the jokes that we were we make jokes in order to survive in this country, right? So the jokes that we had in the I don't want to say the last war because it's still ongoing, even though there's not so much fighting these days, but the jokes of like I'm not going to the mamad Which of course I just want to be on the record because somebody's going to misquote me. Irberg said that they don't go the mamad if they fire missiles from Yemen. We go the mamad no matter where the missiles come from. But the reality is that Israelis joke around and they go, teimanim don't know how to shoot missiles. They don't know how to aim.

46:04 Think about what society we had to create to be able to say, eh, just teimanim, the Yemenites don't know how to fire. Wake me up when it's cruise missiles from Iran. And now it's like, but say there Iran, maybe they will, maybe they won't. But my daughter, my seventeen-year-old daughter, she said, 'You know, I think 很好' Sometimes I wonder to myself, what type of trauma are my children going to be experiencing? What in years from now, in therapy, they're going to be like, my parents moved us to the Middle East with like all of these wars that were going on. Like, what trauma are we actually causing our children? And the Torah says, I don't think we're causing our children any trauma. I think a yid, a simple poshut yid, living in Eretz Yisrael, living their life Knowing. If there's distance, distance is simply the opportunity to call out to my Rebbe Nisolom. That's what it is, to my Maker.

47:02 I remember when I ran attacked. I don't remember which time it was, the first time or the second time. Some of you know my wife. My wife said, "I'm going to sleep." I was running around as if there was something I could do. My wife said, "I'm going to sleep." She had a tehillim by her bed. She said, "Let me know when the missiles are here. I'll say tehillim." I'm like, "You don't want to be awake for this?" No, I think that's not right. She's like, "What is the point of my being awake?" When I need to say Tehillim, I'll say Tehillim. So I'm sitting there running around with my anxiety, and my wife, who's a tremendous Balas Amuna, so she's sitting with her Tehillim and she's able to mamish sleep. There's something very beautiful about that. And when the time comes, like the Ramban says, to be in that state of an Ace Tsara, to call out to the Rebbeinu Shalom, I'll call out to the Rebbeinu Shalom. We're not afraid of Chizaron.

47:48 Yidden in this country and Yidden throughout Galus are not afraid of Chizaron. Chisaron is an opportunity. The deficiency and the lack that we experience is an opportunity to call out to the Rebbeinu Shalom. And so now, more than ever, we exist within the duality of: on the one hand, we are exceptionally calm; we are exceptionally besimcha. We know that this moment is unfolding. We know that while you are stuck in the cold, snowy America, we here in Eretz Yisrael will not have to fight to get on El Al. When Mashiach is coming, we're already here, Mezuzah Shem, and we know that every one of you longs to be here with us. You should be zeicher to come as soon as possible. We are very calm. We know that this moment is unfolding exactly the way it's meant to be unfolding, and so even though there is a part of us that's paying very careful attention, you wouldn't feel it on the streets here. I know it sounds like a funny thing. My wife said to my daughter, "She said maybe we should get some water bottles."

48:50 " And my daughter's like,"If we need water, I'm sure we'll be able to fill up water from the sink." Like, like it's just so like they're like,"Ima, don't make a big deal about this. We're not living that way, right? And even more than that, we understand that Rabbenu Shlom creates these situations so that we long to be in a relationship with Him. The longing is the relationship, and the relationship is the shlemos. And so we should be zeicheh be's Hashem be'karav mamish to see the complete unfolding of the story, to understand how every fragment was just one chapter in a series of chapters that culminated in Yomos Mashiach And that we should, like Chazal say, we should long for Olam Hazeh. When we're in Olam Habo, we're going to be longing for Olam Hazeh. We're going to be missing those times of absence where we called out to the Rebbeinu Shalom and said, Rebbeinu Shalom, I just want you.

49:43 And so we should be zeicher with every fiber of our being to call out to the Rebbeinu Shalom, not from a state of anxiety and not chas v'shalom from a state of despair, but from a state of recognizing that every moment of this world is lovingly held by Hakadosh Baruch Hu to bring us closer to Him. We should be zeicher to enter into that new stage of Yimaisa Mashiach bekarov mamish. Wishing everyone a frailichin, frailichin, frailichin Purim. Amen. Thank you.