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I see that the sheir is Beschoser Fushalima for Amir Benrut And the ilu nishmas nadav elchanan ben eliyazr Yitzchak Sarah bas elia and golda bas henry. Who's Amir Benrut? Your father. Beschoser Fushalima. Who are the Ilu Nishmases? People we know. The two are my grandmothers. Passed away both thirteen years ago on Shlomo Ratzinger and one on Tisha Like in the same year, like. It was a year for my parents. It's a tough three weeks. They're very connected to three weeks. The last one was a cousin of mine that was killed in Gaza two weeks ago. Not Daw, no words. I remember that name. Yeah. We're we're holding we're holding so much it's it's impossible now it's impossible. Where I always grew up and Rabbi Yem always told me we're in it's a nation, it's like an impossible nation. We grew up hearing those stories from Rabbi Yem.
Klau Yisrael can do more than anybody could possibly understand. And I never really believed them. I never really understood what that meant. Say there. Um. When When Mrs. Lubet and I were arranging the sheir, originally we were arranging the sheir around Shavas or Batamus So we didn't know initially if it was going to be beforehand or afterwards or exactly when. The sheir is on Shavas or Batamus, but it's not really. I just want to explain the sheir is not really on Shavas or Batamus. The sheir is really on the three weeks. We all know the idea that anything That's Let's say for example, if a mother is having a child, so we already know that at the very moment that the child is conceived, the child already has everything inside of it in that moment, and then there's just a nine month gestational period that the child comes into being. The same thing is true.
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The same thing is true every week on Shabbos, and the same thing is certainly true in the three weeks that Shavas or Batamos. In many ways, as we'll see, Beis Hashem. Shavasr Batamis holds the key to the entire three weeks. And as we'll see, if we can really understand the Yisod, the foundational ideas of Shavasr Batamis, then potentially we have the ability to undo the calamity of the three weeks, culminating in Tishavav. I'm sure everybody saw it. It was on everybody's WhatsApp status. This one poem went viral. It's that four line poem. This year we don't need anyone to explain to us what the breaking of the walls are. And of course that's true and it's deeply meaningful and I'm not Chassid Shalom saying anything against it. Also when I read it I was also deeply moved and then I started thinking I'm not sure if that's a hundred percent true.
It could be that in this year more than ever before we need to understand what it means the breaking of the walls, as I think we can understand it from the perspective, the natural perspective of what happens when people come running across our borders with intent to harm and takadu, and the months that have followed in that way. But these ideas are so deep And unless we understand the depth of these ideas, we're bound to repeat them. And I do believe that if we understood shiva aser betamos in the way that it's meant to be understood, we would spend the next three weeks working on these ideas. Because Hashem, this Tishavav could be a yamtuf. The Gemara tells us that five things happened on Tishavav, and five things happened on Shiva Aser Betamis. So we're not going to discuss the five things that happened on Tishavav, but we're going to discuss the five things that happened on Shiva Aser Betamis. I'm sure you know them. We'll just review them very quickly.
The Shviras Haluchos, Moshe Abinu broke the luchos on Shiva Aser Betamis. The Carbon Tumid. Was no longer able to be brought Because in the Yerushalmi it teaches us that there weren't any sheep to be brought for the Karban Tumid And so they would have to pay off the Romans to bring them sheep. And on Shiva Aser Betamid, the gold that they gave to the Romans didn't bring sheep and instead they brought pigs, and after that the Karban Tumid was discontinued. Then, as we all know, they breached the walls. So now they breached the walls and they came into Yerushalayim. Which, by the way, if you think about it, we know those walls, right? We live with those walls. We walk through those walls. It's pretty amazing to think about it that if it was Shiva or Batam, as it took them three weeks to get to the Beis Hamikdash and actually destroy the Beis Hamikdash. I was thinking about it today. That it's a couple of blocks. So I was thinking about what happened over there.
The idea is an important one. It was Mammash hand to hand combat, and they were doing everything they could in those three weeks to stop the Roman army from coming into the Beis Hamikdash. It's serious business. The fourth thing, which I think most people overlook, is Apostamos burned a Sefer Torah. Exactly which Sefer Torah he burned is not a hundred percent clear. It's subject to some dispute. But for the purposes of this year We're going to go with the idea that Apostamos, who was a Greek nobleman or soldier, some sort of a high-level official. He burned the Sefer Torah that Ezra had written. So there was a Sefer Torah that Ezra wrote, and that Sefer Torah was the Sefer Torah that everyone copied from. It was a significant Sefer Torah; it wasn't just any Sefer Torah. The idea here is that they didn't just lose a Sefer Torah, but somehow the transmission.
Of Torah to Klal Yisrael was interrupted in a certain sense. They had this Sefer Torah, Ezra's Sefer Torah, and now that Sefer Torah is no more. And finally Menashe placed an idol in the Beis Hamikdash. Again, it's not exactly clear when this occurred, if it was done by Apostamos or if it was done by Menashe, but we're going to go with the side that it was Menashe. Doesn't really make a difference, either way, an idol was placed in the Beis Hamikdash. These are the five events. And at first blush, when we look at these five events, they seem to be five disparate events, five events that have nothing to do with each other. And so, when you're growing up, at least this is the way that I grew up. You're growing up, so you're taught the Gemara: what happened on Shavuos or Passover. And you say, 'Okay, five things happened on Shavuos or Passover.' But how many of us ever thought to ourselves that maybe these five things are really one thing, and they're really deeply connected to each other? Most people don't think that way, but the Balik Chassidus. The Balyashkafa, the Baly Kabbalah, discuss that these five things are really five steps in the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash that culminated in Tishavuf with the actual destruction of the Beis Hamikdash.
But once you go through these five events, the natural consequence of that is the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. So we're going to go through each one according to the Seder of the Gemara, which we just listed in the order of the Gemara. We're going to go through each one and explain how each one of these things contributes ultimately to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. And the way we're going to do it is by explaining the psychology of each one of these things. If you understand the psychology of what Chazal are trying to communicate to us, that these are the five things that happened. By the way, for the record, it's very possible that other things happened on Shavuos or Pesach as well. We know that Chazal say very clearly that the time of the three weeks is not an auspicious time for Klal Yisrael. Many things happened. Throughout history, over the course of these three weeks, if Chazal chose these five things, it's because they were communicating an idea.
And so we have to get to the idea. We have to get to the root of what's being communicated to us in order to understand that. We have to understand the psychology of each one of these things and the progression of how ultimately we lose the Beis Hamikdash. So we'll start with the Shviras Haluchos. The Argad Al Yo. Has a beautiful piece. We're not going to get into the Arge Daliav now, but he has a beautiful piece. I think there he quotes the Mearal And he discusses the idea of the first Luchos being body and soul. That the physical Luchos themselves, and the writing that was engraved into the Luchos by Hakadosh Baruch Hu himself Represents the perfected body and soul. In the times of Adam Rishon. When Adam and Eve sinned What happened there? To understand the depth of what happened, a person has to understand that up until that point, body and soul lived in perfect alignment, in perfect balance.
And then when Adam and Eve sinned Again, without getting into the details of exactly how it changed and exactly what changed, all we need to know is this: the soul of a person is no longer naturally aligned with the body of a person. It's not that's not a natural alignment anymore. It used to be that Adam Rishon lived in a completely natural alignment, and now that world of alignment no longer exists. This is why, and Rabbi Nachman speaks about this. This is why there's a concept called death. If the body and the soul were perfectly aligned, the person would never die. What would be death? By the way, this way of thinking is making its way back into Western medicine now, which is very interesting. It's a very interesting thing. There's a shift happening before Mashiach comes. We're moving back to this style of thinking, where we know that we cannot separate body and soul. We can't separate those two things.
I'm not a fan of him on a hashkafic level. Unfortunately, even though he's Jewish, he said some things that I think are pretty abhorrent. But this person whose name is Doctor Gabor Matei. Anyone here familiar with Doctor Gabor Matei? The Gabor Mate is a fascinating man, and basically he was a medical doctor who became a psychologist. He's a Holocaust survivor. And he has this idea that when we're looking at certain neurological diseases Multiple sclerosis, things of that nature, these are stress oriented diseases And to treat them only with stress oriented hormones. He says it's a mistake because it's not just a physical ailment, it's a psychological ailment. The stress in the body deteriorates the body, so there's a lack of alignment of body and soul that happens. Western medicine is starting to come around to this idea. Rabbi Nachman speaks about this idea that when a person goes to a doctor and the doctor gives him medicine, the person will start to think.
Not the medicine is healing me, but there's something larger than myself that's bringing healing to me, and that is what actually creates the healing. Rabbi Nachman says that the body and soul then become realigned, and that's where healing comes from. After there was a lack of alignment between body and soul, the natural consequence of that was death. We could go on and on about this idea. We should at least for a moment. The natural consequence of when body and soul are in alignment is that the world actually will work for you. And this is what will happen in the times of Mashiach. In the times of Mashiach, the world itself will provide for all of our needs, and this will be what the Rambam describes: how we will spend our time in Yomos Mashiach and in Olam Habah, consumed with the knowledge of Hashem. How will we be consumed with the knowledge of Hashem if we're all busy working like we're working like Meshuganas today? And today we're really working like Mosheganos because the standard of living is off the charts, so the answer is that the world will provide for us. In fact, we see that that's happening today. We see that we already know that there's so many resources in the world, and we can automate the world. The world can give us everything we need.
Right now, there's a lack of alignment of body and soul. People are charging a fortune for things, but there will become a stage. We believe that it will become a stage where the world itself will provide for us. This is what happens when body and soul are aligned. When body and soul are not aligned, the world does not provide for us. It doesn't work in the same way. Things aren't working. The machine isn't working. This is the result. This is the natural result of the fractures that exist in marriage. The reason why marriage is so hard is because we are not aligned, body and soul. Just as an example of this, this is again the curse of Chava. But we know this to be true. When we are in self And we're deeply connected to our soul. And our external life matches the internal desires of the soul, and we're leading a harmonious life.
We know somehow things seem to do better in marriage. Because marriage is a soul-to-soul connection. That's what Chazal. That's what the pasuk says, 'Vahayu lebaser echad.' How could it be that flesh could become one? Flesh, by its definition, is two separate things. How could flesh become one? The teretz is that. The flesh can only become one, the body can only become one when there's an alignment of the soul. The unbelievable thing is that when the soul is aligned with the body, two separate individual people have the capacity for intimacy. They have the capacity for oneness. This is what happens again when the body is aligned with the soul. We know that Chazal tell us that by Arsinei. That the Malach Hamavos had no shlita over us anymore. We were at a stage of tikkun of other merishon sin, that there was no more death in the world. That was the level that we had reached. How did we reach such a level? Because through the forty-nine days of working on ourselves in Sfiris Haomer, we reached the stage where we were aligned totally, body and soul. And therefore, the Arga Daliyal makes this clear.
That the first luchos actually represented Klal Yisrael themselves. The reason why the first luchos were so perfect is because we were in such a perfected state of total alignment of body and soul. So when Moshe Rabbeinu breaks the luchos on Shavuos or Matamos, this represents for us in our world tonight here in the VeShamir the breaking of body and soul. The misalignment that now happens and all of the ramifications of that misalignment. Where do you attack a problem? This is part of the challenge of Western medicine. Western medicine always tries to treat the symptom. If you have strep throat, we give you penicillin or amoxicillin. Now you don't have your symptoms anymore, and you're cured. Eastern medicine would ask why you are getting strep throat to begin with. That's the difference. And I'm not suggesting that people shouldn't go to Western. People hear these shiurim and they're like, so Berg said I should go to a Chinese medicine doctor, and then I get in trouble. It's not what I'm saying.
Although it happens to be, there are some amazing stories about these Chinese medicine doctors and the things they're able to accomplish. I'm not into holistic healing, but I do appreciate the concept. If the first thing that the Gemara is telling us is that the first event was Shviras Haluchos, it wasn't just chronologically the first. We always have to look to the point of the fracture itself in order to understand everything that comes after that. In other words, we can't understand Tishav. Without understanding that tishabub is a direct result of the shvirus haluchos, it's a direct result of the lack of alignment between the body and the soul. We know that the reason Moshe Rabenu dropped the luchos is because the osios left them, as the osios were holding up the luchos, the soul was holding up the body. That's the way it's supposed to be. The soul is supposed to power the body. What happens when the body overwhelms the soul?
Which is the condition that most of us are living in today? I saw an idea, a beautiful idea. What's the difference in a good life, a great life, and an extraordinary life? In a good life, you have what you need in order to survive. It's no small thing. Today, not everyone has that. In a great life, you have what you need in order to survive, and you also have meaning. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they go together. A person could go to work and do an activity that's not meaningful to them. They could achieve tremendously in that job. And the job supports the meaningful things in their lives. I bring home a paycheck so that I'm able to pay tuition. I bring home a paycheck so that I'm able to provide for my family. The meaning is separate from the achievement. That's a great life because you have meaning and you have achievement. In an extraordinary life, the meaning and the achievement are one.
The job itself, the place of achievement is a place that gives you that seipah kanefesh. Why is that an extraordinary life? What's the difference? Why is that so critical to us? Because it means that we've aligned the body and soul of the job. I'll speak to you as mothers for a second. I've lived with a mother for a very long time. She's Baruch Hashem, my wife and I were grandparents now, and we've been parents for twenty one years. And I could tell you, and I'm sure you have this. I shouldn't speak for everyone here, but I'm sure that some people in the room will understand this idea. It's not always so rewarding to be a mother. It's nice to see.
It's always that point in any given year where people smile quietly because they don't want anyone else to see. But for those of you who came with me on this, it's not so pashat, right? Especially ba'az Hashem as you get older and you have teenage children. I want you to know that as good as your children are when they're young and they're all wonderful and they'll all be amazing ba'az Hashem, but when they're teenagers, they might say things that are exceptionally hurtful. That's the nicest way I could put them. And you might think of some of the things that you told your own mother, and you might cringe as you reflect back on some of those things. The fact that your mother could walk out of the house and she had to be judged by you as she was walking out of the house. If what she was wearing was appropriate enough to represent you in the world. You remember that? Remember that moment? I know. One time, my wife was coming to pick up one of my daughters from sleepaway camp.
They were dropping her off at the bus, and my wife was given instructions as to what she should wear. To come pick her up, and I quote I told my friends from camp that you were cute. She's a wonderful girl, Baruch Hashem. But it's like sometimes I see my wife get off the phone and she's got that look on her face. I'm like, how bad? She's like, it's okay. It's not me. I'm separated. I'm other, right? She's like very worked out. You know what I'm saying? It's not always that the thing that you achieve in is the thing that provides you. Sipakanevish. That's not the way the world is supposed to be. The way the world is supposed to be is that body and soul are supposed to be aligned. An extraordinary life is when our achievements match our meaning, when our body matches our soul. That's why people are so frustrated. What am I doing already? I'm a medical biller.
It's like people are struggling to find the meaning. You say to them, but don't you see that job Ultimately brings in this parnasa? It's like I see that, but it's not the same thing as going to do something every day. That I don't find intrinsically meaningful. It's not really supposed to be that way. Before Adam and Eve sinned, every activity was inherently meaningful. When the body outweighs the soul, life becomes very heavy. That's why people are very depressed. When you have more existence than life, life becomes very heavy, and that's why Moshe Rabbeinu drops the luchos. We have to understand the misalignment in ourselves. The word I'm going to use for this is not just misalignment, but balance. How many people don't raise your hands? The answer is everybody. How many people here are in balance? The answer is nobody's in balance. None of us are in balance. Balance is the hardest thing in the world to achieve. People talk about a work-life balance. That's like the farthest symptom of it. But how many of us feel? You ever get to that stage where you like say to your husband, "I'm done."
Those words. I don't. By the way, I want you to know, growing up, I never heard those words before. Men don't use those words. I never had a guy say to me, "I'm done." You get married, all of a sudden, I was like, "I'm done." With what? How far does 'done' go? You don't know. It's like a scary thing when you're newly married. I'm done with all of it. In that moment, she's like, "Yep, with everything, right?" And what's the pshat? We see what we ask Jewish women to do today is insane. We ask you to raise the next generation of Jewish children and do it like it's effortless. By the way, that's very important. I've noticed that also with your half of the species. It's very with men. It's like worked really hard. We come and we tell everyone how hard we work. With women, it's like oh, it was nothing. What do you mean? I saw you in the kitchen for seven hours baking for that kiddush and making Shabbos and taking care of the kids. I saw you working like crazy. It was nothing. I you. But then you're done, right? I've noticed this ying yang. You're playing games with us, but I'm onto you.
It's a lack of internal balance. How do we get to that stage to begin with? There's a shvirus haluchos. Make sense? That's the beginning of the end. What happens? What happens after the shvirus haluchos? After the shvirus haluchos, is the carbon tamed? You can't show up consistently to life if you're not in balance. Which doesn't mean that you can't have awesome streaks. But you can't show up and be a carbon copy. It's impossible. It's impossible. That's why we see it very often. You see, especially with kids, that they're very streaky. If a boy in yeshiva and he's like, "Say, Rabbi, I'm not going out again." He's like, "Forever." And by the way, some of these kids do it like four months later. I have to go. Because you should have been going the entire time. Are you crazy? I haven't showered in four months. I've been in the base of Medrash. I just changed my sheets for the first time. You're an animal. What are you doing? It's a streaky. Children look at it this way. They're very streaky. They can do things. You could do things for a long time.
And you could soldier on You could soldier on through life. And we see most people are doing this But to show up. Every single day with consistency is I would say it's next to impossible. It's really impossible. The reason why we're falling apart, the reason why we're getting to that stage of done, is because there are two things at the opposite ends of the spectrum, and they're deeply connected. If you're in balance, that's one stage of the spectrum. That's the initial point of the spectrum. Then your behavior, which is all the way at the opposite end of the extreme, is going to be impacted by that. In other words, you don't come from nowhere. There's a reason why we behave the way we behave. One of my mentors has this line that he uses that I think is very beautiful. He says Everything is understandable, and anything that's understandable is forgivable.
It's just that we don't yet understand it. In other words, we don't understand why I'm behaving the way I'm behaving, as we don't necessarily connect those dots. Your behavior is a direct reflection of your inner state. Those are not two disconnected things. And so when you know it's like this is why willpower doesn't work. Because willpower is just trying to push yourself to do something that you're not really capable of doing because you're misaligned. Does that make sense? In other words, even though sometimes you need to act your way into good thinking Ultimately, in its essence, if you're behaving in a deviant way, and I don't mean deviant in the sick way, I mean if you're behaving in a way that's not aligned with your values, it's not just a question of changing strategies. There's a reason you're behaving that way. It's because there's a shviras haluchos. You can't show up to life every single day, day in and day out, and be expected to maintain the pace of life with the chaos of life if there's a shviras haluchos at the very beginning of it. That's just obvious.
But most people don't do that. Most people sit in extreme judgment of themselves. And they say, "Why am I not behaving differently? Why can't I get my act together? Why is my marriage still struggling? I've been married to you for a number of years. Why am I still struggling with this? Why am I struggling with this kid? I feel like I've been struggling with the same thing since I'm fourteen years old or seven years old? You have a therapist in Eshelayim who's considered one of the top therapists in Eshelayim. Told me that he was seeing a couple in their seventies, marriage with marriage therapy, in their seventies." And they were like, 'Look, we don't have that many years left together, but we're trying to work on it.' And he was like, 'It was like an unbelievable thing, still going at it, even in their seventies.' But what was more profound is that the stuff they were talking about was stuff from their kids. Imagine being seventy-five years old, being in a therapist's office and talking about what you went through when you were six, doing inner child work at seventy-five.
Imagine what it was like for the therapist during the Great Depression. This is what I was going through. I'm telling you, in World War Two. This is what I was going through. We have to connect the dots. We're alluded to it a moment before, and I want to spell it out. It's not a normal thing to ask somebody to provide a parnasa for their family To be an emotionally tuned mother To because we know this right. We know that you have a capacity. Men don't have this in the same way. It's not that men can't be emotionally attuned, but women have a more natural nurturing emotional attunement to their children. Sometimes my wife says to me, "Did you notice this about your daughter?" I did notice it actually. Tell me what I noticed. There's something, and she's like, "Did you see how she was?" You see, there's an emotional attunement. Can you be emotionally attuned to your children if you're exhausted? It's not shayach.
It's pascha, not shayach. So what time did you have to wake up in the morning? I was talking to a chaver of mine in America. I said, "What time do you wake up in the morning? What time does your wife wake up in the morning?" He said, "I wake up at six fifteen. My wife wakes up at six thirty." He wakes up at six fifteen, so they could be at a six thirty meeting. He lives right down the block from the shul. He's not getting home until seven twenty. She's doing the first round of getting herself off and getting the earlier kids off because she has to be at work at eight o'clock in the morning. He's learning in Kyiv in the morning. He's been in Kyiv for over twenty years. Unbelievable guy. He works. He just happens to be able to learn in Kyiv for the first two third of the day. He really works at night in America, which is interesting. He gets the second shift of kids off, and then he himself goes to Kyiv. And then she comes home at three.
And that she has another job that she does two days a week, and it's like. The kids, how they like. We forget about this because it's not really the same in there. Still, do you know how in America kids roll in? You have the four o'clock shift, the five o'clock shift, then the six o'clock shift, and the kids that come home after nights later. If you have the older teenagers And you have to be there for each one of them as they come home, greeting them with a smile. How are you? Has your day been right? And each one of them provides food for this one. If you woke up at six fifteen in the morning to do that, if you woke up at six thirty in the morning, aren't you going to be exhausted by eleven o'clock at night? And you don't get a break. Sundays are harder day because it's like in America at least. Sundays is like Now you have to entertain the kids all day. This is why all women right now in Ramat Echames, all women, I don't care what section of the community you're from All women dread the summer.
Especially if you have girls. It's like, how come they can't do what the boys do? How come they can't go to Tishabah? I'm just saying, they're home. I just need my space for a minute. I've noticed, as my wife comes home, she tells me from the women in the park, it's like what everybody's talking about. I just need the kids out of the house. I just need them to go somewhere else. It's exhausting. How could you show up and be a karmic talmid if you're not emotionally aligned? And how could you? I'm sorry. If you're not spiritually aligned, and if you're not spiritually aligned and in balance, something is going to fall apart. So that's stage two. Your behavior is understandable. It's a result of the fractured balance of body and soul. Number three, and this is where things really start to fall apart. And it's a big word in today's world. Lack of boundaries, the breaking of the walls.
Of course, we understand, especially here in Israel. The physical breaking of the walls and the feelings of fear and uncertainty that we now live with. And it's like I don't know if this is universal, but I just find myself waiting every day for the other shooter to drop. It's like who likes because we all know. We all know somebody who was killed. Guys, we all know somebody who's and even if we didn't know that kid, but we know somebody who knew that kid. When I was in Eretz Israel for my year in Israel, I used to go to Shilo for Shabbos. Ever go to Shilo? You have to go to Shilo. You have to go to. If anyone here is like, if you've been in Eretz Israel and you haven't gone to Shilo Nara Mat Shilo, actual Shilo. And the way, thank you for laughing at that. That was a very rabbi joke, and as soon as I said it, I was cringing inside of myself. There's a 16-year-old kid inside of myself which wants to punch me in the face for making that joke.
You didn't have to. It was a bad joke, and you're very kind. But the Shiloh is the most beautiful place. There's a mishkan shul that they built in the middle of Shiloh, like in the heart of Shiloh. And it's a replica of the mishkan. And if you ever have the chance to go for Shabbos, Friday night, the way they built the shul when the sun sets in the winter. The sun sets and the rays of the sun reflect off of the mishkan shul in the middle of Shilo. It's absolutely stunning. And I didn't have any relatives here in Israel because my parents are both balei tshuva. And so I didn't really have any relatives. But my mother's best friend lived in Shilo, so I probably went to Shilo at least once or twice a month for Shabbos. Most beautiful place And I learned so much that year, and one of the things that I learned was I came for Shabbos.
And Sarah Cheryl Who was the mother of the family was my mother's best friend. She said, "You can come for Shabbos, but I'm just telling you, it's a very hard Shabbos." I said, "Why?" She said, "Because one of the kids in the neighborhood was a madrich for the Bnei Akiva group that they had out there. Was killed in battle. "And I was like, 'Like I don't have to come. Like I can find somewhere else to be.' And she's like, 'No, it's okay.'" And that Shabbos, I remember it being a very powerful Shabbos because she said to me She called me Matt because that's how I grew up. She said, 'Matt, you have to understand. Everybody here knows somebody, even if he wasn't your madrich, he was your brother's madrich. Everybody here knows somebody.' There's a deep uncertainty that we live with here in Eretz Yisrael.
We are embracing the chaos of life in ways that other people around the world are not. Because of the breach in boundaries, but that's only one dimension of it. It's only one dimension of it is physical. I really want to talk about the spiritual dimension of boundaries. The issue of boundaries is as follows: boundaries are about keeping people in, not about keeping people out. The word boundaries have become weaponized in marriage. It's a very sad thing. It's really tragic because we've destroyed the idea of boundaries. If a therapist is not a good therapist, a therapist could teach a person, a husband or a wife, to say, "You're violating my boundaries." And if you do it that way, if you just say, "You're violating my boundaries," what you're really doing is you're pushing somebody away. Boundaries are not meant to be pushing somebody away. Boundaries are This is what it looks like to be in a relationship with me, and I'm inviting you to participate in a relationship with me by keeping to the rules and regulations of this marriage.
That's a beautiful invitation. If somebody says to you This hurts, and I'm asking you not to do that. What they're really saying is, because I love you, because I care about you, I want to keep you in this relationship. And this is a hard thing. I'm no longer going to lie to you because that's how we destroy boundaries by lying. I'm no longer going to lie to you, and I'm going with you. That was not okay for me. Cowering and not telling somebody when they hurt you is actually a boundary violation. Because then you're not giving the person the opportunity to be in a relationship. So boundaries are the framework within which we live. Every community has boundaries. Every marriage has boundaries. Boundaries in our relationships with our children. Boundaries in our relationship with ourselves. One of the most important things that we have to teach children is no. And again, today for some reason, it's not what people intended. For some reason, people think And it's because they have these bad titles for certain very beautiful books, but they think that unconditional love means saying yes to your children all the time. Unconditional love is sometimes saying no to your children because no teaches them how to respect the boundaries of themselves and how to respect the boundaries of others. I was just talking to my wife.
About a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful man Who never wanted to see his children in any pain, and he spoiled them rotten, and his children were. Very difficult to get along with because of that. Now there's something very beautiful. Here was a kid who grew up. He was the apple of his father's eye. His father was a Holocaust survivor. So he never wanted to make his son upset. When that guy became a father, he never wanted his son to be upset. He spoiled the kid rotten. And I'm talking about ten o'clock at night when the kids were already like ten years old and it was time to go to sleep. He would say to his father, "I want ice cream," and his father, "Okay, here we go. We're getting ice cream." And it was a terrible thing to teach the kid at ten o'clock at night. There's something to telling your child in a healthy way. But there's something to telling the child "I'm sorry, we're not getting ice cream at ten o'clock at night." I see that you want ice cream.
I'm saying no to you because that's the way to teach a child that it's okay to live within boundaries. A child naturally doesn't want any boundaries. They're going to be all over the place by definition. Marriages are like this also. None of us want to live within the restrictions of marriage. You know it's it's funny. I sometimes wonder why things happen. I ran into a chaver of mine who I hadn't spoken to in a while. I ran into Minyesh. And we were shopping. We were both shopping in Yesh. Two men shopping in Yesh. And we were Complaining is not the right word. We were unpacking. The challenges of being—it's not the Yesh part that bothers me. There are many. I want you to remember Yesh when the pigeons were still in Yesh. Before you all moved to Eretz Yisrael, I was here. I was here when it was normal and natural to walk out of Yesh, having been blessed by a pigeon. It was like a very Baruch Hashem, this community has come a very long way. And there's Wi-Fi in Yesh now. There's a tremendous amount of progress being made. There's Wi-Fi in the Yesh and the Merkaz.
But we were unpacking the concept of having to shop for somebody and not knowing exactly what they want. First of all, there's a level of ignorance there. I'm not a hundred percent sure I know what a kohlrabi is. Like that's not a fruit. That's not a. Is it a fruit or a vegetable? It's a vegetable. So first of all, that's good. Thank you for categorizing that for me. Second of all, I know. I just honestly at this point, I just know it's the weird looking one. Also, I'm gonna be honest. Now I know, but I didn't always understand the difference between a zucchini and a cucumber. These are not things that I grew up with. I didn't. I'm not necessarily chopping this. And you come home, and your wife's like, "That was the wrong thing," and you're like I'm sorry, right? And it's like you failed the mission of being the good husband to get all the things on the list, right? Especially in Yesh before there was Wi-Fi. Really, I had no way of contacting her.
Please get yogurt. There's a lot of yogurts. I don't know which yogurt you want. I like the strawberry kind. There's a lot of strawberry kinds of yogurt. I'm not sure. And then not everything that I know of, even in English, translates to Hebrew. I'm not necessarily sure that I understand the term baking soda and baking powder, and I'm not sure that I understand them in Hebrew. We were commiserating over this, and it was just a funny little thing. It happens to be that his wife was shopping with him, so I was like, at least you're lucky. Because you have someone here to tell you what you're doing wrong. Honestly, half the time I'm in Yesh, I want to be walking around with a WhatsApp video call. Just walking through the aisles. Tell me when you see something that you want. Also, I've noticed that about your half of the species. Men work on lists. Women work. I'm going through the aisles, and that's how I'll decide what we need. How do you? How does that work? Because I know what we don't have at home. Then why can't it be on the list? Because I don't know it until I see it in the aisle. I don't understand this way of thinking, but I've noticed this about you.
Because I'm paying attention. That was a funny little bit. And then I went to Holy Bagel. To, by my daughter was having her wisdom teeth out, and she wanted a bagel in the morning, so I went to Holy Bagel, and as I'm pulling out a Holy Bagel, this guy walks by. And by the way, if you ever If you ever have to have wisdom teeth out, you know the expert lives in this neighborhood. Do not go to anybody but Dr. Schmool Katz. The craziest thing in the world. Pulled out all four of my daughter's wisdom teeth in three minutes. It was like he said, 'We got.' This is my ADHD kicks in around this time of night. So this guy walks by, and I waved him. It was funny; we hadn't seen each other in such a long time. So I said, "Hey!" He said, "Hey!" and he kept walking. Then he doubled back and came back. We spent twenty minutes at the car talking.
I was wondering why he came to the car and started talking, and specifically about the topic I'm about to tell you was such an interesting thing. And it never ceases to amaze me that exactly the thing that happens that week is exactly the thing that comes up in my week, and it's like there's a piece of information. He said something very smart. He said we need to have marriage coaches for newly married couples, not therapy, not because they're in trouble, not because they're in crisis mode. We need to teach people for the first three to five to seven years of marriage. There needs to be available date like just like this dating coaches. There needs to be marriage coaches. So I was okay. What are you trying to tell me here? So he said he started describing the challenges of marriage as couples get older. He said a smart thing. He said, and then the contracts begin to change. That was his lashon. The contracts begin to change. The contract that you made with your husband when you're first married is not the same contract that you're living with today, and it won't be the same contract that you're living with in ten years because people evolve, relationships evolve, and therefore the contract of marriage evolves. People don't know what to do with that. People turn around and they're married for ten, fifteen, twenty years, and all of a sudden they go.
What happened to the person that I married? What happened to the person I was dating? Something funny about dating. Because the way that people date, if Chassid Shalom they have to date for a second time, let's say if after a divorce or if a loved one passes away, from what I understand, it's a completely different dating process, because they're not dating like you see these. I remember this one date my wife and I had that she asked me, so what's your ten year plan? I was like I don't ten year plan I'm twenty one years old I don't have a ten year plan I'm living moment to moment you know. And then I asked her, 'Well, what's your ten-year plan?' She also didn't have an answer. That's why I knew we were suited for each other. But when you're older, you see things very differently. You're not trying to predict life because you know that life is unpredictable. My wife and I often joke that the people we were when we were younger, we would not recognize ourselves today. When my wife and I were dating, I was. This is gonna sound funny. I was like fiercely against learning chassidus.
It was the last thing I would ever do. And for whatever series of reasons, things that happened in my life, like I became attenuated to that world, and it changed the way that I saw the world. It was very hard for my wife. She married a guy who wasn't just a Litvak; I was a Mizrachid. And then I not only got into Chassidus, I got into Lubavitcher Chassidus, which was her family was like a whole serious thing. But she also changed tremendously. The person that I married is very different than the person that I married today. But the challenges of the changing contract and how do you keep those healthy boundaries as couples are changing? We know what happens if you're broken inside, if there's a shviras haluchos inside. And then the behavior I can't show up consistently to life, then we know that the boundaries that we've built start to crumble.
It's not an accident. It all goes back to that initial point. If I can't show up every day to a relationship, what's going to happen to the boundaries of the relationship? It's like if I can't show up and be a husband, then is it reasonable to expect my wife to be a wife? And if we can't show up and be a wife, is it reasonable for us to expect that our husband is going to be a husband? That famous line from Rabbi Pesach Krohn, my favorite line from Rabbi Krohn all time. He tells women, if you want your husband to thank you for baking b'challah, you have to thank him for bringing home the dough. That's a real rabbi line, but it's true. If you can't show up in self to be a wife, the boundaries of the relationship start to crumble. Maintaining your own integrity, maintaining your own authenticity, and being able to show up and maintain those boundaries is a critical part of being in a healthy relationship.
Of course, if we don't have enough inside of ourselves, then how are we going to do that? That brings us to step four. This is maybe the hardest one to understand, but I think it's so beautiful. Apostamas burned the Sefer Torah. Which Sefer Torah did he burn? For the purposes of this year, he burned the Sefer Torah that Ezra wrote. What's the significance of that? There's something called being rooted. We don't really appreciate being rooted today in the same way they appreciated it not that long ago. It's a result of living in a post-Holocaust generation. Maybe I'm speaking for myself, and maybe it's not fair for me to say Being the child of two balei chovah meant that I didn't come from anywhere. I don't know if you had this growing up, but did you ever have people who were like Like they could tell you Like they had cousins in the school. Talking about like It's like a thing, if you have cousins in the school, and if you're in a yeshiva school, so your uncle is in a grade younger than you.
And there's a sense It used to be this way because we were very tribal and we lived very close to each other. People couldn't live that far from each other. So it's like. Our family has been living in this town for generations. You knew your great grandfather. You knew the plot that he was buried in. That was the family plot. You would go there and you would see a whole list of people that were yours, and you were sure that you knew where you came from. It's called being rooted. You're anchored somewhere. It gives you a sense of stability. I don't really know any of my old relatives. Even though I'm a Levie, I always wonder if I'm a Levie. I'm talking about if you're Baliju, if you're from Baliju, but I always wonder. Did somebody just make that up? Because I don't know, maybe Cohen was too ambitious for them to reach for, but Levy they felt like we get away with that one. I don't know if I'm a Levy. I asked Shaila, and if your father told you you're a Levy, then you're a Levy. But I wonder sometimes. I'd like to do the research, find out where my great grandparents are from and go back to Poland and find a grave. And it'd be cool if it was Halevi on it.
But I'm pretty sure there won't be. In my heart, I'm like, there's no way it's true. There's a deep sense of being unlike, disrupted. We're no longer anchored. We're no longer attached to our roots. It's no small thing. Children need this especially. Children need to know that they can come home from somewhere and that there'll be parents there. If anyone here is the fifth child in their family, they'll know what I'm talking about. When you're the fifth or sixth child, you know your parents have been parenting by that point. It's like you're the kid that got left in the movie theater. You know what I'm talking about? Like you're that kid that It was encamped till really late, and then mom woke up at five o'clock and goes, 'Oh my God!' You're that kid. Why does that hurt so much, Astan? Because you were forgotten? It's because it's like Is there a place that's thinking of me? I'm the oldest, by the way. I'm talking about other people's trauma. The I was never the forgotten kid But I don't have a fifth kid in my family. I'm not talking about a sibling either.
But I happen to be related to somebody who told me that exact story. The idea that there's somewhere in the world where I'm totally allowed to be myself and I'm unconditionally loved in that place. My closest friend in the entire world lost his mother to cancer and then he lost his father to Lou Gehrig's disease and I flew in for the shiva. There was a lot of joking in the show because he's a very funny person. And he loves dark humor. If you've lost a second parent, there's going to be a lot of dark humor there. I won't say the jokes, but they were amazing. Like that. The but I remember at some point he said to me, "There's no place in the world now" Where I can be completely loved just for being myself. That was the saddest thing in the world to hear. He's right.
He's right. To be anchored in the past is what gives us the capacity To be not only present But also to be future oriented. To be able to say I'm rooted enough here that I can go somewhere else. It is like a big movement in the world today of being present and being mindful. And there's certainly a lot of truth to that. But Chazal are also clear, ezel chachamaro es hanolad. You have to see what's coming. Some you're headed in a particular direction. A plant is meant to grow. But a plant can only grow when it's deeply rooted in its own soil, and it's comfortable and connected to what it is. Losing the Sefer Torah of Ezra wasn't just that we had other Sefer Torah that were validated Sefer Torah. It wasn't the Pshat that we lost our connection to the past. The Sefer Torah is the same Sefer Torah, but the problem was we didn't have Ezra's Sefer Torah.
And he was Ezra's Sopher. It was the Sefer Torah. It was the Sefer Torah that anchored us to the past. So now we were adrift. And that's exactly what happens if you follow what we've been saying the entire time. When you're out of balance inside. You can't show up to life consistently. When you can't show up to life consistently Your boundaries are not going to be held strong. And when your boundaries aren't able to be held strong, the next thing that happens is you're adrift. You're floating in the sea. I heard a line. I don't remember where I heard it from. Maybe it was Lawrence Kellerman or maybe it was Ray Tans. I don't remember exactly who was. Years ago, I heard this line. Maybe like the late '90s. A ship cannot be anchored to itself. It needs to be anchored to something fundamentally other than it. The anchor needs to be in the ground in order to hold the ship steady. Once the boundaries break, we start asking ourselves: So who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? What am I doing with any of this? There's a feeling of being lost.
And it's a horrific feeling if you've ever been there. I think it's for many of us the feeling that came Post October seventh. Things it's a It's like not just the uncertainty So what now, where do we go from here It's like if you remember when they were asking the questions in the beginning, people were like What happened? How could they not have known? If you unpack that question, what were we really asking ourselves? It's like I don't feel safe. I don't feel comfortable. I don't feel like I'm anchored. I don't feel like I'm rooted. Right? We like I don't know if you heard about this. You hear NCSYKOL was in Elat when they had that terrorist threat. There was a supposed terrorist threat a few days ago in Elat. So they at least reported this on the news. I don't know if it's true.
But it was because there was an influx of a large amount of foreign SIM cards into Elat. Those foreign SIM cards were the NCSYKOL boys. That's what's being reported. Which is Objectively, really funny. A bunch of sixteen-year-old kids from the five towns are not a terrorist threat in a lot. It's like the fact that my daughters have to ask me, 'Abba, can I go to the kotel? Is it safe? The fact that you wake up in the morning and you're like, 'There was a drone attack on Tel Aviv,' and it doesn't even phase you It's because we've become accustomed to being adrift. That's not a normal way of living. But it is what happens. It's the natural consequence of when we're not in balance internally. We're not in balance internally. I can't show up to life consistently. I can't maintain the boundaries of my relationship. And now there's this feeling of I'm not anchored to the past. I don't know where I am.
We're meant, by the way, to be raised by tribes. That's the right way of doing it. In hunter gatherer societies, that's the way it was. You were raised by your parents, by your aunts, by your uncles, by your cousins. The reason why friendships were not today, a kid we always get nervous. My kid's gonna go off the derech if he has a friend that's going off the derech. Wait a second, why would your kid choose to go off the derech because his friend is going off the derech? Why is the influence of a friend so powerful? Why is the influence of a friend so much more powerful than the influence of the family? The answer is very simple. Kids will drift naturally to wherever their safety is. If the safety is at home, if the parents are attuned to the children, kids are going to want to be there. It used to be if you grew up and you were surrounded by aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents, and that's what you needed to survive, and they were there for you, then of course you would never leave the tribe.
You weren't adrift. You were anchored. Today, these kids, I feel bad saying it. How many kids are being raised? I think it's better here in Israel. But how many kids are being raised as latchkey children? How many kids are coming home before their parents? Or if their parents are coming home before them, the parents are not home. And I'm not even getting into parents being on the phone and not being present for their children. That kid is being raised adrift. He's being raised without an anchor. We're meant to be locked in. We're meant again. Life is always going to be uncertain. But there's a certain amount of certainty that we expect. We don't expect anybody to come over the wall. We don't expect thousands of people to come through. We don't expect like this week. My son Allah said to me, Master Shabbos. He goes, how it's going to be a big week this week. I said, "Why?" He said, "They're going back to Khan Yunis because they're going after Simayim Ashur."
" So I was like, "Okay And I said to him, 'He's—they're living downstairs for me now.' So I said to my son-in-law, 'I said it's been pretty quiet.' He goes, 'Yeah, I'm shocked.' That's what we're living with. We're living with a level of uncertainty that's not normal. It's not healthy. This is not the way it's supposed to be. We have to remind ourselves that, by the way, because if we don't remind ourselves that this is unhealthy, then we're going to start to get used to this, and it's not normal for us to be adrift in this way. We're supposed to be locked in. We come from somewhere, rooted from somewhere. We're children of Avram Avinu. Talk a lot about this. I'm not going to talk about this more, but I just want to say one last thing. This is what happens when children are so judged and so critiqued. Children, like there is a concept of v'yichus, but the concept of v'yichus is not "I'm great" because my grandfather was great. The concept of v'yichus is "my grandfather was great. Look at the greatness that I come from." Today, that's like weaponized. The worst thing you can do is name your kid after a gavel because, if let's say you have a last name like Feinstein. Don't name your kid Moshe.
Because you know what happens when he messes up in school. There's going to be some rabbi that says, "Them, really, Moshe Feinstein could do this." That kid's not going to feel good about his name being Moshe Feinstein. The best thing my father ever did for me is he used to tell me when I was growing up, "A little learning never hurts." So let's learn as little as possible. This is my rebellion. I never had any pressure to learn. It was a beautiful gift my father gave me. But knowing that you come from somewhere, these people that go like, "I'm an ainikol of the Alter of Slabodka," I'm from you know we have something beautiful about that, and kids today should feel like they're anchored in something. And every time they're criticized, and I'm not talking about saying no, it's healthy to say no. But we're constantly criticizing our children, and we're constantly telling them what they're not doing, which is crazy, by the way, because our children are doing nine Our children are the top one percent of all Jews in the world.
Most Jews in the world are not nearly as observant as what's happening in our community. They're not learning nearly as much Torah. Even historically, they're learning more Torah than ever before. Every one of these kids should be deeply celebrated, and then they'll feel anchored in the community. They have to have Ezra's Torah. That's what they need. They have to have Ezra's Torah, and they feel like yeah, I'm deeply connected to myself. That's what it requires. And then finally, we get to that final stage of corruption, which is an idol gets placed in the base of mikdash. This is not the destruction of the base of mikdash yet, but it is the defilement of the essence. The breaking of the base of mikdash is the final stage. That's tish above, but there's something that comes before this. And it's as follows. I was listening to a podcast. I don't know if you saw this podcast. It's a beautiful podcast. David bashefkin interviewed rabbi y jacobson.
If you have the opportunity to listen to it, it was really good. Two very smart people And about Jacobson said, and I thought this was particularly sophisticated. He said the yisod of the labav sherevi was Elokayin the shamashinu sata be tahori. That there's a part of you that can never be defiled. There's a part of you that's never going to be broken. And this is really the place where healing comes from. The problem is that How could healing Happen if I am broken That's the problem. It's like it's one of the twelve steps. It's a very beautiful program, but one of the chesronos of twelve steps is you have people running around saying, "I am an addict." No, you are a human being. You are a human being. You have a godly soul. Your behavior is the behavior of an addict, but you fundamentally are a lokayn hashamashanasa to be tahori. You're chelik alekam imal mamish.
That was the sort of the Bava Shurabi. He believed so deeply in every single Jew because he believed that there was a place inside of every single Jew that can never be defiled. And from that place is how he reached out to every single Jew. By the way, from that place I would add, with some level of humility, is why he felt comfortable to send children, young married children with no experience, and he would send them to the farthest places on earth, and he would tell them, go build. And they would. Where did he have the faith in them to do that? They were the shluchim that went out, especially in the early years before there was any infrastructure whatsoever. Where did they get the capacity to do that from? It's because he believed so deeply in the goodness and the godliness of every single person.
The final stage that happens right before destruction is that you no longer believe in your own goodness. And if you want to know if this applies to you, it's very simple. Listen to the words that you don't say about yourself. Listen to the words that you don't say out loud, but you do say inside of yourself about yourself. How much negative talk exists inside of ourselves? Words that we would never say to somebody else. We feel comfortable saying to ourselves. A chaver of mine said years ago he said you can't hate yourself into change. And he's right, but it's more profound than that. It's like why do you hate yourself to begin with? The reason you hate yourself to begin with is because you feel I'm fundamentally not good anymore. I don't daven as much as I used to Because I'm running around doing a million things, but I don't feel connected to my davening. Yet that's not the problem. The problem is not that you don't feel connected to your davening. The problem is that you feel unworthy of love and connection because your davening is not what it used to be.
It's like the Balshanto said that the bite of the snake is not what kills you; it's the poison. So the poison is not I did an aveira. The poison is I'm def. There's defilement in my bais hamikdash. It's no longer I'm no longer a place of kedusha And once I'm no longer a place of kedusha, that's the final straw. That's the final straw. Once you've reached that step, the destruction of the bais hamikdash is inevitable. Person can't live like that. So if you follow what we've been saying, it goes like this: Once you're out of sync, once you're out of balance, once body and soul are not living harmoniously, I can't show up to life consistently. Once I can't show up to life consistently, the boundaries of my relationships begin to crumble. Once the boundaries of my relationships begin to crumble, I'm no longer rooted. I don't have anywhere in the world where I am me, loved as I am.
And once you reach that stage, once you're unrooted and you reach that level where you're walking around saying I'm defiled. After that, the bais hamikdash is a fait accompli. It would seem then that all hope is lost. But really, as we said in the very beginning of this year, it's exactly the opposite. If we knew this, then we could also reverse engineer it. If you knew this, then you could spend the next three weeks rectifying every one of these things. So that when you feel like I'm defiled fundamentally, it's reminding yourself, no, you're not. That your base of mikdash really can never be destroyed. The base of mikdash can't be destroyed. The base of mikdash is not sticks and stones. That's why the third base of mikdash can come. It's because it was never really destroyed. So you remember I am kadosh, the kindness, the shabbos, the sata to be toheruhi, and you remember, I'm a toher person. Regardless of what I've done, I'm not defined by my actions.
And then you say, am I really disrooted? Am I really no longer anchored? I'm a child of Avram Avinu, and there's no such thing as farther and closer. And every one of us is deeply connected. And you might look at your relationship and say there are boundaries that need to be rebuilt. So rebuild them. Reach out to people in a loving way and say, I want to be with you. I don't want to be pushing you away anymore. I'm telling you that this hurt me because I care about you and I want to be spoken to in a way that feels safe for me and that feels dignified for me. I want you to come home and I want you to pay attention to me because I care about you and I want to feel your love and I want to show you love in return. Teach me what it looks like to be in boundaries with you. It's no small thing to be able to say to somebody, "I know that I haven't been showing up consistently." But I'm going to work on it. I'm going to try to be more present. I'm not saying that I'm going to be perfect, but I can bring that carbon tummy.
That's a natural thing, and most of all is to get back to that initial state. If we've spent so much time focusing on our body and not nearly as enough time focusing on our soul, then don't turn around and say, "I don't know how I got here." You have to invest in anything. Whatever you water is going to grow. The physical nature of the world demands of us that we spend so much time building it. But the truth is If we don't spend. A significant amount of time watering our soul, and it's true we're going to feel deeply disconnected. I remember many years ago I had the privilege of hearing from the author of Bvavvi Mishkan Avne in the Five Towns. You know the author. You ever hear the Sefer Bvavvi Mishkan Avne? So he came to America for the first time, and on his trip he went to Eish Kodesh in the Five Towns. So everyone went out to see him. Everyone had learned the Sefer. It was like a thing. I want to meet the author.
So he was Israeli. So he got up. And Weinberger was sitting there, and he got up. It was his first time ever in America. It was his first time ever in the Five Towns. And I'll never forget what he said. He said There's a partnership, a fifty-fifty partnership between the body and the soul. The body can get its fifty percent, but the soul has to get an equal fifty percent. This is my first time here in the Five Towns. Driving through the streets here And I see these enormous houses. These people must have huge neshamas. It was a very sweet mussar. It was a very beautiful way of putting it. We chose to be here in Eretz Yisrael. We chose not to live in those places. We chose to live in Baruch Hashem beautiful apartments, in buildings. The challenges of living in buildings. There's beautiful things about living in buildings. Shabbos smells different in buildings.
It's like you come into certain buildings. On erev Shabbos, the mix of various potato kugels and Yerushalmi kugels and cholent is beautiful. But there are also challenges of living in buildings. We don't have backyards in the same way they have in America. We don't have the cars necessarily that they have in America. We chose to live soul oriented lives, and yet even here in Eretz Yisrael, especially with things being the way they are, it's hard. It's hard, and we're investing so much in the physical nature of our lives. We have to make sure we have to have time, and I've said this. I've said this a million times. I'm going to say it again. Your husbands are all awesome, and I'm so glad that they're going out to learn nightsitter. And by Ese Hashem, they should continue. But we have to make sure, as families, for the sake of the entirety of the family.
That the women also have time to dedicate to their own spiritual growth. Because if they don't have that time, then who's going to raise the next generation of children? The women also. I'm not saying that we have to split nights, and not saying that she goes out three nights a week and he goes out three. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying that there needs to be time that's given to the women of the community to invest in their own rochnias, because if they can't, the results will be disastrous. Or you can't be a mensch if you're not aligned, body and soul, or at least working towards alignment, at least oriented towards alignment. Blessed Hashem, these three weeks we'll be working on this. And hopefully, with Hashem's help, this tish above will be a yomtiv, because we'll have rectified these things that brought us to the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. From here, we remain one man. Shleich. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Thank you. Yeah.
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