Teshuva - It All Comes Down To Me

2:25 There's a Gemara. There's a Gemara that I imagine almost everybody in this room is familiar with on some level. But I'd like to unpack this Gemara tonight in a little bit more of a deep way, in a little bit more of a meaningful way. Sometimes The education that we receive when we're younger is a little more elementary. And when we get older, sometimes the things that we learned when we were young We can find depth and meaning and profundity in those things when we revisit them as adults, because we're able to mine the nuggets that are there in these mamari chazal that can teach us some very deep things. So there was a man. The Gemara says, if you know the story, it's worth repeating it very quickly. There was a man whose name was Elazar ben Duda. Blazer Ben Dudaia, the Gemara tells us, was so promiscuous that he did his best to visit every zina Every harlot, every woman of the night in the entire world. He wanted to be with them.

3:40 And the Gemara tells us, and it's very strange that the Gemara tells us all these details. The Gemara tells us that he heard about a certain woman who lived overseas. And she charged a tremendous amount of money for her services—a full purse of coins. She charged for her services, and so Elazar ben Dudaiah said that he was going to be with this woman. And he traveled across seven rivers in order to get to her. And as he's about to utilize her services Chazal tell us that she passed wind. And a very strange thing happened. She said Just as this wind passes and it will not return to its place, so too Elazar ben Dudaiah will never be allowed to do tshuva. He'll never be allowed to return to his place. It's a very strange story. The Gemara goes on to tell us that Elazar ben Dudaiah was very shocked by this And he went outside of the house and he starts to ask the mountains and the hills for help.

4:54 And the mountains and the hills can't help him do tshuva. And then he goes to Shamayim va'Aretz and he says, "Please help me do tshuva." And Shamayim and Aretz can't help him do tshuva. And then it says that he went to the sun and the moon and he said, "Please help me do tshuva." And the sun and the moon were not able to help him do tshuva either. And then he said a very famous thing, and this is usually what gets quoted. He said, "I see. Ein hadavar talui eli." That the only thing this is dependent upon is myself. And the Gemara tells us that he put his head between his knees and he cried until his soul left his body. And then a baskal came out of Shamayim and said, "Rebbe Elazar ben Dudaiah was kona olam haba. He was kona his portion in the world to come."

5:47 The Gemara tells us that Rabbi Yehuda Hanassi heard this baskal. He heard the baskal say that Rabbi Elazar ben Dudaiah achieved this portion in the world to come, and he started to cry. And he said, 'Yesh keina olam haba b'sha'achas. There are those that get the world to come. They get their portion in olam haba only after many, many years. And there are those people that they get olam haba b'sha'achas in just one moment.' And not only that. You see that his tshuva was accepted because he's no longer called Elazar ben Dudaya; he's called Rabbi Elazar ben Dudaya. I want to try to share with you tonight what I think this Gemara means on a very deep level, in a way that I think is relevant to all of us. There are so many questions that we have to have on this Gemara. If you are thinking about this Gemara in a deep way, if you are thinking about it as an adult, there are so many questions that we have to have. First of all, what type of person are we talking about here?

6:48 What type of life are we talking about? Somebody that goes to every single woman to utilize her services—what type of person is this? How could a person fall to such a low state? You've been here in Eretz Israel already a couple of weeks, and I am sure that you've already discovered that whatever exists on the side of kedusha also exists on the side of tumah. And because we have here, Baruch Hashem, in Eretz Israel, so much kedusha. I am sure you might have heard about that. There are places I am sure none of you would ever go. But there are places in this country that have things going on that are not for us, not for what we would engage in. For the Gemara to talk about Elazar ben Dudaia, for the Gemara to give us the details of Elazar ben Dudaia's life, it seems that this person has a relevance to us. The question is, what relevance could Rabbi Elazar ben Dudaiah have with any of us? There's nobody in this room that could ever fall to such a low state. Is it possible that any of us could do what Elazar ben Dudaiah did? A person would have to be sick.

7:52 A person would have to be from the lowest level people that could exist in the world, the most hedonistic people, the people that pursue pleasure more than anything else. We can't imagine such a thing. We can imagine a person that has a hard time waking up for davening. We can imagine a person that doesn't show up to Nachiomi. They still have Nachiomi here after davening. The schedule hasn't changed very much in 25 years. We can imagine a person having trouble with these things, but to imagine somebody falling to such a low level, somebody from our community, it's unheard of. We're talking about a person that's willing to travel across the world to do an avera. Who amongst us? We, Baruch Hashem, for us, we could be malamitzchus on ourself. Who here would travel to do an avera? We're not going to. If we're in a certain place already, it could be we found ourselves in a funny place doing a funny thing. But for a person to travel across the world to go and pay a tremendous amount of money to do an avera, nobody here in this room is going to do that. So why does the Gemara tell us about this person, Elazar ben Duda? Elazar ben Duda's life has no shayches to anybody in this room.

8:54 But if Chazal told us a story about Elazar ben Duda, it must be that on some level every single person in this room has what to glean from Elazar ben Duda's life. What could it possibly mean to us? Another funny thing Another funny thing that we're dealing with in this story is that Elazar ben Duda doesn't cry until the end of the story. I want to share with you what that means. Take a journey with me for a moment. Imagine you have somebody who's fallen to the depths of depravity. Let's say we're talking about an alcoholic. Let's say we're talking about somebody that started off their journey and they were drinking a little bit, and then they were drinking a lot. And then they started calling in sick to their job, and eventually their boss got fed up with them and they lost their job.

9:47 And eventually the kids were so afraid of their father. Their father was coming home smelling so bad, and it was unsafe for the children. And so eventually the mother has no choice for the protection of her own children. She says, "I can't be here anymore," and she leaves her husband. He has no job, no children, no wife. The bank forecloses on his house, and he's living under a bridge. He's a guy who went from having a regular family to losing everything. In the moment that he has clarity. In the moment that he steps into his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I want to share with you what it looks like when you have a person who comes to a clarity that they destroyed their life. The look on their face—if you could see the look on their face—the word is devastated. That's the word. A person comes into this world and they're devastated when they realize that they've destroyed their lives. When a person has a moment where they have clarity and they realize everything in their life has fallen apart, they're broken. The tears come automatically. It's not true by Rabbi Elazar ben Duda. What happens to Elazar ben Duda? He has a moment. He realizes Hakadosh Baruch Hu has sent him a baskal. You're never going to be able to do tshuva, and you don't see any tears. What does he do at this point? He goes to the mountains.

11:03 He goes to the hills. He goes to Shamayim. He goes to Aretz. He goes everywhere. The sun and the moon. He doesn't cry. Where's Rabbi Elazar ben Duda's tears? Did you ever have a moment in your life where you realize you messed up really badly? Did you ever have a moment where you realized you hurt somebody you didn't mean to hurt, a friend? You have a good friend, and that friend. Let's say it was high school. Let's say it was ninth grade. That awkward thing that ninth grade girls do, coming out of eighth grade, they like think that they're top of the world, but then in ninth grade they have to try to reinvent themselves and find new friends. By just I want you to know, just by like the seven or eight of you that just looked at me right now went like this. I want you to know I appreciate you sharing with me very privately your journey. I have girls, I have daughters that have gone through ninth grade. Ninth grade is a merciless time for young women. And then there's always that one story of that one girl that excludes the other girl from the group.

11:56 You know what I mean? I'm used to guys. You know how guys get angry at each other? They punch each other. You know how girls get angry at each other? They isolate them. It's a devastating thing. It's a devastating thing to be isolated from the group. What if you discovered that you caused somebody else massive harm? What if it's now tenth grade and you realize to yourself, 'Whoa, I destroyed this girl.' You wouldn't feel badly. You wouldn't be like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I hurt that person." If you confronted that person, I think naturally you would start to cry. Where is Rabbi Elazar ben Duda's tears? He destroyed his entire life. Where is his tears? He doesn't cry until the end of the story. He turns to everybody else for help, but it doesn't seem that he's really emotionally impacted. And then the final question, which is the famous question, is what does it mean to be kainah elam haba b'sha'achas? How could that be? That sounds like a crazy thing to say. Some people spend their entire lives trying to become people who are kainah elam haba And some people can be kained in one moment. And not only that, the most depraved person in the world could become called Rebbe. What does that mean? What could that possibly mean?

13:07 I want to share with you a very important pshat, and I think it's relevant to every one of us, especially this time of year. There is a progression in life. There is a progression that every one of us has gone through. Stage one of the progression is called selfish. Every single person in this room, including myself, at some point in our lives was exceptionally selfish. If you look at children, children are exceptionally selfish. If a child is playing with another child And they won't share their toys, and let's say they're young, what does a mother say? Share your toys. What's the answer? Sharing is caring. I have a bunch of Care Bears in the room. It's a very beautiful thing. Sharing, share your toys because then they'll share with you. That's an age-appropriate message for a little child, but what are we really saying? We're saying it's in your own self-interest to share your toys.

14:12 So we're selfish. Every kid—if you look at a child, what does a child want? A child wants to have fun. A child wants to pursue pleasure. A child does not want, on any level, to be beholden to any sense of responsibility. What happens when kids go to school? I want you to know, girls, it's the saddest thing. When you're little, every person in this room loved to learn. Every one of us loved to learn. You came home from school when you were little. You were excited to show off your projects. My son comes home. My son, I have a six-year-old son who's in cheder. He came home with his sukkah project already. He walks into the house beaming. And he can recite for me already the first couple of psukim of Bereishis Bal Peh with the trope. He's excited to learn. I want you to know. I know what's going to happen in the next couple of years.

14:58 It's going to be a very sad thing. Every one of us went through this. He's going to start disliking school. Why? Because school will become like it was for every one of us—a burden. School becomes a burden. School is not something that you want to do, even though we naturally love learning. School is getting in the way of the things that I want to do. Especially as you get older and you're in high school. How many things are there that you want to do but you can't do them because you have responsibilities to school? You've got tests, you've got midterms, you've got finals. There's so many things that you want to do, but you can't do them because school is getting in the way. So what happens? We learn to hate something that we love because of the responsibility. Children love pursuing pleasure. There are some people. I'm saying a very straight thing now. I feel badly. I don't mean to say this in a negative way at all. There are some people that spend their entire lives at level number one.

15:57 All they want is to pursue pleasure in life. And when you speak to these people, they don't even realize how selfish they sound. There are people who say out loud. They're not embarrassed to say this. They say, "I love giving tzedakah. It makes me feel so good." Do you realize how off that statement is? Baruch Hashem, there are poor people, so that you could feel good when you give tzedakah. At a much more adult level. Why do we give tzedakah? We don't give tzedakah because of the way that it makes us feel. We give tzedakah because there's somebody that needs, and I have. But some people spend their whole life pursuing pleasure. Especially today, we're living in a culture. If you look around at the world today, there's a word that we're using today called gvir culture. Have you heard that term before? Gvir culture means who do we look up to? Who do we look up to in our communities? Do we look up to our Torah leaders, to our Torah giants, or do we look up to the wealthy people?

16:59 There's an old friend of mine. His name is Rabbi David Bashefkin. He went on a podcast and he said this. And it went viral. People went crazy on him for saying it because he said it out loud. But it's a hundred percent true. He asked the question: Who do our children know more? Do they know more gedolim or more gvirim or more wealthy people? And then he said even further: Or worse, have our gedolim become our gvirim? There's a certain way we talk about wealthy people, and there's a certain level of if I could only be massively wealthy. Baruch Hashem, the Jewish community has a massive amount of wealth today, and we are an unbelievable nation of chesed. But the question is: Are we pursuing wealth for the sake of pleasure, or are we pursuing wealth so that we can do good things with our wealth?

17:46 Elazar ben Dudaiah. He was what? He was a human being like any one of us. But what he was, perhaps more than us, is that he was untethered. He was unleashed. What happens when a person has no boundaries? We always think to ourselves, "I would never do that." You remember when you said to yourself in eighth grade, "I would never do that." Remember when you said, "I'll never cross that line." Remember in the summer after tenth grade when you cross that line? It's always that summer after tenth grade. It's always that kufr right where you say, 'I'm never going to do that,' and then you cross that line. It's a little bit too specific. Summer after tenth grade. It's exactly when it happens. There are certain organizations that exist today in the Jewish world to take kids summer after tenth grade and to bring them here to Eretz Yisrael just to keep them out of trouble summer after tenth grade.

18:37 Why do we do that? Because what happens when we cross that line is either one of two things: either we go like this I didn't like that. I tried it out and I didn't like it. You will, God willing, have a conversation with your parents years from now where you're going to come clean to your parents. You'll probably be depending on who you are. I was in my mid-thirties. I was in my mid-thirties, sitting down. My parents, Baruch Hashem, have moved here to Eretz Yisrael, and all of my siblings now live here in Eretz Yisrael. My brother and I were in my parents' house, and were sitting at the kitchen table. My mother is Baruch Hashem the sweetest, most naive mother that exists in the world. I love her dearly. That woman had no clue what was going on when we were in high school. She always thought the best of us. That's probably why we turned out okay. Because despite what we did, she always thought the best of us. So my mother said, 'You guys never would have done this' And my brother and I burst out laughing. We're like, 'Mom, we did that all the time.' She goes, 'No'

19:41 She couldn't believe it. We spent three hours with my mother, telling her Baruch Hu Bitchaktana, every single thing that we did. She was a shever kli. At the end of three hours, we didn't stop because we ran out of material. We stopped because my mother was broken. She was like a sweet woman in her sixties, and she's like, I just don't think I could take anymore. I'm like, Mom, I'm 35 years old now. I'm good. I'm Jewish. I'm from It's in the past. She just couldn't handle it. I had an honest moment with my mother and I told her who I was. We're all kids. We're just trying things out. If it doesn't feel good, it's trial and error. You go, I don't want to do that anymore. And then if it feels good and you're like it worked, then you go I want to do that more. But here's the thing: there's a rebbe in Mevaseret. He has a brilliant line. I love this line. He says, guys always tell him, I did this, but I'll never do that. You ever say that? I'll do this, but I'll never do that. So this rebbe always says, don't tell me what you'll never do.

20:39 There's what you've done. And what you haven't done yet. Because people are capable when they pursue pleasure, when their life becomes about the house, the car, the perfect kids. When they have that vision for their life, people could do anything. And you think I could never do that? Don't say what you could never do. Elazar ben Dudaiah, he might be an extreme version. Every one of us has the capacity to really become insane. There are people that lose their minds. I'll give you a very simple understanding of this. I have a boy in yeshiva a couple years ago. The boy is an amazing kid. Baruch Hashem, he comes from an amazing family. His father is a workaholic. His father's a workaholic. He says to me, "I have no relationship with my dad. I know his dad. His dad is an awesome guy." So I said, 'I'm like, your dad's an awesome guy. What does it mean you have no relationship with your father?' He goes, 'He's just not around to have a relationship with.'

21:38 So what does that mean? He's not around. Tell me what that looks like. He's not around on Shabbos. He said, "No, he's not around on Shabbos." I said, "Where is he?" I said, "Friday night." He goes, "Friday night, my father doesn't make it past the soup." " We have a game in my house growing up. We have a game. We take bets with each other. Will Dad make it past the soup? A Friday night like soup baba. Does anyone here have Friday night soup baba? Where they're falling asleep? The head bob. The head bob is a valiant thing. I want you to know. When I speak, there's always people in the back that are talking and doing things. Those people. But I want you to know, my heroes, whenever I speak, are the people that do this. They're like at risk. The head. And by the way, if you're a head bob falling back person I feel badly for you. I want to go over them and say it's okay to go to sleep because this feels to me very dangerous. This movie is like they get whiplash when they come back. That's a hero. This guy's father is head bobbing in the soup.

22:40 So Friday night he's out. He's not a participant in the meal. They literally have the meal. Mom is there. I said, "What about Shabbos morning?" He said, "Shabbos morning, my dad's a good, firm guy. He daven's hashkam minyan." After hashkam minyan, he sits and learns. I said, "You don't daven with your father?" He said, "I gotta wake up for hashkam minyan. I could barely wake up during the rest of the week." I said, "Where do you daven?" He said, "Nine thirty teen minyan." He said, "My father and I finish around the same time. He's learning. I come home." I said, "Shabbos lunch. He goes, Shabbos lunch." I said Shabbos afternoon. He goes, I'm going to my friends or I'm going to sleep, and my dad is going to sleep. So he's. I said, what about Sundays? He said, Sundays I'm out. I said, practically he doesn't have any time. I said, during the week you come home. He said, look, my dad doesn't come home till eight, nine, ten o'clock at night. I have basketball practice. I've got games. I've got this. I've got that. We just never seem to connect.

23:27 So his father came to yeshiva. His father came to visit. He came like in January break. He's an old friend of mine. We sat down together. I said, how's it going? He said, good. It's going well. He said, "How's my son doing in yeshiva?" I said, "Good, Baruch Hashem. He's a good boy. He's learning. He's studying. He's doing great." "Tell me, what? Where are you holding with your relationship with your son?" I'm not here to judge. I'm just asking, where are you holding? And he goes, "it takes so much to support this family" That I just was like, we just never made time. We just never had those moments of connection. And I totally get where he's coming from. I totally get it. It's hard. This guy said to me, 'Is I use this line all the time. It's a brilliant line.' In his community, he said, 'You need to make a quarter of a million dollars before taxes in order to be poor.'

24:14 Because if you've got four kids, you're spending a hundred thousand dollars in tuition, mortgage, cars. Life is crazy. To be poor, you need to make a quarter of a million dollars. He said, 'To feed this family, to take care of this family, I work like a dog.' His son, when I said to him afterwards, I said, 'Your father feels like he works really hard in order to provide for you.' So the son was moody. He goes, 'Of course he does. He knows that he's working hard to provide for us. It's just sad that he's working so hard to provide for us.' But he doesn't have a relationship with his kids. It's a devastating thing to hear. There are people that lose the forest for the trees all the time. There are people that are running around doing everything but connecting with the people that they want to be connected to. You think R' Elazar Ben Duvai is extreme? There's no doubt he's extreme. But can't we see ourselves doing that? Can't we see ourselves saying, "What would happen if I was totally unleashed? What would happen if I could do whatever I wanted? What would my life look like?"

25:12 You might be a person that ran around the entire world. There are people that do this. I have a chaver who was an unbelievable guy when he was in yeshiva. We used to wake up at five o'clock in the morning to learn together in the summers because we would work all day in the summer in a place called Simcha Day Camp. We wanted to get some learning in. Simcha Day Camp. You're from the Five Towns. What's your last name? Siegelman. So I grew up. I was one of the people that ran Simcha Day Camp. It's a very, very big camp. It was a big camp at the time, over a thousand kids. In order for me to get any learning in, we had to wake up at five o'clock in the morning. The guy was a huge Masmud.

25:47 But something happened in his life. It was a crazy thing. He went completely off the derech. And this guy, when he went completely off the derech, he didn't just go a little bit. He couch surfed across America. You know what it means to couch surf across America? They have websites where people have open couches, and you could just crash on their couches. He hitchhiked across America, and wherever he was, he crashed on somebody's couch. He went from New York to California and back. And then when he was done, I said, 'What's next for you?' He said, 'I'm going to Australia to be a farmer.' And it's true. He went to Australia to be a farmer, and he's gone. He's told me he's done the craziest things. Today he lives in the Czech Republic, and he chose the Czech Republic because it's the most atheistic country in the world. This was a yeshiva guy par excellence. Not just a yeshiva guy, a guy who knew how to learn. Girls, that's not the same thing. There's such a thing called a masmud. There's such a thing as a guy who knows how to show up and put in the work. Then there are guys that are good at learning. This guy was really good at learning, and he cared five o'clock in the morning.

26:49 But once he was untethered, once he was unleashed, he could do whatever he wanted. That's a stage that people go through in life, and it's worthwhile for us to spend a moment checking in with ourselves, looking inside of ourselves, and saying Do I have a place inside of me that if I said What happens if I just let go? What would happen if I had no responsibilities? What would happen if I said I'm not going to be part of the Jewish community or I'm not going to care what anyone would think? What would happen if I just let go? It's possible that Rabbi Elazar ben Dudaiah could speak to every one of us. But I want to share with you what would happen And it will happen to everybody. There's a moment. There's a moment that every one of us has in life. It's a crazy moment.

27:44 It's a moment where something becomes clear to you that this is no longer working. I'll share with you a story, and it's a personal story. I'm asking you if you could open your heart. I tell this story not to speak about myself, but just to share my journey. I was a kid growing up in the Five Towns. I wasn't a particularly frum kid. My parents are amazing people. Both of my parents are balei tshuva. I love them so much. My parents are my inspiration. My grandmother became frum at 70 years old. At 70 years old, my grandmother turned around her life. You've heard this from me before. My grandmother became frum at 70 years old. She started keeping Shabbos. She started keeping kosher, not only inside her home but outside her home. She started dressing tziyas. She became judgmental of all my cousins that weren't religious. She was truly Orthodox.

28:39 My parents, my grandmother, inspiration, mamish inspiration. But I had to discover Yiddishkeit on my own, just like my parents discovered Yiddishkeit for themselves. And I did things in high school that my parents weren't proud of, and I hid from them. I hid from them not because I didn't love them, but because I did love them, and I didn't want to disappoint them. And without getting into any details, I found myself in a certain place on a Shabbos, and it was not a Shabbatik environment. And people were behaving in a way that wasn't aligned with Yiddishkeit. It doesn't matter. We don't need to get into the details. And Shabbos morning, I wish I could tell you it was Shabbos morning. It was Saturday morning. Saturday morning, I woke up, and there was a guy, and he walked by me, and I had done something that had hurt him the night before. And well, it doesn't matter what I did, but he walked by me and he saw that I was awake and he looked at me and he said What's wrong with you?

29:32 What are you doing? And he walked out of the room, and I don't know why, but it crushed me; it absolutely crushed me. And the way that I heard him, he didn't mean this in a way that was meant to inspire me. He meant to say, 'You're a jerk. How could you have done that?' But the way that I heard it is, 'What is wrong with me? What am I doing?' How did I become this guy? In eighth grade, I was in the top she'er in a yeshiva called Yeshiva Darche Torah. We were required, being in that she'er, to learn night seder. And I went from that guy to being in this house. I can't even call it a Shabbos. It was a weekend. How did I? How did I get here? And I sat on the couch for the next couple of hours. I was totally comatose. I didn't want to talk to any of my friends that were there. Everybody was coming over, asking me, 'Are you okay?' I said, 'Yeah, I'm fine. I just need to be left alone.'

30:20 And in the middle of the afternoon, I got up And I put on my clothing, and I walked out of the house. I didn't know where I was going, but I said, "I can't be in this house anymore." There was a shul right down the block—a shul called Shari Tefila. I walked into Shari Tefila, and there was mincha going on. And the strangest thing, I said, "That's it. I'm going to daven mincha." I had no idea why, but I said, "I need to daven mincha." I daven mincha Shabbos afternoon. I went from wherever I was, not that many hours beforehand, to davening mincha on a Shabbos afternoon. Now mincha is over, and I have a choice: I could go back to the house Or I could go to my parents' house. My parents lived like five, six blocks away, but I had told my parents that I was going to West Hempstead for Shabbos because I didn't want my parents to ask me where I was going to be. I told them I'm going to West Hempstead for Shabbos.

31:09 So I didn't want to hurt my mother. I didn't want to go home and tell her I lied to her. I also didn't want to go back to that house. So I walked back to my parents' house. I walked in, and there's my mother sitting with her friend Joyce on the couch. I open the door, and my mother looks at me right away. A look of dread is on her face. She goes, "What are you doing here?" So I had the perfect lie. You want to hear the perfect lie? The perfect lie was this. You know how you always told me, Mom, that if I make a mistake I should be honest and own my mistake. I told you I was going to West Hempstead for Shabbos because I didn't want to lie to you and tell you that I was going somewhere where I knew you wouldn't let me go. Here's the lie, but I was uncomfortable with what was going on Shabbos, so I figured it would be better for me to leave. My mother was so proud of me, and she literally—I walked upstairs and I overheard my mother tell Joyce. You see, that's why you need to have open communication with your children.

32:09 And I was like, "That's awesome! Great lie." Got to because a lie has to have enough truth in it. So it was just enough truth. So now it's Matzah Shabbos, Saturday night. I don't even know what to call it. And my buddy calls me up and he goes, "Where are you?" This is the days before cell phones. I had a line in my room, a physical landline, and I got a phone call. He's like, "Where are you? You disappeared. Everyone wants to know where you went." So I was like, "Yeah, I just wasn't down anymore. I had to get out of there." He goes, "Well, your car's here. So I was like, "Yeah" About that. He said, 'You coming back to pick up your car?' I said, 'No' Because we mean you're not. I'm a five times kid, but you still can't just throw away a car. So I was like, I was like, where? How am I going to get my car back? "So he said, 'I'll drive it over to your house.' This is like one of my closest friends. I'll drive it over to your house."

32:59 So I said, "Thanks so much. Need me to give you a ride back afterwards?" He said, "No, we're all going out. You're not going to come with us?" I said, "No, I'm not down." He said, "What is going on?" I said, "I'm just not down. I'm out." He said, "What do you mean?" I said, "Yeah, I just need some space." All Sunday, all my friends called me. I didn't pick up any phone calls. Sunday, I called a guy. Today, this guy lives here in Israel. Sunday night, I called a guy. His name was Eli Aloni. Eli Aloni was from the great Simcha Day Camp counselors. He was the guy that I really looked up to. He was a great ball player. He was the coolest guy. He was the nicest guy. All I wanted to be was Eli Aloni. And then Eli Aloni went to Israel, and he came back, and he was super frum. And I'll be honest, even though I wasn't in a super frum place, I was like one day I'm gonna be like Eli Aloni. This is the summer before I went to Israel. I called up Eli Aloni that Sunday, and I said to him, Eli, I gotta speak with you. He said, it's just a question of when, because he had a chavruta in the morning. I said, Eli, I gotta speak with you. He said, I'm gonna cancel my chavruta.

33:58 Schmooze tomorrow morning. I came to camp on time. I sat down with Ellie in the beis medrash of Simcha Day Camp. And I told him everything. I told him everything. I didn't hold anything back. It was total vulnerability. Starting from where I was in eighth grade and what happened to me in ninth grade and why I made the decisions that I made and how I ended up at that house on Shabbos And he listened to everything I said and he barely said anything. And then Ellie said to me You want to come to my house for Shabbos next week? So I was like, "Why? What's going on in your house for Shabbos?" "My," he said, "My mom's not going to be around for Shabbos. We're having an open house." He was a couple years older. All the older counselors are coming for Shabbos. You want to come? So I was like, "Yes, sounds awesome." He goes, "Listen, this is the rule for this Shabbos. This Shabbos is called Basserfest.

34:47 So I don't know if you could tell this about me, but I'm the type of person that likes Basserfest. I don't need to know what Basserfest is. I'm already in just from the name. So I said to Eli, I'm like, okay, I'm down. What's Basserfest? He goes, Basserfest means you have to bring enough food for you and five other people. So I was like, what type of food? He said, well, only buser. We don't do sides. So I was like, cool. So I was like, what's the rules? He said, well, if you're bringing hamburgers, you have to bring ten hamburgers. If you're bringing steaks, you only need to bring five steaks. You need to think about what would be a portion size for five adult post yeshiva men. This is awesome. I came home. I told my mom. I said, "Mom, I'm so excited. I got invited to Ellie's house for Shabbos." And my mother says to me because she obviously knows where I was last Shabbos.

35:38 "Are his parents going to be home?" I said, "No, they're not going to be home." And my mother, naive sweet woman that she is, she goes, "Are you sure you're going to feel comfortable?" Like I know last week you didn't make the best decision. This is the people you want me hanging out with. These are all the post Israel guys. " So my mom's like, "Okay," she goes. I told her about Bucerfest. You like, we need to go shopping. She goes, do they need dessert? I called up Ellie. Do we need dessert? He started laughing. Nobody makes it to dessert. You're like in a food coma. Well before dessert ever hits, this is great. Friday after camp is over, we all get in Ellie's car. We go out to Long Beach. Ellie pulls out the grill, and everybody comes out with their meat. It's like 15 guys for Shabbos. We for sure had meat for 100 people. It was an insane amount of food.

36:26 They brought turkey tins to hold all the meat. The enormous turkey tins. We filled three of them. We had a problem. We couldn't fit them in the oven. One of them had to go on the plata before Shabbos. It was a massive amount of food. Friday night is here. What do we do? One of the guys goes, "Get your sedur." We go to the living room. I said, "We're not going to shul." Like I was used to shul. They started laughing. We sat girls. We davened We didn't daven like we just davened up the words. It was singing, it was dancing, and I looked around and I saw these guys, and they were having a totally different religious experience from the one that I had. I was so annoyed by davening from the sitter. These guys were clearly talking to Hashem. It was beautiful. Then it came time for kiddush. We sat down, made kiddush, and made challah.

37:21 Certain beverages were brought out to the table that were reminiscent of the previous week. You understand what I'm saying? I'm not saying. I'm just saying. If you know what I'm saying. And I said to myself, I was like, I get it. But it was a totally different type of experience. If you wanted to take a drink, you had to say a dvar Torah, and the guys were saying real dvar Torah. They had clearly prepared. They weren't saying kitschy things. They were saying real things. And there was one guy at the table. His name is Yitzi And Yitzi was crying And not crying because How should we say Not crying because he was induced to cry. He was crying real tears, and he looked at me and the two other guys that were going to Israel, and he said, 'I want you to know, you guys are about to have the best years of your life.'

38:10 I'm so jealous. I wish I could go back. And it struck me that he had something in Israel that I was yearning for. It was a beautiful Shabbos. We woke up the next morning. We went to shul. We came home. We had lunch. I was about to go to sleep. Shabbos afternoon—that's what you do. And Eli looks at me and he comes. My name now I'm Mordechai, but back in the day I was Matt Berg. Eli puts his arm around me and he says, "Matt, we don't just go to sleep." Shabbos is not just something we sleep away. You got to learn on Shabbos. So I was like, 'Eli, what do you want me to learn?' So he pulled out. He goes, 'You want to sing in Hebrew? You want to sing in English?' I'm like, 'I'm definitely not down for Hebrew.' He pulls out a little book, like one of those little fella time books. He pulled out a book called Strive for Truth. He said, "Let's sit down. Let's learn a little bit." We sat down. We opened up a Strive for Truth. We started going through it. I had questions. Ellie had answers, and we learned for two to three hours. It was incredible. I hadn't learned that much in years.

39:06 Girls, the moment that I had that Shabbos was when I was coming to Israel. I was already on fire. When the rest of my friends were having their summer before the year in Israel, I wasn't going out with them anymore. I was done with that. Everybody has something called the moment. The moment is when you realize I can't believe what I've done. I led an untethered life. I did things that I shouldn't have done. I crossed lines that I said I'm never in my life going to cross. Everybody has a moment where, from the most depraved place, maybe they hear a backlash that says, "You've gone too far." But you're not yet ready to accept it. You're not yet ready to cry. Because you don't yet have full responsibility. What you do is you turn to others. You go to Eli Aloni. You go to whoever it is that madricha, that rakaze, that mechaneche, that rebbe, and you sit down with them. You make a meeting and you say, "Can we talk?" But in a certain way, you still haven't owned the problem.

40:05 Because there's another stage. Even after you've had that moment. Even after you're looking to everybody else for help, girls, there's something that you have to learn, and we'll finish with this: Ein hadavar talui ella bi. At the end of the day, you are the one who caused the damage, and therefore, you are the only one that could solve your problem. Girls, I'm going to tell you a secret. This is not a popular thing to say. It's not in vogue to say, but I believe it with all of my heart. There is no mussar sefer that you will read this year that will give you the answer to any of your problems. There is no rebbe, no teacher, no mechanechet, no rakaze, no madricha, no embaiz that knows the answer to your problems. And it's disempowering for you to think that somebody else knows what you need to do.

40:52 I want to give you a piece of advice. Don't do it now. Later tonight. If you have a question of what you should do next, instead of running to somebody else for advice, close your eyes and think, and allow an answer to well up from inside of yourself. Take ownership and say, 'You know what? This is going to be my path.' Ravolbi writes in Aliyah. Sure, nobody knows your path. Your path is your unique path. Your avera is your avera. Therefore, it must be your tshuva. It can't be anybody else's tshuva. Ninety percent of the problem today is that we think we don't know the answers to our questions, and it's a lie. You get older, and you realize advice is a beautiful thing, but that's all it is. It's just advice. You're the only one that could solve your own problem. It's a hard thing that I'm saying because you might say, "But I feel overwhelmed. I feel anxious."

41:50 You know, you girls have language that the boys don't have in yeshiva. I want you to know when I give the shmuuz in yeshiva, the boys go like this: they go, 'This is what it sounds like.' No, Rabbi, that seems hard. When you speak to the girls, this is what it sounds like when they go I just feel like I don't know if I have the space inside of myself. To give myself permission to be curious about what my journey has been And I guess I just feel lonely in the journey. And maybe if I just had somebody with me who was journeying alongside of me in a non-judgmental, compassionate way Then maybe I could discover my own answer. For the guy, he's like, I don't know, Rabbi. It sounds hard. It's the same thing. It's just expressed two very different ways. It's not bad.

42:41 It's not bad. I have five daughters, so I've learned about having emotional language. When guys come to yeshiva in the beginning of the year, and you ask them how you're doing, how you're adjusting to yeshiva, they either do this: they go, "Yeah, good" Or they go, "Eh." Eh means the world is falling apart. Good means I think I'm going to manage, but it's hard. Great is actually decent. That's the way we're in seminaries. You come, you go. How's it going? I just—I guess I'm wondering if I belong here. I'm not saying I made a mistake. I definitely could see that this would be the right place, but I don't know if there's a lot of girls like me. Or if they really understand where I'm coming from. That's for boys. It's two letters. It's not even a word. It's a sound. I've learned a lot about your half of the species. I want you to know we appreciate you.

43:36 We're still trying to figure you out, but we definitely appreciate you. Ainadavertoloyella bi. If it's overwhelming, if it produces some anxiety, if it even moves you to tears, if it's something that you realize It's my mistake and I'm the only one that could fix it. That's understandable. Elazar ben Udiya doesn't cry when he realizes how far he's gone because he's still externalizing. He's still looking other places for the answers. The journey of tshuva ultimately has to get to a point where you say chatasi avisi pashati. These are my mistakes, and therefore they're mine to fix. What is olam haba? Olam haba. The Rambam writes, Maral writes, the Ramban writes that olam haba is down here in this world. Sometimes we grow up thinking that olam haba is this mystical world in the sky. Olam hazeh is the world as it currently is. Olam haba is the world as it will one day be.

44:34 What are we talking about when we say Elazar ben Duda was kaino elam haba b'shachas? It means that in that moment when he went outside and he put his head between his legs and he cried out to the Rebbeinu Shlalem, he became the person that he was meant to become. He achieved his shlemus; his soul left because there was nothing left for him to do. Because at the end of the day, once you take ownership of your life, you've won the game. It's a very hard thing to take ownership of your life. Most adults don't take ownership of their life. Many adults sit there blaming everybody else, externalizing, looking to other people for the answers. Most people don't know how to turn within themselves and discover the true path. Elazar Ben Dudaiah is crowned with the title of Rebbe because he teaches that to every one of us. And Rabbi Yehuda Anasi is jealous of him. Some of us are still in process. Elazar Ben Dudaiah teaches us what it looks like to arrive, to take ownership of yourself, girls. The secret to this year is it belongs to you.

45:37 At some point this year, I'm sure it's not going to happen, but just in case it does, and when it does, at some point this year, you're going to realize the year is not going exactly the way I want it to, and the first thing you're going to do is you're going to blame others. If I was only in that seminary with those girls, if I only had that teacher, I feel like this teacher's not there. I keep trying to make a meeting with that mechanecha, but she's never available. And we had it, but it's never working out. I just don't feel I could get what I need. That's externalizing. That's not taking responsibility. It's even deeper than that. I went to that rebbe, that teacher, that mechanecha, that rakesa, that madricha, that ain't bias, and I said, 'Tell me what to do, and I'll do it.' Even that's not going to make your year what it is. If you want to know what's going to make this year last, if you want to know what olam haba looks like, if you want to know what it looks like to be a darkebina girl 25 years later The key is this: Did you own it?

46:29 Did you say "Ein hadavar taloi ella bi"? Did you say this is my year to make it what it is? Every one of us came into this year with hopes, dreams, expectations, aspirations And you will only meet all of those goals that you have for yourself. There's a secret that everybody in this room has. You've been waiting to come to Yerushalayim Eretz Yisroel to make a big change in your life. You've been waiting for this. As long as you keep looking everywhere else and saying, 'who's going to do it to me? Who's going to do it for me?' It will never truly happen. There's always those guys that come to yeshiva. You see them every year. They're awesome when they're in yeshiva. Five years down the line, it didn't last. Why doesn't it last? Because they never took ownership. Sometimes you have a guy in yeshiva and he's shtagging like crazy. Why? Because that's what you do in yeshiva. The guy next to him is shtagging, and the guy in his room is shtagging. So he becomes like that. But did he really do it?

47:20 You have girls that are going to make a choice about themselves. Things this year. Girls that are going to say, "I'm no longer doing this, or I accept upon myself to do this." My wife told me about a friend of hers when she was in Darchebina, Darchebina alum Who was makabel on herself that she was no longer drinking soda. She was no longer drinking soda, but not for health reasons. Because she wanted to live a simple life, she wanted to marry a guy, and this was her thing. She wanted to marry a guy who was going to be a long-term learner, and she said, "We're not going to be able to afford soda." Now the irony is that she married a guy who's been learning in Kyiv for over twenty years. She got the long-term learner part. Happens to be, he comes from a very wealthy family that could have all the soda they want. She abstains from soda for two years of her life. I promise you, if this girl wants to buy Coke Zero, she could buy all of Coke, not Sprite, Coke, Coke Zero, the whole thing.

48:10 But I so admire that story Not because I care about the Coke, but because here's a person who said, "I have a plan, and it's on me to implement it." I want to give everyone in this room a bracha. And it's a bracha for myself. I'm not sitting here above you. I'm not telling you that I have life figured out. One thing for sure, I have no idea what to do in life. I only know what roads not to take because I've tried all the bad ones. But I'm telling you for real. I want to bless everybody in this room that we should be zeicha this year to take ownership. That's what it means to grow up. That's what it means to be an adult. To be able to say in life, 'Ayna davar taloyelabi,' that even if it feels like I can't do tshuva, nothing could stand in the way of me when I get started. That I could be a person that sets my mind to something and has grit, perseverance, and loyalty. These are not words that we use today. Everything today is about what pleasure am I going to get? That's for children. Adults want to know what they are. What they are contributing. What they are part of. What they can do in life. Blessed Hashem, this is going to be a year of tremendous growth because we're going to have the courage to say, "En adavar tali elabi." I want to wish you girls a gemar chesim etayven a good.