Shavuos - You're Not Broken

2:15 Where's Mrs. Staller? I saw Mrs. Staller here before. It was wonderful to be in your house in Lawrence. It's better to see you here in Eretz Israel. I want to share a shvus tyra. Start off by asking two quick questions and then moving into the meat and potatoes. The minig in Klal Yisrael to stay up all night is a very precious minig. It's not a minik that really makes much sense in the sense that nobody has a good day the next day if you have young children. So it's all about keeping them away from your husband or sons that were up all night. It becomes a lot of pressure for the women. I've learned that shvuas for the men and shvuas for the women are two very different experiences. I've been married for a long enough time to understand this is not always the yomtiv that has the same geshmack. Purim and shvuas seem to go together.

3:17 Nothing beats Purim on both sides of the fence. It could be a complex, it could be a complex yantiv. Both bechinus of Kabbalah Satora. So I want to try to share a little bit tonight of today. For me, it's tonight. I haven't slept seven or eight hours in the last three days. No. And I'm flying to Toronto tomorrow night, so for me it's tonight, but it's obviously the day. I want to try to explain a little bit of the depth of the essence of the Yom Tov of Shavuos. Why is it that we stay up all night? The Arizal says that someone who stays up all night on the Yom Tov of Shavuos is guaranteed to have a year of vitality, a year of life. And that somehow comes from staying up all night. The first question is to explore what the nature of Shavuos is, such that it gives us this vitality, this life for the course of the entire year.

4:21 It is not only for men. I did not mean to obligate anybody, but for sure, somebody who stays up all night learning has tapped into the essence of Torah. And for sure, we know that Ko Tomar LeBeis Yaakov. Certainly, women have a chelak in Torah. It's not obligatory for men either. But if you do stay up all night, or even a little bit, you've tapped into the vitality of Shavuos. The shaila is, what does that mean? There's a gemara in Chagiga. This is our second question for the night. The gemara in Chagiga tells us about Ben Azay that when he was learning, there was a heavenly fire that surrounded him. Rav Kiva found out. That Ben Azay had this heavenly fire, and he came to him and he said, 'Surely you must be learning Ma'ase Merkava. You must be learning like the deepest Kabbalistic inyanim in Torah, and that's why you were zecher to such a heavenly fire.' And Ben Azay said, 'No, that's not what I'm doing.'

5:17 I'm connecting psukim and kesuvim back to psukim and neviim, back to psukim in Torah. So because I'm doing this, the type of Torah that I'm learning is the Torah of Har Sinai. And that's why the same fire that existed by Har Sinai exists now when I'm learning. Again, the shaila is: What is this Torah of Har Sinai? It sounds like there are two different types of Torahs: a Torah not of Har Sinai, and a Torah of Har Sinai. A Torah of Har Sinai comes with a heavenly fire. And what is this Torah in Har Sinai? It's to trace k'suvim to nevi'im, nevi'im to Torah. What exactly does that mean? I want to share with you an unbelievable Torah from the Alter Rebbe. This is a game-changing Torah. I feel a deep sense of achrayus on two levels. Whenever the Chizuk Mission comes to Israel to share with you something new and something special.

6:08 The first level I feel it on is there's always a phone call that happens before this year. There's a Barry phone call that exists. I don't know if you've ever been on a phone call with Barry, but this is always the way it goes. Rabbi Berg, this is a very special group that's coming. It's always a very special group that's coming in Barry's eyes. Special Unique for sure, but special. The and Rabbi Berg, we really need to touch their soul. We really need to get to the essence. These women, they're on fire. We need to bring. So there's always this pressure that Barry puts on me to try to do something good. I'm trying my best. I hope I'll do something good. That's always one, but also there is I don't want to. Chas Hashem be mizalzel in anybody's Torah. The Torah of Chutz La'aretz is a beautiful Torah.

6:57 But the Torah of Eretz Yisrael is different. Avir de Eretz Yisrael machkim, the Gemara says. When you're here in Eretz Yisrael, it brings a level of wisdom that you don't otherwise get if you're from Montzie or Brooklyn or the Five Towns or Lakewood or wherever it is that you're from. And not Chas Hashem to be mizalzel in any of those places. They're beautiful, wonderful places. But how often in life do people see two, three times a year. Baruch Hashem. You are zeicher to this view, sitting here right outside the Kaisel's most unbelievable thing in the world. But to try a little bit to tap into a Torah that's worthy of traveling 6,000 miles to come. I hope this Torah is something that's going to be life-changing and that it'll present a new paradigm of how we approach ourselves. The Alter Rebbe asks the following question: One of the miracles that happened at Har Sinai in the month of Nisan, a very unusual miracle.

7:48 Is that when Hakadosh Baruch Hu spoke, there was no echo. The words that Hashem spoke didn't echo. There was no echo when Hakadosh Baruch Hu spoke. Right now in this room, there's an echo. It seems at first glance to be a very unnecessary type of miracle. The Rebbeinu Sholom doesn't do miraculous things. It doesn't appear to us to add anything to the Torah that's being given over. If it would have echoed, then it would have been a different Torah. It's very difficult to understand. The simple explanation, which is not simple at all, but it's the commonly given explanation, and it's not the explanation that we're going to be giving today. The common explanation is that the world absorbed Hakadosh Baruch Hu's word. So when Hakadosh Baruch Hu spoke, normally something bounces off something else. For example, my words are bouncing off the walls. The walls are not being transformed by my words; they bounce off.

8:45 The simple explanation is that when Hakadosh Baruch Hu spoke by Mayim HaSinai, it entered into the essence of creation. It permeated the fabric of creation, so there was no echo. That's the simple explanation. It's a very beautiful explanation, as I said. It's not simple at all, but we're going to go ten steps deeper. I want to share with you something unbelievable that the Alter Rebbe said. The Alter Rebbe said as follows. I'm going to use my words, but this is what he means. When we speak. There's no echo within ourselves. If a person goes to again, I've never been, but I imagine that if a person goes to the Grand Canyon, there's probably a place there where a person can speak and there's enormous echo. The echo is always outside of yourself. Within yourself, there's no such thing as an echo. A person can't speak and then feel like there's an echo within themselves. That's impossible.

9:43 Because the echo always occurs outside of ourselves. What was revealed by our Sinai? What changed? When we make phone calls Sometimes you only have an echo. It's very disconcerting. It's very because we shouldn't hear an echo. We're not meant to hear an echo within ourselves. There's no echo. It's a beautiful horror. Thank you. This world is made up of Hashem's words. If we could wear spiritual glasses, we would not see chairs, tables, or walls. We would see the letters of creation themselves. The Gemara says that Betzalel, who created the Mishkan, was Mitzareif the Oseios of the Bria. He changed around the letters of creation. That's how he built the Mishkan. Everything in our world is made of letters. We see a fragmented reality. Where the letters appear to us as physical things.

10:45 But in truth, we are not sitting in chairs, we are not eating on tables, we are not surrounded by walls. If we had spiritual glasses, all we would see is letters. There was a movie. They made a movie about this. I think I heard that it was written by Yiddin. There was a movie called The Matrix. I think H. Dot com at some point had that on its list of movies that Jews should see. I'm not sure if I agree with that or not, but if you've seen the movie, I'm not betraying myself, but I definitely did. If you see in the movie, then you know that in the like at the end of the movie The pinnacle of the movie, the character that's the main character, he sees he doesn't see walls anymore. He sees when he there they had it as numbers. They had the numbers of the computer code. We would have the same concept if we could see beyond creation. We would see the spiritual components that make up all things.

11:37 What was revealed by Har Sinai? When Hakadosh Baruch Hu spoke, there was no echo. Because at that moment All of creation stripped back the veil of the fragmentation of physical reality and revealed itself to be Him. So there was no echo, because we were all living within the true reality, where there was nothing else other than Hakadosh Baruch Hu. So the words that would fragment themselves normally and that would bounce off of the mountain didn't bounce off of the next mountain because they simply absorbed themselves into the words that Hakadosh Baruch Hu had already spoken to make that mountain appear as a mountain. In other words, it was all Him. That by itself, if we stop there, would be an amazing vort. We're going to take it, as I said, many, many levels deeper. Step number one: there is no echo. By Har Sinai, because in that moment, Ein Odmalvado, everything is Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Just like there's no echo within ourselves, there's no echo within creation. That's step number one.

12:49 Step number two. We're now post Har Sinai. Chet Ha'egel, whenever it happened The world reverts back to its state of fragmentation, where we don't see the letters of creation. We don't see the essence, the soul of everything. What do we see? We see tables and chairs and walls. Did something change or not? In other words Was there a difference between before Har Sinai and after Har Sinai? Did the world change in some way that, even though it appears to be the same exact thing, is there some shift in the fabric of creation? That does something different that's relevant to all of us. The outer Rebbe says, "Yes." What changed? What changed is as follows: the world got a taste of what it's like to be authentic. Before, after. Before Har Sinai, the world, if it could speak, if a mountain could speak, would say, 'I'm a mountain.'

13:58 After Har Sinai, the mountain knew something about itself. I'm not a mountain. I am the Dvar Hashem. The mountain is a character that I play. And I yearn not to play this character anymore. I yearn for that Har Sinai moment when my true essence was revealed. That's what I yearn for. So the world itself went through a change. Once we discern that we're just playing a character. We can't play the character anymore Not so well. By the way, if you think about it, this is what makes a great actor or a great actress. They call them method actors. A method actor means that when you're playing the part You don't believe that you're playing a part, and therefore the audience who's watching you doesn't believe that you're playing a part. There was an actor. Who unfortunately took his own life. He played a villain in the Batman movie called the Joker. It was played by Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger was a method actor, and it wasn't just from a couple of hours before he came on set. He became the essence of that character, and it drove him insane to the degree that he took his life.

15:17 They say also about Jim Carrey that Jim Carrey is a method actor. That when he's in a character, he lives that character. Which is hysterical because some of the characters that he plays are ridiculous. I'm trying to imagine somebody walking around as some of those characters. But yeah, Mrs. Stoller, I think you are a—I couldn't have said it any better myself. But the nature of the character is that once it's not real to us, once we realize that we're just playing a character, we can't play the character anymore. There's there's a there's a revelational moment. That every person in this room has had. I know I've had it. It is a revelational moment where you discover something about yourself, and there's a pure moment of authenticity. After that, life is never the same. You just yearn to go back to that moment. It's like a drug. I just want to live like that forever. Lamashal, if you've ever had a purely honest conversation with a friend Halavai it should be a relationship. But let's say I'll use the not relationship mashal because that's the easier one.

16:27 Everybody has things that they hide. Every one of us is living from a hidden place because nobody wants to confront the shame of acknowledging that things in my life are not really going as I want them to. And we want to acknowledge We don't want to acknowledge that shame because it's so embarrassing that it's happening to us. We don't want to acknowledge that shame because we know that we're a contributing factor. So it's one thing to acknowledge and admit that we're—I'm going to use examples—that our children aren't doing what we want them to do. It's like could be embarrassing, could be like I never imagined that this is the way my life was going to go. To talk to a friend and to say "Zakoevly, it hurts me so much to see my child behaving this way." And I think that I played a role here And I didn't mean to do that. In fact, I dedicated my life to the exact opposite of that. I dedicated my life to raising beautiful, wonderful Olvdei Hashem, and I raised a child who maybe isn't that way at this point in time. That I might have been a part of that process that led that child to that place.

17:39 We got married. We stood under the chuppah. We had dreams. We knew for sure we were going to do it better than our parents. You remember that? By the way That was a tremendous gift you just gave me. I want to say the room just divided itself into three parts. There was the people in the room that didn't laugh, but they were like, shoot, that hurts. There were people in the room that laughed out loud, and those people were like, they're my people. And then that was the gift that you gave me. The gift you gave me was, yes, I breathe that moment. I want you to know I'm secretly that person too. And the truth is, you really just laughed for all of us. That's a laugh that comes from a deep, deep, deep place. It's group therapy. One hundred. The Chizuk Mission is an authentic place.

18:27 After you guys come back from the spa, who needs sleep? The idea that I don't have the marriage that I wanted. That there are thoughts and feelings that come up within myself that I don't ever want to give voice to. I don't even want to give voice to those feelings right now. There are all things that we think about our spouses, about our lives, that it's like super uncomfortable to say out loud. And worse I might have been responsible for this, at least 50%. I don't have the marriage that I want, not because my husband's a bad guy, but because I've shown up in ways that I'm not proud of. Everyone has a place that they go. That's like there's this life that they pretend to lead, the character that they play, and then there's a if you're lucky One, maybe two friends where you go to be your absolute truest self.

19:22 When you let go of the character of who you think you're supposed to be and you embrace your authentic self, it's a drug. You want to live your life that way forever. You're like, I don't want to live in this fake reality of pretending to be something that I'm not. I don't want to do it anymore. By the way, that's why, on some level, I'm so jealous of people that go to 12-step meetings. If you ever want to be in a room, 12-step meetings. Oh You're way deep into this parsha. It's good to be by a therapist. It's good to be authentic by a therapist. It's amazing to be authentic in a group of people that are just like none of us have to be embarrassed because all of us are broken. The world yearns after Har Sinai. Once the world came to its It came to its like revealed essence. The world was like I'm so tired of being a mountain.

20:23 I'm so tired of being a mountain. I don't want to play a mountain anymore. I want to live in Olam Haba where they forget mountain. I just want to be who I am. So something very precious happened at Har Sinai. Even though the world reverted back to the state that we live in right now, it's not the same. After you have that moment of authenticity, you can never be the same. So step number two is the world yearns deeply in ways that we can't possibly understand. The world yearns to return to its essence. That's step number two. Step number three And this is maybe the hardest part to understand. All of the brokenness in our lives All of the pain that every one of us experiences We experience that pain because that's the fragmented reality trying to attach itself to authenticity. For us, that feels exceptionally heavy.

21:30 But the truth is, our broken parts of ourselves are trying to hitch a ride onto our authentic being. I'll explain what I mean. The physical world After Harsinah It yearns to attach itself to the Dvar Hashem. What is the Dvar Hashem in this world? What is that thing called the Dvar Hashem in this world? It's us. We're the Dvar Hashem in this world. The Dvar Hashem in this world is a yid. That's what it means to be a Jew. A Jew has a capacity that no other creation has. We are the revealed essence of Hakadosh Baruch Hu in this world. That's what it means to be a chosen nation. A chosen nation doesn't mean you're better than anybody else. A chosen nation means that you're on a mission. Chizuk mission. You're on a mission. You're on a chizuk mission to tell the world you are really the Dvar Hashem.

22:29 I like when Rabbi Kalish says this. Rabbi Kalish tells when he's teaching his guys in Waterbury, he says this all the time. He goes, "You are a neshama." You are a neshama. He's saying you are created by Hakadosh Baruch Hu to be the revealed essence of Hashem in this world. That's what a neshama is. The umos ha'olam, the nations of the world, they're chasing after us. It's not just the nations of the world. Physically, it's the nations of the world spiritually. It's all the parts of ourselves that represent the worldliness, the broken, fragmented physical reality. It's all chasing us. It's a strange thing about history. You could read history if you read history and you don't understand that it's all revolving around Klal Yisrael. It's the craziest thing. Try reading history and see what the Jews were doing at that time. We are a very small nation. We're a very small piece of land.

23:26 The world is obsessed with this piece of land. It's the strangest thing in the world. Is there a war between Russia and Ukraine? When was the last time you read about it? Right. Who cares? First of all, even the world says we don't really care. It's not interesting. Everyone's the hack about the president and what does he feel about us and what does he not feel about us? Why are we at the center of this whole thing? We are a magnet. A Jew is a magnet for all the things in this world to be able to say Reveal me in my true essence. I want to say something that I think I think it's true. There's a tremendous gift that we've been given in 2025. We have wealth in ways that are unprecedented throughout history. Even wealthy Jews 500 years ago, a thousand years ago, did not have wealth like we have today.

24:20 In the final moments before Mashiach The physical world is attaching itself to us in unprecedented ways, and it's begging us: use me in a godly way so that I can reveal my true essence. It's such a responsibility. Money is such an enormous responsibility. If you have money, the kisufim, kesef, the kisufim, the desire of money is: use me in a godly way. Don't use me in a non-godly way. I had an opportunity. The yeshiva last night. The reason I'm so tired is the yeshiva was last night, two nights ago. I forget. The yeshiva ran a fundraiser for tuition. Baruch Hashem, we were zayecha. I almost met my goal. I wanted to reach a goal of $100,000. I got to 95. Raise $95,000 for the boys for next year. Baruch Hashem. I met. I went into New York City a couple weeks, week and a half before the fundraiser to meet with some of the balabatim of yeshiva.

25:18 So I have the opportunity. I want you to know I'm tremendously inspired by the people that I met with. They're so generous, but not just that. They're so real. They're such real people. I was sitting in the middle of Manhattan. I don't want to give any more details because I don't think the person would want me to say their name or to embarrass them. I was sitting in the middle of Manhattan, the middle of the power of New York City. On whatever level floor this was. It was like one of those kosher buildings. I'm used to buildings. You have to understand. I'm Eretz Yisrael Dick. I've been out of America for 17 years. I'm not used to going into buildings where the elevators you don't press the buttons. There's elevators where they send you up because of security risk. You can't just go up there. When I was growing up in New York City, you went into an elevator, you press the button. That was like the whole fun of the thing is to press the button. Your father says you can press the button. You go into elevator this building that you don't press buttons. We went up. I'm sitting with this guy and he's giving me unbelievable stories about tzedakah that not that he was a part of that somebody else was a part of. I said to him, do me a taiva.

26:17 I said, I'm an educator, but I'm a poor educator. I'm a rebbe. I'm not sitting here with millions of dollars. Far from it. So I said to him, how can I teach the boys how to give tzedakah? How can I teach the boys how to give tzedakah? It's a good question. If you grew up in a home which Baruch Hashem I did, if you grew up in a home where your parents gave tzedakah and you saw it, which by the way is not so obvious. Sometimes parents make a mistake. They give tzedakah and they hide it even from their own children. That's not good chinuch. It's great to give matan b'seisr. Nobody's saying you should brag about it to your children. Your children should know that you give tzedakah. This is not just a plug for daily giving. Your children should know that you give tzedakah. It's a big Torah to have your children know you give tzedakah. I'll tell you, my father, many years ago, when I was an heir to Israel, I used to go to a family for Shabbos, and I felt very uncomfortable. This family really had no money. A mamash had no money. I was very uncomfortable going there for Shabbos. I felt like I was taking the food out of their mouths.

27:11 So I stopped going. So my mother called me and she said, "Why'd you stop going?" She said, "They noticed that you stopped going. Why'd you stop going?" I said, "Mom, I feel like I'm taking the food out of their mouths. I can't go there for Shabbos." She said, "You can go there for Shabbos." I said, "I'm not going there for Shabbos." Next thing I know, I got a phone call from my father. My father said, "You can go there for Shabbos." I said, "Dad, I'm not going there for Shabbos. I'm taking the food out of their mouths. You can go there for Shabbos. I'm not going there for Shabbos. You can go there for Shabbos. I'm not going there for Shabbos." Finally, my father relented. He said, "Listen. They don't know this, but I've been paying for all their food for years. So you can go there for Shabbos. You're not taking food out of their mouths. You're taking money out of mine, so it's fine." I ate like a beast when I went for Shabbos. I was like, that's my dad's money. I don't care about that. But there's a big Torah that my father. I knew my father was about tzedakah. I just didn't know where it went. He was very hidden about where it went. I said to this guy, if you don't grow up with parents who gave tzedakah

28:00 If you don't grow up, miser. By the way, it's a real thing. We don't. People give tremendous amounts of tzedakah. Not everyone is machbad on ma'aser. I heard from a major personality in the Jewish world that if every yid would give ma'aser, we wouldn't have problems in the Jewish community. People give, even people who give a tremendous amount, don't realize. I was just talking last week to Jonathan Donath, who's the founder of Daily Giving, who's my roommate from back in the day, and he said to me, he himself, he's the biggest bal tzedakah in the world. He's running around like crazy, raising money to give tzedakah. So I, so he said he started a miser account. He's like, I was giving a lot of tzedakah. I didn't realize how much money I had to give. And it's a beautiful thing. To give tzedakah is a beautiful thing. I said to this guy, 'How do I teach these boys how to give tzedakah?' He looked at me like I was from the moon. He said to me, "I kid you not." He said, "It's not your money."

28:50 It's not your money. So I'm like, it's one thing if a rebbe gets up and says that. It's like I'm a shfiach shmuuz, like it's not your money. It's a rabbi's money. I'm sitting in the middle of New York City. With a major, major personality who can give a tremendous amount of tzedakah, he does give a tremendous amount of tzedakah, and he's sitting there yelling at me. It's not your money; it's the Rebbeinu Shlomo's money. And he said to us, he goes, "This is what he said to the Rosh Hashanah myself. He goes, and you're going to have to give din v'cheshbon on every penny that you spend. You bought that car; you're going to have to give din v'cheshbon. Why'd you buy that car? And why didn't it go to tzedakah?" And I'm sitting there going, 'It's like one thing if I say it, but if this guy said, I need to fly you to Eretz Yisrael to give a shmuuz to the boys.' It's an unbelievable thing. Money desires to be used for the right thing. Money doesn't feel comfortable when we stop embracing materialism. The world doesn't feel comfortable.

29:38 What's the deeper tirah here? What's the chesed mission tirah? The chesed mission tirah is like this. What was that? For sure the chesed mission has its own tirah. We have a rebetzin, we have a minahelat, and we have our own tirah. What's the Torah? This is the Torah. All the challenging parts of our lives, all the physical broken pain that we go through, all the aspects of our failed marriage, all the aspects of the way that we wish that we would have raised our children, all the pain that we're going through—it's attaching itself to us because it yearns to be redeemed. It's a very big thing to say. It's a deep Torah. When Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave the Torah, He revealed the world's essence. The world, after that, said, "I can't be this way anymore." It runs after Yidden. It attaches itself to Yidden. It says, "Take my fragmented nature and reveal my unity." It's not just true on a physical place. It's true within ourselves.

30:45 I'm not supposed to be this way. It doesn't feel right. It feels like it's dragging me down. All of this brokenness that I'm experiencing, all of this psychological pain that I'm experiencing, it feels like it's dragging me down. It's not. It's trying to hitch a ride. It's attaching itself to you so that you could reveal the essence of all the brokenness. You're not happy in your marriage. It's bearing down on you. Givaldik. It's because it yearns to be redeemed. You have a child who's struggling. It's painful. Givaldik. That child is yearning to be redeemed by you. Everything that goes wrong is an opportunity to show the Divar Hashem within it. Which means as follows: There are two types of Torah. There's a Torah that's a broken Torah, and then there's a Torah that's before all brokenness. The broken Torah is a very simple type of Torah. It's like you have a question. This is an answer.

31:39 You have a question. This is an answer. I don't know what to do. I don't know what the halacha is. So the Torah comes along and says, if you find yourself in this situation, this is the answer. That's a tirah for brokenness. That's a tirah for something that went wrong. What do I do? There's a tirah that comes before all the chaos. There's a tirah that comes before all the brokenness of the world. That is Hashem Himself. That's what Ma'amar Har Sinai was. Ma'amar Har Sinai was not just Hashem came down to tell you that if you find yourself in this situation, this and this is the halacha. It's a very surface level of tirah. There's a much deeper level of Torah. The deeper level of Torah is everything is the Dvar Hashem. The mountain is Dvar Hashem. The physical world yearns to be redeemed. It yearns to have its inner essence revealed. All the brokenness, all the fragmentation All of the material things in our lives that are not working—they're attaching themselves to us because they yearn to be revealed before the brokenness. They want to go back to the original states.

32:42 The Alter Rebbe says it as follows: if you're wearing a long robe with a ton of extra material. It doesn't weigh you down if you're sitting. If you stand up, all of a sudden it's like a little heavier than it should be. But it's not so bad because all the extra material is on the ground. When do you feel the weight of all that extra robe? When you start to walk and it's dragging behind you. We're going through all this brokenness, it's like all this extra material. We just want to slice it off. We're yearning to be free of all this brokenness. I just want to get rid of it. You can't get rid of it. It's not a bug. It's a feature. It's meant to be there. The reason why things are going wrong is because it's trying to get our attention to say, "Can you reveal my essence?" It's such a complex thing that we're living with because so many of us are trying to run away from the exact mission that we were created for.

33:35 It's like if we could just cut off all those parts of ourselves that we don't like. Then I'd be good. It's like then I could just get rid of it. If I didn't have to worry about that kid, if I didn't have to worry about that spouse, if I didn't have to worry about that person in my job, I could just get rid of it. Everything would be fine. But it wouldn't be. It wouldn't be because then the next thing will come and the next thing will come. It's almost like I don't know if you've had this experience. It's almost like everything in the world. If we manage to cut off one thing, it's like whack a mole. Something else comes up. It's you always think that. Because then the next kid is going to be three times as difficult. A hundred percent. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's it's almost like we have two choices. We either we can either lean out or lean in.

34:26 So let's say on a very practical level. But I just want to be clear that what I'm saying now, I'm not saying it as a general klal. I'm not saying that Chassam anybody made a mistake. I'm just saying Let's say a person's in a tough marriage. And let's say Again, I just want to be so clear about the way that I say it because I don't want to chassid shol make anyone who did go through a divorce feel like it wasn't the right thing. There is a parsha of divorce in the Torah. We're not like the Christians. We do believe that there's a mitzvah of gerushin if it's appropriate and when it's necessary. But let's say that a person rather than dealing with their own stuff Just decides, I'm out.

35:07 I'm out. I can cut this part of the robe off. I don't have to do the hard work. I don't have to lean into the discomfort. I'm just out. I don't have to think about it anymore. My wife has a good line. She says, "It's easy to be happy when you don't have to worry about anybody else. It's difficult to be differentiated when you're in a relationship, but that's where true differentiation happens." People go, "I'm so happy I got divorced." Of course you are, because you don't have to deal with another person now. The chiddush is not to be happy when you're divorced. The chiddush is, can you be happy when you're married? Can you say that person is them and I'm me, and my emotional reality belongs to myself and to nobody else? Nobody dictates how I show up in the world. Not my angry child, not my angry teenager, not my frustrating spouse. Nobody dictates my own emotional reality. So rather than run away from that thing, I lean into it, and I'm willing to have the hard conversation with that spouse. I'm willing to have the hard conversation with that child, and I'm willing to listen, because I know that within that pain, there's a devar Hashem that's yearning to express itself.

36:06 I had a child. You should know. I'll be vulnerable myself. I had a child that she needed to tell me things. She had things she needed to tell me. And it was very hard for me to hear. I wanted, of course, to hear. But as a parent, if you've had teenage children, you know that parenting teenage children is not a treat. It's the old myth about the alien children. At 13 years old, your child becomes an alien. The kid that you had that was very sweet up until that point is gone. And the rule is, the aliens will return your abducted children at 20 if you treat the alien children well. So I had an alien child. She was a very good girl. She is a very good girl. Baruch Hashem, she's married herself now. She's awesome. Her husband's awesome. She had things she needed to say to me, things that I did not want to hear because I knew they were going to be painful for me to hear. They were going to speak to the inadequacies of the way that I showed up as a father. And everybody, I'm human. I had things that I didn't do well.

37:01 It took about a year and a half. A year and a half of every single time she spoke, I sat on the couch and I had to take it. It's like right over and over again, right in the face. I had spent so many years running from those conversations. I wish I would have had those conversations five years earlier. Her life would have been better. My life would have been better. There was dvar Hashem in those conversations. I had to be willing to hear the painful thing. I had to be willing to hold my own space and to know that just because she felt a certain way, that was her truth. It doesn't mean it's the capital T truth. But it was true. I probably wasn't ready because I didn't want to hear it. Honestly, she would have been ready to say it. When we say the truth hurts, I deal with strange families as a coach, and I do see a lot of people running away. Parents and children And only to say a lot of them all because you're going into other problems

37:52 Sadness and other pain. It doesn't work. The problems. I'll tell you the way I think you're saying it very beautifully. The way I heard it was. The problems that you didn't solve in your first marriage, they'll be there in your second marriage, but worse. And the problems that you had in your parents, you're going to have. That's right. It's intergenerational. So we have a choice. We could either La. So we have a choice. We could either lean into it and do the work. Or we could just spend our lives running away from it. My mother told me one time when he was getting frustrated with my other son, I was like, "What is it, Moshe?" That's right. That's right. But you can only you're you're 100 right. But you can only do that when you know that thing is chasing you because it's trying to get you to recognize its essence. You're exactly where you're supposed to be.

38:51 Dvar Hashem, you say it's Dvar Hashem. Dvar Hashem means the essence of all of reality. The words that animate creation. Meaning, what you're sitting on right now is not a chair. I know that. It's Hashem's desire that this chair exists. The question is, how do you relate to that chair? Yeah. I'll give you a good example of this. I think all kidding aside, you happen to be. You know we joke around a lot, you and I. And I think that you've made yourself into a certain character here on the Chizik mission. But I want to say this. I want to say this. I want to say this, and our families know each other at least in my lifetime. My mother was your au pair many years ago. I'm saying our families know each other a very long time. It's true before I was born, even I think.

39:52 Paula Berg. She worked for you many years ago. Our families know each other very well. I feel very comfortable saying this to you. There are ways of showing up. You're recording me now. My mother. That poor woman. What I put her through. There are ways that people relate to the physical world, and they relate to it in a very physical chitzoni way. And it's about amassing stuff. It's not about being authentic. In fact, it's the opposite. The more stuff you amass, the bigger you are. There's an inverted hierarchy that exists in the world today, where Talmidei Chachamim, Rosh Yeshiva are running around not because they want to, but because they have to. And they're coming to wealthy people and they're saying, 'Please help us support institutions.' Something happened in the Jewish world. It's a very dangerous thing, where our talmidim, our children today, can probably tell you who the gvir in the neighborhood is before the rasha shiva.

40:55 Because we somehow thought that the rasha shiva who's coming to the gvir to ask for money to support teira, the gvir is higher than the rasha shiva. There are people that when you give tzedakah, there are people that make you feel like it was a privilege and a schus that you asked them to give tzedakah. Those are the people that are doing it right. The Dvar Hashem means I know exactly what this money is. I know exactly what this husband is. This husband is the essence of Hashem coming in its broken state. That husband that's so difficult to deal with. If I can relate to him, if I can turn around and I can really hear him, and we can really connect, that's essence meeting essence. I'm going right to who you really are. And I'm forcing myself to do the hard work to see it's not just something that's schlepping on me and weighing me down. This is what I'm meant to be doing. I'm meant to be carrying this extra material because it's not extra.

41:50 So I'm not frustrated anymore by that child or that spouse or whatever that boss, that employee. I'm not frustrated by them. I know why they're here in my life. They're here in my life to be rectified. They're here in my life to be brought back into the fold. It's the mountain screaming at us. I'm sick of playing this character. I just want to be authentic. All of our inauthentic parts. The reason they're there is because they're trying to get us to pay attention. They're saying, "Will you release me from the bonds of this thing that I am? I don't want to be this way anymore." This is the site of shvuas. Shavuos is going back to Matan Torah before all of the brokenness that happened afterwards. It's that moment where everything is capital T true. Everything is authentic. Nobody has to worry about all the brokenness of the world. The brokenness is something that comes afterwards.

42:42 On Shavuos night, we stay up all night. Why? Because we're experiencing Har Sinai. We're going back to a place before everything was broken. Just the essence. Just me and Hashem. And Hashem is giving Himself over to me. Anochi stands for Ananav Shiksavis Yahves. I am. Hashem said, I wrote my essence into the Torah. I'm giving it to you. It's one essence meeting another. It's the night of no echoes. That's what Shavuos is. It's the night of no echoes. On Shavuos, everything is real. The day after Shavuos, we're back in the brokenness. The day after Shavuos, it's schlepping that brokenness along. But for one moment, we got to go back to that original position, so that we remember that all of the brokenness is really because it yearns for that moment of authenticity. Memaleh, we can understand why Ben Azay's Torah had fire flying around it.

43:32 What was so special about Ben Azay's Torah? It wasn't because he was learning Ma'ase Merkava. It's because if you think about what it was, it's like Torah becomes Neviim, Neviim becomes Ksavim, right? It's like slowly getting fragmented, moving away from that original point of essence of Hashem's Chamishchukum Shaitora. What does Ben Azay do? He shows how the Ksavim come from the Neviim, how the Neviim come from the Chamishchukum Shaitora itself. He's connecting everything back to its source. That's what Har Sinai is. If you want to have a fire in your life If you want to have the vitality of Torah, then you have to live in a pre-broken way. Somebody mentioned psychotherapy before. I'm a big fan of therapy. I'm a huge fan of therapy. But I want to say something about therapy. There's a limitation to therapy. Therapy is amazing. Working through the brokenness is amazing. There's something that therapy does though that if you're not careful, it could be very dangerous. It could make you believe in the brokenness because you spend all day talking about all the brokenness. There was a therapist that we brought into the yeshiva many years ago.

44:31 It's okay. I appreciate your work. But I'm saying, and I'm okay to say this because I think probably the people in the room here are people who don't do this. But if you spend all your life rolling around in the mud, you're going to get dirty. If you spend all your days talking about the brokenness, then you're going to believe I am the brokenness. The avoda of a good therapist is to teach you are not your brokenness. You're who you are way before your brokenness, and all the brokenness that you experienced. It's here to help you become the person that you are. I had a therapist who came to yeshiva to do staff training. He was very smart. He said to us He said therapy can be the most narcissistic thing you ever do. You get in a room for 45 minutes and you just talk about yourself. It's true. There's something very gishmak.

45:17 It can be very. It can be. It can be. And by the way, that's why sometimes it's like if you can't afford therapy, it's like it could be a little bit of a good thing. It's like I want to talk about myself, but I don't want to pay $300 to do it. So I want to go to a group. It's free in a group. But this Torah This Torah of tapping into the vitality—that's why we stay up Shavuos night. Shavuos night is not just another night of learning Torah. Shavuos night for the boys—it can't just be another night of learning the same black Gemara. It's not what it is. It has to be a new way of connecting to the essence. You said before, "Don't tell me it's for women also." Now I have to tell you, it's very much for women. Because the truth is, it's much more natural for the male species to pay attention to the brokenness. It's much more natural for the female species to pay attention to the essence. That's why men are so busy taking care of things, and women are so busy trying to take care of the relationship. I get frustrated when my wife says it'll work out. I say I'm not an it. I'm not it. I'm a person. So obvious, I wouldn't say it if it was real, but it's a joke. What she's saying is right.

46:29 I'm gonna take care of the practical thing that needs to get taken care of. She's saying the peseder is gonna get taken care of. But let's talk about the atzmos. The atzmos that's what Shavuos night is about. Be'ez Hashem, man, woman, child, whoever it is, we should be'zaych at least a little bit to stay up. So that we could tap into the part of ourselves that's true and authentic, the essence of all things, so that when we look at the brokenness, we could say that's not me. That's just stuff that's attaching itself to me so that it could be redeemed. Awesome to be back here. Have a wonderful day. Have a meaningful rest of your trip.