Purim - Sleeping Through Our Relationship With Hashem

1:57 The Gemara says as follows: Yeshno am echad. What does it mean that there was one nation? Amar Rava Leka diyada lishne bisha kahaman. There was no one who knew how to slander How to attack like Haman Arashad. There was nobody like him. He was the best of the best. Amar le Tanichalnu. He said to Achashverosh, "Let's destroy Klal Yisrael." So Amarle Achashverosh said back to him "Mistafina melokayu d'lole avibekid avibekame." I'm afraid of their God. I've seen what happens before. What happens when you attack the Jews? A Kadosh Baruch Hu protects them. It's the end of our reign. This is Achashverosh's fear. This is what the Gemara tells us. So Haman responds, strange response. Amarle Haman says back to him, and this is the end of the Gemara. Yeshnu min amitzvos. When it says in the Gemara Yeshno am echad that there's one nation, really, Haman says Yeshno is Yashnu. They're sleeping from doing the mitzvos. That's Haman's argument. Don't worry, Hashem doesn't have their back because they're sleeping from doing the mitzvos.

3:17 If you look at this Gemara, there's two things that bother us very much. Two things that we really need to unpack for ourselves. That's a very strange thing to say. We're sleeping from doing the mitzvot. What should Haman have said? Hashem's not going to have their back because we're not what? We're not keeping the mitzvot. We're not doing the mitzvot. It's a strange thing to say that Haman says they're sleeping through the mitzvot. What does it mean to sleep through a mitzvah? To do it some way. What does it mean? It sounds like Haman was saying, in some way, there's something unconscious. It's by rote. They're just going through the motions. That's perhaps a great start, but we're going to need to unpack it very deeply because there's a second question. The second question is as follows: If the Gemara tells us that Haman had a drasha Don't read it yeshno, rather yoshno. Don't read it. There is, but they're sleeping.

4:16 Or the words that Haman said. Let's look at the actual words. There's one nation; they're scattered. They're everywhere. And they're sleeping through their mitzvot. Do you see the problem? Those are two very different things. Whenever there's a drasha, the drasha has to work together. The thing that Haman is saying has to connect to the drasha. Haman says there's a scattered nation. What does scattered nation mean? It means they're sleeping through the mitzvot. My yeshmiti Eitz Yerushalayim. What does one of those have to do with the other? You hear the second question? Did everyone get that second question? Should I say it again? I'll say it one last time just to make sure everyone gets it. Haman's argument to Achashverosh, according to the pasuk Take Klal Yisrael out. They're scattered among the nations. They're different than everyone else. They don't listen to your laws. They're not like everybody else.

5:08 The Gemara tells us that there was a subcontext to that conversation. That they're yashno is yashno. They're sleeping through the mitzvos. Those are two very different subjects. The subject of being separated from the nation, separated from each other. They're scattered. That's what does that have to do with the fact that they're sleeping through the mitzvos? Obviously, they have something to do with each other because the gemara is putting them together. Haman is putting them together, but it seems to be a very Two diverse, totally different topics. Obviously, they're one. We have to understand how they're one. That's the two questions we have for today. And now we'll get started. I want to talk to you about a vulnerability that I know I'm feeling very much in my life, and I'm seeing it wherever I go. And the vulnerability is to live in harmony. It's a very difficult thing to live in harmony. What does it mean to live in harmony?

6:10 Just don't raise your hand. I'm sure the answer is most people here. A lot of us feel like things in my life. There, if you're here on the Chizuk Mission, I'm pretty confident you feel this way. Things in my life might be working But they're not working well. There's something disjointed. Like, for example We could have children. What do we want from our family? We want our family to be in harmony. How many people here? How many people here have ever created disharmony in your family by wanting so badly for there to be harmony in your family? You didn't have to raise your hands, and you certainly didn't need to dap each other up. But yeah, it's like my mother, who's an amazing person. I have nothing bad to say about her. She's an incredible person. She wanted so badly for the kids never to fight.

7:11 Every mother wants that, but some mothers really want that. My mother really wanted that. Like the family pictures, we smile, we're having a good time. Have you had this experience? So we would get a pre-vacation speech. We're investing a lot of money. We really want everyone to have a good time, and I was the oldest in the family. She would say, "Please include your little brother." So we would be beating the snot out of him. My mother would go, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "Including him." So often We create the disharmony from our toxic need for harmony. The kids don't have permission to be fighting with each other. Because there's such a need from the parents to make sure that everything goes well, but actually, if you think about it A disharmony vacation in some ways is nicer than a harmonious vacation, right? Like that dystopian reality It's going to be perfect and everyone's going to get along the entire time. There's also something beautiful about the cheeping of kids that just like They act like children.

8:32 Like. Sometimes I think to myself, the things that my kids say to each other, I'm like, how come I'm not allowed to say that to them as a parent? You know what I'm talking about? I have one daughter and she's going through something right now, and I have another daughter who's 17 years old and you've met her. She has no filter. Zero filter. If there's a word in her brain, it's already out of her mouth. Am I exaggerating? Not even a little bit. So she will look at my other daughter and she'll just say to her, 'Enough with your desperation.' And I'm like, thank you for saying it. Because I, as a parent, can't say it. This need for harmony in our lives It's a very beautiful need, and most of us don't have it. Without raising your hands, answer here. I'm sure everyone is on some level. How many of us are experiencing the level of harmony that we want in our marriages?

9:30 We could have even a good, healthy marriage. But it doesn't always mean that it's operating well. Something is disharmonious in the marriage. Something is pulling at us. There are words left unspoken. There are things I just don't feel I could say. There's not a space for me to be myself here. There's a lot of pain in the disharmony of our relationships. How many people, when we think about work-life balance? You are here, which means that you hit pause on something in your life to be able to attain the balance that you want to get from this mission. Otherwise, you wouldn't have left. It's no simple thing to be able to stop. Were you here for a week? It's no simple thing to stop and be here and say "I'd like to hit pause on my life so that I can recalibrate." That's no simple thing. It speaks to our need.

10:26 For harmony, it speaks to our need for things to be working well together. Why aren't things working well? It's a good question. It's a vulnerable question because if they're not working well, what does that mean? It means I'm contributing something to this dysfunction. Is this somebody's? I have no idea. Do you know what it is? She was drinking the entire time. It's vulnerable to say that things in my life are not going well. Because then I know that I'm going to have to recalibrate. Because I can't control the other person, I can only control myself. And paying attention to the disharmony within ourselves makes me feel inadequate. Means that I didn't do enough as a mother. You didn't do enough as a mother. I didn't do enough as a father to create the harmony in the family that I really wanted. I didn't do enough as a husband to create the harmony in this relationship that I wanted. There's something very vulnerable about even acknowledging that things aren't going well. How many couples will quote unquote soldier through, soldier on

11:58 Because it's easier to say it's good enough rather than continue to aim for what it could be. How many people won't say I'm not okay with the way you're showing up to this relationship because it's easier for me to swallow my words than it is to have the hard conversation because I might get feedback in that conversation. By the way, I want you to know I read rooms for a living. This was look. We're real people on the Chizuk mission. So we're willing to have the hard conversation. And I see, as I'm speaking, I want you to know what your faces look like, at least to me up here. There's a lot of people that just went like this. We're all in the same boat. Nobody here is better than anybody else, and we don't have to pretend that we're perfect. We don't have to pretend that we're perfect parents or that we have the perfect marriage. We don't have to pretend that our jobs are going well all the time or that I'm able to manage all the million things that I'm doing in my life. The responsibilities of being an Orthodox Jew today are enormous.

13:00 I have to be able to have the finance, the healthy finances, to be able to live in our community. Our community is insanely wealthy. Because we live here, and we have to keep that standard. So we have to make that money, raise our children, spend time with our husbands, take care of ourselves, engage in our own personal growth. How many people here feel that they're doing that well, even in a general sense? Most people I speak to are telling me, 'This is really hard.' And the people that I speak to that tell me, 'Yeah, no, I'm doing good,' it's only a short amount of time until they say, 'I had that unmentalized process of thinking that I was doing well' Until they realize they're not. In a certain sense, what you might say about our lives. Is that they're imbalanced? We have tinas on our spouses. You're spending too much time away from the family.

13:50 What's the husband's response? Who's paying for this? How many times have you heard from your husband, not you, but you? I'm so sick of feeling like a bank. The only time that I feel valued is when people come to me and say, "Can we get?" But how many people actually appreciate me? All I hear from you is the negative feedback of "I'm not around enough." There's something imbalanced about our life, and the question is how do we achieve balance without trying to achieve perfection? Because balance and perfection have nothing to do with each other. Perfectionism is a way of being that's designed to take us away from balance. Because if you have to be perfect, then what are you not able to be? Normal. You can't be in balance because balanced people know how to say, "Ouch, that hurt. I didn't do well at that. That's okay, and move on."

14:47 So how can I be enough and be balanced without having to be perfect or dysfunctional? Do you ever notice that that's the way people use balance today? They use it to excuse dysfunction in their lives. There are people who don't know how to appropriately use the word self-care. Self care can be a weapon that we use to excuse our dysfunction. Or self care is a word that we could use to be truly in balance. And it's not obvious where you draw that line, right? You want to hear a great one? If anybody ever asks you where you draw the line, the answer is somewhere. It's an amazing line because that's what every share I give. They go, but yeah, but where do you draw the line? I go somewhere, right? You have to figure out where your somewhere is. But how many people growing up today are saying, "I need to engage in more self-care appropriately because it's impossible for me to be a wife and a mother and working and managing everybody's crisis. I also need to take care of myself." Of course you do.

15:48 But what's the negative impact of that self-care? If you're taking care of yourself, then that means there's something that's not being taken care of. Other people can pick up the pieces. At what point does self-care become selfish? Or at what point is self-care the tool I'm using to stay in balance? So there's a formula. I want to share this formula with you. It's not a hard formula, but it's a little deep. You ready? Formula is this. There's something called a body and a soul. If the body is driving the soul You're out of balance. I'll explain what this means in a moment. If the soul is driving the body, you're in balance. And if you take a look at your life in the areas that you're out of balance, it's because the body is driving the soul and the soul is not driving the body. I'll explain what this means.

16:44 The nature of the body is that it is ridiculously conscious of death. That's the nature of the body. Your body has a spirit to it. In Hasidic language, this is called the nefesh habahamis. Anyone here ever learned Tanya before? Your body has a worldview. The worldview is, I am here to animate your body. But what's the problem with the body's animation? One day, the body will die. The body consciousness has a certain vulnerability, a certain desperation to stay alive. That's why people do crazy things to feel alive. I'm embarrassed to ask this question. I'm sure the answer is nobody. How many people here have jumped out of a plane? I didn't do it. You did it. Good. So we have here an incredible mother. I've met mothers like you before. You're the most incredible mothers. I met a mother who said to me, I hate football.

17:47 But my son is obsessed with football, so I sat on the couch and watched football with him every week. You're an amazing mother. You had no interest in jumping out of a plane, but your son did. So look at this mother enabling her son to do this crazy thing. Baruch Hashem, a wonderful mother. When you landed, what did you feel? You were terrified that night. After. Why? Shocked because I realized that it was. Good. This is perfect. You thank you for. I laid it up, but you dunked at home. Way to go. I appreciate it. Because what you did and what your son wanted to do. But listen, it's clear to me that Hashgacha dictated we should arrive at this moment. When you jump out of a plane, because you have your brush with death People say when they land, I feel so alive. My heart is beating like crazy.

18:46 And it stays with you. It's such a rush. The nature of the body is one day you're gonna die. So it lives from a place of death. Can I share with you what this looks like as a parent? If my kid is not okay, I'm not okay. Which is a terrible way to live. But we're gonna see. We're gonna see that there might be a different way of doing. Because if my happiness is dependent—very good, thank you for laying it up. If my happiness is dependent on another, if I'm not because they're not I'm parenting from a place of fear. How do you think that's going to go? Not so great. Because that means we're trying to draw power from our children. It means I'm not enough for myself because I know this could end really badly. So I'm trying to draw power from something else. If my husband comes home from work and he had a really bad day at the office, and I'm living in fear that he's going to take it out on the family that night because he's running on empty, I say I have to be the perfect wife to make sure everything in the home is exactly perfect when he walks in. It's what we call codependency. Codependency is a way of avoiding a certain type of death.

20:02 I'm not going to be okay if he's not okay. So therefore, I'm drawing power from everybody else. Does that make sense? That's a bodily way of living, and that means the soul is following the body. Here's the opposite. The nature of the soul is that it has infinite whatever it needs because the soul is an infinite piece of God. The soul has an infinite amount of whatever it needs. Or to put it differently, the nature of the soul is that the soul is enough. The soul is enough. So what would it look like to parent? From a soulful place My kid walks in the door. He has that look on his face, and you know that look. It's the look of 'I have bad news to tell you, and I just have to figure out how to package it.' He walks in and he says, 'I got called into the principal's office today. Fill in the blank because I did the following stupid thing.' Let's say, for example, he said, 'I was just having this crazy moment.' And the history teacher, we never know if he's paying attention or not. So I opened the window before class, and when the teacher was kind of looking in my direction, just to see what would happen, I walked out of the window onto the adjacent building.

21:19 Which is connected, and then I jumped off of that building onto the sidewalk and cut school just to see if the teacher would notice. The teacher didn't notice, but everybody in the class started laughing. So the teacher found out from one of the kids what happened and reported me to the principal. That's what happened when I was in 11th grade. It was an amazing moment. I'm going with you. It was a great moment. I just wanted to see. I just wanted to see. I just wanted to see. For those of you who are from the Five Towns, there's a school called Brandeis. There's a big building like this, a little building like that. By the way, it works. And every time I went back to Rambam to present for my yeshiva. I always like walking by that classroom, just like a zecher lachurban, just like a little bit of a remembrance of that time.

22:08 So your kid walks in, they have that look on your face, right? From a soulful place, how would you want to respond? You would want to say, whatever you're about to tell me It's okay, and I'm with you. I was in the car with a great Rasha Shiva. I was driving, and he was in the passenger seat. That thing that sometimes somebody's taking a private call, but the volume is too loud, so you can hear everything that's happening, even though it's not for you. So I'm driving this rashi shiva, and he gets a phone call And I wanted to say to him like I can hear every word, but it was like I'm saying it was that awkward, like I was too late in it, and he was clearly I heard every word of the conversation. His son got suspended from yeshiva. And the phone call was from the son letting his father know you're gonna get a phone call from the rashi shiva. That I'm suspended. By the way, only a couple months later he was expelled. But in that moment, I'm sitting here with this great rasha shiva And he's on the phone with his kid, and he's, I hear every word. The kid says to the dad, Dad, I just want to let you know At some point today you're going to get a phone call from the rasha shiva.

23:14 I haven't been showing up to minyan, I haven't been showing up to seder, I've been in the workout room, and I'm going to be suspended from yeshiva. Here I am. I've got this moment. I'm driving the car. I'm not supposed to be knowing exactly what's happening, but I do. The Rosh Yeshiva was totally calm, just goes like this. Whatever it is, we'll get through it together. " And I was like It was incredible. And I started thinking, "What would my reaction have been?" When you get home I'm going to kill you. Now that may not have been what I said out loud. But the feeling I would have had, you grip the steering wheel just a little bit tighter. And it's not exactly road rage, but it's not exactly safe either. I was thinking the greatness of this Rosh Yeshiva is that his son's actions didn't define him. He was totally in flow.

24:07 He was soulfully parenting. His body was following his soul. What would it look like to show up to a relationship with our spouse from a place of soulfulness? My husband walks in. He has that look on his face that he had a bad day. He was having a meeting with his boss today. He was nervous. And you could tell right away. If you don't get the WhatsApp to let you know that it went well, you're already spending time in your head thinking it probably didn't go well. And the second he walks in, you've already read his face and you know exactly how the conversation is going to go. It doesn't have to be that exact case, but you know what I'm talking about. To soulfully engage in a relationship means to take stock and to say. Whatever he needs to be right now is okay. How much better will the conversation with him go if he has the space to express his frustration and pain that has nothing to do with you?

25:04 But from the body perspective, it's like he doesn't value me, he doesn't appreciate me. Doesn't he know that I also had a bad day? How come he doesn't check in with me? There's a desperation that we have. When we parent from our body, as opposed to parenting from our soul, same thing in any relationship. Think about it in terms of work-life balance. Why are you really upset at your husband for working as much as he does? By the way, the husbands they have this trump card; they think that it wins. It doesn't win. We know it doesn't win, but we use it anyway. It's like, who's going to pay for this? That's a husband thing to say, but I've studied your half of the species for a long enough time to know that's not what you mean. When the words come out of your mouth, this is what I've learned. Men have a completely different pattern of speaking. What was that? We made up myrev.

25:51 Myrev is a tremendous bit. I want you. I'm gonna tell you a secret. There's no such thing as myrev. Myrev is a menspud. Yaakov Avinu made up myrev because he had 12 kids and four wives. You know what I'm saying? Like, I buy the I buy. I want to continue this conversation. I just have to go to Ma'ariv, and I'm waking up tomorrow for MDY. I know these moves. I built these moves. I studied them. It's a mesora that I have from the people that came before me. When I was newly married, I was going through Gourmet Glot And I was shopping, and all of a sudden I heard a voice behind me. This is the mesora. Go mess it up. So I turned around, and there was a famous Rebbe from the Five Towns who I never had him, but all my friends did. He kind of knew me. He was a good ball player, so I had played before in the gym with him. And I turned around and I said, "What'd you say?" He goes, "Mess it up." So I'm like, "What are you saying?" He goes, "You just got married, right?" So I'm like, "Yeah, like two weeks ago." He goes, "If you get it right now, you're going to be shopping for the rest of your marriage."

27:14 And if you mess it up now If you mess it up, you're going to be off the hook for the next 50 years. I'm giving you the secrets. And then his wife turned the corner and she goes, "What did you just say?" He goes, "Nothing. I was like, he didn't say anything. I just kept going. Haven't been shopping since. Beautiful, yeah." I came home with all the wrong things. Specifically, the nine by thirteen. I know. Why do men not know what nine by thirteen pans are? To make you a mess. Can I tell you what I mess up? In Israel, my wife asks me for vegetables, and I don't necessarily know all the names of them in Yesh. I can't tell the difference between a zucchini and a kohlrabi. You know what I'm talking about? I come home with a cucumber. I'm like, is this good for the soup? You know what I'm talking about? What are we saying here?

28:14 We're saying as follows. I don't remember how we got onto this, but no, before shopping. If my husband shows up and I say I'm going to be there for him as he needs me to be, because I know that he'll be there for me as I need. That's where we were. If the husband says, if the wife says to the husband, "You're spending too much time in the office," I know what that means. You ready for the translation? The translation is: I miss you. I'd like to spend more time with you. Not get a different job where you could be home more. So when the husband responds defensively and he says "I'm just the bank in this place. Do you know how much money is flying out of this place all the time?" Now we've already lost each other because we're in two-body conversations, as opposed to a soulful conversation where, when you say, "I feel like I don't get to spend enough time with you because you're at the office," and then he responds by going, "What do you want me to do? Go. I just want to tell you what I meant."

29:10 I understand that I just upset you. I hear that. What I'm sharing with you is that I like you. And I understand that you have responsibilities. It would be awesome if we could be together more. That's vulnerable because it means you have to say there's something that I'm missing without you. But that's from a deep place of soulfulness. We can connect to each other. I'm going to share with you. You say soulful is more emotional. I'm saying soulful is more. I'm enough for myself. And I can hold space for others who might not be okay. And I can create boundaries when they try to take from me that which doesn't belong to them. Such as? Boundaries is also one of those toxic words, because today people use boundaries as a way of keeping people out. But in relationships, boundaries are designed to keep people in.

29:57 When you say to your husband that this doesn't work for me, we have to remind him when we're saying those things. Because I value you and because I want you to be in this space, I'm teaching you what it looks like to be in a relationship with me. That's healthy boundaries. So if something is happening that I feel is inappropriate, I get to say, 'I'm sorry, that's not okay.' Not from a deep place of anger, but from a deep place of self. Does that make sense? But how do you know how they're going to interpret it? It's not your problem. Because even if they're not okay with what I'm doing, that stuff belongs to them, and I don't have to scoop it up. Because if I'm scooping it up, that says more about me than it does about them. Anybody's allowed to put something in front of me, and I'm allowed to walk away from it or to choose to engage. If somebody comes to me and says, "Hey, I don't like the way you just showed up" I can say, you're saying something that I want to take in, and because I'm enough, I'm okay for the mussar. Alternatively, I see that stuff. That's not my stuff. I had a Talmud. This is an amazing Talmud.

30:58 And he. He said to me, "He said I'm about to start dating" So he said I came up with this muscle of how to think about dating. He said I am a house. Said I'm a house, and there are things that I need to do before I get married. The first thing I need to know is just because somebody knocks on my door doesn't mean I have to open it. And meaning somebody could say, 'Hey, I need your time right now,' right? And you could go, 'That's okay.' I'll make time for you, but I'm going to open the door when it's appropriate for everybody. He said I need to have a label maker in my house so I can know whose stuff belongs to whom. I need to know what's in the basement of my house, hidden away in the corner, because I know that stuff I'm bringing into the house is going to have an impact on the relationship.

31:49 So I said, how long have you been in therapy? He's been about six months. He was young. He doesn't have. A yeshiva called Mevaseret. He's an amazing guy. But how many of us How many of us are operating from a place of not knowing what's in our basement, opening doors that we shouldn't be opening? Thinking that somebody else's stuff belongs to us or that our stuff belongs to somebody else. This martial, by the way, you could do it for hours. It's an amazing martial, and I've done it. There's a reason. Everyone in the whole world right now is saying the same thing. The pandemic of Judaism today is Judaism by rote. That's what everybody's talking about. How do we by rote? Everyone is talking about I daven, but it's words. I keep Shabbos, but it's boring. I keep kosher, but it's expensive. And there are certain dynamic, charismatic people that when we see them, we're like There's something there, and we run to it. These rebbeim are amazing, but they don't solve the problem. What they are, they're like glimpses. It's almost like a tease. If I can get to that, I go to a Rabbi Y Jacobson Sheer. I walk out. I go to Moshe Weinberger Sheer. I go to Rabbi Frayn Waxman.

33:07 And there's something there that, when I catch it, it's like and then I for a couple of days or maybe even a couple of weeks, I've got it, but then it fades There's something that's not working. What's the answer to that question? It's an amazing pitch for a chizuk mission. Too bad Barry's not here. But yes, if Mrs. Fass is here, then I'll call. Everything is good. You can relay the message. But I'll tell you the truth. This chizuk mission, if done poorly Could just be the same thing And then you're just living from chizuk mission to chizuk mission. Which is great. Come back as often as possible. Wouldn't it be amazing if there was a shift that we could make within ourselves on these missions to take it with us, not to be perfect and not to always have this level of inspiration, but to be in balance? That would be an amazing thing. Haman is the one that taught us how to do it.

34:08 Haman said to Achashverosh, "I'm going to tell you the secret of Klal Yisrael's weakness right now. They're mafuzar umafura." They're separated from each other. Why are they living in a state of disharmony? Because each one of them is living from a place of "I'm not enough." And when we live from a place of "I'm not enough," we create disharmony with each other. It's happening in the Jewish world today. That famous article that was written many years ago: 'Mashiach wants to come, but he doesn't know what yarmulke to wear. He doesn't know what hat to wear. He doesn't know what bekashetor to wear. He doesn't know what shtraimut to wear. He doesn't know how high his socks should be.' Tucked in? Tucked out? We've created the dumbest, most artificial words to create separation from each other. Joey's that type of soulful person. But the ridiculousness of it is that we know it's not true.

35:05 You know how we know it's not true? There's a rebbe in Mevaseret who grew up in the Five Towns. I know Mrs. Staller knows him. His name is Rabbi Yosef Herschel. He was friends with your son, Joey Herschel. There's an ice skating ring in Long Beach. And Rabbi Hershel and his brothers were there, and they were beating him up. He was the youngest kid, and a mother came over to them at the arena and she said, "Stop picking on that kid." He looked at them, and he looked at his mother and he said, "Don't tell my brothers what to do." He was like a little boy. We can fight with each other like crazy. Nobody fights like Jews fight. There's a famous line from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. How do you know if somebody is Jewish? You wish them shalom aleichem. The first thing they say back is aleichem shalom. The way that you know if you're Jewish is if you disagree right away. Unless you're walking through an airport. If you're walking through an airport, you ever see how Jews walk by each other in an airport? We do this. It's called the Jew nod.

35:56 If you're walking by, you just do this. You go, just a little nod to let you know. I travel. I travel a lot. So like, I was like, I, I'm in like Dallas, and I'm like walking by somebody's like, I'm going from Dallas back to New York. They're going from New York to Dallas. They're walking by each other, and we're never going to see each other again. It's just a Like. In case anything goes down We can fight with each other like crazy, but don't hit us because then we're going to hit you back together. Our state of being in body is only until we're threatened. But then what happens? We awaken from our slumber of disconnection. And we're am echad. All of a sudden, and that's exactly what the pasuk says. There's one nation. They're one, but right now they're mefuzer u'mefurad. Right now we're scattered all over the place. We figured out how to say, you're that type of Jew. You have to go away. You're that type of Jew. You go away. I don't want my son sitting next to that kid in class.

37:02 I don't want my son being in school with that kid. I want to tell you something. I was expelled from school in fifth grade. It's true. I was expelled from school in fifth grade. And there were two people that would take me into school. One was Rabbi Herzberg, ala v'shalom, from South Shore, and the other was Rabbi Bender from Darche. I ended up going to Darche. I'm a Darche kid. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, or I should say halfway through fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Were unbelievable years in my chinuch career. All the kids in my class were Russian yeshiva kids. Rabbi Blumenkrantz, ala v'shalom. His son was in my class. Rabbi Wilner, Rabbi Pitter, Rabbi Dicker—these were all my kids, like all my classmates were their sons, and I was the kid who had been thrown out of Haftor. How come Rabbi Bender didn't say Look, I just can't have that type of influence in the school. In fact, I'll tell you that for the first time in my life, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, I felt like I had this deep sense of belonging in the school, and I knew that no matter what happened, Rabbi Bender had my back.

38:08 Unconditional love, but why? Why weren't they concerned that I was going to share with my classmates ideas that maybe these kids didn't know? There are certain Gemaras that are more graphic in nature. And in eighth grade, I was learning bechavrusa with one of these Rashi yeshiva kids, and it became clear to me that he did not understand what the Gemara was talking about. And for the first time in my entire chenuch career, I had what to teach this kid. Baruch Hashem, today he has a very large family. I take responsibility. Because we used to not be so afraid. Because the mentality of the Jewish world back then was, how can we not pull kids in? It's just like we're here to serve kids. Since when? Since when did we lose sight of ourselves? The yeshivas and the seminaries are responding to the fears of the community.

39:28 It's like I can only take in this kid because otherwise those parents won't send them. Those families go there, so I can't take in those families. For the life of me, I can't understand it because I was that kid, and I wouldn't be here speaking to you today if Rabbi Bender had treated me the way that yeshivas are treating kids today. It's all about money. It's even more than that. The money is being driven by fear. It's this enormous fear that's coming from this deeply imbalanced place. I'm afraid of my kids, and therefore I have to be careful about that kid. What happened? And it becomes shidduchim, and it becomes marriage, and it becomes I have to be perfect, and I have to look good. This is such a dysfunctional way of being And nobody's stopping and waking up. So this is the answer. This Gemara is the answer.

40:19 No. It has to be together. Which Gemara is the answer? This Gemara that we said in the beginning. This Gemara is the answer. Absolutely. Yeshno means Haman is saying. The vulnerability of Klal Yisrael right now is that they're asleep. What does it mean to be asleep? When you're asleep, your mind and body don't work in harmony. Your soul ascends to Shamayim. That's why, by the way, what do we call sleep? The Gemara calls it a sixtieth of death. So in a state of slumber where you're making contact with death Soul and body are separated. In that state, they have no shmirah from Hashem. Your predecessors couldn't get to the Jews because they were living from a deep place of soulfulness, and when you live from a place of soulfulness They're invulnerable. They might have had the mightier army. But it doesn't matter because they were together. We're never so powerful as when we're together.

41:15 But right now, Haman says they're asleep at the wheel. This is a shasakosha. This is an opportunity to get them. So he knew our vulnerability, but he also Betrayed himself by teaching us what it looks like not to live that way, and it's called being conscious, being awake. Making decisions and choices every day to hit pause and ask myself Where am I operating from? Am I operating from the place of my soul, and then my body follows suit, which is what it means to be awake, or are we sleeping through life? That's the answer. The answer is. That thing you're afraid of, shadochen. I'm just taking that because somebody said it before. What was that? How did Haman teach that to us? Because Haman said, 'Look, they're asleep.' Which means the antidote is to be awake. Sleep is when the body and soul are separated. The body follows. The soul follows the body in that case when you're sleeping because the soul is disconnected. What we want to be is awake. We want to make conscious decisions from a deep place of soulfulness.

42:20 So finishing up because I know you have to go. Sheduchim. Do we believe in the Torah or not? Do we believe in Chazal or not? Let's start like this. The Gemara tells us, Beferish, Arba'im Yom, forty days before the vlad is conceived, a baskal says Ploni will marry Plonus. All of our anxiety has nothing to do with the sheduch. It doesn't. All it's doing is feeding the fear of the system, and now the fear breeds the fear. Do we want our daughters? I have five daughters, and I have one son. He's the last one. I have just had my first grandson a month and change ago. I look like a grandfather, right? I do. I'm just so excited to putter. That's all I ever wanted in my life to putter. I said now I'm a real zadi. So what are we going to do? We're going to raise our kids on the Shidduch crisis. Is that a good idea to raise daughters growing up and going? Just want you to know, there's a shidduch crisis, so you have to do everything perfect. And if everything on your resume isn't exactly perfect, this might not go well.

43:22 Is that gonna like? First of all, let's say it works. How crazy is that? Let's say you have a daughter who does everything right because she's living from a deep place of fear. That's terrifying. That's terrifying because God knows what's happening inside that system. And let's say it doesn't work. And now every time your kid makes a mistake, you're sitting there going What's gonna be? What are you communicating to your kid? I'm not enough. You're not enough. Right? Nothing. Nobody's enough. We could hit pause and say yeah They had that article in the Five Towns Jewish Times, in the Jewish Home, and this and whatever, all the different newspapers about the quote-unquote Shidduch crisis. Or we could choose to impart to our children I have deep faith that you are somebody who's worthy of love and connection, and I'm sure that in the right time with the right one, if you show up as yourself, you'll be a magnet of attraction for love and connection.

44:16 What's a healthier way of parenting our children? We could sit and blame the system or we could hit pause and choose to act differently. Yeshno am echad. If we wake up from our slumber, then what are we? We're one nation. Why do we need to wait until some rishayim arurim come over the border and I can't even describe and do what they did? To wake us up. It's not even massacre and butcher. It's so far beyond. It's really the word is barbaric. We saw things on October 7th on Simchas Torah. We saw things that people have not seen for generations. This is like what you read about in books, like Attila the Hun. And now we wake up and go Taka, we're all Jews. Why does somebody need to scream in order to wake us up? Being conscious is a choice. And I see that she did this already.

45:20 Who? Rabbi Nevin. He's wonderful. So this is our opportunity. This is our opportunity right now. And our Judaism, as parents, as spouses As members of Klal Yisrael, if we're going to bring Mashiach, the first step is to wake up. Once you're awake, you get to make choices. I'll finish with this line from Rabbi Nachman. It's one of my favorite lines. Rabbi Nachman says choice is always available. And today that's not obvious because people say, "Well, he's an addict; he doesn't have choice." No. The person who we think has lost choice has choice. When we're in a state of "I feel like I don't have choice anymore," choice is available to us. We're just sleeping, but choice is always an option. I'm looking forward to seeing you on Shabbos. Have a wonderful rest of your day.