Tazria - Plugging In To Hashem

2:34 So there's a beautiful answer to this question that I want to share with you And it goes as follows. And nobody, I know we already had one comment. Nobody should take this personally. I'm not commenting on anybody or their skin color. I know. I'm very careful. I was just returned from America And one of the weddings that I was at. Baruch Hashem, there were a lot of weddings over a couple of days. The kallah was very faint under the chuppah. To the degree that they had to bring her water. Under the chupa So that she wouldn't collapse, because it has happened. And in this case, I don't even believe that she was fasting. But it's a trying day, a lot of emotions, a lot of pictures, a lot of makeup, a lot of hair. There is a lot going on. It's also anxiety provoking. You are getting married. There is a lot going on.

3:41 Sometimes when you see somebody who has a very pale complexion You are like, you don't look so good, like. What's wrong? Let's get you some water to drink. Sit down, relax. The life looks like it's being drained out of you. Usually, when a person is healthy They have a very alive, which we'll speak about in a moment. They have a reddish complexion. If we think about Asav, he was named Asav because he had a very ready, ruddy complexion. He was very alive. When a person has a lot of blood coursing through them, their face has that blood running through it, and they don't look very pale. They don't look like they're about to faint. So On an inner level We can begin to understand the following idea. Just like physically, when a person looks faint. You can tell that something is wrong because the life force is being drained out of them. That can also be understood as a person who is having their inner life force drawn out of them. We'll explain what that means in a moment. Mashiach came when a person has a healthy complexion. It's because they're coming internally from a very connected place. They're alive internally, so it expresses itself externally.

5:12 I'll share with you. When I was in college, I had a professor. And he was a guy from my neighborhood. I actually knew him growing up. And on Monday He came to class. And I was sitting there with a bunch of my friends. And I looked at him and I said, "Paul" You don't look so good. And he said, "Yeah." I said, "Yeah, I don't know, man. Just like Like you look like, like I don't know. Your face looks green. This doesn't look right. He goes, "Yeah, I don't know. And he died the next day. True story. He died the next day. This is someone you know. I knew him growing up. He lived. The doctor? I didn't ask. I didn't have the time to ask. It was like, and we and everyone was hocking about it. You told him he didn't look good. I said he didn't look good. And then he managed to die the next day in the middle of the semester. I think they just had a heart attack.

6:01 Again, I'm not here to get it. I just wanted to mention, B'Toras, that the outer complexion of a person could tell us what's going on internally. It's true, by the way, even on a simple level. Like when you go shopping for fruit. You look at it from the outside, and it tells you something that's going on the inside. That's why buying a watermelon is such a gamble. Unless you know what you're doing. You ever see those guys in the market? They slap it and put it on their shoulder and check if it's hollow. There are people that know how to buy a watermelon, and I always see people squeezing cantaloupes. I'm like, you have no idea what you're doing. Is it supposed to be hard? Is it supposed to be soft? But when you look at an apple If the apple is brownish or a little bit soft on the outside, it's already not good. And so the same thing is true here. When you look at a person's face and it's white and pale.

6:50 You could tell that internally something is not right. Masha'ain came when a person's face looks healthy, ready, like it's got a ruddy complexion. The blood is coursing through their body. You know they're alive. That's good. It's true on a spiritual level too. What we often fail to remember And it's okay. It's normal that we fail to remember this, but what we fail to remember is that while we are alive. Just because you're alive doesn't mean that you're tapped into life. No different than saying there's electricity in this wall. Just because there's electricity in this wall doesn't mean my phone is charging. My phone is charging because I have a charger in my phone that's connected to the electricity. But if I take out that charger, then just because there's electricity in the wall doesn't mean that my phone is charging. And the same thing is true on a spiritual level.

7:44 Each of us has a godly soul. And that godly soul is where life comes from. That's how we get life into our body. But just because you are alive doesn't mean that you're tapped into life And we know this. There are people that are alive but they have no life. In fact, we say that to them. It's like you have no life. We will literally say those words to people. What does it mean to say you have no life? It means you're not tapped in. I'll share with you a scary thing. Was in America a couple months ago. Month ago And a boy used a term that I had never heard before. He said, "In my school, there's a group of boys. They're NPCs." "I said, 'What's an NPC?'" He said, "An NPC in a video game is a non-player character" Non-playable character. They're just there. They're on the screen.

8:40 But you can't do anything with them. They're just background. He said, "You so I thought he was being mean." He wasn't. What he explained? He said these kids went into isolation during COVID in tenth grade. They didn't get out until the end of eleventh grade. They didn't see anybody. They didn't develop social skills in critical years in high school. They sat in their rooms all day. Different people doing different things. Some of them were addicted to their phones. Some of them were smoking all day. Some of them were drinking. Some of them were watching terrible things. And what do you think will happen to a person after two years of total isolation, like really losing your social skills? School is on Zoom. My wife called it very early. My wife has always said, and she's a hundred percent right about this, that the value of yeshiva, the value of seminary, is fifty percent educational, fifty percent social.

9:42 So it's like, we're going to move all the yeshivas and seminaries onto Zoom. What's the negative impact of that? The negative impact is when you go to school, you're forced to interact with people. It makes you come alive. You have to go to sleep at a certain time every day because you know you have to wake up at a time. Here he said, "These kids are just zeros, they're NPCs." He wasn't being judgmental. He was just saying it as a fact. "They came back to school in twelfth grade." He said they have no social skills. They're just, if you don't mind Hard for me. It's like it. He's just like he's like He's like I don't have a chevr of guys to hang out with. They're just not there. They have no life. They're alive, but they have no life. You understand? There's a meaning. There's electricity. It's moving. The body is moving.

10:30 But there's nobody home. What does it mean to be tapped into life from a Jewish perspective? So let's start with let's start with two two ways of understanding it. We'll start with a simple explanation first. In a relationship It's possible to be in a relationship. And even to participate externally in the relationship But to be missing the point. What would that look like? You have a couple. The wife has a job. She drops the kids off at the school in the morning. She goes to her job and comes home. She helps the kids do their homework. She cooks some dinner. Her husband gets up in the morning and goes to minion. Gets on a train, goes to work, and works all day. Maybe he checks in with his wife once over the course of the day, just to see how you're doing. He comes home at night, minchamayiv, catches you know some time homework with the kids. When does he ever have time for his wife? When does she have time for her husband?

11:35 They're participating in the relationship. The electricity is there. But there's no spark. There's no life. You missed the point. Having a relationship with Hashem means being connected not only to the activities of the relationship, but to the essence of the relationship. And it's very frustrating for us because for so many of us, what we were trained in was to participate in the activities of the relationship. But intuitively we know that's like being alive but having no life So what did we complain about in high school? I don't want to just daven anymore. I'm sick of just saying these words. I want to know what it means to talk to Hashem, not just to read the words of the sinner. I want to know what it looks like to have a Shabbos where I actually feel connected to Hashem, and not just waiting for Shabbos to be over so I could run to check what happened on my phone.

12:26 I want to know what it looks like to raise a family and to really impart Yiddishkeit to them, not just by telling them these are the rules, but that they should look at their mother and say, 'My mother is somebody who's deeply connected to Hashem.' I want to say Tehillim and I want to feel something. The people that say you should know they're a hundred percent right to say that. They're right to say. Of course, they're right to say because what are they really saying? They're saying, "I don't want to just be alive. I want to have a life." That's one dimension of it. There's another dimension, a little bit of a deeper dimension And that's the role of speech. And one really follows the other because the essence of a relationship is when a husband and a wife talk. That's why dating builds a relationship. The challenge of marriage is that you stop dating.

13:19 But when you're dating, you actually feel connected to each other, even though you don't have it. You haven't even done anything. It's like two people are dating. You look at them and you go You haven't built a life together. Why you? Why do you feel so close? You know what they did the entire time? They just spoke. Speech is critical towards building a relationship. It's like a guy goes out on a date with a girl. And he shares with her his hopes and his dreams. And she's listening to him. And she's like, "I'm inspired by the fact that you're inspired. That these are your hopes and your dreams, even if they're not mine. But if you can be inspired by them, it builds you. It brings you closer. And if he can be inspired by yours, it brings you closer." Speech builds. Why is that? When Hashem Baruch Hu created the world, and remember that Hashem created the world to have a relationship with us.

14:07 When Hashem created the world He created the world with words. He didn't create the world with thoughts. Baasara mamoros nevraolam. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world with ten utterances. The lesson here is a very valuable one. Hakadosh Baruch Hu creates with words, and the same thing is true with us. We create with words. What we create is about to be what we discuss. But we create with words. A moment ago, we spoke about a date. That's creating a relationship. That's real. That's why when you come back from having a real conversation with somebody The word that you feel is rejuvenated. Isn't that true? You ever have a five-hour conversation, but it's not a garbage conversation. It's not just one thing leads to another. You ever have those conversations for five hours where it's like I went in a car. I have to tell you about the car that I just went in. I went in a Tesla. Oh my God, she has a Tesla. Her house is a baller house. I think her dad is a lawyer. I would never want to marry a lawyer.

15:16 Because they work all the time. I would want somebody who's going to spend time with the kids. It's really important to me because I didn't have that growing up. What was that like for you? It was really lonely. And we went from car to loneliness, and now we're like I'm like, how did you get from point A to point Z, right? Like, those conversations. I'm not saying they're not meaningful, but they're not as meaningful, right? But then there are conversations. Have you ever sat down with somebody and really shared yourself with another, like total vulnerability? How amazing is that? The feeling you have afterwards is not exhaustion. How do you feel afterwards when you have a real conversation? Maybe you have a vulnerability hangover, but what do you feel? Alive. You feel rejuvenated. You feel like something connective really happened, because words create Or words can destroy.

16:04 For example. And this is something that I can't say that I'm innocent of. I'm certainly not. I'm sitting up here and giving the shmoos, but I'm just as guilty as anybody. But sometimes we spend time with people talking about other people. And at the end of that conversation, two things have happened. Number one You'll feel a little dead inside. Because there's something, there's like a perverse type of pleasure we get when we knock somebody else down. Isn't that true? Like you said something like, "Oh, her." She was always like that, right? It's like a perverse type of pleasure, but afterwards you feel a little empty. That wasn't a good thing that you just did. You didn't use your words in a way to heal a relationship. You used your words in a way to destroy a relationship. And so you are left feeling a little bit like.

16:58 I had this awesome, powerful tool, and what did I just do with it? I didn't do anything meaningful with it. And why is that? It makes sense Because our Kadosh Baruch Hu is the electricity in the wall. And you have that electricity inside of you because you have a godly soul. You have a nefesh l'kis. And you can tap into that electricity if you speak in a godly way. Do you see why it makes sense? God created the world with speech. He put that power inside of you. If you want to be connected to Him, what do you need to do? You need to speak in a godly way. What's speaking in a godly way? Speak in a way to create relationships. That's what God did. Olam Chesed Yibane, Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world from a place of love. He wanted to have a relationship with us. He used speech to create that relationship. So if we use speech like He uses speech, then we're tapped into Him.

17:51 And being tapped into Him means coming alive. Machein came when we use speech in a way that brings death into the world, that severs relationships, that builds destruction. Kaviochol. Everything is doing something. It's a question of what are you building? Are you building devastation? Are you building something healthy? So not only have you destroyed something, but you've unplugged yourself. Have you unplugged? Because you stopped tapping into the godliness that was inside of yourself. Of course, this is true with every avera. But there's no avera that's more damaging to the relationship of Hakadosh Baruch Hu than the avera of lashon hara Because that is the plug itself. So if we speak in a way that's inappropriate, we're literally unplugging ourselves from Hakadosh Baruch Hu. That's why the Chafetz Chaim wrote his sefer about lashon hara because he said this is the most essential way you speak.

18:50 You know. It's a funny thing. Sometimes we grew up in ways that maybe we didn't have sensitivity to speech. Maybe we heard people use inappropriate words. Maybe we heard people speaking in inappropriate fashions, speaking from a place of anger and rage. Maybe we heard people use their words to tear down others, as opposed to build up others. What was the impact? If you think back on those situations where you heard that Do you think that made you a more connected or a less connected person? When you hear somebody speaking about another person inside of yourself, do you ever wonder if they're speaking that way about me to somebody? Not exactly safe, even though they think oh yeah I'm right with you. Oh my God she always does that right? So you like for a second you think she's with me right? But then in the next second even if it's not a conscious thought you go but is she?

19:50 Because maybe she's doing that with somebody else about me. It's a very damaging thing. When a person speaks from rage and anger We expect words to be gentle. I don't mean gentle like soft. I mean gentle like building. When a person speaks out of anger and rage, do you feel safe around those people? It's terrifying, isn't it? You ever see somebody when they go really crazy? It's almost like It's like a show. It's like wow That's wild. They use their words in the most destructive way. They're unhinged. They're unplugged. It's not good for us to be around those people. And so, a lot of times in yeshiva and seminary, a guy or a girl will say something like, "I really want to work on my shmiras haloshen. I want to speak with more nikias. I want to speak in a more refined way." I wanna really watch what comes out of my mouth. I wanna stop speaking lashon hara, and they'll say something like, "But it's so hard."

20:58 " Right? I'm not saying it's not easy. It's definitely, it's definitely hard. But this is what I would want to share with you. It's definitely worth it. The gift that you're gonna get back. Your olam haza is better when you are a person that speaks in a certain way. Because when you speak in a particular way, you attract that back into your life. So when you speak in a bitter, angry, sarcastic, sharp, inappropriate, disparaging type of way, you bring that into your life. Every person here, on some level, wants to marry a guy who's going to speak to them in a gentle Kind Drawing-in type of way. I tell you, I had a friend. He's a rebbe in a yeshiva today. My rebbe said about him, he's a kleiner chavetzheim. He's a small chavetzheim. The guy was so careful about every word that came out of his mouth.

22:01 Sometimes in yeshiva you see guys when they have a chavrusa they're fighting. That's not Pshat and Rashi. This is Pshat and Rashi. How could you say that Pshat and Rashi? And their mamish fighting. I was a fighter. I'm not going to lie to you. I was a fighter. My chavrusa, he was a fighter. And we had nicknames for each other. He called me the Lamedshia Warrior, and I called him the Australian Stallion. And I'm coming to the base measures in the morning. He's like, "All right, Stallion, you ready?" I'm like, "As I would say, if you're Stallion, you ready?" He's like, "Let's go, Warrior." He and we would fight. And these two guys One of them became this Rabbi. But these two guys would sit three tables away from us, two tables away from us. But you could hear them. This is what it sounded like when they had their chavruta. What do you think Pshan Rashi is?

22:47 No. You want to go first? No. You go first. No. You go first. I'm still not a hundred percent sure. I'm also not a hundred percent sure. Until they would finally, one of them would go. Maybe Pshan Rashi is like this. They would go. That's very good. What do you think? It's like I was thinking. Maybe it's like this. What do you think? It's like I think that could be good too. But what about this question? It could be a little bit of a question. That probably is a good question. Because I would watch because they were like to me they were like zoo animals. It's like everybody in the base manager is fighting, and these two guys are so nice to each other. I used to say to this guy all the time, I want you to know, your existence makes me feel bad about myself. I used to tell him that all the time because I was sitting there fighting over a Rambam, and he would come and ask, what do you think the Rambam is? So I would say, maybe you know, I think the Rambam is saying this. He would say, that's really good.

23:41 I was like, "Do you have another pshat in Rambam?" He's like, "I don't know, maybe." I was just thinking, "I'm like, you have a pshat in the Rambam. You're a smart guy." He was just such an honor. But it did not shock me when I met his wife. It didn't shock me even in the slightest. You know why? Because she's the same exact way. And they have this like very sweet. I'm sure that their fights, because I'm sure they fight, but I'm sure their fights are like this. I guess what I would want to share is that it's like It could be like I know it's mostly my fault, but it could be difficult for me sometimes. And I know I should say more that it bothers me. I am saying that's their fights. They don't have real fights because he's such a soft, gentle person.

24:28 And he attracted that into his life. My roommate was the nicest guy in the world. And I used to say you are just going to marry the nicest girl. He did. There are people in the yeshiva, not me. I was very close friends with them. But people in the yeshiva did terrible things to him because he was so nice. And not like bullying him really, but just like they would take advantage of But almost in a joking way because they knew that he was so nice. Under his chuppah, his Masada kedushin, his rebbe said to me, who I was under his chuppah with him, I was one of the aidim. The rebbe turns to me and he goes, "How much do you hate it that you know that this couple is never going to fight?" I say, "Maybe we should just do the kedushin now. We don't need to have this conversation right here." It was literally under his chuppah. Everyone was laughing. He said it right into the mic because everybody you attract that into your life.

25:17 You want to marry a husband like that? You want to have kids like that. My wife has this line. It's a great line. There are words that we use that are not refined words, but we don't have. We don't even think of them as not refined words, like the words 'stupid' or 'idiot'. These are not refined words. My wife says she goes. You want to know if they're refined words or not? What does it sound like when it comes out of a four-year-old? Your little four-year-old daughter She says she's an idiot. It's not cute. It's not cute. Why are you speaking like that? You know why they're speaking like that? Because the parents spoke like that. My mother was a teacher for many years. And she had a girl in first grade. Who was a very close family friend's daughter And the girl had some learning disabilities.

26:08 She wasn't ordinarily the girl that raised her hand to give an answer in class. So it was first grade. My mother was doing rhyming. So my mother goes, "Does anyone know what word rhymes with truck?" Ooh! Marvel! I know! So my mother goes, "Yes!" So excited to call on this girl. And she let it out And my mother was like. My mother goes over and she whispers, and she says, "Just want you to know that's not a nice word." And then she calls the dad. And she's like, "I just want you to know what your daughter just said." Now, in this case, the father was like, "That's awesome," you know, but like, okay, just say there. Aside from that He was like, "Yeah, that's what he's like. That's my girl." Most people would not have that reaction. I hoped no, but there's something when you speak in a way you build things. Speech builds things. Imagine if every time we spoke, we were able to see, this is what flourished from that speech.

27:08 So it's so important the way we speak. So here we have a person And they come to the kohen And they have a white lesion on their body. You know what's in doubt now? Why are you so white? Why is the life force being drained out of you? Why aren't you connected? Because anything physical is really coming from the spiritual world. And that's not something that a doctor can see. It's not something that you have to be like a mumcha, like you know what tzaraas is. This is a spiritual disease. This is for a kohen to look at and say to this person Something going on in your life. You need to be quarantined. We need to examine this small amount of life force that's being drained, and we need to check which direction you're going. You're tummy right now. And the guy goes away. He quarantines for a week.

28:04 He's in bed. You know what happens? We check back with him And not just any kohen, but a kohen who's in the base of mikdash. Because he has to be ensconced in total kedusha. If you want to be sensitive to who's plugged in and who's not plugged in. You got to be plugged in yourself. You got to be surrounded by it. It happens to be like I haven't. There's a certain genre of music that I haven't listened to in a very long time. I came into the gym in the yeshiva. And a boy was playing this music, and he shouldn't have been playing the music. It's against the yeshiva rule, and he shouldn't have been doing it. As soon as I walked in, he quickly ran to turn it off, both because it's the yeshiva rule and also out of respect. He doesn't want his rabbi to hear this type of music. But it took a couple of seconds from the time that he went from here to there, and in a couple of seconds, I heard.

28:58 Probably not more than a lyric or two, but the lyric or two that I heard was like Oh, it was gross. I was like, "I cannot believe that just went into my ears," and I couldn't believe that it was going into his ears. I said that to him. I was like, "I just for yourself, I feel badly that you're going to lose sensitivity when you hear these words, these things all the time." But then I was a little bit proud. I was like, "Used to be a time in my life where I also listened to that, and you can regrow the sensitivity if you're cut off from it for a long enough time." This Cohen, he's living in the base of mitzvah. You know he sees around him all the time plugged in people. It's like if you grew up in the house of Sadikim, they were the Kohanim. They were in yeshiva, they were in seminary, they were in growth oriented modes. So when somebody came to them and they said, "I've got this white lesion. It looks like the life force might be," they couldn't diagnose that themselves. Who could look at themselves and know themselves that well? They come to the coin and they go, "Am I moving in the wrong direction?" The coin goes, "Let's see Let's see

29:52 " And then he comes back in a week. And maybe he has to go outside of the camp. Why does he have to go outside of the camp? Because if you speak that way, you can't be a part of us. That's dangerous. That's dangerous. You bring in that type of speech, you could destroy. We see it all the time. You have one guy in shul who's a rabble rouser. He gives a couple of speeches, and the next thing you know, the rabbi's out. Speech is a very, very, very careful thing. It's really important. Somebody like that. If you're cut off, if you're plugged out, if you're not with us You're still a Jew, but you need to be outside of the camp to take that time to reflect on how you're going to use your words. That's a big deal. We're heading into Beinazmanim. This is the last year for about a month.

30:41 And I just want to say that I remember the beginning of the year. I remember what y'all looked like seven months ago. And today, Baruch Hashem It's obvious to anyone who's in the room that we are in a growth-oriented environment. And we have growth-oriented girls in this seminary, and that's something you should be very proud of. No clap, no clapping necessary, but yes, internal clapping. But I think That's something to consider over Benazman. Because you're not going to necessarily be in the same growth-oriented environment. If I could encourage you to be mekabel on yourself, something called Machsom Lefi. You girls heard of Machsom Lefi? Machsom Lefi is a program where, for an hour a day, if you can't do an hour, do half an hour. For an hour a day, you're mekabel on yourself. Don't speak lashon hara. Take time. It takes you not more than a couple of minutes every day to learn hilchos lashon hara. They have Chavetz Chaim books that are divided up by the day.

31:52 You should know. If you do this And don't do it like my three o'clock in the morning is my ma'asam lufi. I say no lashon har from three to four in the morning. I know that for some of you that's actually a thing. And maybe for some of you it's relevant. But for some of us that are sleeping at night, that's not from two to three in the afternoon. It's my ma'asam lufi hour. Not speaking lashon har. If you learn a little bit of Lachshinara every single day, you should know. That's an amazing way of keeping the growth-oriented environment. Taking it with you because you can't. Some of you I know will be here. I'm sure you'll have amazing times. But for those of you that are perhaps going to all sorts of interesting places You might find yourself facing different coasts, different places, different things.

32:45 It's important to take what you have learned here and now bring it into the world of action. And if I can, I know it's a small suggestion. I'm sure you have many suggestions from many different teachers and many different rabbis, but I think it's an appropriate suggestion. If you can, take an hour a day and say, "This is my shmiras olashan hour." I'm not speaking about other people. I'm being careful what comes out of my mouth. If you do that, you should know that in a month's time, when you return to seminary, bezer Hashem, you'll see. Tremendous growth! I want to wish you all a chag kasher v'sameach. I will see you, Beizer Hashem, soon, and I'm sure that by that time Mashiach will have come. How could it be anything else?