Shavuos - To Be A Part Of God's Nation

2:54 This was not a good time in the history of Klal Yisrael. The Chasam tells us, and this is an amazing thing, very relevant to today's day and age. Unfortunately, that this was the time when they were settling the land of Eretz Yisrael. They were involved in building the country, and they became, like so many Jews have throughout history, obsessed with materialism. I think we could relate to that. We're building our country, Baruch Hashem, beautiful houses. But it's possible to lose ourselves and to become obsessed with materialism. And there was a famine in the land. And why was there a famine in the land? Chazal tell us there was a famine in the land because of the way that they were acting. You know the Torah? It's a beautiful Torah. It was because they were the way they were acting. That's why there was a famine in the land. So this is really not a good time period. And the Torah tells us, the Megillah tells us, there's an anonymous man, Leila Chish. We don't know who it is at this point, but we know that he's from Beis Lechem Yehuda. What was in Beis Lechem? That's where the Sanhedrin sat.

3:53 So this was clearly a man of some distinction, but the Megillah chooses at this point that he should be anonymous, almost as if it doesn't matter who he was. He was just a man, but a royal man, a noble man, but just a man. And Lagur he went not to live, but to Shujeirn to spend some time, a small period of time, in Stay Moav. Why Moav? Why is that important? Moav is one of the eternal enemies of the Jewish people. Pasuk tells us when were in the Midbar, we had were hungry, we had nothing to eat, and the Moavites would not give us any bread to eat. So these are selfish people. So if you're getting the context of what we're speaking about here, we're talking about a man who, in a terrible time period of Klal Yisrael's history, a man who's supposed to be a leader. We don't know who he is yet, but we know he's supposed to be a leader. He abandons ship.

4:51 And he goes to the enemy. He goes to Moab. A selfish person, acting in a selfish way, goes to a selfish land. That's the story we know so far. Why does he go to the fields of Moab? Again, Chazal fill in the gaps based on the Medrash. This man he takes his family, and where does he go? First to the fields, but he finds that there's immorality in the fields. He finds that those people are not behaving as they should. So he goes to the city with his family. But there's no water in the cities, and as a result of there being no water in the city, he returns to the fields. Even though there are immoral people here, and that's why he lives in Ste Moab. Every single word of the pasuk is not extra. Every single word of the pasuk is important. Who ishto ushnebonav? He goes with his family. Who is his family? It doesn't tell us. They remain anonymous. This is what we know from the first pasuk. The second pasuk gives us a wealth of information that the first pasuk doesn't give us.

5:50 The first pasuk tells us, 'B'sheimai ish Eli Melech.' This is a huge bombshell. If we were living in the times of Megillat Rois, we would be like, 'Oh, that's the man you're talking about.' Who was Eli Melech? Let's take a second to know who we're talking about. He seems to be the person of interest in our story, although we'll see in a moment that he's not. Eli Melech is the descendant of Nachshon ben Aminadav. Why is that important? Imagine you're in a time of anarchy in Kallah Yisro. The judges are not respectable people. The people are not respectable people. There's a famine in the land because we have misbehaved. What do we expect when we face an impossible situation? How can we possibly fix this? We turn to our gedolim and we say, 'Lead us.' And there was a man whose name was Nachshon ben Aminadav who had almost a parallel situation. Nachshon ben Aminadav is standing at the precipice of the Yam Suf.

6:48 And Klal Yisrael is about to be destroyed by the Egyptian army. There is no hope. And what does Nachshon Ben Ami Nodav do? He says, 'I'm going to lead you. We're going to walk into the water. We're going to figure this out. There's going to be a miraculous solution.' Klal Yisrael is looking to Eli Melech to do the same exact thing for us. That was an excellent presentation. I have a spot for you on the Mivasayat Hockey Team if you're interested. Are you interested? Yeah. That's a whole different problem. This serious business. This the leader. We're all looking to the person to say what we should do. And that man does the exact opposite of what Nachshon Ben Ami Nadav does. If Nachshon Ben Ami Nadav is a person who is fearless, who has hope in the face of hopelessness, Eli Melech, whose name means a lie Melech.

7:44 I'm supposed to be the monarch of Klal Yisrael. A lie to me is malchus. The fact that Eli Melech walks away, and not only does he walk away, but he goes to our mortal enemies and says, 'I'd rather live with them.' Could you imagine the death of hope that existed in Klal Yisrael at that moment? This was a time period where people didn't believe in nature as much as we believe today. Today, if there's a famine in the land, if we don't have water, we turn to our governments and we say, 'Build a desalination plant. We need water, right?' We turn to our political leaders. In those times, they turn to their spiritual leaders, and they said, 'Guide us out of the wilderness.' Eli Melech was the person they turned to, and he leaves. So when the pasuk says, 'V'shem ha'ish Eli Melech,' we have to be there emotionally. We have to be present in this moment to realize what's being said. What's being said? This is the guy who was supposed to lead us out. He just betrayed us. V'shem ishto nami.

8:42 He has a wife. You should know her name too. Her name is Naomi. She doesn't seem to be the focal point of the story at this point, but she's there. She's present. And Chazal tell us, v'shem means pay attention to her name. V'shem ha'yishali melech. Pay attention to his name. A lie melech. He was supposed to be king. Naomi means neim. She was a pleasant, sweet person. So she has a husband who's betrayed his people, and he has a sweet wife. That's what we know. Any of you know couples like this? I know couples like this. I am a couple like this. I have a very sweet wife, and I would like to think that I wouldn't abandon all hope. But you never know. So he has a wife. She's a pleasant person. What else do we know? The pasuk says, "Veshem shnei b'neiv, machlon ukelion." And now he has two sons, machlon and kelion. These are not good names. Machlon means to be erased. Kelion means to be eradicated.

9:38 These are clearly not people about whom the Torah has a lot of positive things to say. In fact, those weren't their actual names. Their actual names are said in Dibre Ayamim. We all grew up knowing that Makom B'Kilion are their names. They're not their names. In Dibre Ayamim, the names of these two people are Yoash and Saraf. Yoash means to abandon all hope, and Saraf means to be burned. They burned all their bridges. We'll discuss how they burned their bridges soon. So this is not a great family. What do we know about the family so far? A noble father who's abandoned his post. A pleasant wife. The children don't seem so good. Not great names for the kids. And listen to what it says about these people. Ephratim ibeis lechem. Do you know what it means to be an Ephratim from Beis Lechem? It's telling us these are a serious family. A noble family. It's a big deal. This family. Ephratim ibeis lechem Yehuda.

10:34 And then it says another word—a change, a small change, a subtle change. I'm sorry, it's a little textual, but it's worth it. You remember earlier we said that they came Lagor Sham B'stei Moav? They came to sojourn there. Listen what it says now: Va'avou B'stei Moav, Va'yusham. Something changed. This family starts off as a family that's going. There's a famine. We're abandoning the people. We're going to go for a couple years until the family until the famine is over, and then we'll leave. What happens? They begin to become a part of the Moab culture. They don't leave. They get—I won't say assimilated, not yet—but they certainly become part of the fabric of society. Again, I'm sure many of us can relate to this. The idea that you say, which means I'm about to say it.

11:28 Do you ever have, when you were a kid, and you're like, I don't want to go back to America because if I go back to America, I'm gonna get stuck there? You ever have that thought? You're having that thought right now. You ever have that thought? Like, you tell all the yeshiva guys, you tell the seminary girls, you'll make it back. You'll see. You'll have an apartment on Paron. It'll be a beautiful little life for yourself. Your parents could pay for two, three years of Mishpacha magazine. And maybe you'll stay. Maybe you won't. But, Many people go back and they have big dreams of coming back, but they never make it back. They never make it back. My mother-in-law, when she was dating, she dated here in Eretz Yisrael. She got engaged to my Shneur L'moshalom here in Eretz Yisrael, and they said we're going to make it back, and they never did. Only many, many, many years later, after my father-in-law passed away and my mother-in-law remarried, she made it back. This was Eli Melach's family. They said we're coming back. They never made it back. And then, very.

12:24 Tragically, very abruptly, we now know the story. Vayamas eli melech ish naamit vatishar he ushne banal eli melech dies. You ever see the movie Up? You know the cartoon movie Up. Do you not cry your heart out after the first five minutes? The rest of the movie is awful, but the first five minutes—I don't generally watch movies. But if I'm on a plane and Up is on, and I really just want a good cry, I turn on this movie Up for the first five minutes, and then I turn it off. What's it about? It's about an elderly couple that grew old together that never had children, and then the wife dies. At five minutes into the movie, and then the rest of the movie about his life afterwards. It's a tragic movie. But what always astounds me about that movie is you think the movie is about the couple. It's not about the couple. It's a movie about the husband, because the wife passes away after the first five minutes.

13:21 This whole time, what have we been talking about? The first two psukim is a story about Eli Melech. He's a noble man. He abandoned his post. It's the death of hope for Klal Yisrael. He has this sweet wife. His kids, not so much. It seems to be about a story about Eli Melech. And then the third psuk, end of act one, Eli Melech dies. And look how it describes him. VaYamos Eli Melech Ish Naami. Up until now, what do we say? He's Ishmi based Lechem Yehuda. He's a noble man. He's an Ephrati. He's a serious person. At the end of his life, what does he have left? He's not a part of the Jewish people. He's no longer considered noble. He's a traitor. The only thing that he's accomplished in his wife in his life, which is no small thing. I don't want to make anyone feel bad, but the only thing he's accomplished is he married Nami. That's the only thing he's known for. And look what it says: Vatisharhi usne baneh.

14:16 And now we find out the story is not about Eli Melech. This whole story was really a story about Naomi, because he's already gone, and she is now we'll call it the first remnant. She's the remnant. What's left? Naomi and her two children. How's it going to go? And now her children. Again, think about what it means to be a Jewish mother. Who's going through this? And your husband led you to a strange land, a traitorous land. And now you see your children. What do you want from your good Jewish children? At least marry a Jew. Don't get married here in Moab. They go and they marry Goiuta girls, Rus and Arpa. Says Veshema Achaz Arpa, Veshema Sheinis Rus, Vayeshvu Sham Keneser Shana. And instead of just being people that happen to be there, Vayeshvu.

15:09 They literally assimilate into the culture. They marry gayish girls. It's a tragedy for Naomi. Her life seems to be totally over. But it gets worse. This is where we will start talking again, like a normal person. Once we get the background, we know that right afterwards, Naomi's children pass away as well. It says, "Va'yamusu gam shneihem machlon the kilion." But Tisha, her Ishah, B'shnei Yaldeha, Ume Ishah, she is a remnant of a remnant. Naomi has nothing left, no children, no husband, two gayishah daughters. That's all he has. That's all we have. And all of that was to set the scene for what I want to talk about right now. What do you do if you're Naomi? I had a client today. I have permission to share this story. I want to make sure I get the words exactly right, so I'm pulling up the words on my phone right now. I'm not looking at my phone. I'm pulling up the words on my phone right now. I was when this client told me this today. I said, "Do I permission to tell this story?" This is exactly what I want to say. I have the quote right here. I want to tell you a story about a young lady. It's 100% a true story. I'll change only important details, like just so you won't ever know who it is.

16:37 It's a young girl who lohalenu comes from a broken family, not a girl who was ever really taken care of in her life. A girl who, right now at this stage in her life, is asking herself the question: So, who does love me? Do you know? Right, do you know what I mean? Well, maybe not. Okay, let's see. So, if I say that, it's not like the person is being overly dramatic or anything. It's just that we have to be careful about how we frame things. Just take a second. Do you know how much pain a person has to be in to ask the question, "Who does love me?" Every one of us was loved into being. We have a terminology in psychology today that's wrong. It's a destructive terminology. We say you have to learn to love yourself before you love another. That's a very dangerous thing to tell people. There is no such thing as learning to love yourself. The words "you are worthy of love" do not belong to you. They don't belong to me. We cannot. We could say that about ourselves all we want. We could say I am worthy. I am lovable. You can get in front of the mirror if you remember that old Saturday Night Live skit.

17:35 I'm good enough. I'm strong enough, and God's darn it, people like me. And no matter how many times you say those affirmations, it doesn't help. It doesn't help, because for a person to really, truly believe that they are worthy, they have to draw from the well springs of another. We grow up with parents. We grow up in a community. We grow up in camps. We grow up in schools. We had friends. We had family friends. We had the parents of our friends. There were tons of people in our lives that told us. You are worthy of love, but this is a young woman who's asking herself the question: Did anyone in my life tell me that I'm worthy of love? And thus far, her answer has been very few and far between. And the problem is that any time this client hits a rocky road, any time something goes wrong in any relationship, the feeling that she has is adrift. The feeling that she has is.

18:34 I'm going down the river, and I don't know if there's anyone there to catch me. That's the feeling that she has. That's a horrific feeling. To sit with a person like that and just to give them space—I want you to know—it takes a tremendous amount of work. Because most of us, when we're going through our hard time, we know we're going to be okay because people told us in life that we're okay. This is a young woman that never had that. A tragedy happened. In a community, she moved around America for a little bit when she was younger. A tragedy happened in one of the communities that she lived in. This is a Meisah Shalaya today that she was telling me a tragedy happened in one of the communities, and she was so pained by it. A person who very ordinarily has trouble expressing any emotions was able to call upon very deep emotions and really was very present in a way that I've rarely experienced with this client.

19:29 And I asked her. I said, 'Please tell me what this means. I need to understand. Were you so close with this person?' She said, 'I was not so close with this person.' I said, 'So tell me what the tragedy means.' And I listened to what she said. She said, 'Of all the places that I was in my life, this was the place where I felt I had a sense of belonging. This is a place where I said, "I am loved."' And she described how she would wear. And again, I don't know what this means. Girls maybe know better than me. She described that she would wear the nerdiest clothes, and she would wear like pink shirts and pink skirts and pink socks and pink shoes and pink headband. And she said, but in that school, I was the coolest kid in my grade. I have no idea what that means. If I'm being honest with you, I assume it means that she dressed nerdy, but I don't really know. It sounds to me like she was matching. That's about as much as I know about that.

20:23 So I had to like ask. I'm like, that wasn't a cool way of dressing. She's like, no, that's not a cool way of dressing. What do I know? Wear the same clothing every day. What do I know? But she said, but I was cool. I was loved, and she told me that in that community there was a rebbe of a certain grade. I won't tell you which grade. It doesn't matter. She told me there was a rebbe, and he just thought the world of them. He never looked at them as messed up children coming from a broken family. He never had a tsaros eye. He had an ayin tova, and so I asked her in the session today. I said, "Tell me, what would this Rebbe say about your situation in your life today?" His voice lives inside you. What does it say? I don't want to misquote it. I wrote it down, and I told her I stopped in the middle of the session. I said, "Can I please write this down so that I don't misquote it?" She said.

21:18 Speaking about the worst moment in her life, what this Rebbe would say: "You've never gone too far. We will always love you. We are all broken. It's." Say it again. Exceptionally powerful words. You've never gone too far. We will always love you. We are all broken. It's. That's the voice that she carries inside of her. And I asked her, in times like this, where you feel so adrift, where you hit a bumpy road in one of your relationships, where you feel like there's no space, because the relationship that she hit a bumpy road with is a really important person in her life. This is the person that gives her space to be herself, and now she doesn't have that. So I said, but is there a voice that lives inside of you that you could take with you in times where you feel totally adrift, when there's no sense of belonging? Can you call upon this rabbi's voice?

22:18 And it was amazing to watch the shift. In that moment, we were at that point. I want to say thirty minutes into the session. I asked her, 'How do you feel?' Knowing that you could call on this voice, close your eyes, meditate, call up that voice. She said, 'I just feel so much lighter.' This rebbe, he was a rebbe in a young grade, an elementary school grade. We're not talking about a high school rebbe. We're talking about an elementary school rebbe. This rebbe is walking around in his small town in America. And he has no idea. Just think about this. He has no idea that it was his voice all those years ago, for the short time that she lived in that community, that she's carrying with her today, that gives her that sense of belonging. Every one of us in this outdoor area, every one of us, is that to somebody else. And every person that we have that loved us into being lives inside of us.

23:17 It's an amazing exercise to do. I don't know if you'll ever have the chance to do it or the courage to do it. I tried to do it a couple of years ago. I got halfway through my list. It was very hard. Somebody gave me this idea. They said, 'Call the people that loved you into being and express gratitude.' So I said, 'How many people should be on the list? How many people loved me into being?' They said, 'Make a list and then put an asterisk by the people that really did it.' So I made the list. And then I softened up the list. There was like an NCSY advisor on the list who was like a really nice guy, but he didn't really love me into being. He was just kind of there in an important time. But my parents, Mar Kachashem, were on the list. There was an important principle that I had in my life that was on the list. There were a couple rebayim that were on the list, and I started making the phone calls. And I said, I just want to tell you, it was your voice. Thank you so much. It's very sensitive.

24:12 He was your voice that loved me into being. One of the rabbis that I called, I said, "Rabbi, I just want to thank you." I'll tell you a little bit about this rabbi. He's sick. He has yana machle. She bezachet to rofush lelma. Hadn't been in touch with him for years, but now I'm a man in my forties, and somebody gave me this piece of advice. I started thinking about it, and this is a wonderful rabbi. It was my eighth-grade rabbi. Now I want to tell you that on the outside, if you had asked me then, at 13 years old, did this Rebbe love you into being? I would have told you it was impossible for him to love me into being, because I was thrown out of the class so much that he wouldn't have had the time to love me into being. He used to throw me out of class so much. It was a Rebbe in Darche. I went to Yeshiva Darche Torah for elementary school. For those of you that know Farakway.

25:05 I was expelled from Haftar in fifth grade, and the only person that would take me into the yeshiva was Rabbi Bender Shlitah. There was another rebbe; he was a seventh-grade rebbe in Darche. His name was Rabbi Lubart. My mother got a phone call from Rabbi Lubart. He said, "Mrs. Berg, I just want to tell you that your son has been absent from class for two weeks." And my mother said to Rabbi Lubart, "He's not in your class. That's just the class he gets thrown out into. He doesn't go to your class." But I was thrown out so often that the Rebbe didn't know I wasn't in the class. So after two weeks of being a good boy in my other class, Rabbi Bluburger got nervous. I haven't seen Matt in two weeks, so he called my mother. I would have told you then, are you crazy? This Rebbe loved me into being. He threw me out every second. How could he have loved me into being? I started thinking about it. You should know that this Rebbe was a genius in chinuch. I was a kid who, baruch Hashem, had tremendous ADHD.

26:01 I married a girl who has no ADHD to try to rectify it for my children. I have six children, Kaninahara, and only one of them got my genes. Unfortunately for that daughter, but everybody else is doing great. That daughter only has two years left to school, so we're hanging in there. Two years left. At the end of every year, I'm like, here we go. You've met my daughter. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Am I exaggerating? I'm not exaggerating. The girl has no filter. You've seen this tonight. You've seen the show. This is ADHD. Forty-two years later. This Rebbe had a policy with me. He would look at me in class, and he would belt out the words, "Mit ice," which means "with ice." What did he mean? In Darche, the campus was very big. We were on one side of the campus, in the extreme right of the campus. In the extreme left of the campus, there was a woman whose name was Mrs. Katz, and she ran a catering company in the Waterview. And they had a fountain soda machine where you could get a big cup and fill it up with Diet Coke and ice. My job.

26:58 Was to run across the campus and get the rebbi a big Diet Coke, and he was a big man with ice. I think it's because the rebbi wanted me out of the class. I think it's better to have a clean version of this text. I know why he said that. He said that because before I could get in trouble, and he saw, like you ever see that when kids, like especially if you have ADHD kids, you ever see the moment that they're about to implode, you could tell. There's one of my daughter's teachers. She said, "Cause that whole class is like ADHD up the wazoo." She's like, "I need a riddle and hose. I just need like a thing that I could pull out and spray the entire class with riddle." This rebbe would see me and probably—I'm just guessing—my knees would start to shake. I'd probably start to write. I'd probably look in my bag for something that I wasn't supposed to do, and the rebbe would belt out and he would say, "Mitzvahs." It was a beautiful thing. I never thought about it before. Mitzvahs.

27:55 We had a phone like a landline. Some of you are younger in the audience. You know what that is? It was like a phone that attached to a wall. It had a long cord, and to dial it took time, because it had to snap back. We live in a world where these kids didn't grow up with it. These young kids have no idea what we're talking about. It was called a rotary phone. The reason that my rebbe had a phone in the class was because he was the gabbai tzadka for several gedali tyra in Eretz Yisrael, and he would tell us the stories how we would go around to this person and that person and ask for money, and he would tell us what a privilege it is to ask for tzadka. My job, if the phone rang, was to answer the phone. And one time, this is a true story. One time, the phone rang. I jumped up out of my seat. I was so excited the phone rang. I was a punk little eighth grade kid in Darchei. So I answered the phone inappropriately. They said, "You don't just answer when you go hello." So I answered the phone. I was like, "Yo, what's up?"

28:52 And there was somebody speaking Hebrew on the other end. Evshalu daberim harav Bender, I'm harav Gossman. So I said, "Hang on one second, Rabbi." There's a guy named David who works at the company. He's really good at his job. This is a big Rebbe. He was a large man. He took off. He was moving fast. This was not a common occurrence. He took off. He grabbed the phone out of my hand. He threw me out of the closet. He shut the closet door. We had a closet. That's where the phone was. He comes out of the closet five minutes later, and he pulls me over to the side. And I'm not going to tell you the gavel's name because I don't want to embarrass myself. It doesn't matter. It was a serious gavel. It was a person that, if I said this name, everybody in the room would gasp. That level gavel. He pulls me over to the side and says, "When you answer the phone, you need to answer respectfully, because a lot of times gadolay tyra are on the phone." So I said, "All right, who was it?" And he told me the rabbi's name, and even I was smart enough to know I messed up, but it didn't stop me.

29:48 From answering the phone that way, and I did it, and continued to do it for many years to come. Even when I was working in Darche, running Simcha Day Camp, I picked up the phone like a doofus, and it was Rebbe Zin Kaniewski. It's a common thing that when I pick up the phone like a doofus, there's a gadol batei r on the other end of the line. But this Rebbe didn't. He didn't yell at me. He didn't scream at me. He knew I didn't mean anything bad. He gave me a job because it kept me busy. I had another Rebbe whose name was Rebbe Krauss. Rabbi Kraus was a tzaddik. When I switched from darche from halter to darche in fifth grade, Rabbi Kraus saw right away I wasn't going to be able to handle the regular classroom. So he pulled me over to the side. I'll never forget this. A gem of a human being. He said, Mordechai. He called me Mordechai even though I was growing up. My name was Matt Berg. Mordechai, I want to tell you something. In this class, we have something called an emergency fire drill. What's an emergency fire drill?

30:42 He said, "If I look at you and say emergency fire drill, it means you get to go out of class and run around for 15 minutes." I was so prepared in case there was a fire in Darche. I want you to know, I could have led the whole school. I knew exactly where, what to do, and how to do it. Every nook and cranny in Darche, I knew. I knew it all because I had emergency fire drills twice a day. Rabbi Kraschuk just looked at me, go emergency fire drill. I go, let's out of there. My parents were the people that you know the potential speech that you get by PTA. Your son has a lot of potential. If only he would live up to that potential. And then my mother would come home after I like you know because I was fake sleeping because it's always better to get the news the day after you know it's like worth it to push it off. My mother would wake me up and go like I know you're not sleeping. Your teachers think you have a lot of potential. And at some point I mean I was like in eighth or ninth grade I was like can we just stop playing the game like.

31:38 We all know what potential means. Potential means you're doing nothing with your life. I never felt as much love as I did from Yeshiva Darke Torah. In my life, I've been in many yeshivas. I remember the day I got called into Rabbi Bender's office. There used to be a bus company in Darke called Rivlab Bussing. I don't know if any of you know Rivlab Bussing. Rivlab Bussing doesn't exist anymore. So I'm allowed to say lashon hara about it. It was the worst buses, Rivlab busing. You remember, Rivlab bussing was the worst busing that existed. If you were going to Shea Stadium in the summer, it was a guarantee that you were going to break down in the middle of the Van Wyck, guaranteed. And I want to tell you why those buses broke down, because me and three other guys had an anti-Rivlab club.

32:27 And whenever we were out of class, we would break into the buses and destroy the buses. We brought screwdrivers to school, and we would take things out. There was a kid I remember. He was taking out the steering wheel, and I said to him, "I don't think that's a great idea." It's one thing to take the radios to mess around with the chairs. He said, "It'll be fine." I remember him sitting there unscrewing the steering wheel. A bunch of lunatics in the arcade doing whatever they wanted, and we got caught. Dave Rivless, who ran Rivland Busing, caught us. And he pulled us into Rabbi Bender's office, and I thought, "This is the end of the world." I've been expelled already once. There's no reason for Darkei to keep me. It's not like I'm coming from a yeshivishah family. It's not like I'm coming from a wealthy family. I knew this was the end. And Rabbi Bender continued to love us, and he said, "Okay, you messed up. We had consequences, and we definitely felt his wrath." But I knew that in Darkei Torah, they were never going to throw me out.

33:21 And it wasn't like you would think, like from an eighth grader's perspective, from a seventh grader's perspective, you would think, like they're not going to throw me out. I can do whatever I want. It was the exact opposite. Is they're not going to throw me out? Don't mess this up. The sense of belonging was so palpable that I knew I was. I knew I was. We see this time and time again in Chomish. Cain, Cain says, "I killed Hevel." Akal Shmuel says, "You're Na'vinad." You have no place now. You're wandering around in the world. What does Cain say? Then I'm going to be dead. I'm going to be killed, because a person who doesn't have a sense of belonging, a person who doesn't have a place, is as good as dead. We see it by the Eglah Arufa. A person gets killed out in the field, and the elders of the city where this person came from have to say, "We are not responsible for his death." Of course, you're not responsible for his death. What do you mean?

34:16 But maybe we weren't malava him out properly. Maybe we didn't escort him out properly, so that when he went into the field, he didn't know that he was loved. He didn't know that he was cared for. Somebody came out into the field, says the Maral. Somebody came out into the field and attacked him. Why didn't he win the fight? The Maral says, "Cause he wasn't worth fighting for. Because there are people in this world that walk around in this world, and because nobody pays attention to them, because nobody cares about them." Because they don't feel the voices that love them into being. When somebody comes to attack them, their response is, "Take it. Who cares?" There are people that roll over in life, and maybe it's not that extreme. But how many of us, when the going gets tough, roll over because we say, "I'm not capable of doing this." Grit and resilience are built from love. It was the craziest thing. I was watching it happen. I'm sure you were watching it happen too.

35:10 In the COVID times, when these teenagers were going under left and right because they were locked in their rooms and their homes, and they had nowhere to go, and everybody was ripping these kids to shreds, telling you have no grit, you have no resilience. In our day, we would have for sure been amazing during COVID. It's not true, it's a lie. But if they had no access to education, that wasn't the problem. If they wanted to know what happened, they could have asked me. The problem was that they didn't want to talk about it. So I think it's better to say, 'I don't know' rather than making up something. That's the truth. But if they had no grit and resilience, that wasn't a kasha on those kids. That was a kasha on us. How did they not have grit and resilience? Grit and resilience comes from people who told these kids, 'You are capable.' And if they didn't have that, then it was because they didn't hear those voices. And it was a tragic thing that happened. I don't know if you know this. You might know this from working with younger girls. There's a concept, a term that's used now. It's a cruel and unusual term. Please, if you hear somebody use it, please tell them to stop. There's a word that the kids are using about each other. It's called being an NPC.

36:09 Being an NPC is a video game terminology. It means you are a non-playable character. That's what kids call each other these days. You're an NPC in a video game. There's always the person that you play with, and then there's the person that's on the side. They're just wallflowers. They don't actually do anything. The kids refer to COVID kids, kids who went into their rooms for a year and a half, two years, and when they came out, they had no social skills. They had no grit. They had no resilience. They're just on their phones all day. They came back to school, and the second they're allowed to have their phone, what do they do? They sit on the sides of the hallways. You walk into high school today. This is what I see. I see with my own eyes. And the kids tell me it's meisim b'chol yom. These kids are sitting on the sides, and they're all on their phones, and nobody's talking to each other. There are a group of kids that are talking to each other, but these kids are lined up on the side.

36:58 And the group of kids that are still socially with it are referring to those kids on the sides as NPCs. They're non-playable characters because they went in during COVID and they never came out. And I tell the guys in yeshiva, don't speak that way. Please don't speak that way. That's a human being who's suffering. That's a kid who needs you to go over and put your arm around his shoulder. That's not a kid who needs to be told you're an NPC. These are Edla Arufa kids. They went down because they didn't have a sense of belonging. If Chassar Shalom somebody has to give a get, we put the name of the place that you're from on the get because where you're from, your sense of belonging is part of your essence.

37:50 Hasal have a machlokas. Where does Adamarishon come from? The dirt that Adamarishon came from. Where did it come from? Did it come from all the corners of the earth, or did it come from under the mizbeach? What's the Gemara telling us? What's the deeper lesson here? A human being, if he comes from all over the world, it means he belongs everywhere. If he comes from under the mizbeach, it means you're always capable of being forgiven. Where we come from matters. What we're made of—the dirt that we're made of—it matters. It's an inner lesson, and there are countless examples like this throughout Torah. I want to bring you one last example. This really is the point of this year. I saw this. You called me. I said, 'This is it. This is the one.' I can find the piece. Got it. Listen to this.

38:44 There's Naomi. Nothing left in her life. She's a remnant of a remnant. At one point, she was a queen, the wife of the descendant of Nachshon Ben Aminadav, who lived in Beis Lechem Yehuda. He was a royal member of the family, a wealthy man. Now they're poor, they're destitute. She has two Gausha daughter-in-laws. Listen to the words of this pasuk. They're such exceptionally powerful words. V'takam he uchlosel. She gets up. What did Mami do? She was down. She was out. She had nothing. She's in a foreign land, enemy territory, in a selfish place. She gets up with her daughter in laws, vateysev mistev moav, and she returns from the fields of Moav. She's returning to Eretz Yisro. Could you imagine what that was like? Could you imagine what it would be like to walk into Rachavia, to walk into the five towns, to Muncie, to Lakewood, to Chicago?

39:40 And you were a woman who once was a woman of dignity. That everybody in the community looked at you and said, 'You are the person we want to be like. You're the queen.' You married Eli Melech, and you're coming back. And who's on your right side? And who's on your left side? Your two Goyish daughters, destitute, broken, alone, a betrayer, because we know the truth is that on some level Nami was responsible. Because where was Nami when Eli Melech said, 'We're going to Moab?' We all know how it works. I want you to know, men are not stupid. You think that we don't know what you're doing. We know exactly what you're doing. You think that we're making the decisions. I want you to know, we know that we're not. We appreciate that you allow us to pretend that way. We're very appreciative. My wife, you know how it sounds. If I say I think we should do this, she goes.

40:36 And just help me understand. Those words already tell me that the decision I made was wrong. I know that. My wife's a therapist. She's a very good therapist. My kids have no shot of staying under there. I'm a rabbi. My wife's a therapist. They're for sure going off. But God willing, though. She's very good. She has that therapeutic language. She goes, 'Help me understand what the positive impact and the negative impact of this decision might be.' And I go, 'Maybe you're right?' And then I change my mind, and she goes, 'You know what? I agree.' She thinks that I don't know what she's doing. I know exactly what she's doing. She's like, maybe we could consider all the options. I totally hear you, Eliza. Tell me what the other options are so I can do them. I know exactly what she's doing. Where was Nami when Eli Melech said, 'There's a famine. Let's bounce.' Where was she? Where was Nami saying, 'Don't do that.'

41:26 This is the time. Even though it's true, it's a reasonable thing. We have a family. Even though there was a time when Avram and Yaakov left the land because there was a family, like the Gemara in Baba Basra says, that's when they were a family, not when they were a nation. We're responsible for millions of people here in Eretz Yisrael. If you leave, what type of message does it send? She wasn't there. She was quiet. She was a pleasant woman. She went along with Eliyahu's plan, and that was a mistake. And then she had Machon and Kilion. And they married gayish girls. Where was their Jewish mother going? Please don't do that. I'll tell you a true story. I think I'm almost out of time, but I have to tell you this story because it's an amazing story. I'm out of time. I made the HD. Listen to this story. This is 100 a true story. I have rishus to tell this story. I can tell you all the details. A young man comes to NCSY Kollel from an out-of-town community, post 11th grade. He's a kid who, unbeknownst to his parents

42:24 Is getting Division One baseball scholarship offers. He's a very talented athlete. He comes to NCSY. Call. He's really not into Yiddishkeit at all. At all. He comes to my shir. At the end of the summer, he goes, Rabbi, I'm thinking of making a radical move. I'm thinking maybe I don't go to senior year and instead I come to Mivatsera. So I was like, That's a big move, my friend. Are you really ready for that? Given where you're coming from, do you need more time to cook? He goes, If I go back there, it's over. If I go back there, I'm not coming to Israel. I'm just going to take one of these scholarship offers that my parents don't even know about right now. I think this is a good move. I went. I spoke to the yeshiva. The yeshiva said, Mordechai, it's your call. I said, Let's take a flyer. The kid came. I wish I could tell you there was a happy ending. He didn't do great. He had his ups and his downs. And at the end of the year, we started talking about shanah bet, and I said maybe it's worthwhile to go to a different program for shanah bet. It doesn't seem like Mivaser is the best fit for you. He agreed. We got him into another yeshiva. I wish I could tell you that had a happy ending.

43:20 It didn't. Doesn't matter what the details were. He left halfway through the year. It was anything but a happy ending. And he went to college, and in college, he got involved in certain things, and he stopped keeping Shabbos and he stopped keeping kosher. And after college, he graduated. He had a job, and he was going out in that job. He was, for whatever reasons, he had to be in the bars all night long with his clients. And in order to stay up all night long and all day long, he got involved in taking certain drugs that would keep him up all night long and all day long. And in this bar, he met a young Gentile woman, and he fell in love with her. And his mother calls me up, and she says, "Rav Berg, you always tell me don't fight with my son. When he stopped keeping Shabbos, you said don't fight with him. When he stopped keeping kosher, you said don't fight with him. He's going to marry a goyish girl. I can't have goyish grandchildren. I have to fight with him." I said to her, "What are you talking about?"

44:16 The whole reason that we didn't fight for Shabbos and didn't fight for kosher was because we were waiting for this fight. This the one to fight. She sat down with him and she said to him, "I love you. You're going to kill me. You're going to break my heart. This the most important thing in the world to me." He calls me up. He goes, "Rabbi, what do I do?" I said, "You have a decision to make. How much does your Yiddishkeit mean to you? Don't do this for your mom." Because in 20 years from now, in 30 years from now, if you break up with this girl and you marry somebody who you're not happy with, you're going to turn to your mother and go, "I met the love of my life. You broke me up. You have to make a decision right now. What does your Yiddishkeit mean to you?" And he calls me back two weeks later and he goes, "Rabbi, I broke up with her. I'm devastated. But I realized, as much as I don't keep Shabbos, as much as I don't keep kosher, as much as I don't go to yeshua on Yom Kippur, I can't marry a guy." It was a watershed moment for him. He never realized how much he cared. It was an amazing moment.

45:07 A couple of months after that, he gets a phone call from this Gentile girl. She says, "I can't live without you. This is crazy. You broke up with me over Judaism. You don't even care about Judaism." He said, "I really do. I'm sorry." And this girl said, "If Judaism is so important to you, I want to know what it's about." So she started learning, and they were going to a they were going to a rabbi who I wouldn't have necessarily approved of the conversion, though that rabbi happens to be a very dear friend of mine, and it's a little uncomfortable, but. They were going to him, and the girl says, "I don't feel like this conversion is real. I don't feel like it's authentic. We have to go to a real rav." And they were in an out-of-town community, and there was a very serious rav there. And she started learning Torah, and she started teaching in a Jewish school, secular studies, and she became deeply embedded in the Jewish community. And ultimately, they go to the bezd to convert, and I get a phone call from the rosh bezd, and he calls me up. It's not my first dealing with this rosh bezd, and he calls me up and he says, "Mordechai, is it true?"

46:07 That every single week, for almost a decade now, is it true that you speak to this Talmud every single week? Do you consider yourself him his Rebbe? I said it's true. Every week he either wishes me a good Shabbos or I wish him a good Shabbos. But we kept in touch even the weeks when he wasn't keeping Shabbos. Every single week we wished each other a good Shabbos. He said Mordecai, I want to tell you we met with this girl today. We were blown away. She's so authentic, so sincere. She's a real georas, and we're gonna go ahead with the georas. Because they have rebbeim, you're his rebbe, she has a rebbe, and she converted. Three weeks later, they got engaged. Three weeks later, they got engaged. Unbelievable! The parents of the boy go for Shabbos to the girl. They're all going to spend the Shabbos together while they're engaged. And the father told me that he's in the kitchen and the girl is preparing deli sandwiches. And she gets the pickle jar out of the fridge. She opens the pickle jar.

47:04 And she goes and she washes in the teils yadayim, and the father looks at her, and he goes, "What are you doing?" She goes, "It's brought down in Mishnah Brura that really you should wash your hands before you touch vegetables that are in liquid." And the father goes, "It's not carpas. Who does that? Literally, people do that on Pesach because it's different. Because nobody really does it during the year." This girl is Mamish a Frumer. She's a she's a real serious girl. I went to the Chasna. I surprised the boy in America. His parents flew me, and it was a beautiful thing. I flew in for one day. I showed up at the chass. It was a beautiful moment. I never met the kallah before in my life. She's a gentile woman. It doesn't matter of what descent she is, what heritage she is. She's a gentile woman. I'm telling you, this girl looked like she was a Beis Yakov girl from the times. It was the thummiest wedding dress I've ever seen in my entire life. My daughters are growing up in Ramat Beit Shemesh. My daughter's wedding dress was not that thummi. This woman looked Amish. It was unbelievable. Why?

48:02 And they're raising a from home today. This happened this year. This year in October was the chasna, because a mother stood up and said, "If you marry that goyish girl, it's going to break my heart." Where was Nami? Where was Nami when Machlon and Kilion got engaged and married to gentile girls? She was nowhere to be found. Vatakam Nami. Nami got up. She got. Where did she get the strength to get up from? From this horrific life that she lived. She lost everything. Listen to the words of the pasuk: "Ki shama b'stei ma'av, ki pachad Hashem es amo la'seis lehem lechem." Because she said, "I heard in the fields of Ma'av, in that immoral place, in that selfish place, I heard that Hashem did chesed for my people, for His people, and He gave them bread and He ended the famine in Eretz Yisrael." She didn't go back to Eretz Yisrael because there was bread there.

48:58 She went back to Eretz Yisrael because Hashem was paka. He did chesed. He remembered his children even though they were unworthy. And Nami said, "If Hashem remembers His nation even when they're unworthy, then I too am part of that nation." That's where she got the strength from to say, "Vatakam Nami, I'm going to walk back into town. My two daughter-in-laws are going to be my right and left arm. I'm going to walk in with my head held high, and I'm going to say, 'Chatosi avici pashati.'" But I'm part of this, and I won't leave. How levai that the children in our community should feel that way? How levai that we should feel that way? That in our worst moments, Hashem—it's not a cliche thing—Hashem loves us. That in our worst moments, Hashem says, "I can't get rid of you. You are mine." That's a healthy thing for children to grow up with, for children to know. We live in a world today that we used to live in villages. We lived in villages. We were hunter gatherers.

49:55 Everyone was part of something. I live in a block in Ramat Beit Shemesh. It's like a bungalow colony. If somebody orders pizza, you've been on my block. If somebody ordered pizza, everybody knows who ordered pizza that night. I went to the hospital for a month once. I almost died. It was a crazy story. At a different time, the ambulance came on my block on a Shabbos morning. I'm walking into the ambulance and I look up and I see tons of little children all watching. Berg is going to the hospital, and I said to myself.

50:25 Everybody knows, Rav Weinberger Shlitah. I heard from him many years ago. You know how a Jewish secret is told, one person at a time. It's a beautiful thing to live in a bungalow colony. But today, these kids are growing up, and they think they have connections, and they do. This one follows me, and that one likes me, and this one slid into my DMs, and this one swiped right. Everybody has their thing that they're connected to, but a sense of belonging that they don't have. That's why if they don't have grit and resilience, it's because they don't know that they're worthy even in their lowest moments. That's the gift we can give our children. That's the gift we can give each other. The connection to Shavuos is obvious. We should not celebrate Shavuos. Shavuos was an epic failure. Hakadosh Baruch Hu came and gave us the Torah forty days later. Moshe Abinu destroyed it. La'enei Kol Yisrael, he destroyed it. It was a failure. It didn't go.

51:18 So why do we read the story of Rosh Hashanah to remind us that in our lowest moment, right? We were at the top. We were like Eli Melech. Forty days later, we're like Nami, broken. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is pachadasam. It should be a sukos for us. It's a lot of sweetness, of beauty. We should be zeicha. We're coming together a couple of days before Shavuos. Thank you so much for putting this together. When yidden sit together like this, it gives us a sense of belonging. We're not just somebody who sat next to somebody on a keter chair outdoors in Rehavia. We're part of a community. There's a sense of belonging. I'll finish with this. Baruch Hashem, my father's a man who did well for himself in his life. When I was younger, we didn't have much money. When I was a teenager, my father's business went well. My father made a comment to me once, and he said to me, "If money can solve it, it's not a problem." And I laughed.

52:14 I said, Pat, that's easy for you to say. You haven't. He looked at me and he said, "Not in our community. In our community, if you get sick and you need money, no problem." How many of us have contributed to a campaign somebody put up there? In Lo Alenu, somebody passed away. We need to raise a million dollars for this family so they should have money for the rest of their lives. We'll get a million dollars. There is nothing for us in our community. Forty-eight hours, seventy-two hours. We'll beat it by twice. We'll get two million dollars. If you're sick, lo alenu, and you have cancer, you call Chai Lifan. You have a child who has Down syndrome, you call Ches. And our community is a tremendous community of Chesed. It's vayichan Shomrei Israel negedahar. We have a deep sense of belonging with each other. But are we communicating that to our children? Do we actually feel it, or have we moved a little bit too far into the cities of our lives? Maybe we have a lot of connections, but a little less belonging. And if that's the case, then in order to be zoycher to Matan Torah.

53:08 Let's do many more events like this. Let's sit. Let's talk to each other. People have to be known. It's not Brooklyn where you dive in one shul this Friday night, another shul Shabbos morning, another shul Shabbos afternoon, and you could be dead for two weeks before somebody knows that something happened to you because you don't belong anywhere. This is a community, and if it's a community, we have a responsibility to each other. Thank you so much for having me. It's a tremendous privilege to be here. L'chatchamet.